Time Stands Still

Happy Duck Day at Kilometer 691

2012-01-22T20:02:00.000+01:00

Lots of rain, the Rhine has grown and some of the meadows on Cologne's northern end are flooded. The ducks seemed to love it.

Ecstasy Trilogy

2011-12-13T09:52:00.011+01:00

Here are three ambient movies that I put online recently, each of them about 30 minutes long: "Mouse Pointer Feedback Ecstasy", "Arboreal Ecstasy", "Symmetric Jellyfish Ecstasy". Wow, 90 minutes of ecstasy?

Ecstasy is not something we usually encounter in our daily lives, and different people have very different ideas about what it is. I just saw that Wikipedia has three different definitions!

The effect of the videos on the observer will vary, but all of them slow down time like the motion of liquid in lava lamps, or like Marian Zazeela's extremely slow ornamental videos to La Monte Young's drone music.

For the MTV generation that is used to very fast and hectic cuts, this will be unbearable to watch :)

1. Mouse Pointer Feedback Ecstasy

I used a toy microscope and filmed the microscope output on the screen - I pointed the microscope to its own images. This creates a video feedback loop, resulting in all sorts of effects. Because nothing much happens when filming an empty screen, resulting in more of nothing, I chose to film the mouse pointer from very close. Some postprocessing was applied (mainly, slowing down). The music is ambient music that I played on synthesizers and tape delays, back in the mid-eighties.

2. Arboreal Ecstasy

This was the first video designed to use as a backdrop for Georgina Brett's set on my livelooping festival from last April. I filmed these trees out of my car while driving through forests in Washington and Northern California (usually, Sabine was driving and I held the camera). Postprocessing: Slowing down and some motion blur, and a mirror effect at the bottom of the video, to take out the street that was visible in the original. The mirror creates a nice effect that looks like a reflection on water.

I chose Georgina's piece Leanate as soundtrack for this, and I slowed it down considerably using Paulstretch. Then two weeks before the festival it turned out that someone else had also planned to use trees for a backdrop video, so I dropped this, and created something new for Georgina:

3. Symmetrical Jellyfish Ecstasy

I had filmed these amazing creatures in an aquarium in Oregon. Postprocessing included slowing down, changing the colors, and introducing symmetry. The music I chose for this imagery consisted of a loop I had created a while ago (I have forgotten in the meantime how I did it); during the piece, several instances of this loop, running at different speeds, get superimposed.

Georgina's gorgeous set with the jellyfish video behind her can be watched here.

Locus Amoenus II

2011-11-06T18:14:00.006+01:00

Sunday, 6th of November: an expedition to one of my secret favorite places near where I live :) I spent an hour lying on a meadow in the sun, no jacket, just a t-shirt. It was so warm and relaxing that I almost fell asleep. If this is the climate change, it can come :)

Ladybug Chapel

2011-10-29T14:18:00.009+02:00

Her birthday, a day off together, the sun was shining and it was very warm for an end-October day. We went to see an unusual little chapel on a field somewhere west of Cologne. It was designed and built by Swiss star architect Zumthor for a family of farmers who felt grateful for a long and good life, and wanted to build a chapel.

We were not the only visitors on this wonderful day. We would have loved to have this very unusual place for us alone for a while, but so did the others. Maybe I'll eventually come back here on a grey day outside the school holiday period.

The building is shaped like a tent, originally built out of 112 spruce trunks with layers of concrete on top. When it was finished, a drying fire burnt inside for three weeks. The trunks dried off the concrete and could be taken out. The walls on the inside, under the open roof, still show the shapes of the trees.

Lots of glass tubes connect the dark interior to the outside, creating dots of light in the walls. Sitting on the tiny bench beside the candles, it was totally quiet. The place has a very special atmosphere, but I found that I felt much more in a meditative mood outside, on top of the open field near the chapel. Somehow it seems to be slighly unsettling to me to sit in a dark little room with no way to see if any other people are approaching. Some part of me feels safer alone on a hill where I can see in all directions.

For some reason, there was an invasion of ladybugs, flying around and sitting on the concrete of the chapel, hundreds of them.

We walked through a village nearby that turned out to be less interesting than we had hoped, but at least they had very good cake on offer.

In the evening, some shopping and dinner in Cologne. We saw the first signs of Christmas approaching, but also of the carnival season that officially starts on November 11. A big thing in Cologne, even more important than the puppets of the classical Hänneschen theater.

A stroll down the Rhine. We were too tired already to take a closer look at the amusement park on the other side. A nice day out!

Full of Love

2011-09-16T08:24:00.008+02:00

Another week with 100+ people in this place that I've written about several times before. We had a full schedule and very little time but I managed to take a few walks, some of them in the late evening, walking with a moon shadow. I don't know if these photos manage to give an impression of the incredible beauty of this place. Especially the sunny September days are breathtakingly beautiful here.

The teachings and exercises were about topics that I won't try to describe here in detail, but some of it had to do with the source of intelligence, as described in Almaas's book about "Brilliancy". And connected to that, complex stuff such as the oedipal complex and how it influenced our capacity to feel and express passionate love, or our tendency to sublimate this love into ways that were less difficult in the contact to our parents. Many participants, including myself, had very moving experiences of deep love. Amazing what capacities are waiting to be uncovered in us.

And no, even if these retreats take place in a Christian monastery, this stuff doesn't have anything to do with Christianity :)

Jumping Ice

2011-08-26T18:12:00.006+02:00

While New York, just shaken by an unusual earthquake, prepares for a severe tropical storm, we're having much more harmless weather conditions here, but unusual as well: today we had a hailstorm, something rare for this area.

While I took some photographs, hail jumped through the open terrace door, some of the ice balls made it all the way to the other end of the house.

Our water lilies got perforated ...

Several loads of torrential rain followed in the hours after the hail. And we discovered that the skylights in Sabine's room aren't completely tight - one of them above her bed. The mattress was partly wet. We had to drag it in front of the heating, hoping it will dry soon. Adventure!

When in Rome

2011-07-22T21:26:00.018+02:00

In the afternoon of the second day of the Florence Livelooping Festival, Fabio Anile (who had to work on Monday morning and could not stay for the evening concerts), Michela and me drove down to Rome.

Fabio had invited me for a couple of days to make music together. We share a love for livelooping, ambient, and minimalist polyrhythmic music, and we had already played together on loopfestivals in Berlin and Cologne - here is what the final minutes in Cologne sounded like:

I stayed in Fabio's place for several days, and on each day when he came home from work in the afternoon, we improvised together for several hours, and recorded everything. It will take some time to listen through all of this! Some of the improvisations will probably be good enough for a CD as they are, some others need some working on, and some might be used as a sketch for a composition. The music that we produced was quite beautiful and dreamy, often involving silence or very few notes.

Not surprisingly, the food was also very good :)

Of course, being in Rome, I also did the tourist thing - wonderful !

"Peters is super" - yes, but there are still some typos in there ! Please try again.

On my last morning in Rome, before going to the airport, Fabio drove me to Tivoli, a few miles outside of Rome, where we took a look at Villa Adriana. "Villa" is a somewhat misleading word for this huge complex of buildings. This amazing place had been home for a while to a Roman emperor who liked it better than his palace in the city - I could understand why. Of course I did not only take photos but also binaural recordings with "headphone" microphones (wearing my furry black windshields which Fabio found very funny).

A Suitcase Full of Stars

2011-07-17T12:00:00.017+02:00

Another Livelooping festival, this time in beautiful Florence ...

Some of you might remember the sentence "my god, it's full of stars". Another situation, but one could also say this about my new suitcase that I had to buy because the airline that calls itself "Easyjet" allows for only one piece of cabin baggage. For me as a travelling livelooper (well, occasionally), this is a bad restriction: I need to carry the laptop in one hand and the small Hohner G2 guitar in the other hand. I wouldn't check in any of those two of course, and to put the laptop into my suitcase didn't feel so safe. The solution for this was finally to get a large new dark blue suitcase that could contain not only my toothbrush and t-shirts but also the guitar, squeezed in diagonally. And to be able to recognize it at the baggage claim, I put lots of little fluorescent stars on it, on all sides. It looks really nice, and they glow in the dark!

Massimo Liverani the hero had organized the 4th International Livelooping Festival in Florence. And as if that wasn't enough, he also housed us, fed us, drove us, and showed us around the town.

Among the liveloopers I met in Florence: Gareth Whittock, and his wife Emma, from Bristol ...

Willie Oteri and Dave Laczko (WD-41, and I know the secret story behind this name now) from Austin, Texas ...

Fabio Anile from Rome, with his friend Michaela ...

Rainer Straschill from Munich with Michéle ...

Enrico Coniglio from Venice (right) who turned out to share some unusual passions with me (such as, wandering around with binaural microphones, or dipping a hydrophone into the sea and listening to fish) ...

We walked around the old city after midnight ... Roman statues, old bridges, cafes that were the birthplace of the futurist movement, and of course breathtaking buildings ...

We drove up a hill to take the tourist look over the valley of Florence ... the city and the area of Tuscany are amazingly beautiful, I want to come back and spend a vacation here!

The venue was an open air stage in a beautiful park. It was very warm, and families and kids were all around until very late.

My set was the last one on this day. I replaced Randolf Arriola from Singapur who couldn't come.

My set had some weak moments, but all in all, I was very happy with how it developed, and I felt that this gig had been a significant step. Too bad my long pants had disintegrated unexpectedly the day before, I look a bit sloppy with my short pants, but it works if one closes one's eyes and just listens to the music :)

The Sunday after the Saturday before. Massimo and his wife fed us with pasta, and we all sat together in a small garden under a fig tree, eating and having coffee and talking.

After this, most of the tired loopers went to bed again, while Fabio, Michaela and me set off to Rome for the next adventure. Fabio had invited me to stay with him for a few days, to make music together. Because he had to work early on Monday, we missed the second day of the festival. Too bad but the first day had already been very enjoyable, with very nice sets of Giovanni Lami, Enrico Coniglio, Fabio Anile, and Rainer Straschill. (And me.)

Nuraghe Island 5: Paper Strip Beach

2011-06-30T20:48:00.005+02:00

The coasts of Sardinia are quite beautiful. We found a couple of spots that looked like the Caribbean. And I found that the colors of the sea are much more convincing when I take photographs through my polarising sun glasses. This is how it looked when I was wearing these glasses:

Wind surfers riding the mistral ...

A coastline full of natural sculptures (you can see the coast of Corsica here - the white line is the chalk cliff at Bonifacio) ...

Some adventurous people had climbed the top ...

Another beautiful beach with interesting snorkeling areas ... unfortunately, there were some small, almost invisible jellyfish in the water that burned our skins when we touched them while swimming ...

On the small island of La Maddalena: Lobster sculptures, glorious mysteries (vanished), heads of animals, a beautiful balcony ...

Not sure what this butterfly is called ...

One of the more beautiful beaches where we spent some hours was full of the dried leaves of some underwater plant. There were soft heaps of them that really looked like paper strips, shredded East German secret files maybe ...

And on the last day, on arriving at the Alghero airport, we were greeted by lots of swallows who had turned all the lamps into houses ...

Nuraghe Island 4: Close To The Edge

2011-06-30T10:09:00.009+02:00

Bonifacio, sitting at Corsica's southern end (in a way, the most southerly point of France) and one ferry hour away from northern Sardinia, is one of Corsica's main tourist spots.

The old city is perched on top of a high cliff in a quite breathtaking way. Its large natural harbour is home of dozens of yachts, and in the summer, it is visited by giant cruisers almost on a daily basis. From our temporary base in northern Sardinia, we could see them slowly approach like spaceships.

The harbour part of Bonifacio is full of restaurants and very expensive t-shirt shops. We had a salade italienne and a jus d'orange after we arrived, and marveled at the various million-dollar-yachts, but to get to the old town on the cliff, we had to climb the steep road.

The city walls and the outer houses are sitting directly on the edge of the cliff. I wonder what it is like to live in such a house and maybe have breakfast on a balcony above the sea, with lots of nothing below you.

The old city itself is picturesque of course, but we really wondered why some of the money that gets spent by the thousands of daily tourists isn't invested in renovation. Many of the houses were in a very bad shape. Obviously, the money disappears in the hands of people who find better ways to spend it. After all, tourists continue to come, regardless of the condition of the old town!

A short look at Christian violence fantasies, mostly because the church was a good place to sit and cool down for a few minutes after walking around in the heat ... this life-sized wooden martyr scene, weighing hundreds of kilograms, was sitting on a platform that could be carried around for some Christian ceremonies, hopefully taking place in a cooler time of the year.

After climbing down to the harbour, we felt justified to dedicate ourselves to these two extremely delicious little beasts ...

Time to go back to the ferry. This lovely lady in the waiting hall caught my attention because she was busy loudly browsing the frequencies on a Sony short wave radio. She seemed to really love this little box, and continued playing with it later on the ferry back to Sardinia. I enjoyed being treated with this unexpected avantgarde sound installation.

Leaving Corsica and France, back to Italy. It was good to have been back to this remarkable place. I had visited it once in 1988 together with my American girlfriend (a year before I met Sabine). We had been on a round trip on Corsica, and while visiting Bonifacio, we had even met her older sister and her sister's husband, who happened to be here on that day during a cruise tour of the Mediterranean. Looking at my photos again from that time, I am surprised how young I was then ... and how distant it feels. A different self.

Nuraghe Island 3: Towers of the Sky

2011-06-29T20:05:00.003+02:00

Eastward across very windy plains full of large rocks surrounded by colorful flowers ...

... towards a small place called Burgos which lies under an impressive castle ... we wanted to take a closer look at it, or take a look downwards from the surrounding hills, but we got lost in the tiny streets of Burgos, couldn't find our way, and were relieved to eventually find out again!

A few miles later, in the middle of nowhere, we saw this group of buildings and stopped to take a look. Sabine was delighted - it is called St. Sabina, mostly consisting of a beautiful little 10th century Roman church and a Nuraghe tower, one of about 700 on the island of Sardinia, dating back to perhaps 1800BC. The tower was in good shape, and I climbed up the dark stairway inside of it, built of huge uneven rocks. Being on top of it felt more like standing on a small hill.

Further northeast, we had seen an unusual looking plane flying back and forth at low altitudes, several times, and we had already wondered about it. We eventually found that our road led across a strange artificial lake filled with green water, Lake Coghinas. The plane came back, touched the water surface for a few seconds, and took off again - it was a fire fighter plane that was loading new water, probably on a training mission because we didn't see forest fires anywhere.

We eventually reached Tempio Pausania, our destination for this day. The sky was very blue, but it was very windy and unusually cold - Mistral weather. Fortunately it ceased after two days.

Nuraghe Island 2: Fish Out Of Water

2011-06-29T11:03:00.003+02:00

The name of the place was Bosa, the river was called Temo. I have never seen a river that was so full of fish - large ones, tiny ones, everywhere you looked there were fish, and in the evening, the surface of the river was criss-crossed by fish that swam around with their heads out of the water. They didn't tell me why they did that (I spent two hours at the riverside with a hydrophone and headphones - the results were disappointing: the fish of Bosa don't talk).

The old town of Bosa, beneath a large castle ruin, is a maze of picturesque cobblestoned paths and colorful little houses. The view from the castle over the beautiful wide valley is definitely worth climbing up there.

In the evening, we found a real good restaurant at the riverside, right opposite the decaying tannery buildings that were one of the sources of Bosa's wealth many years ago.

The next day, on the way to the east, a visit to a medieval church, extramuros ... a friendly dog followed us for a while ... red poppies and hissing crickets in the heat, and a last look back to Bosa.

Nuraghe Island 1: Excited Shouting

2011-06-28T13:40:00.001+02:00

Every evening there was a flight show in the Alghero old town, starring hundreds of excited swifts flying high speed manoevres above the roofs, while shouting loudly.

Alghero, which is considered the prettiest town on Sardinia, was our first base during the two weeks we spent in the north of Sardinia. We had a nice flat in the old town (but we had to close all windows and use ear plugs during the night because tourist activities were quite loud until about 3 am - excited shouting of another kind).

After a few days, we got a car and started exploring the surrounding region - hills with a view and beautiful beaches.

We drove to see the cragged rocks of nearby Capo Caccia and climbed down (and later, up) hundreds of stairs to a stalactite cave; on the next day, we took a boat to the same area and marveled at it from the sea. On the way back to Alghero, we were accompanied by a group of dolphins which jumped out of the water ...

Humming Tree

2011-05-07T15:26:00.006+02:00

This year seems unusual, weather-wise, too much sun for April-May, too little rain, and the plants grow and are flowering more than ever before, or so it seems. At the moment, our Laburnum anagyroides (Golden Rain) is pretty amazing and if there is a quiet moment, without wind, cars, or planes, you can hear that the whole tree hums with bumblebees. What a great natural sculpture!

The Livelooping Weekend

2011-04-04T13:07:00.011+02:00

This was the weekend of the 2nd international Livelooping Festival in Cologne - I had organized the first one almost 3 years ago, and for various reasons I felt it was time to do another one.

I wish more liveloopers would organize such a festival. It doesn't have to be a mammoth, several-days-70-loopers festival such as Rick Walker's festivals in Santa Cruz (which he now has stopped doing because it kept him busy for months). This Cologne festival presented 10 acts again (this time, 9 soloists and 1 trio) and so was small in comparison. Many people seem to think that it is very difficult or lots of work to do that, but in fact, it is not so much work, but lots of fun, especially if one chooses nice loop musicians and everything turns out to be a success. It helped a lot that the cultural office of Cologne and the culture trust of the Cologne-Bonn Sparkasse bank sponsored me again to an extent that allowed me to hire people who did sound, videotaping, video projection, photography, and other support work.

Some of the loopers stayed in hotels, but Georgina Brett, Per Boysen, and the boys from Darkroom stayed at our house.

The day of the festival was very warm and sunny ... good for us at first, so we could hang out on the terrace in the morning ... of course in the evening, there were less people in the audience than we had expected because some of them had preferred a lazy evening in a beer garden over hours of difficult music in the darkened hall of the Loft ...

Setting up was less chaotic than one could expect with 12 musicians and tons of electronics all squeezed together on a few square meters. Then Thomas Elbern started with his Twilight Worldz guitar drones, followed by Uwe Schumacher (who I knew from two concerts in his church based KlangSpielRaum) and his world music influenced improvisations on bass, percussion, and voice ...

Patty Stucki sang, played synths and saxophones, and transported the audience into other worlds ...

... before I entered the stage with my guitar and delivered several quite multifaceted pieces of music, some of which were successful (i.e. came out similar to my plans) and some didn't. Oh well. I am still learning!

Sjaak Overgaauw had been inspired by the first Cologne loopfestival to create his own annual festival in Antwerpen. His Premonition Factory produced beautiful ambient music, and after this, David Cooper Orton played guitar somewhere between folk, rock, jazz, and minimal music. Both Sjaak and David had been among my livelooping colleagues in Santa Cruz in 2009 ...

It was a special treat for me to finally see Georgina Brett on stage. I had met her in London in 2007 where she introduced me to her ethereal vocal canon music. This time she sung a complex 30 minute piece based on words by Pythagoras. The video backdrop I had created for her, starring slowly moving psychedelic jellyfish (which I had recorded in an aquarium in Oregon) was a great visual addition to her composition I thought. (Georgina was too concentrated to even notice :)

Georgina was followed by Stockholm based looper Per Boysen, one of my favorite looping musicians (I remember being in awe watching him on festivals in Zürich and Rome). Instead of guitar, flute, or saxophone, he presented his newest instrument, a Chapman stick. It seems that a good musician can create magic on just about any instrument!

Reyn Ouwehand from Amsterdam was the only livelooper I hadn't met before. He turned out to be not only fun to spend time with, but also a much more proficient keyboard player than I had expected - jawdropping even. He finished his set with a nice impromptu improvisation with Georgina.

And finally, Darkroom (Andrew Ostler and Michael Bearpark with Andrew Booker on electronic percussion) delivered a beautiful and relaxing piece of electronic music that reminded me of Krautrock psychedelia, probably due to the synth sequences created by Os.

We came home after the gig, exhausted but happy, and stayed up late. On the next morning, Sjaak and Ingrid and Patty came to watch us having breakfast, Georgina and Per did the dishes ... some of us stayed until the evening, talking about music, but only Per stayed another night and left on Monday afternoon.

What a great weekend with such nice people! I wish we could all stay together for longer, but of course many of the loopers are parents and have to go back to their families and workplaces ... the looper island that Michael Klobuchar dreams of will probably remain a dream ...

Here is a very nice 5 minute WDR3 radio feature about the festival, containing short interviews and music snippets by Reyn, Patty, Thomas, Georgina, and Uwe:

(photos taken by Andrew Ostler, Mike Bearpark, Petra Schulten, Mike Gürgens, and myself)

Soft Drugs in Antwerp

2011-03-06T18:45:00.024+01:00

I did a Saturday/Sunday trip to Antwerp to visit the Livelooping Festival, the 3rd one organized by Sjaak Overgaauw. Except for the bad traffic jams that I got into on the highway, I found that Antwerp is not really far from here - less than 3 hours.

I had booked a hotel that looked cheap and good on the website. Well let us say I will look for another hotel should I come back to the next loop festival. But the area was interesting - it was a Jewish quarter of town, and I saw lots of Jewish couples walking around the place wearing very traditional cloths and very strange cylindrical fur hats that I haven't seen before anywhere.

Living in Germany, I'm not used to seeing traditional Jews because understandably, very few of them live here. I saw lots of people from many countries in Antwerp, and I heard many languages. A young man talked loudly into his mobile, in a language that I didn't recognize, while taking a leak standing beside me in the toilet of some cafe. Antwerp somehow reminded me a little bit of Manhattan - even the relatively small city park with its ponds and bridges reminded me of Central Park. I liked that a lot.

Lots of interesting shops, some of them selling things that I didn't recognize. And the chocolateries - oh my god. Soft drugs (I am clearly addicted to chocolate), and beautifully set up. And expensive.

I visited the bank of the Scheldt, a broad river flowing by the city into the nearby Atlantic.

A ponton made loud and deep water noises. I recorded a few minutes using my little digital recorder (this time it was wearing its new wind protection, and looked like a muppet with a wild hairdo) - click the arrow to hear water, seagulls, church bells, and traffic noises of Antwerp.

Hungry from walking. Apple pancake and coffee. Good. Then back into the city roads and early evening. Time to walk to the venue.

I first met with Kirstin, Facebook friend, synth player, and fan of Sjaak's music. It was nice to talk face to face instead of using facebook (we hardly knew each other in real life). Then to the venue together for a couple of hours with ambient music, drones, and loops.

Some of the livelooping music was quite amazing. Sjaak's ambient synthscapes were deep and hauntingly beautiful. Welsh guitarist Simeon Harris also created sounds and textures that were very beautiful, shimmering and complex - I wish I knew his trade secrets ... but I think gear is involved that I cannot afford at the moment. Flute and sax player Theo Travis used relatively modest gear, but his playing technique and compositional skill was outstanding. A very enjoyable and inspiring evening.

I walked home to my less-than-convincing hotel, slept for a few hours, and got up early. I drove through the Schelde tunnel and visited St. Anna, a popular recreation area for Antwerp citizens. You can see the city from there. If you walk around a bit, there are also views of, er, modern architecture and chemical industry areas, maybe not quite as beautiful as the Antwerp skyline, but in the early Sunday sunshine, everything looked shiny and fresh.

After a croissant or two for breakfast, I drove to Sjaak's and Ingrid's place for coffee. The boys had just gotten up and were busy transferring video files to portable hard disks. I also met Coco again, the cheese loving red tomcat that can make funny faces.

Walk The Dog

2011-03-03T19:53:00.011+01:00

We took a long walk near Lindlar with my old friend Thomas and Chikai, his friendly Akita Inu dog, past the quarry where I had recorded a few midwife toads a while ago, and beyond it into a very beautiful open landscape of large fields and hills that I wasn't familiar with although it is just half an hour away from here.

The sky was amazingly blue. Sabine couldn't stop exclaiming how beautiful it was everywhere around. I had to agree.

What a beautiful walk. We came home happy and very hungry and ate lots of chocolate.

Bonus track:
This looks like a Porsche covered in red, and fast asleep. It was parked near a house that we walked by during our walk. I thought you might like it too, so here it is.

When The Wind Quiets Down

2011-02-17T14:38:00.013+01:00

when the wind quiets down
there is a vast stillness all around.
some very distant sounds
of a crow or a car -
tiny streaks on
an wide empty blue canvas

from the hilltop
far away horizons, timeless
and silent.
mid-February sun begins
to warm up the world
stirring up fragrances of soil and grass

there is a promise
not only of spring
but also of something much larger
that my little brain can't grasp
something too huge to take in
something wonderful

Solid Like Hematite

2011-02-12T16:06:00.027+01:00

back at Kloster Schöntal with many old friends ... each one a different color

deep in the west, a very thin moon
we're very lucky to have a large moon like that
it stabilizes the earth rotation,
making regular seasons
and enabling life on earth

a walk under a very blue very wide empty sky
a sparkling sense of joy
little glowing dots seem to surround me
an exuberant lightness

the triangle of desire, self-rejection and hope
keeping us fixated in a prison.
it seems so human, so life-giving to have hope
"the life energy of it"
but then, no animal seems to need hope
and aren't they the ones who are full of life energy?

the deep seated desire for love and acceptance
(we used to live in tribes without which survival was unlikely)
searching for it on the outside
getting some, losing it, never really safe
all the time unaware of the true love
until it comes to pick us up

sitting at the computer desk, waiting for the show to begin, chewing cardamom ...

the conviction that I cannot do anything
the conviction that I have to do it all myself
how can both coexist?

I finally slept ok in the third night
to wake up at 6 out of a dream
in which I remembered myself as a young child
my own early childhood innocence and openness
was so moving that I had to cry.
images of old grown-ups in comparison
they were all distorted, grimacing, and sick of their lives,
sick of madness from having forgotten themselves for too long.

then that woman (not one that I know in real life)
she was like ... the archetypal good mother
I embraced her and cried on her shoulder
moved by the beautiful memory of my own
long forgotten innocence,
and I woke up with this feeling. How strange
and completely unexpected

walking through the yard,
a friendly white cat comes to say hello
while the eternal flock of black birds
still circles the spires, shouting
as it will in a thousand years from now

spending much of the day taking care of
a dear friend who is in deep distress
did palpably consume some of my own energy.
I lie in bed after midnight with headphones
carried into sleep on the wings of an angelic lullaby
sung by another dear friend

coming from the toilet at 4am
the sky is full of bright large stars
reminding me of that painting
3 hours later, all is grey and wet from rain
and the birds sing early spring songs

still suffering from the previous day,
something becomes quiet.
What a luxury to be able to read a few Hafiz poems
before getting up.
It sets my mind back on track.
All is happening on its own.
And I know this. What a relief

later, the topic of hatred and the urge for revenge
the being cut off from all of this
(aggressive behaviour was forbidden, unthinkable
so there is something old and unresolved) -
I am unable to access this energy.
A major part of my unconscious seems to still be
mostly unresolved and packed away
while the sense for unicity and the nonconceptual
is already growing, all following its own plan,
bypassing this white spot on the map as it were
"you don't need more experiences of unity"
i feel like a beginner
deficient and insecure. Why did I come here anyway?

"mindful work" practice in this group can be anything
from needlework to cleaning up or gardening
to learning a choir piece
(I hear them down the hall, slowly getting there)
I sit alone in the hallway, mastering talk recordings.
The woman with the bell comes by and rings -
stop and be present ...
resume work with the second bell signal
(it is so hard to stay present with computer work
at home almost impossible, it works better here)

and being present vs. being lost in the trance of thinking
can be heaven vs. hell - more than that
this goes way beyond what the mind can imagine

"dedicating this work to the awakening of all beings"

she feels stuck, without hope.
he asks her, is there anything you want to do?
she says, "yes there is.
I want to cry so loud that all the windows shatter at once".
Yes! let us cry together, there are enough windows
for both of us to shatter. This energy
needs to be free.

early morning, the cathedral shrouded in mist
waking up after a good night's sleep
my heart is still heavy
I can't feel where this weight comes from
so often, this inner life is inexplicable
and so often, subject to change
on short notice
"stay with your experience"
rule of thumb
and always the wisest thing to do

an hour with a white-bearded man
looking at my heavy heart
doing various breathing exercises on the mattress
nothing spectacular or difficult,
but bright and light new rooms opened easily for a while,
rooms in myself that I had never entered before.
I want my body back.
I WANT MY BODY BACK!!!
when the convictions (saying I can't do it) give way and dissipate
and the stories about deficiency and disconnection cease,
then I'm here, I'm at home, I lack nothing,
and something seems to reunite in love.
So easily!

"fake it till you make it" I have to remember this advice.
Find a way, do whatever works
until the voices stop and the joyous simplicity
(that was there all the time)
can stabilize

another walk together over the hill
to the sacred spring cave
sitting in the bright February sun, talking, looking at it
and then back to coffee over muddy paths

positions and perspectives
how much they shape what we think we are
what would happen if they were all absent?

my two partners in the triad I worked in,
they both came to feel like newborn babies
one of them looking at her own hands in amazement
moving her feet
feeling insecure and happy

another foggy morning
rows of large trees along the river
populated with mistletoes
their tops fading into grey

the question of existence itself
inquiring into the feeling of existence
(grey and solid - like hematite? hmm)
different flavors of presence
still or exuberant
coming and going
the great joy of discovering together
what being home means

my black desperation when I lost it
my deep joy of finding it again
"hold it both at the same time"
getting beyond that dualism.
Ok, I'll try that -

spacious presence without thinking or knowing
simplicity and peace
all the different flavors of the transcendent
and there are many more.

I come back from the walk
hiking shoes full of mud underneath

"when we know presence, when we are in touch with, and feeling presence, we are in touch with being"

Tiny White Spikes

2011-02-01T17:52:00.004+01:00

This happens when it is very cold and foggy. No fun to take walks because the cold creeps into your coat, but then everything looks like a fairytale landscape, or like those strange infrared photos where the sky is black and trees are white. Everything is covered by tiny ice crystals. People who walk through this frozen fog eventually seem to get grey hair as even their hair gets covered by ice crystals.

I took a very short walk just near our house - enough ice covered tree beauty to find here.

Endless Blue Silence

2011-01-30T16:31:00.007+01:00

Sunday after the birthday party, taking care of a slight hangover, cleaning up the house. I was lazy but Sabine convinced me that we should take a walk, and maybe not one of our short standard walks around the hill, but something a little more special. The weather was cold and sunny, spectacular compared to most of the rather grey January.

We drove to a village called Frangenberg, near Linde, a few miles from here, and took a round walk around the hills at Breidenbach and Spich, under a deep blue sky, with wonderful views. The end-of-January sun had already some power, and there was a hint of early spring.

We discovered an old stone cross, nothing unusual in this area, but this one (150 years old) had my name chiseled into it ... hmmm ...

Sometimes we stopped and listened ... there was the hum of a very far away plane, surrounded by a silence that was deep and rich and stretched out far in all directions.

Back home we had cherry cake and coffee and then we put these images on my computer and looked at them and had half of the chocolate candy box that Vera and Michael had given to me yesterday ... they were REALLY good

Fresh Snow Walk

2011-01-20T20:44:00.004+01:00

Just when we thought that the mild mid-January would directly turn into spring, new snow - not much yet but it is cold. I went out because I thought I should, not because I felt like, and then it was quite beautiful and I stayed outside for a long time.

Abandoned Kieswerk

2011-01-15T13:54:00.004+01:00

Stopping near Ellersbach

2011-01-15T13:30:00.009+01:00

Colours of mid-January. The last patches of snow had disappeared. It had rained for days. Tomorrow there would be patches of sunshine.

Blue Snow

2010-12-07T12:47:00.006+01:00

Two days after yellow snow, the snow was blue today. I took a little walk from our house. And felt very happy to be here.

Yellow Snow

2010-12-06T12:06:00.006+01:00

Fresh 5th December snow near our house, late evening. It had finally stopped snowing, thank god. We had done two shovelling sessions on this Sunday and my shoulders were hurting.

When I got out to take a look with the camera, the bushes and trees had turned into surrealist sculptures, lit up by the yellow street lamp. It was totally silent.

Dreamed I was an eskimo
Frozen wind began to blow
Under my boots and around my toes
The frost that bit the ground below
It was a hundred degrees below zero...

And my mama cried
And my mama cried
Nanook, a-no-no
Nanook, a-no-no
Don't be a naughty eskimo
Save your money, don't go to the show

Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said ho, ho
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow
Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow

(Frank Zappa)

Reudenbach Hill

2010-11-26T17:19:00.011+01:00

Größere Kartenansicht

This is one of the special places that I have to visit now and then, in summer or in winter. Today was the coldest day so far in this November. The ground was muddy. Surprisingly, walking uphill in the cold wind was a very pleasant experience.

Lightmill

2010-11-23T10:53:00.006+01:00

Actually these landscapes looked somewhat different ... bleak and depressing maybe but I liked driving through them for hours yesterday, listening to Frippertronics and music by Perotin.

... Fogs and Windy Phalanxes

2010-11-01T20:54:00.008+01:00

... But Left His Golden Load

2010-10-31T18:06:00.008+01:00

October 31st, Sunday afternoon in Kürten:

I Advance Masked

2010-10-30T16:50:00.011+02:00

Sabine took a day off - we spent the afternoon visiting Cologne's beautiful new ethnological museum, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum that has moved into a spacious new building and opened a week ago. We liked the museum a lot. Some people still think that a museum about ethnology is a boring collection of dusty artifacts - this is certainly far from true here.

I liked the section about rituals and religion most - not so much because I'm fond of rituals or religion but because it features many beautiful sculptures and statues - and I loved the circular room with the world map and the many masks. What a wealth of ideas, colors, and shapes!

I liked this place a lot and will certainly come back.

Later, on the way to the Indian restaurant, we met this lady. In a way, she felt more alien to me than all the strange masks did.

(The title of this entry refers to this album, in case you wondered)

Watercolor II

2010-10-16T12:51:00.003+02:00

Sky Whale

2010-10-16T12:45:00.003+02:00

Watercolor I

2010-10-16T12:36:00.005+02:00

The Schaffhausen Rhine Falls seen through colored windows ...

Innocent Misunderstanding

2010-10-15T14:33:00.006+02:00

That time of the year again - a Ridhwan retreat week in the Kloster Schöntal monastery, I've been blogging about these retreats before.

Sabine and me came directly here from our Lake Constance vacation. Since we spent a weekend here in June, she loves this wonderful place as much as I do, so she took the opportunity to take a nice walk (while I was busy setting up the recording for the talks) and spend another night in the monastery with me before taking the train home the next morning.

The weather was still warm and sunny although the nights got quite cold. Schöntal in autumn is full of beauty ...

The week was wonderful again, it was a full week with very little time to take walks ... but then, it often felt like we were taking inner walks. We were about 120 people, each of them somewhere in their inner process of finding themselves, but we did it together, so I sometimes thought of a large group of people climbing a high mountain together, each of them taking a different route, but feeling like a group nonetheless. I had several deep experiences that were completely new and unexpected - I surprised myself. How often does one surprise oneself?

"Because of an innocent misunderstanding you think that you are a human being in the relative world seeking the experience of oneness, but actually you are the One expressing itself as the experience of being a human being." Adyashanti

Above The Inland Sea VI - Fog

2010-10-10T08:36:00.004+02:00

Last day of our 1-week vacation at Lake Constance, and the sky was all grey everywhere.

Everywhere? As we could see on the webcam image of the Säntis mountain ...

... it was just the Lake area that was covered with high fog. We had been on top of the Säntis already so we decided to drive to Bregenz, the Austrian city on the east end of the lake, and take the cable car to the Pfänder mountain - this mountain is not as high but its top still looked out of the fog layer on this day.

View from the ground ...

... (fruits of the season) ...

... and the view from the top of the Pfänder over the lake and the fog layer towards the Säntis range on the other side.

The Vorarlberg area of western Austria is famous for its beautiful mountains, forests, and the cheese made of the cow milk.

It was as warm as in summer up here ...

We walked for a few miles and met idyllic little villages inhabited by friendly people ...

Eventually we took the cable car down into the fog again ...

What a nice place - so many very different landscapes can be found around the Lake Constance area. We just had one week but we easily could have spent more time!

Above The Inland Sea V - Wine

2010-10-07T22:17:00.015+02:00

Ravensburg is famous for a number of things, one of them being the publisher of games and children's books that is named after the city. Ravensburger is very famous in Germany - all children probably know their logo, have played their games, have read their books. I am no exception. We went to see their beautiful new museum which shows how the company evolved and how games and books are made.

One game that is part of my childhood is the original Memory game from the late fifties. This is how it looked.

Another interesting museum, this one about the history of the town, is right across the street. I've never seen nor heard about these beautiful large medieval guild member wheels. They had the names of their members painted on them, complete with their emblems. This is a wheel for the wine grower's guild.

On the next morning, the fog was very dense over the lake.

We took a round trip walk to a village called Baitenhausen. It was very warm, almost like summer (in October!). The orchards were full of apples, pears, and plums, and the leaves all around already wore their autumn colors.

Baitenhausen has a very nice pilgrimage church.

We always thought that the little angels sing all the time, but we found that some of them prefer to practise martial arts.

The view over the valley ...

Back in Meersburg, we went to that wine restaurant with the terrace and the incredible view over the lake. We were reminded of Italy, maybe of Cinque Terre. Life was good.

When the evening came, the sky was burning ...

Above The Inland Sea IV - Ice Cream

2010-10-06T21:02:00.010+02:00

Many delights here. One was a beautifully clear night sky with the milky way overhead. Here is a 15 second exposure that gives an idea of the night view ...

Next morning - it is warm enough to have a breakfast on the balcony. In early October!

A walk to a village east of Meersburg ...

... where we found a really good ice cream place. Ice cream! in October!

We took the bus to Friedrichshafen, home of the Zeppelin (which could not fly today because there was too much wind) and to the very nice Zeppelin museum. We didn't visit the museum this time because we had seen it the last time we were here, but we went to the cafe of the museum. They have Zeppelin cakes, a nice red-white striped canvas overhead which reflects nicely in the spoons, and beautiful 30s architecture.

A strange encounter at the bus stop ...

Finishing the day with a visit to Überlingen ...

We found a really good Pizza place in Überlingen. I actually took a photo of the Rucola-Parmigiano pizza (tasty and beautiful!) but I won't show it here because you might think that we are busy eating all day. Which we are.

Above the Inland Sea III - Mountain

2010-10-06T10:05:00.009+02:00

After seeing the mountain range across the lake from our appartement every day, we finally went there to take a closer look. The highest peak of this part of the Alps is the Säntis. We were conveniently taken up the mountain top by a cable car - the view was breathtaking. In the distance we could see Lake Constance ...

Now and then, we could see mountain climbers in the snow, sometimes on top of dangerous looking cliffs. How happy I am that I don't have to do that!

Sabine enjoying the view ... (she had forgotten her sunglasses and had to wear old scratchy ones that we found in my car)

A trail was starting here ... I took a few steps, imagining what it would be like ... the snow was knee high, and very near that rope, there was the abyss ... this kind of fun is clearly not for me.

Switzerland was the first country that invited refugees from Tibet when things got difficult there. Good to see a stupa here!

Going back down after a few hours in the sky ...

oh, and on the way out we had this close encounter with an alternate reality ...

Above the Inland Sea II - Water

2010-10-05T18:48:00.014+02:00

I've been living near the Rhine for all my life but I never wondered where it came from. I learned now that the Rhine springs are located in several parts of Switzerland, that it is a large river already before it flows into Lake Constance, and that it flows through this lake and comes out at the other side. After that there are the famous Rhine falls near Schaffhausen in Switzerland. Both Sabine and me hadn't seen this place yet although it is the second largest fall in Europe.

Lots of water, fast water. Visitors can stand on platforms very near the raging waters, or even on top of them, and there are boats that visit the rock in the middle of it. Standing near these amazing amounts of water is a humbling experience. The ground shakes.

Another tourist spot is a historic town called Stein am Rhein, not far from the falls. Lots of medieval houses here, and lots of tourists - I don't want to know what this place is like in summer.

In tourist season, we would probably have queued to get a cake and a coffee like this. The cake was good, the coffee was so-so, but we sat near the Rhine and the view was wonderful.

A visit to a monastery ...

Old keyboards ... too bad I couldn't try them ...

Back home, waving up to our Zeppelin friend ...

And a beautiful view of the alps - and to the Säntis, tomorrow's travel destination.

Above The Inland Sea I - Zeppelin

2010-10-04T22:15:00.012+02:00

We're having a wonderful week at Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Southern Germany. The weather (after some very wet weeks) is unexpectedly wonderful, and the appartement that we rented is also quite wonderful - a large flat under the roof of an old villa. We like it so much we could easily move in. And it is not even expensive.

Day 1 - a little hike ...

... seeing beautiful gardens - we have not nearly as many flowers in our garden at home because the climate there is much colder: We are hundreds of miles southwards of home here, and because of the large lake, winters are usually very mild, so mild that lots of wine grows around the lake.

After a few miles of hiking, a coffee is obligatory ...

... feeding the hungry ghosts ...

In the harbour, a very unusual combination of racing car, speedboat, and slide ...

We saw our old friend Zeppi again. Since we were here in 2003, taking a wonderful (but unfortunately very expensive) flight with the Zeppelin around Lake Constance, this wonderful vehicle (we think of him being a very kind very large dog-like being for some reason) was asking when we would come back. Of course he spotted us beneath him, and waved down to us ... of course he couldn't really wave very wildly because he had to take care of his passengers.

Walking through colorful autumn forests ...

Looking down on the lake through rows of wine ...

Fruits from the huge cedar tree in front of our house ...

and the view from our little balcony ...

Inhabitants of the village trying to make the lives of us tourists even more colorful ...

Scrap Cities, Rubber Boats, Sepia Songs

2010-09-25T22:37:00.048+02:00

Last saturday was very full. I worked until noon (no pictures of the ColdFusion code that I wrote, that would be too boring), then I headed towards Cologne. On the way, driving towards the S-Bahn station, I realized I would have to wait for quite a while, and I stopped by an unusual exhibition that I had always meant to visit.

Michael Kramer is an artist who lives not far away from my hometown. His studio, I am told, looks like a scrapyard - one thing that he does is creating sculptures from scrap metal. His sculpture "Die Stadt", the city, is spread out on a large flat roof. Visitors can walk around on the roof and look at many very different kinds of cities made from a million strange looking metal parts. I loved this place so much that I almost forgot that I had planned to take the next S-Bahn station to go to Cologne.

I managed to catch the train in the last second ... it took me to Cologne where I met Sabine in a sports museum. Now I don't care for sports at all and I don't care for the sports museum even less but today Greenpeace was here on a 30-year-anniversary tour (the German leg of Greenpeace was founded 30 years ago, 10 years after Greenpeace came into existence in Vancouver), and both Sabine and me were curious what it would be like.

(On the way from the Cologne main station to the Greenpeace event I met Dorothee, a friend of Sabine - we talked for a couple of minutes. I wasn't aware at this point that I was going to have four (4) chance meetings of this kind on this day.)

I met Sabine and my colleague Michaela - I handed her the data CDs that I had worked on this morning - and we had a coffee together. Soon after I ran into my old friend Karla who was also interested in Greenpeace as it turned out.

The Greenpeace event was interesting and moving - we listened to a 1-hour talk about the history of this organization in Germany. I had forgotten so many things and realized that without these people, the world would be in a much worse shape than it is now. They had helped to stop major environmental crimes that would be unimaginable today. I felt moved and very grateful that this organization exists.

One ugly German word that made Greenpeace famous during the eighties was "Dünnsäureverklappung" - chemical companies got rid of their highly toxical acids by simply dumping them into the North Sea, and Greenpeace successfully stopped them.

On this day, families could take their kids on a ride with one of the famous Greenpeace rubber boats on the Rhine. They went pretty fast. I'm not sure I would dare to do this. I get seasick when I brush my teeth.

Sabine had enough adventures for this day, and drove home. I went to several concerts in the evening. The annual Kölner Musiknacht took place on this day - it offers dozens of concerts at many places throughout the city. One 15€ ticket pays for all concerts.

I had heard the quite wonderful jazz band Sepiasonic one day on the radio, 3 years ago, and my ears got really big. What was this? It sounded like a very poetic crossbred between Canterbury bands such as Hatfield and the North and modern Scandinavian jazz groups such as Hanne Hukkelberg. I loved it. Sepiasonic? They had a website with some music but no CD. Anyway when I saw that they played in Cologne I was very happy that I could finally see them live, and I was not disappointed.

Swiss master clarinetist Claudio Puntin, jazz singer Insa Rudolph, and jazz guitarist Kim Efert (I loved his compositions and style - a kindred soul!) were accompanied by an amazing band that consisted of drums, bass, and three flutists - a very unusual setup but with everyone being a master of their instrument, very effective in creating interesting improvised soundscapes and highly sophisticated tunes in odd meters. When Insa Rudolph's voice effortlessly soared above complex harmonic structures, and three flutes played playful and experimental compositions that reminded me of Egg and other Canterbury bands, I was a happy listener.

I talked to Insa after the concert and asked her about the CD. Apparently they are working on it and it might be released at the end of this year. Something to look forward to!

My next concert was two hours later. I walked through cold streets towards the Cologne Cathedral which was illuminated brightly. When I got there I saw that it was full of people for some kind of catholic event which had nothing to do with the Kölner Musiknacht.

Although this cathedral (when empty) can trigger some sort of feeling of presence in me, I'm not at all interested in Catholicism and cheering crowds of young Pope-the-popstar-fans. Actually I think that it is sad that so many kids get conditioned this way instead of learning about their conditionings in order to wake up from them, but I don't want to go into that here. The cathedral remains a place of power to me regardless of what might go on in the people who come here.

The WDR Funkhaus, the old central building of the largest radio station in Germany, sits right across the cathedral. I have spent many hours of my life in its beautiful concert hall, seeing amazing concerts of many kinds, mostly avantgarde and world music. I hadn't been here for a while. Coming here on this evening gave me a warm feeling of coming home.

The Iranian concert was scheduled for 10 pm - it was not yet 9 pm and cold outside, so I decided to attend the 9 pm concert with Baroque string music - more precisely, "NeoBarock" with compositions of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. The violins were tuned in unusual ways but coming from the quite stunning performance of Sepiasonic, I found that I couldn't open to this music.

Although I think of myself as very open to basically all kinds of music, I have problems being interested in some periods of classical music. Although the musicians played with breathtaking virtuosity, I found myself getting bored with the predictability of the compositions.

The 10 pm concert was a different category altogether - classical music, and modern music in the classical style, from Iran. The band played three long compositions that gave the instrumentalists ample space to improvise and show off their quite amazing virtuosity.

One of the percussionists was Peyman Nasehpour. We had met two years ago because he is a friend of Rick Walker. In May 2008, Peyman drove a couple of hours just to meet Rick at the livelooping festival that I had organized in Cologne. On the day after the festival, we all met again in Cologne and had a beer together - a delightful mix of musicians from many countries. I have been a Facebook contact of Peyman since (he even gave a frame drum lesson to me via Skype once), and he had invited me to this delightful concert.

Before the concert began, I noticed my old friend Walter and his wife in the audience. We met afterwards and talked, and then we saw that Kerstin Kilanowski had also been in the audience. Kerstin and me had been colleagues as students working in the department of education ... 30 years ago? Our common colleague and Kerstin's friend Gisela Schinawa also came and greeted me ... she wondered where my long hair was ... it seems I have changed a bit during 30 years ...

Against a Dark Background

2010-08-29T20:25:00.003+02:00

My God, It's Full Of ...

2010-08-29T19:55:00.005+02:00

SHROOMS!

I can't remember an August that has been this wet. July was sunny and hot, very hot, too hot too long, and August has been raining almost all the time.

The mushrooms seem to be the only ones who enjoy this. I've never seen the forest uphill of our house so full of them. I just took these photos during a 30 minute walk.