Brownian Motion

So far things are going according to plan, which is to say no plan at all. Very few things that I've done here have been scheduled much in advance. Last weekend's 48 Stunden Neukölln was a rare exception where I found out about it roughly two weeks before it happened. Just about everything else has happened through being buffeted about by random human interaction.

This is Travis, my first randomness generator in Berlin (seen here dancing in front of a shifting-color animation with a techno soundtrack at the Berlin Technical Art School, during the Long Night of the Sciences). He was another temporary guest at the same place that was my residence for the first six weeks.

Right behind where I was having fun with photographing the slowly setting northern latitude sun, were about 100 booths of artists displaying their work on the Oberbaumbrüke. The only reason I was aware of this event was because I had somewhat randomly to move out of the place I was staying, so I ended up at Travis's two days ago, as it just so happens he's in the States for a short while, and his roommate, who randomly is a tango instructor, was going to hand out fliers for his classes because—for some reason—there was a tango stage at this art festival. Wanna go? Um, yes. The art ended up being very good as a whole, and I made two contacts that could turn into more randomness and even an opportunity to weld out in the sticks. Niceness.

This scenario has repeated itself dozens of times. An example or seven. Joey, a long-time friend from the bay, now lives in Chicago, where he works with a woman who was visiting Berlin last week. She and her family were on a train from Prague back to Berlin, and on this train a musician and her father, also a musician, started talking tunes. Turns out that this guy's band, Orkestra del Sol, was going to be playing in Berlin two days thereafter. They were playing in this funky little joint called the Kule Theater which was having a salon with music, theater, and anarchic hand puppets (with Klingon to German on-the-fly translations). Both the content and the path to the evening were wonderfully convoluted.

Even the aforementioned art walk in Neukölln was filled with random wonderfulness, despite my attendance being more intentional. I quickly realized that trying to use their information to make a plan of attack was fruitless and counter to all that I knew of this town. So instead I simply followed the dots on the maps provided and stumbled quite nicely. These teapots were in a larger, more polished exhibition by a collaborative duo that go by the name JKM (Jürgen Krebber, Karin Michaelis). As the viewer walks by, the sensors under each pot independently trigger the classic workman's cat-call whistle.

The randomness extends into puns and language learning, no less. Someone was selling an alcohol called Neuköllnish Wasser. I just thought it was funny and cute, because it was neon green and implied that this was their water. It's kind of a mix of apple and anise flavors. Evidently it was created at this same event a couple years earlier as an art project about the mix of tradition and newer immigrants, and about the negative image of Neukölln. I got it on a basic level, but leaned more when I showed it to my roommate later. Time now for history, geography, and language lesson. Köln = Cologne, a city in Germany. Kölnisch Wasser = eau de cologne. Neuköllnisch Wasser (extra "l" is just how the neighborhood spells it) is not perfume, but booze. Maybe not everyone can appreciate the subtler details, but eventually with enough randomness (and ethanol) it all makes sense.

Hopefully, with the bountiful ethanol and randomness that Berlin provides, my life will start to make sense. A walk in a park I've never been? A Turkish tea shared with Dutch travelers? A flier that slips out of a magazine? "Why are we here, because we're here--Roll the bones."