Uniform Grey April 11, 2008

Sarah Harmer dedicated her song “Uniform Grey” to Birmingham city when I saw her play there a couple of years ago, though of course the song is not actually about Birmingham and she was just being amusingly facetious. In the tiny Brummie venue I’m not sure that people really dug her little Canadian hippy dig (since I suppose one does ‘dig’ a dig), but at least—being from north of the border—her spelling of Grey matched ours.

The thing about Berlin is—despite everything posted on this blog so far—that it is not “uniform” grey at all, but rather a patchwork of greyscale with the odd splash of graffiti colour thrown in and on for good measure. This means that I have a slightly ambivalent attitude to its suitability for extended periods of daily life. On the one hand it is grey, often cloudy and rather dull; but on the other, it is a city sewn together from a strange history which is still constructing its own narrative post-unification.

As such, the greyness is a factor in the Frankenstein, pulp-cut-up of the city and is unavoidable. Some days it’s interesting, document-worthy (hence this blog) but at other times it makes me want to stay at home where at least the internet sparks some colour.

Other notes from the musical landscape: The Divine Comedy’s “Absent Friends”, to whom I also raise a (beer) glass. Men at Work (Colin Hay)’s “Down Under”. And Sarah Harmer’s “Lodestar”, which—if you watch it—you must let play until the drums come in. It is federal law.

I suppose I’m thinking a lot about travelling, distance and accompanying music. Perhaps I should suggest a song to accompany each photo?

Greynotes April 8, 2008

The Weather for 8^th April 2008

The default weather pattern for Berlin is “cloudy with possible rain showers and potential sunny spells”. If you would like a more accurate daily forecast, I would suggest opening the largest window in your house or apartment and taking a look, because it’s as changeable out there as Mitt Romney.

I’ll just have to go and listen to “The Weather” by Built to Spill to take my mind off it. It’s better than an 8.30am train ride squashed up against bicycles, bankers and sweaty Pendler whilst your headphones mockingly begin to play Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”, in any case.

Wann kommt endlich die Sonne wieder? At least in black and white, everything is grey.

HamburgNoir, 24th – 26th March 2008 April 6, 2008

Hamburger Hafen

Pic 1: This is Emily at Baumwall, an U-Bahn station near the harbour. Now the intention was for it all to be in focus, so it’s a little odd that the background is clear but Emily isn’t! But it’s somehow a nice photo anyway.
Pic 2: This and pic 3 here are also favourites! I really like the composition of the light in this one – bright sun in the centre, silhouettes fading to black, and glistening water.
Pic 3: More harbour sunset. Similar to the last photo, but I like the lone wispy cloud and the mast of the ship in the foreground.

That’s all for now folks. More coming next week.

HamburgNoir, 24th – 26th March 2008 April 6, 2008

Centre of Hamburg

Pic 1: The Hamburg Rathaus with a nice sunspot behind it. Another favourite photo, and just about what I was trying to do, although the building could have been darker still I think.
Pic 2: Taken from near Jungfernstieg and the Alster, a view of the Hamburg Fernsehturm, which I alway think looks like a squashed version of the Berlin TV tower. Thanks to Ms Jones, I managed to get some of the contours of the clouds by metring them first. I like the little details in traffic light silhouettes etc.
Pic 3: One that wasn’t what I wanted, as a contrast. St Petri Kirche on Mönckebergstraße, which I wanted to be in silhouette. More detail on the buildings is nice, but not planned!
Pic 4: Part of the Rathaus plus some crazy tree in the foreground.

HamburgNoir, 24th – 26th March 2008 April 6, 2008

More Art: 3D sculpture problems

Pic 1: A Picasso sculpture – this is the idea I was trying to do, though not the exact outcome. The sculpture was intended to be very dark against a very white background. Still cool, I think.
Pic 2: Possibly my favourite photo of two small sculptures, with the one further away in sharp focus and the foreground sculpture blurry but facing the lens. Pleased with this one.
Pic 3: A Rodin sculpture – I like this one too, though perhaps it would be better if it were metred for the body of the sculpture in close up, and then taken as a longer shot?

HamburgNoir, 24th – 26th March 2008 April 6, 2008

Art at the Kunsthalle

Pic 1: It’s a little too dark to see well, but this is a sculpture with various busts in a glass cabinet, but the case is cracked open. It’s in a hallway next to the lift, so at first you’re unsure whether it’s meant to be there at all!
Pic 2: A reflection of me in the second of these three Warhol prints featuring artist Joseph Beuys. Interesting because the third print is in the style of a film negative.
Pic 3: Difficult to see, but reflections of Emily and me in the concave mirror in this sculpture, made of a black piece of wood and the mirror.

HamburgNoir, 24th – 26th March 2008 April 6, 2008

Pic 1: Bells at the Nikolaikirche, which is totally bombed out and has one of the many Coventry Crosses. The sunspot is quite nice, I think, but the image seems too light all over.
Pic 2: An attempt to get an idea of the reflection in the Hamburg Handelskammer windows. Not sure that worked.
Pic 3: A better shot of the miniature gothic architecture on the Handelskammer.

Berlin, 27th – 29th March 2008 April 6, 2008

Questions of focus

Pic 1: The Fernsehturm is still the tallest structure in Germany. The focus is actually more on the tram lines in front of it, though.
Pic 2: Ms Jones: I’m not entirely sure where this was, but I like the shallow focus with the blurry background.
Pic 3: The focus here is a little blurry – should it have been ‘deeper’ to bring all the elements into sharper focus? The Sony Center, despite its American English, is still very cool though(!)

BerliNoir, Version II April 5, 2008

A re-launch of sorts for a much less wordy version of BerliNoir.

As of tomorrow, I shall begin posting a visual look at Berlin, in the form of analogue black and white photographs taken by me. A caveat is that I am just now learning how to take real meat-and-potatoes pictures—rather than the microwave-meal of digital photography—thanks to Emily E. Jones, so please forgive any imperfections (which I shall nonetheless blame on the scanner).

Alongside these pictures, I will be writing the occasional short post about what I’m up to, about things relevant to me and/or Berlin, and about anything that tweaks my fancy and can be nicely encapsulated in a short post such as this. For longer posts, check out my more journalistic forays into the world of Pulp at PULPable and my fiction pastiche at Ray Delaney & the Devil’s Interval.

So put your feet up, make yourself at home, the bathroom is upstairs, don’t set fire to the dog, and I shall return tomorrow with pictures.

Inspiration quotations #6-#8: Chandler/Marlowe, from The High Window (Penguin, 2005) July 2, 2007

#6: from The High Window (Penguin, 2005 pp230) 
            “He’s the fellow for whom they coined the phrase, ‘as ignorant as an actor’.”

 
#7: Ibid, p235
            “I want to tell you about it,” she said breathlessly. “I—”

            I reached over and put a paw over her two locked hands. “Skip it. I know it. Marlowe knows everything—except how to make a decent living. It doesn’t amount to beans.”

 
#8, Ibid, pp247-8
            “All right,” he said wearily. “Get on with it. I have a feeling you are going to be very brilliant. Remorseless flow of logic and intuition and all that rot. Just like a detective in a book.”

            “Sure. Taking the evidence piece by piece, putting it all together in a neat pattern, sneaking in an odd bit I had on my hip here and there, analysing the motives and characters and making them out to be quite different from what anybody—or I myself for that matter—thought them to be up to this golden moment—and finally making a sort of world-weary pounce on the least promising suspect.

            He lifted his eyes and almost smiled. “Who thereupon turns as pale as paper, froths at the mouth, and pulls a gun right out of his ear.”

            “That’s right. We ought to play it together sometime. You got a gun?”

 Thoughts: The first time Chandler seems to be playing—and having fun—with the more ridiculous elements of the genre he’d begun to define, as well as with the filmic quality which imbued all of his writing. For example, he uses the adjective ‘hard-boiled’ far more than in any of the previous novels, and he also refers to Marlowe in the third person more often.
Many times he (e.g. pp247-8) pokes fun at the stock ‘noir’ scenes only to use them nonetheless, with Marlowe as a kind of author-figure who realises that they’re ridiculous but also realises that, as the tough-guy hero, he has to play the role designated him.
At the same time, Chandler’s screenwriting work allows him to comment on the movie industry (‘Hollywood’s full of them’; ‘I’ve been in pictures’; ‘as ignorant as an actor’), going nearly so far as to have Marlowe/Bogart repeat Rick’s line in Casablanca (‘it don’t amount to beans’).
            Chandler’s still playing. But by The Long Goodbye, this sense of fun has almost disappeared with Terry Lennox, a drunk, down-on-his-luck author whom only Marlowe can take under his wing and attempt to save. By this point, Chandler’s wife was dead, he’d attempted suicide, and he’d become disillusioned with working in Hollywood.

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