Berlin 1980

It was pretty late when our old diesel 250 Mercedes Benz rolled into town. My friend Burkhard was driving, pretty Tina and I were stoned to our gills, as we had to finish the weed before crossing into the communist part of Germany. Homegrown, from seeds out of Ghana and watered faithfully by my dad who didn't have a clue what those pretty plants might be. Or so he says.

The sky was gloomy, smoggy and all the buildings seemed to be poured of gray concrete. I was taken aback. I was supposed to live in this concrete jungle for at least four years? We rolled on and on, directed by Tina who lived in a factory-sized loft with a few fellow artists and hippies. Burkhard crashed on the floor and I went out with Tina's sister Petra, just as pretty as Tina, but a bit more crazy, as I would soon find out.

***

Since I grew up near a small provincial hick town, I had serious difficulties adjusting to a big city in the beginning. It seemed so ugly and so noisy after the peaceful countryside where I had spent so much of my time. I missed my friends, people made fun of my strong north German "fishhead" accent and grad school was not at all what I had expected. I had studied three years of Philosophy with a gifted teacher whereas at grad school everybody seemed to be interested in only one thing. Showing off. Nothing about "philos" or "sophos" to be found there. So, I made Sinology/China studies my major, dropped philosophy and took anthropology/ethnology instead.

***

Things got better after that. I slowly got my bearings, readjusted my expectations, and made some new friends. Cool cats they were, in the "scene", they knew all the hot nightspots and soon I did, too. Punk & Dub Reggae replaced the hippie music I had listened to for years. I took up Kung Fu and spent days and nights discussing the latest novel or what was happening in the squatter scene. Heady days. Pretty good, actually, especially since things were also going better with my studies.

It took me at least a year to feel reasonably at home in Berlin. My new girlfriend, Sabine, with whom I am still in touch today, found a small apartment and we moved in together. That was another part of my ongoing education, as Sabine was my first "real" girlfriend and living together proved to be much more difficult than the paradise I had imagined it to be.

But what really annoyed me after a while was not Sabine, but certain other people in our circle. For one, there were the squatters. While what they were saying certainly made a lot of sense - there was a bad housing shortage at the time & many of the buildings were empty because the owners were more interested in real-estate speculation than in renting them out - I found out fairly quickly that these arguments were merely a facade. Much more important than that, was the fact that it was fashionable to be a squatter. As a squatter you were on moral high ground, you were daily proving your courage facing police raids and you were definitely showing that you were not part of the establishment, of the rotten "system" that so many of us despised.

Also, it was for free. Squatting saved a couple of hundred bucks which would otherwise have to be spent on rent. So far so good. But there was a small, but very persistent group of people amongst all the squatters, who took saving money to extremes. These "Schnorrers" free-loaded wherever they could, never bought a single beer for themselves, or food or anything else for that matter. They invited themselves to your home, helped themselves to whatever happened to be in the fridge and called everybody but themselves a reactionary. One of them came from my hometown and when I found out that he not only smelled abominable, hadn't had a wash, bath or shower in a couple of months, but had also stolen several things from our apartment, I had enough. I severed diplomatic ties and kept my distance from the squatter crowd from then on.

***

Another group that got on my nerves where the artists who never produced any art. Film-makers who were talking about making films, writers who would one day write great masterpieces and painters who would create the new Mona Lisa. Not a single one of them was actually doing anything but talking. At the same time they called themselves writers, painters, film-makers, sculptors and whatnot. They expected, nay, they demanded to be treated as the real thing. Of course we had to put up with their tantrums, we had to support and encourage them for the great sacrifice they were making, we had to buy them beers and we would have to nod sympathetically when they told us that nobody understood them. Everything else would have been uncool in the extreme.

If it had been one or two guys, this wouldn't have been a problem. If I hadn't had many musician friends back in my hometown, who practiced hours and hours and hours to get ever better at what they were doing, it probably wouldn't have mattered. Who knows, anyway. I vowed never to call myself an artist then. Not unless I had something to show. And now, anyway, I know that these specimens were nothing but a bunch of losers, who would stay that way forever. I know this for a fact. Word gets around.

***

It would be many years later, that I would meet any "artists" again. In fact, for about a decade, I went out of my way to avoid people like the "Schnorrer" freeloaders and "Schwaetzer" artist-talking-heads of my Berlin days.

And you know what? These new artists were quite a different bunch. They didn't walk about bragging about things that only existed in their heads. They didn't even brag about things that they had created and that were excellent. If anything, they were shy about it and tried to steer discussions elsewhere, so as not to appear pompous. They were not - for the most part in any case - substance abusers or throwing tantrums every five minutes or insisting that the rest of the world had a *duty* to support and admire them. They were, instead, working their asses off in the same way my musician-friends in far away Flensburg were practicing day after day after day to master their craft. And after many long years of hard work, maybe, sometimes something magic would occur and they would get IT, whether it was in music or in writing or in whatever it was they were doing.

And while they were doing their art, practicing it religiously in fact, they did their best to make a living as teachers, copy editors, gardeners, concrete-pourers, and and and. Some of them were married, some were raising children. And you know what? Most of them were happy, contented people. Almost not a single one of them chose to be a martyr, although many of them had been through rather rough periods in their lives - Am I doing the right thing here? Is it really worth it being this poor? Did I lose my wife/husband for this? - and quite a few of them were just barely scraping by as far as living expenses are concerned. I take my hat off to them. I admire them, and I am proud that several of them like me enough to call me a friend.

All that said, I would not like to live like most of them. From hand to mouth, with the future ever uncertain. If a genie asked me whether I wanted to trade with Jack Kerouac or Jack London or Albert Einstein, I'd say "no" without a moment's hesitation. As far as I can tell, they were driven to their work, they produced something outstanding - but they did not live a happy life.

And what good would it be, if I created another masterpiece while I was deeply unhappy with myself? Would that be good for the people around me, for the ones I love? I don't think so.

***

The funny thing is that not one of my artist-friends would like to exchange his life with mine, either. They think I am crazy and want no part of it. ;-)))

Cheers!

Holg