James Joyce Can Suck It

And so can Jesse, for that matter. Inspired by a number of things, mostly suffering as documented by several of Berlin’s topnotch museums and a long walk down the most touristed stretch of oh-so-touristed Paris, I’ve managed to put together, at least somewhat, a few of the story ideas I’ve had so far into what I think might eventually become something worth reading. I’m not quite ready to start writing the first draft, but I’ve outlined a basic mythology and story arc and am doing character work right now. I don’t know what any of this means. Sure, my topnotch education can define mythology for you, can hunt it down like Dog the Bounty Hunter to it’s greek routes, pin it to the terra cotta floor, and mace it! Mace! But I don’t know what it means in terms of preparing a story of any scope. But, having blogged about it, it will happen. More to come? Surely.

Since this would be a very short and even-more-than-usual self-congratulatory blog post, I’m going to take some time to describe what is either the coolest or most horrible, depending on whether or not you’re a real estate appraiser/Basquiat fanatic outlet of creativity I’ve discovered in Berlin. This passion – mania? No, just passion – don’t get carried away, Sparky – is shared by virtually every inhabitant of this troubled, vibrant city, from the 2 foot tall Lebanese ladies who constantly throw themselves at my shins when I try to walk past them in Kreuzberg to the good shoppers ant ExtraX, the goth superstore – no joke – next to our apartment. I speak, of course, of writing indecipherable things on things you don’t own.

The most famous example of this is the Berlin Wall, specifically the still impressive East Side Gallery – 1.1 km of the wall left standing to preserve the bright, peace-and-freedom celebrating graffiti put up on it surely before much of the rest of the wall fell in 1990. The least famous example is the obscure tagging done in plain sight of me and anyone else who happened to be walking by the front door of my apartment on a pane of murky glass by an otherwise unremarkable German lad.

Quick note on how to look German: wear a Yankees cap. No joke. It’s also very important to respond to any question including the words “ball” “championship” or “you must be pulling my leg with this faux-New Yorker crap, goateed Berlin hipster” with “Go Yanks!” or people will begin to suspect that you know nothing of baseball, having a job, or not listening to the entire Sean Paul song you just downloaded on your cellphone, which, look at you, you’re actually doing even as I type this
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In any case, this eighteen or so years old German kid sees me sitting outside my apartment, sees me seeing him, then tags the door, opens it, walks out towards me, giving me a faintly confrontational look – not threatening, really, but more of a “what’s with you, bro?” – and walks off. And I came off feeling weird.

Correctly, it seems, because virtually all of Berlin – and, please remember, this city is somewhere between 6 and 9 times the size of Paris – is covered in graffiti. Most of it is what I refer to as “banal tagging” – the kind of stuff you see everywhere in big cities, except more so. Some of it, however, shows signs of being the result of some sort of mass hysteria. On, for example, the East Side Gallery, which, as you might have guessed, draws its share of non-artistic graffiti, somebody saw fit to write a crude slogan, a command – let’s call it “dance with my cousin” for proprieties sake, in Spanish. And then, for no apparent reason, most of the people who passed that oh so clever ejaculation felt the need to write the same thing, again in Spanish, somewhere near by. Sometimes they would try to outdo each other with emphasis: “dance with MY cousin, friend” etc. Like hundreds of times. What? What?

Shhhh, darling. Do not ask that. It’s Berlin. The answer to your question - to all questions? Maybe - is “Berlin.”