A portrait of the blogger as a young knee

Jazzit garden, one favourite hangout for Jazz lovers, bloggers, and non-graphic designers: could somebody please tell me, why I can't seem to get rid of this underline?! Mr. Blogwart!? – Never there, when he's needed, phew.

The backoffice-crew, responsible for tasteless puns like 'blogwart' is naturally out or in a meeting, so I will have to comment that myself, without deleting it. Our Blogwart is never there, when we need him, the 'original' Blockwart of dark Nazi past was always there, especially when people definitely NOT wanted to have him nearby. So much for the difference.

w/emo

Did some research work at google.com, found Urban Dictionary, found a number of definitions for the label 'wemo' that seems to be put on persons in some circles.

Just a warning from our Blog theorist: Don't ever pin labels to humans!

Soundtrack: Witchi Tai To by Jim Pepper, in the old version by Jan Garbarek.

[handwritten remark, found on a Post-it® at the frame of a computer monitor, signed: Dr. Mr. Hammerhead o.b.o. Mr. Dr. Hammerhead]

Bring on the lights

"Bring on the night"

Must have been way back in the 1980s, when pop star Sting tried to bring some street credibility into his formerly slick New Wave star existence. Yet it was just Black Romanticism, maybe "Gothic" with a capital "G". Did he know of different lives back then, did he know what 'night' was like for an undercast who just did not have a chance to realize how 'cool' darkness and night 'really' were?

Austria seems like a peaceful, civilized place; yet, 'way back' in the late 1960s it was not so hard to end up in a jail (for some 'criminal' offence), in darkness with nothing but bread and water. Big fun, eh?!

Yours truly included, most people haver never experienced this total bulls*** way of life.

Who is there to judge how anyone ended up messing up his life like this?

Soundtrack: Don't let it bring you down, "a song that is guaranteed to bring you right down".

CSNY, Four Way Street live. Signed with the deepest respect for Neil Young as an artist and a loving, political human being. wemo

Have a look at the motion picture Déja Vu!

Thanks to SUNDANCE '08 independent film festival for that great trailer on Youtube.

Cinema Foyer

It used to be the foyer of Salzburg's largest cinema, Stadtkino. More than 20 years ago the cinema was stripped from all interior decoration and the room turned into a theatre and concert hall of pure concrete poetry. It is the main venue for Szene Salzburg.

The foyer kept its architectural charms, was spiced up with lights and a sound system. So after its daytime life as a restaurant and bar with a wireless LAN (nice MacBooks to be spotted there frequently!) it is turned into a club with 4 resident DJs, and a highlight coming up shortly:

Stereo MCs DJ Set, Oct 3, 2009, 23.00 – be there!

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Spatial parking / Das wirkliche Blau

Ostinato

As a 4 year old, yours truly is reported to have taken his parents on endless 'train rides' along the square pavement patterns of St. Marcus Square, Venice Italy. The journey ended nowhere, as the pattern would lead back into itself.

Maybe the first loop in this looped career.

For today let it be the loops of Burning Spears Ethiopians on the album quoted below.

Introducing the team / Imprint

wemo: reflective photographer, blog editor, no further details available

Sound technician: Dr. Mr. Hammerhead, LlD, Bsc, Hon. Prof. at Loops Technologies® Labs, Inc.

Blog theorist: Mr. Dr. Hammerhead, MD, PhD, Life Univ., Jane Austin TX

Production facilities: Canon Ixus & blogger@google.com

Archives: iPhoto, Cupertino CA & Ice Cube, Salzburg, Austria

Maintenance work: Apple Europe, Cork, Ireland, EU

Blog administration: Mister Mister, Associate Prof. for Blog studies at iLife® Univ., Apple, N. Y. – a.k.a. 'Blogwart'.

Irresponsible & tasteless puns by the backoffice crew, unless supplied by external links; then it's, highly more poetic: James Joyce Finnegan's Wake

All characters on this blog are entirely fictitious.

Stage hands, electricians, gaffers & riggers will be booked on location. Feel free to apply!

After your application, please note: Don't call us, we call you.

Designer lamp

I like the lamp.

But here's for a word from our favourite TV presenter, Bernd das Brot: "Eine Designerlampe: kostet so viel wie ein Kleinwagen und gibt so viel Licht wie eine Taschenlampe aus dem YPS-Heft".

To be seen in the background: one of the hot chefs of this popular Salzburg city venue, republic café.

Trance, or GOD is a Sound System

Sounds from the Burning Spear. Soul Jazz Records presents Studio 1 recordings by Burning Spear. SJR CD 101

It has been argued that GOD in the middle ages was SOUND. The sound of ringing bells over the villages and towns, bells to be heard in the forests far away from the villages. Music, church music, Gregorian chanting, organs filling the church space, resounding in the bodies of the believers.

Live sounds, no recordings whatsoever. It is now or never.

Imagine a black man from Jamaica, known as the Burning Spear.

take #1) I imagine him at a microphone in something like a speaker's cabin. No reverb, absolutely 'dry' acoustics. He is not singing, he is 'speaking', not rapping or toasting.

take #2) I imagine him with an electric bass, recording one single 'sound' that might become the back beat for Swellheaded. "Run, run, run, I will never run away".

take #3) I imagine him with a guitar doing that simple 'shuffle' that was to become the back bone of what is called roots reggae nowadays. Did he do it for hours together with a rhythm section? Did he do it for minutes by himself in the studio?

take #4) The Burning Spear at his sound system. Four tracks, eight tracks? I do not know, it doesn't matter. GOD matters, and GOD appears in the mixing process.

The Burning Spear of today is a wise, friendly old man, an eccellent live musician. Seemingly detached except for some addresses to the audience he presides a 'band', a rhythm sound machine, eine Wunschmaschine, a system that seems to function like a machinery, cog wheels connected by an invisible hand. Miles Davis's electric bands come to mind, early Talking Heads, James Brown's Jungle Groove. In this music, GOD is always nearby, no matter what 'contents' or 'message' may be involved, no matter what 'private' personality may have been involved with a man like James Brown.

Jah blessings, for an appointment with his majesty.

"Geht's noch?"

"Hit the road, Jack"

Yours truly has earned himself an unusual reputation as a professional driver: no speeding, no matter what, no honking of the horn, no matter what, no risky overtaking etc.

His colleagues sometimes get to ask him curious questions, such as: heast deppata, kannst du net schnella, oda wüsd net?! The answer is quite easy in all of those cases; it's the latter.

Still even I get to hit, not the road, but the curb with one of the hand brushed light alloy rims with a low-section tire on a company car, just about once every 180,000 miles driven on the job. And I hate it.

My boss has one routine question in such cases: "Well, I know, s*** happens, but all those drivers never seem to hit their private cars' wheels, just the company cars'. How come?"

The answer is quite easy: nobody drives even half as much in his private car as he regularly does on the job.

And in my case it's even more easy: I don't have a private car. – You sure, dude? – Yup, and I don't own a TV either. – Ah, where you from? The moon? Belarus? The monastery of a weird sect that's refusing regular consuming habits? – Nope ;–).

I have met people who seem quite ordinary blokes otherwise who don't own a car or a TV. And I even have a friend who also has neither of both.

Still both of us would refuse to accept any personal responsibility for the current economic crisis. Sorry.

"Und Zuckererbsen nicht minder"

Es wächst hienieden Brot genug

Für alle Menschenkinder,

Auch Rosen und Myrten, Schönheit und Lust,

Und Zuckererbsen nicht minder.

Ja, Zuckererbsen für jedermann,

Sobald die Schoten platzen!

Den Himmel überlassen wir
Den Engeln und den Spatzen.

Und wachsen uns Flügel nach dem Tod,
So wollen wir euch besuchen
Dort oben, und wir, wir essen mit euch
Die seligsten Torten und Kuchen.

Ein neues Lied, ein besseres Lied!
Es klingt wie Flöten und Geigen!
Das Miserere ist vorbei,
Die Sterbeglocken schweigen.

Heinrich Heine: Deutschland ein Wintermärchen. Caput I a.k.a. 'Lied des Harfenmädchens'

In reaction to the death of one more 'Schubhäftling' in an Austrian prison, Mr. K. (see below), an almost violent discussion broke loose in the forum to the respective article at derStandard.

Many posters voiced an opinion that to go on a hunger strike was just a 'simple' means to blackmail the state into releasing a person that is staying in Austria illegaly. Among those many seemed to confuse the reasons for imprisonment: whoever is taken into 'Schubhaft' was not convicted of a crime, he did a simple regulatory offence that never justifies a criminal trial or even ensuing imprisonment. So 'Schubhaft' is just a means to put a hold to people that the state would prefer to get rid of until the legal procedure is completed.

Some posters voiced sadness about the death of the young man from India, and one put a few stanzas from Heinrich Heines "Wintermärchen" into one of his posts.

Voiced in the first half of the 19th century Heines credo remains a utopistic belief, even though we KNOW there is enough bread or rice or roses or sugar peas for all God's children on the earth.

Combustion & Hydro Power

"a gentler, kinder, a machine gun hand"

Neil Young, Rockin' in the free world

This is in memory of Mr. Gaganpreet Singh K. who died in an Austrian prison this morning.

See orf.at.

Mr. K. was not the suspect of a crime, he was an 'unfriendly alien',

he was treated to what the Austrian minister of the interior likes to call aufenthaltsbeendende Massnahmen.

Here I will not speculate on the causes for Mr. K.'s death; these will have to be determined by an Austrian D. A.

Mr. K. is not the first human being whose 'stay' in Austria

ended by death.

Before that, he is reported to have been on a hunger strike.

Like with the suspect of a crime before conviction

in a court his last name is not given in full by the media.

As concerned citizens, and as human beings, let us not forget that

the Declaration of Human Rights is a part of the Austrian constitution.

Time

There's a place where time stands still

When you keep takin' these little pink pills

Elvis Costello

Und eine Frage des Blog-Theoretikers: ist der sprachlichen Verfasstheit des Unbewussten mit Mitteln des Strukturalismus beizukommen, mit Segmentierung unter Zulassung suprasegmentaler Elemente, syntagmatischen und paradigmatischen Reihen, unter steter Berücksichtigung eines surrealistischen Bildes 'mit' Nähmaschine und Regenschirm, dabei niemals vergessend, dass eine Pfeife manchmal nur eine Pfeife ist, das Bild einer Pfeife jedoch niemals eine solche? Ätsch.

untitled

Tilt

First signs of travel sickness high above Lago di Garda ...

Rock'n'Roll to the rescue

Johann Hauser, 1926 – 1996.

One of the artists at Gugging, a psychiatric hospital near Vienna, that became a safe haven for artists who were creative in certain mental conditions; 'zustandsgebundene Kunst', to be seen in Gugging, at the 'Haus der Künstler' – Art / Brut Center.

Intermission

Spent a few days at Lago di Garda, Italy; shot some 500 photographs – not ready to upload any yet.

So here is a 'stock photo' from one of the webcams of Grossglockner High Alpine Road, from a foggy day way back in July of this year. Enjoy ;–)!

Werner Otte, *1922/9/4

"Hoffnung auf Regen", 1974; acrylic on canvas, 55 x 75cm.

Found at: artnet.de

Hoping for kind permission to use the reproduction in memory of a great artist.

It is his birthday today; let's celebrate an artist who was not 'just' a craftsman; he also was a master of acrylic painting.

When this was a new technique, Otte experimented with it. His sons remember a stone flag covered with layers and layers of acrylic paint that sat out in the garden in wind, rain, frost, and snow – placed there in order to see how the material would wither.

With "Hoffnung auf Regen" Otte had mastered the technique; transparent layers of colour, 'altmeisterlich', as the Germans would say. And a fine example of Otte after his 'abstract turn'.

There is always landscape involved in those abstract works and forms hovering freely above the horizon.

As a regular to the small provincial town of Rauris with its institutions of Literaturtage and Malertage, Otte made friends with Austrian writer H. C. Artmann who in his medium of prose and poetry was a close relation in his perception of the world.

I see the light come shining

The Spirit of Mozart as seen by sculptor Marina Abramovich. We humble mortals are expected to sit in those earth-bound chairs while meditating Mozart's greatness in that towering steel inferno. No comment otherwise while I meditate on the concrete poetry of bike & foot paths around Staatsbrücke.

Reflections

Night over "Amadeus"

It's not actually our river boat, it's the café on the landing bridge, most colourfully illuminated with city lights in the background.

Dusk over Salzburg