"The most secret movements of the inner world are inaccessible to words." -Hegel. Berlin with all the interleaving of sinister violence, layered decadence, its brilliance of intellectual thought, outpourings of creativity, music swirling over all, has also its physical elements as great implacable givens. When I first arrived, the heavy gloom was palpable. It was dark, it rained, I couldn't see. It then snowed, it was dark, I couldn't see. Since then it rained, it was dark, I couldn't see. It rained and rained, snowed and snowed, was dark, and I couldn't see. Being built on a swamp, the water table is high, and with so much reconstruction digging down for the vast new structures, water has to be constantly pumped out of these sites into the river Spree. The sewers smell of dank foulness as one passes their vents. All of this is imbedded into Berlin, as much as the grisly past, points of candle lights, magnificent accomplishments. There is movement in all this, change and the excitement of new possibilities, perhaps uniquely so. These shifting blocks, at this time, and here.
Now, overnight before my eyes sunlight has entered Berlin, transforming it entirely. Throwing off the long dark winter, everyone is out on the streets and parks breathing in sunlight through their pores. One can feel the instinctive awakening; at last it has come. One turns one's face to the light. Up on the hill of Mauer (Wall) Park, it is as crowded and festive as any beach in the summer. After all the darkness this brilliant explosion of sunlight has magnetically drawn everyone outside as if sucked by a radiant vacuum. The Milchhof studio building is empty of artists. It may be a false spring, so enjoy it now. On the hill built out of the debris and bones of war, the large swings swoop out over the city, both children and adults pump their legs swinging out, letting their cares, the past go. Here comes the Future. We are alive.
Most welcome arrival of the Architect again. It was to be the final visit and departure but now there is this period of another month's grace. Hurrah. We visit the Landscape Architect in his spacious apartment, a newly converted attic of a turn of the century solidly bourgeois building into a contemporary loft up some six flights of stairs. No wonder he is so slenderly athletic. It is elegant, filled with paintings, some his own, artworks, both a grand piano and an upright, and of course many large impressive plants. My favourite being the Madagascar Palm with its' tall spiky trunk and two leaves in hibernation. After fragrant white tea that is, I think, from Lychee leaves, we had an elegant dinner at the Austrian, but with a French touch, Borchardt's restaurant. With my calf's liver the mashed potatoes were a vivid viridian green, because pureed Ruccola had been added. That was a delicious first. Afterwards we walked and looked at new trophy architecture built since 1989, including Jean Nouvel's Galerie Lafayette, and were showen more of Berlin's hidden places and passages.
These colours won't come right. It doesn't help of course that the studio lights are so dim that I have to blast the two halogen lights onto the painting just to see at night. Now I am resorting to glazing. Who would have thought I would have to take recourse to this Old Master-ish oil painting technique, but I'm desperate.
"I can't tell you on the phone, I'll come over." That sounds like a leftover from our parents' generation, either from the war when telephones might be tapped, or from country towns when the local switchboard might have been eavesdropping. Nope my twenty-four year old Welsh artist friend has been having German girlfriend challenges. Well Prince Charles had his mobile phone intimacies broadcast to the world, so who knows now. Over tea he tells me what's up. It involves two lovely girls both fancying him but now he is starting to fancy only one and he doesn't want to hurt the other. This takes a lot of discussion of course, but then he postpones the burden of how much truth or what sort should be told and we go off to the vast Templehof airport to have lunch in the workers canteen. This gigantic Fascist building is the largest building in Europe. It is eerily empty although complete with employees; there are almost no passengers as it costs much more to fly into this airport than the commercial Tegel airport. And I mean no passengers. A clutch of pilots and airhostesses sitting at the Air Lift coffee bar, all the counters manned, or wo-manned, and three single passengers scattered about. Unbelievable. In the employee cafeteria, called Casino, again there were five people serving and apart from us two there was one lone couple eating in the large claustrophobically Fifties dark wood panelled dining rooms. Weird. Very cheap the food, unfortunately it was not above institutional standards, although with an impressive range of dishes set out, gradually drying out and congealing. All the time I felt as if I was underwater or in some old film.
