Finally accepting that I had to wage war on these recalcitrant linen canvases, the day was spent sandpapering them down then re-applying another coat of primer, which in twenty-four hours I'll sandpaper down again. Even though it was pouring with rain, in the evening I did a circuit of gallery Openings. In Berlin they want people to come to the openings, they aren't invitation only, celebrity A-list, and guards on the doors, affairs. There are gallery guides printed for each month, the Berliner Kunstkalender that lists all the galleries with their exhibitions dates and times and as well the dates and times of the Opening Receptions. Isn't that such a friendly, democratically great way to run an art scene? People actually are nice here. So around I went, looking like a drowned rat, hair plastered down, coat dripping and managed to meet friends and see four galleries before squelching back home to my cosy Milchhof studio.
12/02/2007 This evening I met and had dinner with a landscape architect and a jazz singer. Not at all an uptight stiff German as I imagined he might be, when he drove up in his Audi, meanwhile saying how Mercedes Benz are terrible cars that should be banned, he is all gaily laughing, youthful fluidity, the opposite of my suppositions. She is a blonde with darker roots, a languid smoothness, lovely in a slower sense, with a liquid layer of sadness underneath which must feed into her singing. He has a new project, the grounds of a new school, she sings in jazz clubs, letting a room in her flat for short stays, and teaching English as a language to make ends meet. We went to the Volkspark am Weinberg near the Milchhof, but the other side of it to where I usually walk. Up a path a pink concrete shed with coloured lights seemed to be our destination. Going round the side, a large, modern Swiss restaurant on the peak of the hill appeared, all glass looking out over what now was revealed to be a picturesque wooded hill sloping down to a small lake. Amusingly, there are rows of reclining deck chairs set out and a chalet holding piles of folded thick blankets. People come when the winter sun is bright and lie out wrapped in blankets sunning themselves just as if they were in the sanatorium of The Magic Mountain. Truly surprising.
What was East Berlin, which deceptively appears at first as bleak, decrepit, even brutally forbidding, especially during the dark winter, has in fact myriads of hidden delights. Walking the streets one finds capacious courtyards leading to other interlocking courtyards with a formal magnificence, not at all visible from plain, rather dull streets. Then there are these delightful little parks scattered everywhere. Unlike the English squares, these are Volksparks, that is to say for the people, all folk. No fences, no locking out, they are open. Day and night people walk through and especially in the spring, enjoy Nature there. Slowly my impressions expand of this delightful, liveable city.
After dinner in a lively small Italian restaurant, with much spirited conversation, we go to a jamming session at a jazz club where the ambience and music is wonderfully enjoyable, but my how these people smoke. Everything, my hair, clothes, eyes, lungs are permeated with cigarette smoke. Everything that can be has to be washed out before I can get into bed. In the morning I wake with a sore throat and the feeling of a nicotine hangover. And she bravely sings in that night after night
