Finally the colour is right. What had started out to be a sunshine yellow painting, which proved to be impossible to achieve the exact colour I wanted, it looked constantly too harsh, too artificial in this murkiness, has become after days of hard won changes a sort of burnt orange. But it is exactly right now and I am elated. Now move on and get another colour to perfection.
Reading Rilke's Diaries when he first visits Florence, he writes, "I felt at first so confused that I could scarcely separate my impressions, and thought I was drowning in the breaking wave of some foreign splendour." As in 1898 so in 2007, arrival in a new town brings the same stages of adjustment. Two months ago I observed with such intensity the smallest details of surroundings and customs, as if my life depended on it; the survival instinct. Now two months have passed and I am easy in my wanderings around Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. Although it is true there is much to Berlin that I haven't seen, there is so very much to see here that I am more than fully occupied.
If one were arriving now for a one-month stay, one would luxuriate in the scope and length of time ahead. A glorious full month to spend here in exploration, one might so exclaim. Whereas I on the other hand say what! Only one month more but that is such a miserly space of time to complete so much. Just as Woody Allen at the end of ‘Zelig' says, "I can't die yet I haven't finished ‘Moby Dick'." I say I can't leave Berlin in a month, my paintings are only just beginning to come into shape; there are dozens of museums and galleries still to visit in Berlin, and surely Dresden and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister is a must, let alone this that and the endless else of possible delights. So Time the great elusive expands and contracts. It is all a question of perception, or if you like, attitude. One more month in Berlin, what will that be like?
