In times of stress, I find it really hard to maintain an acceptable online presence. Sorry! I hope I’ll be back to a normal heart rate and posting frequency by approximately December 2nd.

Music.

Yesterday, I saw Jens Lekman at the Odeon Theater in Vienna. The venue was simply amazing, a huge neo-classical hall, mostly empty save for the space in the middle that was used as 'stage' and the tribune with the seats for the audience.

There is only a crappy mobile photo but look:

It was the first time I ever saw Mr. Lekman play live, and it was great. He started out with a couple of songs that he accompanied with his guitar only, except for some occasional support from his drummer, and I must say, I almost prefer those simple arrangements to the album versions. Towards the end he sort of increased the volume, using more pre-recorded tracks. Then he walked away from the microphone and stood right in front of the audience and did Shirin. End of the set.

An encore was requested, but he just said: "That song just now felt like a good ending, and I wouldn’t want to spoil it. If you want to hear any other songs, just come to me later and I will play them for you personally." (He actually kept the promise, too.)

It was a good night.

Interrail #8

Dear friends, I am horrible with uploading and blogging photos.
One prime example is the seemingly inexhaustible stock of Interrail travel pictures, which are now over a year old and still waiting patiently on my hard drive to be posted and written about. So I figured it was about time that I continued the series. As you perhaps remember, the last stop was Paris.
After that we hurried on to Amiens, a small town in Picardy, famous for its gothic cathedral (built between 1220 and 1270).
Apart from that, it’s just an ordinary French small town, I guess. See yourself.

Upon arrival, we find the weather decidedly colder than we had experienced in the days before. Button up!

Here we go then! The façade. Much excitement. Amiens was my favourite gothic cathedral back then. (I’ve since decided that it’s not that easy to say.)

Max and a couple of headless martyrs. The sculptures in the embrasure of the portals are worth the visit alone.

Inside. (Can you see the cracks? That’s for trying to get too close to heaven.)

I walked all the way to the centre of the labyrinth.

This is sculpture is called la Vierge Dorée. It used to be gilt, hence the name. It also used to be on the outside of the cathedral, which is why it is no longer gilt.

More martyrdom!? Don’t you love catholicism and its crazy love affair with death? Don’t you love the executioner’s bum? Don’t you love the little dog looking on in wonder? One day I will write a paper on the significance of all the little dogs looking on in wonder in Christian art.

More death love! I would have loved to take this (decidedly un-gothic) little cherub with his skull home with me. It would have been great on my non-existent mantelpiece.

Outside: Official buildings are still decked out in Bastille Day decorations!

Well, well! (Haha, oh no.)

Are you in the mood for some flying buttresses? Honestly. How could you not be?

Me in full interrail gear. Go front-and-backpack! And already we say good-bye to Amiens. Efficient tourism, is what I call that. On to ... LILLE.

Hello, international waters. So the Dutch word for rental is cognate with "whore" and "Hure". Car whoring, anyone?

WAITING FOR THE EUROSTAR!!!

WAITING FOR THE EUROSTAR TOO!!! Bye!

Film time & Bear suit weather

Today I spent two and a half hours queuing (and freezing) for tickets for the Viennale. As a result I have tickets for: Submarine, Le Havre, L’hypothèse du tableau volé.

Trailers!


Exciting. I will report back upon having watched.

Unfortunately, there is no trailer for L’hypothèse du tableau volé to be had, but instead here’s a picture of Susan Sontag in a bearsuit (photographed by Annie Leibowitz and found in this treasure trove of pictures), and that will be all for today.

.
Good night!

October!

I figured it was time to kick-start this blog and write something.
I sincerely apologise for being like: "Aiee, lurkers! Y U no say anything!" and then disappearing for almost a month. I’ve been rather busy, and also I’ve been avoiding the blog out of guilt because I promised you Florence pictures, but the film I had developed came back blank and I cried bitter tears. It’s horrible. I will steal some of the digital photos from M.’s camera, though, so the whole trip won’t be entirely undocumented, visual-wise.

Also: What do you know? It’s autumn, already!

Several new things are in my life, like a tutoring job at university, to which I’m supposed to dedicate 2 hours of my week, which is what I get paid for. In reality, I’m kinda working over-time for free, because I really enjoy it (?). It might well be that I am – by nature or nurture – conditioned to be something like a teacher. It’s not a profession that receives much respect these days, but it’s still better than something that might be paraphrased “expert on books and pictures”. Imagine if the experts on books and pictures went on strike! Mayhem! (I’m being facetious, and I also have a strong futility complex.)

Another new thing in my life is actually a lack. Another one of my best friends (dot) has moved away, left the country, buzzed off, cleared out, absquatulated, gone expatriate. Considering the amount of friends I have, this is even more of a tragedy that it would already be if she was just one of many good friends. I made a list, and it turns out, as of now, I have two (2) non-related people in my vicinity who I would without doubt call my friends, and who don’t already have at least 15 people in their life who are much more important to them than I am. And one of them is my boyfriend. Everyone else is scattered across the globe. But the scattered people are not that many either.
I don’t want to moan, this is just something that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot, recently. I’d like a couple more good people in my life. Why am I so crap at making (and keeping) friends? Is there a way I can learn how to be better at it? Open University or something? I’m puzzled.

But anyway. Here’s two autumn outfits that I made today. I wanted them to reflect my new boring trademark style.

Allons-y au cinéma! by housewitheyebrows

October Staple by housewitheyebrows

Safe as Houses.

Staying indoors?

Lately I’ve been wondering who the people who read this blog are.

Now, I know that a few of my friends read it more or less regularly, and they are the ones who leave comments, if they do. But unless the blogger statistics are lying to me (which I am not fully convinced they’re not), there are more of you.

Hello? How’s it going? Are you here frequently, or are these just coincidental hits followed by speedy and panicky retreats?

Who are you, where you’re from? What do you like? Where do you live?

I’m sometimes having a hard time writing into the void, so this is an attempt to probe and chart the unknown anonymity and fill it with faces and places. Drop me a note, will you?

Unadulterated pleasure.

I’m reading a book called Letters between Forster and Isherwood on Homosexuality and Literature, although the title is somewhat misleading, as the content of their letters isn’t at all restricted to those two themes, – mostly it’s just adorable invitations and attempts to meet up and then tragically missing each other, much like life in the twentyfirst century when your mobile phone battery is empty, but with the added tension of impending World War, and the increasing dilemma of how to deal with it on a personal level, both in very abstract and very, very real and specific ways, as in: “My lover is German, how on Earth is that going to work out???”. D:

I’m finding it wonderful and endlessly quotable. I think the personal memories and/or letters of literary people are my favourite thing to read by now, I don’t really know why. Obviously it’s because they’re always incredibly well written and witty, but what has happened to me + novels? I seem to be more and more interested in non-fiction. It’s strange. Is it a growing up thing? Can’t be, right? Adults do read fiction. Am I infested by a sort of high(er)-brow reality TV worm?
Anyway, you must bear with me whenever quotes from there crop up throughout my blog posts in the near future.

T., you must read the book!

“If you happen to be in Greece, please come and call. All you have to do is to get to Chalkis by train, then persuade some farmer to bring you as far as Chalia with his cart, from whence half an hour’s brisk donkey ride will bring you to the shore. From the shore you must shout very loud, and I will come over in a boat and fetch you.” 

Isherwood to Forster, 1933

On an unrelated note, I like these kids:

Impressions of Bulgaria, Part 4 (Food)

Before I will tell you any more ’bout Firenze, I’d like to get Bulgaria over and done with. So here’s the 4th and last batch of pictures, themed FOOD.
I admit that I was a bit worried about food, before I went to Bulgaria. It was right after my decision to turn vegetarian again, and I wasn’t really sure if the local cuisine would include an ample amount of vegetarian dishes or if I would have to live on bread and cheese alone (which isn’t per se such a bad thing). But it turned out, yes. Bulgarians do eat a lot of salad and their vegetables are wonderful. Most main dishes do contain meat, but there’s usually a way to somehow meander around them, and I never had to go to bed hungry. The contrary! Just one thing: it’s absolutely pointless if you ask the waiter at a restaurant if something contains meat. Meat seems to mean ‘a piece of meat’, so if something just contains minced meat or bacon, they will gladly assure you that it is a meat free dish.

First evening feast – Starters. Here we have the ever-present cucumbers and tomatoes, as well as Snezhanka Salad (the Bulgarian version of Tzatziki), some sort of Cream Cheese Paprika concoction (yum!) as well as Ljutenitsa (sauce of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc.). All served on top of an enormous piece of flat bread, as you will see when you look closely enough.

First evening feast – Main course. Apart from the ubiquitous grilled chops which I didn’t have and which aren’t that interesting anyway, here we have a nice bean stew, and absolutely wonderful baby potatoes in a garlic-dill-sauce. How come I haven’t yet made these at home?! I remember writing that on my mental to do list as soon as I tasted them.

Chips from a ratty take-away in the middle of nowhere. Usually there would be grated white cheese (a manouri-like sort) on top of it, sadly not in this case. I did like the little salt cellar chef, though.

The typical Bulgarian flatbread called Parlenka. It’s sooooooo good.

So as I said, about one week before I went to Bulgaria, I had decided that I wouldn’t eat meat or fish any more. I do, however, make exceptions when I am by the seaside and I have it on good authority that the seafood is locally caught. This was the last time I had fish – we all shared a platter with an assortment of Black Sea fish, as well as these tiny fried anchovies, so-called tsatsas. They were absolutely worth overcoming my queasy qualms when it comes to swallowing fish whole. But it was fine, there was nothing unwelcome to be tasted. In fact, with a little lemon juice drizzled on top, and accopanied by Snezhanka Salad, they were delicious!

I’m a bit shocked that I never took a picture of a Shopska salad, which was indeed what I existed on mostly during my stay in Bulgaria. The recipe is always a little different, so it doesn’t get boring, but the main ingredients: cucumbers, tomatoes, grated white cheese on top. It’s all you need on a hot day, really. I love it.

Back From Firenze.

I have returned from Florence with a travel bag stuffed with new impressions and so much to blog about. I have no photos yet because most of them are on film, and Max has taken the digital camera away (;() so I cannot get right to work.

But, meanwhile, let me share two photo-booth-photos of postcards that show details in Michelangelo’s Night and Day sculptures from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici.


Details are the best.

By the way, the unfinished face of “Day” (not pictured) is one of the scariest and most fascinating things I have ever experienced in art. It is absolutely arresting to me.

I have lost my voice.

I have not been writing anything of substance during the last few months.
And indeed, it’s been years since I felt I had anything to say.
The question is, what am I so scared about? The answer is, I’m “scared” of not being good enough. “Scared” of my thoughts being too unoriginal, or not well enough put. “Scared” that my taste in things is so bad that I don’t even know which of my thoughts are worth saying out loud or writing down, and which aren’t. A while ago, someone or other has told me – relating to a completely different subject, but that is irrelevant – that I’m not really as great as I seem to think, and it just won’t leave me alone. I am constantly comparing myself to others, and concluding that I’m not fit to hold a candle to them. Why are they so much better than me? Envy turns into resentment, and I turn into a bitter cynical misanthrope. Then at times, I tell myself that this whole blogging thing is nothing but a narcissistic, specular, exhibitionist circus world that I don’t think I want to participate in anyways. And fear not, I think the same of the real world, in general, too. From time to time.

Also, I assume, I’ve lost something, and that is time to reflect. Time in which I am alone with myself, left to marinate in my own essence, so to speak. I don’t think everyone is like that, but for me, when I am with another person, or other persons (a lot), I forget myself a bit. I start existing exclusively in the space between me and the other person. I am de-centered. I put myself out into the creative commons. And I lose my own grip on myself.
The above, for some reason, has made it impossible to write anything that is in any way profound, because I don’t even think profoundly. I don’t have to. Everything just trinkles past, in an everlong, inconsequential stream
There might be other reasons as well. But those I dare not think, because they are inacceptable.

This is why there have been only pictures, lately.
And nothing interesting.
Sometimes I read things, and then I think, well, obviously. I’ve thought of that before.
But I didn’t write it down. Perhaps because I was too self-conscious and thought it wasn’t that impressive to begin with. But more likely because I was simply too lazy to put the thoughts into words.

tl;dr?
Pictures were taken in and outside of Westlicht gallery, Vienna.
Have a nice day.

Impressions of Bulgaria, Part 3 (Random Town and Country)

Impressions of Bulgaria, Part 2 (Churches and Walls)

As I went to Bulgaria as a part of an art history field trip, most of our time was spent looking at brickwork, buildings and battlements. And of course churches. Especially the brickwork on churches.

Sibylle Bergemann

If I was in Berlin, or had a chance to go any time soon, I’d love to see the Sibylle Bergemann exhibition ”Polaroids” at the C/O.

“I am interested in the margin of the world, not the center. For me, it is the non-interchangable that is crucial. When something in the faces or landscapes is not quite right.”
Sibylle Bergemann

(How perfect is that last photo of a girl on a swing in the Mauerpark? I am absolutely in love with it.)