The streets feel strangely quiet as I head out at 6:30 to fetch breakfast and coffee. What the heck? Eifler Bakery is dark without a sign of life. Oh well, the bakery across the street is open.
This place is a self-service spot that I’ve avoided as I couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t violate COVID mitigation rules I may not be aware of. Good thing others are in here so I can take cues from them. With an egg and bacon sandwich and medium coffee, I returned to this peculiarly quiet neighborhood. At this time of day, Caroline is still awake but will soon be asleep. I used the opportunity to not only let her know I was awake and still missing her but also asked if she knew if there was a holiday here in the first week of June on a Thursday. It is the Feast of Corpus Christi in English, but in German, it is Fronleichnam (which, to naughty school children, translates to Happy Cadaver Day). While a day of recognition for Catholics, the Protestants and Lutherans simply enjoy the extra day off.
My day is going to unfold slowly without much to share about Frankfurt or the surrounding area as I’m spending some time with Stephanie here at Jutta’s til 10:15 when I will leave to meet an old friend, but until then, we are sorting things and determining what remains and what joins the dustbin.
It’s a short 13-minute walk from Saalburgstraße 46 to Friedberger Landstraße 100, where Torsten (To) Kuehne and I are meeting at Lucille Kaffeehaus. By the way, it’s 5 minutes by scooter as I just noticed that as a travel option for where I’m going. Seeing To for the first time in only a couple of years but so much has changed since then. Artists have had to bear the brunt of the economic pain brought on by a pandemic as they usually don’t have anything to fall back on, but here’s To; he looks good, and he’s surviving.
After the briefest of updates of news from the past couple of years and my explaining to To why I’m in Frankfurt, we jumped right into the lost opportunities that we had a glimpse of after the pandemic started. What I’m referring to is when people were singing in appreciation to health care workers, playing music on balconies, and helping each other get through a bizarre moment in human history that was seemingly affecting everyone simultaneously on our Earth. But we blew it; we turned to anger and frustration that our perfect lives were inconvenienced and that somehow the most valuable minutes of our lives were being stolen instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to reevaluate and reinvent some small part of ourselves.
And now we want everything to return to normal, and maybe that’s just where we are going, which in both our views is unfortunate as we are driving society without a compass of ethics and morality. As human experience has shrunk into milliseconds and tiny screens instead of big ideas, grand vistas, and the embrace of love, we are more hedonistic and frightened of not being able to work out if we have a future.
A friend of To’s was walking his bike up to the cafe. His name is Stefan and I found him as interesting as so many of the other creative people I’ve met over my years living here and the intervening years when we visit. Stefan works in theater, well he did before the pandemic, and now his future is uncertain and is doubly so due to a generation that has lost touch with historical and intellectual matters. Stefan doesn’t create theater for Pokemon or TikTok, and he has no desire to establish himself as an influencer; he tells stories.
Stories, isn’t that all any artist shares? Within every object, image, and human-created sound is a story distilled from the imagination and experience of the person who has offered to others. The artist will only rarely find a glimpse of what others have tried to take from something as complex as the reorganization of stimuli wrapped in an obtuse package that may or may not resonate with others. Take the image above, To shared with me the work of a photographer, Barbara Klemm, for whom he has tremendous respect. She shot an image of Andy Warhol standing in front of a painting by J. H. Wilhelm Tischbein of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a famous author from Frankfurt. To had the idea to recreate it and reached out to Ms. Klemm, who agreed to shoot the image with To in front of the painting to recreate her famous image. He then reached out to the Städel Museum, who, while they thought it was a great idea, had it loaned to another museum for another two years. So, To recreated the image of himself as Goethe, then he posed as Warhol and set up his camera so he could take the photo himself. Today, I’m holding the postcard inspired by the Tischbein image in front of the image of To in front of To taken by To. And that’s the story of that.
Self-portrait of the artist To – Torsten Kuehne.
On my way out of To’s place, I handed him my camera and asked that he snap off a few shots for me so my camera would be given the experience of seeing differently. I suppose it is wrong of me to have automatically put my copyright statement on them as I exported the batch of today’s photos but appropriation and outright theft are the acknowledgment that an artist holds such influence that others want to steal from him. Had only I thought about nabbing his circa 1970s banana seat bicycle in the basement, I could be seeing Frankfurt from a whole new perspective.
I know what comes at me after Caroline sees this image of To, “See John, To looks great in a “wife-beater” doesn’t he?” Ouch, writing that hurt my fingers that want to be politically correct, as I suppose even the idea of “wife-beater” is probably a dark subject these days. Let me just state here and now that I do not condone beating one’s wife, even if it happens while wearing the appropriate shirt. To make up for this transgression, I’ll share a secret with you, To’s most recent tattoo addition is an image of Wile E. Coyote holding a Help Me sign near his buttcrack, ask me how I know.
The Polaroid of To is the To I met about 30 years ago. I give this man a lot of credit for being an authentic and idealistic human being. His range of experience is wide and maybe extreme to others who live in tiny boxes and are afraid to encounter the full spectrum of life, but it’s just To looking at the details that are always before us that he has an eye for. I can’t say I’ve known To to be foolish, and while luck hasn’t always been smiling upon him, he’s been calculating enough to avoid the worst life has to offer. Today, he’s spending some of his daylight hours coaching students to be confident and creative. Some would call this being a teacher but To doesn’t attempt to alienate those he has charge over but asks them to offer something real from inside themselves. For that effort, he read me a letter some of his students recently wrote him that was deeply heartfelt, along with a bottle of whiskey they gifted him that sits near the front door we entered through.
Earlier, when Stefan ran into To, and I was introduced to him, it turned out that we both lived on Gluckstrasse, he in address 13, Caroline and I in #8. Why To shared that I was eating grüne Sosse almost every day, I don’t know but he was aghast. Not seriously or anything, but he found it hard to imagine someone liking it so much. So, I asked him to recommend a place he seriously enjoyed, and he told me of Sümela Turkish Restaurant. I got out of To’s at 3:00 p.m. and walked over to this place as it wasn’t far from where we were, but it doesn’t open until 4:00. I sat there and wrote until they opened and then feasted on this mixed grill plate. Feasting already implies eating an exquisite meal, and so I hope it can go without saying just how much I enjoyed it.
Yesterday, I mentioned this ad campaign asking Frankfurters (not the hot dog ones) when they wanted to return to normal activities such as travel and dancing. This is the other poster I was referring to, with DJ Ata doing his part in motivating people to help end the pandemic in Germany. I wish I knew how to get hold of him to say hi.
Thunder is heard in the distance, but for a few more minutes, I believe I had the last remaining blue sky shining over my head; that’s what optimism brings you.
Here in the rain, after being in Germany for ten days and witnessing the rapid transitions regarding the pandemic, the restrictions still in effect bite harder in the rain. I’ve been rapidly transitioning into remembering my existence here, and while the rain was an inconvenience last week, I now remember how when the rain came, it didn’t matter as every bar, cafe, and restaurant was hopping with steamy, loud, and exuberant revelers who moved the party indoors. Jackets and umbrellas were stacked thick near the entrance, and the sound of glasses filled the room with the many voices speaking nearly as many languages. With the heavy thunderstorm this late day, nobody gets to squeeze into an already crowded room because though the population who have had a recent COVID test or has been vaccinated with both shots with at least two weeks since their last one can get a table outside, we are not allowed to sit together indoors yet. So, business must come to an absolute standstill. The streets are as empty as they are at 5:00 in the morning, and the voices going by my windows fall silent.