Realm of fantasy
(View of my friend, Jochen’s apartment: Berlin, Germany)
I’m now back from sunny, frosty Berlin and back in the thick of it here in windy old Glasgow. The rain has been lashing down once again, diluting the memories of my recent German foray. I promised a view of Jochen’s apartment, the friend whose funeral I attended last week. The first time the door was opened to me last week, I stepped inside and just stopped. I’m not sure how different my reaction would have been had Jochen been alive and invited me into his home. I felt like an interloper, somehow finding myself in a place and situation that I had little right to be. This was compounded by all discussions related to funeral planning occrring in German, leaving me the task of photographing what I could. It was overwhelmingly different to anything I had anticipated; larger, more airy, magnificent, yet more sparse in a way than I expected. It took me a short while to become accustomed to the space and its qualities – only after spending some time poring over the many intricacies of the decor did I begin to recognise patterns and connections.
The entire apartment was a complete artwork, one that at once felt very showy with a sense of spectacle, but transversely intensely personal. Each item, either fused or connected to another seemed to play out an allegory that potentially linked to Jochen. Each of the numerous wooden hoops suspended from the ceiling by fishing line was just touching the next, neither one leaning on each other, but just caught in that moment of just making contact. There was a prevalence of snakes and lizards in the decor, wooden effigies and models, so many faces and statuettes from time spent in India, paintings, prints, lights, hands, and everything about to tumble, as if like an Escher image; gravity and space were skewed and broken.
On the afternoon of the funeral, this same view was teeming with people – there must have been sixty or seventy people crammed into this space at least. It was truly a great party and the testament of his friendship to everyone was that his flat was so well attended. As I believe (and have experienced), what commonly happens in these sorts of situations is that I kept seeing Jochen in the mass of people – the back of his head or a shoulder pushing past another attendee. It is possibly because that person is at the forefront of one’s mind, that they so readily appear, even when the brain comprehends they cannot be present. It was strange to meet his sister too, since they share such a lot of likenesses. It was me wishing he could have been there and shared it all with us.
On a completely different note…
In good and recent news, (and thanks very much to Ishbel and Tom who held the fort) work began on Project B (the bathroom) on Monday while I was away. I didn’t want to forgo my Berlin trip, in part because I had already paid for, organised and promised my attendance, but also because I truly wanted a break. Some might argue that falling from the ‘frying pan’ of a derelict bathroom into the ‘fire’ of a funeral was not a particularly good swap, but in this instance, a change was as good as a rest. So, more on project B tomorrow if I have a chance. By then, we should be back where we originally started in August; with a blank canvas of space that used to be – and will be once again – a functioning bathroom.
– Today Rosie continues to co-oordinate Project B, is saying goodbye to a friend who is moving to China and is also trying to draw in between all that and her family visiting in Glasgow, Scotland –
