Berlin isn't the prettiest city in the world. Having been bombed pretty much flat in the war, it's been reconstructed in a rather haphazard fashion. Tacky "Wirtschaftswunder" and dreary socialist functionalism have not afforded us much in the way of architectural elegance and poise. However, like a "jolie laide", Berlin exudes that most attractive of all qualities - a sense of life. She may not be the most beautiful girl in the class, but you know she'll be a lot of fun to go out with!
Three days was inevitably barely enough to scratch the surface, but we were able to stay focused enough to get a reasonable amount of tourism done! Standard stuff, I suppose - the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden, Pergamon Museum, Checkpoint Charlie, Jewish Museum, Ku'damm, Scheuneviertel, Spree boat ride, Alte Nationalgalerie. Not a bad "bag". The still visible war damage on the unrestored buildings on the Museumsinsel was eerily evocative - an extravagant juxtaposition of man's loftiest cultural ideals and his capacity for violent depravity.
The most fascinating, though psychologically most demanding, visit was to the Jewish Museum.
I am not Jewish - at least I don't think so, although my mother used sometimes to hint darkly at "strange blood" on her father's side! Yet the idea of Jewishness has always exercised a special fascination over me. As a small boy, growing up in Ealing, there were always Jewish kids around. My very best childhood friend was Nick Berg - we were constantly in and out of each others places. My mother was very good friends with his mother and continued to write to her long after we moved from London. I can remember being vaguely jealous of him getting his Hannukah presents before my Christmas presents! All to say that Jewishness seemed the most natural thing in the world.
I also remember the profound sense of embarrassment which came over me when I first came across the holocaust. I must have been twelve at the time. I'd saved up my pocket-money to buy "The Bantam Illustrated History of World War Two". I was showing off my acquisition to my friends at school, when one boy ( surnamed David, incidentally), turning to those appalling photographs of Belsen, suggested that my parents might not be too happy at my viewing this sort of material. I was so ashamed that I tore the offending pages out of the book and burned them!
Even today, I still find all that holocaust stuff hard to take. The more you learn about it, the more it staggers the mind. The "final solution" to the Jewish "problem" - it's totally cuckoo! And yet thousands actively pursued it and millions passively acquiesced in it. Institutions like the Jewish Museum are there as part of an extremely broadly based "never forget, never again " campaign, which is very courageously and generously supported by the German state.
The museum is largely housed in a modern construction by the architect Daniel Libeskind. Built in a deliberately lopsided manner, with strange angles and slopes, the outside marked with zig-zag scars, it evokes an unpleasant feeling of emptiness and imbalance, as of a world out-of-kilter, oppressive in its sense of absence.
The exhibition itself takes us through the history of the Jews in Germany, from the medieval period through to the holocaust and beyond. It seems there was always a precarious aspect to Jewish life in Germany, sadly predictable in a situation where a minority group seeks consciously to distinguish itself from the majority culture. Everything may appear to be going all right, but there's always the danger of the population running amok at the full moon. From the 19th century, however, Jews were becoming increasingly assimilated and enjoying greater possibilities for advancement. As we reach the twentieth century, we start to see the photographs of nice, middle-class Jewish families, looking happily and confidently into the camera, full of intellectual curiosity and cultural creativity. It breaks your heart to think that all that was destroyed. These are my kind of people, the people who give life its colour and zest!
I remember a conversation with my old mentor, Hans Fluger. We were discussing the failure to communicate the idea of Europe to the population at large. Hans was categorical: "Not enough Jews! If we had more Jews they'd bloody sell it. They'd write the books, make the films, create a whole ground-swell of opinion! We've destroyed much of the cultural leavening which our society so badly needs. They are cosmopolitans, natural Europeans." But then again, without the catastrophe of the Second World War, there would never have been the same urgency behind the desire to create a united Europe...
Of course, the terrible and almost unmentionable contradiction is that a degree of oppression is possibly necessary if the continued existence of Jews as a seperate people is to be assured. The real danger to a separate Jewish identity is assimilation - that over time they will be absorbed into the general population and Jewishness will be reduced to an accidental quirk, rather like red hair or being left-handed. There's always Israel as a sort of fall-back, but the state of Israel is the source of so much injustice, real or perceived, that it cannot be seen as a cast-iron guarantee of the survival of Jewishness over the centuries.
The Judaic religion, its teachings, traditions and dietary laws, has, viewed from an historical perspective, been the real guarantor of a separate Jewish identity. But it seems to me that Judaism too is fraught with contradiction. The notion of monotheism, that all life, in its infinite variety, partakes of the One Life, is conceivably the greatest conceptual breakthrough in the history of civilization. In other words, monotheism is almost by definition a universal religion, a fact borne out, I would argue, by the extraordinary success of Judaism's two major offshoots, Christianity and Islam. And yet, this essentially universal religion has to serve as a tribal cult, as it were, to protect the continued separate existence of a specific ethnicity. Which begs the question: "Does the survival of Jewishness matter?" Personally, I have always found nationalism embarrassing and those that attribute all sorts of qualities to themselves by virtue of their mere ethnic identity utterly pathetic. Still, the idea that we should be reduced to a homogeneous coffee-coloured mass, devoid of all difference and distinction is a fairly depressing prospect. What is needed is a higher comprehension of what it might mean to accept and understand that we can, no, must acknowledge and welcome the fact of difference, but difference reconciled in that Oneness, which is the source of all life. It's probably something which takes a bit of practice.

Visited Berlin for three days over the Easter weekend. I'd always liked Berlin, but I'd not been there properly (not counting a one-day in-out for work) since the wall came down. Berlin was always for me an almost mythical 60s/70s destination - the cradle, virtually, of "Alternatives Leben und Wohngemeinschaft", a natural collection point for artists, poets, musicians, deadbeats, oddballs and panhandlers, Baader-Meinhof "sympathisanten" and burned-out hippies. It's different now, of course, with reunification and reconstruction, but one still gets an impression of a city of promise and possibility. Urban, sophisticated, intellectual, resourceful, ironic, clever, garrulous, in a state of restless movement and constant metamorphosis, Berlin is relatively free, one has the impression, of that self-conscious awkwardness and stiffness one so often encounters in provincial Germany. Unsolicited conversations with taxi-drivers and shop-girls seem quite spontaneous and natural. If you say something "clever" you know you're going to get the same back with interest! People going about their business are, one feels, human beings first and social functions only second. This gives the city a strange "conspiratorial" feel, which is oddly liberating. While traveling on the U-Bahn, for example, our carriage was "entertained" by what were possibly the World's Worst Buskers! The reaction to our two beer-sodden, slouch-hatted, one-chord wonders singing "Country Road" off-key in a ludicrous accent was not one of irritation or embarrassment. No, everybody just laughed right out loud, taking pleasure in the shared sense of the ridiculous.

Another emblematic experience occurred on the Hackescher Markt. We were sat at a terrace enjoying the spring weather and our sausage and beer lunch, when, out of nowhere a character appeared in a clown's red nose and, walking in step behind insouciant pedestrians, proceeded to imitate their mannerisms. Peals of laughter from the pavement alerted the poor innocents to the fact that something was going on - literally behind their backs, but as they turned round, the clown would turn round in synch, and it would take some time before they finally twigged to what was happening. The satire was horribly cruel but fiendishly accurate, ruthlessly pointing up people's vacuity and pretension. Our laughter set in a grimace as we reflected that it could easily have been us.

I've been looking at P.D. Ouspensky's "A New Model of the Universe" which Maurice Nicoll drew on in writing his quite fascinating book "Living Time" (see earlier postings). Ouspensky is probably best known as the author of "In Search of the Miraculous", which is about his experience as a disciple of the mystic and sage, Gurdjieff. Put very simply, Gurdjieff's teaching posits higher levels of consciousness which are potentially accessible to us through using our power of attention to attain a state of "self-remembering" - a certain objective awareness of our own existence. Reading "A New Model of the Universe" it becomes clear why he was so interested in Gurdjieff. Largely written before his meeting him, the book is essentially an exploration of the notion of esotericism. He sets out his stall from the start of chapter one:

The idea of a knowledge which surpasses all ordinary human knowledge and is inaccessible to ordinary people, but which exists somewhere and belongs to somebody, permeates the whole history of the thought of mankind from the most remote periods.

He then goes on to investigate such diverse topics as the interpretation of the tarot cards, yoga in its various manifestations, the nature of dreams and their possible interpretation, the science of hypnotism, the concept of the "superman", the significance of the sphinx, the possibility of the transmutation of sex energy and much, much more! There is also a fascinating exploration of the fourth dimension and the mysterious nature of time ( the link with "Living Time").

Particularly intriguing was the chapter given over to an investigation of the New Testament from the point of view of esotericism. He paints a very convincing picture of Jesus, not as the leader of a universal church, but as the teacher of a limited esoteric group seeking to attain the "Kingdom of Heaven" in this life through a raising of level of consciousness. His reading of the parables from this new standpoint is especially persuasive.

However, reading Ouspensky can be hard work at times. It may be a sort of intellectual honesty, but he doesn't go out of his way to charm the reader. His tone is very much: "I've done a lot of serious study of these things and it's like this. If you don't like it, then bad luck!" There's also a lot of phrases of the type, " it's perfectly clear that...", "this, of course , is simply...", we always find..." - the sort of thing which in an undergraduate essay would produce a rash of red biro with comments such as, "how?", "explain!", "why?"etc!

Nevertheless the book contains some astonishing material presented in a no-nonsense, non-sensationalist manner. I'm not going to try to read it and understand it all in one go, but I feel it's a book which I'll be coming back to again and again.

Just seen my nephew and family off at the station. They came over from the UK to visit us for a long weekend which was a lot of fun. Jerome is Carol's brother's son, but I've known him pretty much all his life as we first met in 1974 when he was one-and-a-half! They have a young daughter who's nearly two, plus another baby on the way. I am occasionally invaded by a powerful nostalgia for that same period in our own lives, when we were the generation at the centre of life. Anna, our youngest, is already nearly sixteen, so she won't be with us for much longer now. Having had children in the house since 1976, it will be strange to no longer have a little life-source under our roof.

Jerome's discovered Pink Floyd and was thrilled to find I had some "on vinyl". He used the same sort of tone I might have used for my auntie's old "78's"! I only have the two albums, "Meddle" and "Dark Side of the Moon", but listening to them again after all these years was another experience which induced aching pangs of nostalgia. Of course, not all of it stands the test of time, but even the rather pompous "prog rock" stuff is a complete time-machine. Of the two, on balance I prefer "Meddle" which brings something more positive than "Dark Side". But then again "Dark Side" is, by definition, an exploration of the, well, dark side.
"Echoes", the song which starts with the asdic bleep and lasts the whole of the second side of "Meddle", is forever associated in my mind with a particular experience. While at University I spent a lot of time climbing and on one occasion I was hitch-hiking back to Newcastle after a trip to the Scottish Highlands. I got a lift heading South down the A9 at Newtonmore from some guy with a fancy motor and, wonder of wonders, a car stereo! We barrelled on to Dalwhinnie and, breasting hill after hill, we surged exhilaratingly up over the Drumochter pass and cruised effortlessly on down to the Vale of Atholl, all to the magical soundtrack of "Echoes". It was one of those special youthful moments pregnant with a strange nostalgia for the future, for the infinite richness of possibility which life seems to offer. How strange to feel nostalgia for a sense of nostalgia!
Some songs have, as it were, a built-in sense of nostalgia and somehow evoke that same sentiment regardless of the age of the listener. This is true of "A Pillow of Winds", the second track on the album. A love song, or rather a song about the psychic sensations which accompany the state of being in love. In its hippyish, Piscean way it somehow captures that barely-conscious, intuitive sense of being in contact with some deep sense of meaning, as:

...I lie

With my love by my side

And she's breathing low.

"Fearless" is also a great track with a message which we can all use:

You say the hill's too steep to climb

Climb it

It's the one that finishes with the Kop singing "You'll Never Walk Alone", as though to say that once you truly commit to a project, Providence is duty-bound to come to your assistance. (Interesting also to hear how football crowds sounded different back then.)

The album cover of "Echoes" is one of the emblematic features of the early seventies. Handling those old albums is one of those rituals of which the younger generation is tragically deprived. A CD, still less a computer download, just doesn't do it! The inside cover with the black-and-white photographs of the boys in all their hirsute grandeur is another nostalgia-trigger. The hippie era was full of hypocrisy and pretence, but one thing it did have is conspicuous now by its absence - the sense that it is proper and legitimate to be a seeker of wisdom and truth. Less and less today are people allowed "not to know" and are therefore forced to hide their innocence behind a mask of knowing irony, which, over time, hardens and stifles the real person.

Of course "Dark Side of the Moon" is also a great album. Recently, late one Friday night, when I was too lazy even to go to bed, I watched a thing on TV about how the album was recorded. I couldn't help being struck by David Gilmour, King of the Hippies, looking like an overweight solicitor wearing his weekend jumper! But he can still sure play! It was fascinating to learn just how "hands on" their use of the new synthesiser and recording technology was back then - a work of art in itself. They explained how in the writing they were definitely confronting difficulties they had encountered within themselves and in the world about them. "Breathe", "Time", "Money" are all excellent tracks and you need a lot of positive energy to look honestly at negative stuff. But still, to say life is meaningless, we're all going to die and society is based upon superficial values isn't enough. It seems to me that, if you break the eggs, you'd damn well better try and make an omelette!

Monday lunchtime. Arranged to meet Carol at the Enfants Noyés in Boitsfort to walk the dog. Drove round by the Etangs d'Ixelles in a tremendous thunderstorm. Great cracking forks of lightning rent the darkened sky. As I parked in the forest it was still bucketing down. However, when Carol drove up a few minutes later the sky was beginning to clear and patches of blue appeared as we set out on our walk. It was then that we were vouchsafed the most miraculous vision of natural beauty. As we walked down towards the ponds, the combination of the emerging sun and the backdrop of the black rain-clouds revealed myriad tiny pearls of rainwater attached to every tiny twig and branch as though each tree had decided wantonly to bedeck itself in its most fabulous jewels. The whole shimmering extravagance was infused with the most delicate flush of green from the incipient leaf-growth. The translucent light invested the trunks of the trees with a new intensity as though one had never seen trees before, as though one only now became truly aware of the extraordinary depth of their, and our, existence in three dimensions. The fantastic richness and subtlety of the colouring of trees were revealed as though for the very first time; the browns, greens, greys, green-greys, yellow-brown-greens - each nuance perfect in its suchness. Although observers, we yet participated in the scene with a strangely heightened awareness of our own existence. It is at such times that we are reminded that to be alive is something utterly extraordinary and that we spend too much of our precious time short-changing ourselves with the dull habit of negative thinking.

Sex and swastikas. That's what the publishing industry knows sells books, which is why I always suspect my own fascination with the Third Reich. However, I finally succumbed to curiosity and borrowed the DVD of "Der Untergang" and I must confess I really enjoyed it. Well, "enjoy" is hardly the word, but I was riveted by it. The screenplay was based around the eyewitness account of Hitler's final days in the bunker produced by his secretary Traudl Junge. I had seen her interviewed in the old "World at War" series and was fascinated by her tale already then. She seemed a very sensible, ordinary, decent sort of woman, as curious as I was as to how she got mixed up in that whole insane business. In fact, that was the heart of the film's message - the sheer banality of evil. It is in many ways so much more comfortable to view Hitler and the Nazis as demons rather than human beings. Once we accept them as human beings, sincerity requires that we confront that same potential for evil in ourselves. The film reveals an obvious truth about Hitler, which is that he had a capacity for charm, for human warmth, without which he would not have been able to create the cult of mass devotion to himself. Like all psychopaths and confidence tricksters his secret was his absolute belief in his own sustaining fantasies. His preparedness to sacrifice the whole German Volk as extras in his personal Götterdämmerung was entirely justifiable given that they had proved themselves "unworthy" in the Darwinian race-struggle. This sort of bloke-down-the-pub interpretation of evolutionary theory seems completely bonkers to us today, but it was an idea he sold to millions by the simple device of telling people what they most deeply want to hear - that they are special, that they are the master race. Who among us, deep in our black little hearts, does not think they are special?

The production is technically brilliant and the acting at times superb. The neurotic, claustrophobic atmosphere of the bunker is extremely well captured. Bruno Ganz as Hitler pulls off an incredible "tour de force". Heino Ferch as Albert Speer is particularly good - he even looks like him! I never quite worked out how a sensitive and intelligent guy like Speer ever got involved with those gangsters and fantasists. Presumably something weak in him was flattered. There was a biography came out a couple of years ago - another one for the list!* For me the most gruelling scene is where Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch) forces her eldest daughter to take the poison which is going to kill her. I had to look away.

There was an "extra" DVD in the box with details on the making of the film etc. which gave some interesting insights into how the director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, achieved the effects he was looking for. Some nice interview footage of old Joachim Fest, who wrote the book, looking good in his eighties. I remember particularly his "Face of the Third Reich" - a series of pen-portraits of the leading Nazis, a brilliant study of the banality of evil.

Intrigued by the "draw" of the whole loony Nazi fantasy, I returned to Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich - A New History", which, of the books I've read, gives the greatest insight into the deep psychological attraction of Hitler and the National Socialists. On the subject of the quasi-religious nature of the movement he writes:

The Nazis hardly had a monopoly over the sacralization of politics, for since the French Revolution the quest for utopias based on reason, class or nation has been construed as a holy task. Many regimes more or less consciously usurped religious forms, much of it as harmless as the common transference of religious sentiment on to art, foxhunting or a football club. In a secular age, religious emotion has been diffused into various compartments, one of which is organised religion itself, which becomes a private matter on a par with lifestyle options such as vegetarianism or knitting. But Nazism did not merely hijack a few liturgical externals, all the better to win over a largely Christian country. It sank a drillhead into a deep-seated reservoir of existential anxiety, offering salvation from an ontological crisis.

The idea of frustrated religious sentiment necessarily finding some, any, outlet is deeply convincing and is probably more relevant to many of our current difficulties and misunderstandings than we would care to admit.

* Gita Sereny "Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth"

Saturday night. Played the Brussels Rhythm and Blues Club. It's a rock-on-out evening organised every month by Jonathan Todd and Geoff Meade at Sounds. JT's been rather reluctant about taking on About Time II, as he finds the Zen Blues repertoire somewhat demanding. However, having given him assurances as to our ability to act out the hard-drinking, high-testosterone blues band cliché, he took the risk and, ultimate accolade, he wants us back!
The evening was a little bit "Back to the Future". They have a house band, "The Witness", which, fronted by an ageing Vietnamese Mick Jagger impersonator with poor English, do a pretty decent job on all the old Beatles and Stones classics from the early sixties. Meanwhile, we'd weighted the repertoire heavily in favour of late sixties Hendrix and Cream material, which gave us the opportunity of unleashing Michel on the unsuspecting audience. People were left wandering around in a blank state of shock as he ripped into "Red House". Grown men wept uncontrollably, blood spurting from their ears, as he soared into axe-man hyperspace! Women gave birth spontaneously as he tore into "Voodoo Child"! The sheer displacement of air as he worked his own feed-back pinned audience members to the walls! So, all in all, a pretty good night out.
Had a quick chat with Sergio, the owner, on the way out. "See you next month", I said, as we're playing there on our own billing on the 28th April. "Sure, but maybe a little bit less rock", he said pleadingly!
In fact, I hope to sneak in a bit more of my "Weltanschauungsjazz" from off the album, plus a couple of new songs perhaps. We'll keep you posted.