I ♥ Gob Squad (especially Fons!), or: What I did when you saw Lady Gaga in O2 World

April 30th, 2011, 12:57 | 1 comment

 

My visitor is a Swedish stage actor, so through him I’ve encountered some very interesting modern theatre that I would otherwise have missed. When his director heard he was going to Berlin, she said there was only one thing he needed to see, or rather, that he must see: Gob Squad, and their new show Before Your Very Eyes, which is made together with Campo. So we went to the HAU1 theatre yesterday (the premiere was Thursday and the show ends today – all sold out). The copy reads:

Ladies and Gentlemen! Gob Squad proudly present a live show with real children. A rare and magnificent opportunity to witness seven lives lived in fast forward…Before Your Very Eyes!

Live show. Real children. Eine Live-Show mit ECHTEN Kindern! What’s this, a variety show? A cirkus? Well, sort of. There were indeed seven children on stage, caught in a little room with walls of mirrored glass, so that we could see them but they couldn’t see us. Maybe I would call most of the seven actors young adults (they were between 8 and 14), but that’s beside the point. And the point was that this was/isn’t a children’s play. It’s a play for adults, where all the roles are played by children. Where adult words, ideas and objects (cigarettes!) are put in the mouths of children.

And that evokes so many questions. Which is why this is the most brilliant piece I’ve seen on stage in a long time, or, maybe, ever.

That’s a good beginning. The sound of a small heart beating.

Photo by Phile Deprez.

Before Your Very Eyes takes place on so many levels. It’s daring to use children in the same way one can use animals – for the pleasure of adults. Is it ok for us to watch them play? We’re forced to this question. And then there’s the whole pragmatical and symbolical discussion: Is it ok to let a child smoke a cigarette on stage? Is it ok if the cigarette is fake? (Which I don’t know if it was.) Is it ok if they don’t inhale? Or is the whole concept of a child smoking degrading to children in general? Next question: Is it ok for a child to talk about sex in the same way as an adult would? Hm. And what about taking kids out of school and putting them in a touring show like this – can that really be justified, even if they’re having the time of their lives and getting a kick start into acting?

As I said, brilliant. And politically extremely daring.

But brilliant ideas and script only take you that far. In the end, it’s all about delivery; the actors and the director. And this was one of the best acting I’ve ever seen on a Berlin stage. I got my favourite pretty soon – the amazing Fons, whose presence made me shiver – but in the end I was impressed and touched by all of the actors. Not to mention the work the director has done together with them. Again, animal training comes to mind, which of course is the point; what we have here is seven kids delivering wisdoms about life – so convincing, and with such perfect timing that it brought tears to my eyes.

Ladies and Gentlemen – don’t miss the show of the decade!

  • premiere 28 April 2011 at HAU 1, Berlin/ Germany
  • 29 & 30 April at HAU 1, Berlin/ Germany
  • 5 – 7 & 12 – 14 May at CAMPO, Ghent/ Belgium
  • 26 & 27 May at Stamsund Festival, Stamsund/ Norway
  • 2 – 4 June at FFT, Düsseldorf/ Germany
  • 18 – 20 August at NOORDERZON, Groningen/ Netherlands
  • 10 & 11 September at Festival de la Batie, Geneva/ Switzerland
  • 16 & 17 September at Frascati, Amsterdam/ Netherlands
  • 29, 30 September & 1 October at brut, Vienna/ Austria
  • 15 & 16 October at Archa, Prague/ Czech Republic
  • 21 & 22 October at VIE, Modena/ Italy
  • 25 & 26 November at Next Festival, Kortrijk/ Belgium
Category: Culture, English
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Den rätta känslan

April 27th, 2011, 10:20 | No comments

Min vän Frippe rapporterar från Autobahn:

278 km/h enligt GPS:en. 320 på mätaren, men den har jag slutat lita på för länge sedan. Ryggsäcken skakade så i fartvinden att jag höll på att blåsa av motorcykeln. I morgon ska jag försöka nå 300. Men det är svårt. Även om man väntar in rätt tillfälle så kommer det till slut någon jävla Ford Mondeo som till varje pris ska köra om en lastbil, och så måste man panikbromsa. Min frambroms är nästan helt slut, så bromssträckan är egentligen längre än själva sikten framåt. Mycket handlar om en mental inställning, om att liksom hoppas jättemycket – och verkligen mena det.

Jag gillar hans inställning.

Category: Swedish
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Berlin Velothon test ride

April 24th, 2011, 22:09 | 3 comments

View Karl’s bike tours in a larger map.

I’m thinking about whether I should participate in Škoda Velothon Berlin on 22nd May, 2011. The registration deadline is tomorrow. So today I took a ride along the shorter distance, 60 km, to see if I would be able to meet the requirement of a minimum average speed of 23 kph (14,3 mph). That turned out to be no problem – my average speed was 26,4 kph (16,4 mph). Okay, my bicycle computer only counts the speed while I’m rolling, not during the stops, which amounted to 20 minutes in total, mostly due to traffic lights. But on the other hand, during the real race there would be no stops.

  • Total time: 14:00 – 16:50 = 2 hours, 50 minutes
  • Biking time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
  • Distance: 65,8 km (40,9 miles)
  • Average speed: 26,4 kph (15,8 mph)
  • Max speed: 52,6 kph (32,7 mph)

Plus I didn’t count my trips to and from Brandenburger Tor, where the start and goal was. So if you add those 14 km I actually biked 80 km today. It was quite tempting to leave the route as I passed just 800 meters from my home, being in the last 10 kilometers and very tired. Biking to Brandenburger Tor almost the same route as I had done earlier in the day. I was really tired in the end. But of course I endured!

Jesus, Google Maps is so extremely buggy! Have been trying to add this route to my bike tours map for half an hour now without success. Or rather, the line grows thicker every time I try, so I probably added it three times on top of itself, but despite that it doesn’t fucking show up on the fucking map. And now I’ve got a headache! So I’ll leave you at that while I drink some more water and Apfelschorle and watch some anime.

No photos today – cause I was biking! :) This was my first long trip this year. It’s nice to be back on the saddle!

Category: Biking, English
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Reaktion på Bonintervjun

April 19th, 2011, 8:00 | 1 comment

Helsingborgs Dagblad har recenserat nya Bon. Recensenten Johan Malmberg skriver bland annat:

Den enda text som frångår det småputtrigt självanalyserande (till skaran hör också Jonas Hassen Khemiris samtal med Jonathan Safran Foer) och bränner till är Luis Venegas intervju med Karl Andersson, mannen bakom bögfanzinet Destroyer som konsekvent pryddes av avklädda pojkar. Hans motivering till pojkbilderna är dubiös, men poängen att bilder av väldigt unga flickor inte alls väcker samma reaktioner som pojkbilder är förstås relevant.

Är det här jag ska skriva någon fyndig kommentar till ovanstående citat, så att det så att säga inte blir hängande i luften? Okej, vad sägs om: “Ser man på, det verkar ju nästan som att …” Hm, vad ska jag skriva nu? Det verkar ju nästan som att … Eller kanske en krångligare formulering innehållandes en negation: “Om det inte vore för xxx skulle jag nästan yyy.” Ja, det blir väl bra? Nu gäller det bara att fylla de fina formuleringarna med innehåll, en alltid lika svår uppgift. Eller jag kanske ska inleda med ett tillbakalutat “Man kan notera att …”? Då avslöjar jag liksom inte att jag egentligen blev superglad över att se mitt namn i tidningen, utan jag håller en distanserad och lätt blasé ton. Kanske göra lite Wikipediaresearch och koppla till något som ingen vet vad det är: “Som solipsisterna brukade framhålla: Det är alltid den som …” Ja, vadå? Om jag var en vanlig kille kunde jag skriva “word!” och om jag var en vanlig tjej i Bagarmossen kunde jag skriva “hepp!”. Men nu är jag ju en bög i Berlin. Jag kanske borde skriva något bitchigt? Så där bögigt liksom, fast ändå med en intellektuell touch? Typ: “Jag säger som Golda Meir: If it ain’t xxx it ain’t yyy.” Kanske pilla in ett “honey” också. Det blir väl en härlig slutkläm? Jajaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Category: Culture, Personal, Swedish
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8 months of Japanese studies – the breakthrough!

April 18th, 2011, 23:14 | 1 comment

You know which day of the month it is? It’s the 18th – the date I started to study Japanese eight months ago! So I’ll take a short break from my work to give you the report.

First of all, I decided to pay for the crippled Smart.fm successor called Iknow. I did not like the way Cerego Japan shut down Smart.fm, which was a language learning site with a strong social aspect. I actually wrote a whole post about what an idiotic decision this really was, but I decided not to publish it. Let’s just sum it up in saying that in a time where the social aspect is everything, Cerego decided to cut that aspect. They could have become the Facebook or Youtube of language learning. And they threw it away. I’m amazed rather than annoyed. Now my only worries are that the company will go bankrupt before I’ve finished my lessons and got my money’s worth.

Anyway, paying works wonder for your motivation. Here are my time stats so far for this month:

A week ago, I received Elementary Japanese Volume 1 and 2 in the mail. Since it starts pretty much from zero, I’ve covered the first 100 pages in Volume 1 pretty quickly, reading one chapter a day approximately. It’s good to repeat what you’ve already learned in other books, but to have the same grammar explained in a different way. Now at chapter 6 I slow down the pace, since the book is already introducing what Genki covers in the last chapters of the first book, and what Japanese From Zero never even came to.

The biggest gain of Elementary Japanese though, has been the way the book explains kanji. I think you have to let the concept of kanji grow in you to fully understand it. Elementary Japanese explains very well the difference between phonographic and ideographic languages, and the pros and cons of each of them. I found this little table very good:

Phonographic writing system

Ideographic writing system

Records sounds (e.g. hiragana, katakana, alphabet)

Records meanings (e.g. kanji, numerals)

Small set of symbols

Large number of symbols

Language dependent

Language independent

More processing time

Less processing time

I never thought about the fact that numerals are ideographic. You can understand them in every language, despite every language has different sounds for them; 2 = two, 2 = zwei, 2 = två, and so on. One language can even have more “readings” of one number, as in English, where 2 can be read either as “two” or “second” – or even “twenty” when paired with a 0. And that’s how kanji works. As the book points out, in theory it would be possible to write and read English or any other language with kanji – an amazing thought.

But what really amazed me was the notion that kanji has less processing time than phonographic writing systems like the Western alphabet. I used to wonder why the Japanese use kanji when it would just be easier (well, for me at least!) to stick to hiragana and katakana, their “syllabaries” that work like our alphabet. I asked my tutor last time he was here what the point with kanji is when there is a hiragana that says the same thing and that is much quicker to write, as in these examples:

食べる = “to eat” written with kanji.

たべる = “to eat” written with hiragana.

飲む = “to drink” written with kanji.

のむ = “to drink” written with hiragana.

As you can see, the kanji are quite complicated and contain many more strokes than the simple hiragana character. My tutor saw my point, but explained that reading texts written entirely in hiragana is more time consuming for him, because the characters are not as exclusive as the kanji are. And I can understand that. Despite I haven’t learned many kanji yet, I can already see how you sort of see the whole word as one entity in another way than you can with a word made up of characters in an alphabet. Again, compare with numbers. The phonographically made up word “eight” must be parsed by your brain, whereas the ideogram 8 goes right to it – right? If “eight” was too easy, try “fifty three thousand six hundred ninety one” versus 53,691. Quite amazing, no?

This last example with numbers was somewhat of an epiphany for me (there are so many of them!). So, I thought, is that how the Japanese read texts? Where Westerners read texts as numbers written out with characters, the Japanese see the numbers without that annoying middlehand? But, that must be so effective! And so, my tutor admitted that he thought the Japanese might be faster readers, or rather, that it goes faster to read a text written with kanji than to read a, say, English translation of that text. The eye sort of jumps from kanji to kanji, and the hiragana is mostly there to help with the endings (with our number comparison, think 53,691st).

Now it’s not as simple as that, of course. A linguist by profession, I know that even Westerners parse the words not only character by character, but rather, each word has almost become a pictogram to us. We recognise its form just as much (or probably more) than we read the actual characters. That should explain why the difference in reading efficiency isn’t there (or at least not as striking as to become an established fact or make the Japanese society superior to … hm… wait a minute, maybe I’m onto something here!).

After these revelations, this feeling of having understood – in my gut! – ideographic writing systems, I just can’t stop loving kanji.

But this is not the only good news. Last time I met my tutor (or ok, the time before that because last time I had a hangover), my Japanese was so good that we were both amazed. The reason was that I had studied really hard during the days before, and it paid off in a more direct way than I had expected. I thought it would be more like being on a diet or going to the gym; results come some weeks after those fierce days where you devote everything to whatever your project is. But here they came immediately, and that triggered me to study even more, because I could finally see the difference. It’s simple really; you study some hours a day and you make progress. So I e-mailed my tutor and asked him to come twice instead of once a week in the future. This was a breakthrough and I think it’s wise to use it to gain momentum in mastering Japanese conversation.

Category: Japan, Japanese
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Category: Personal, Swedish

Busy busy…

April 13th, 2011, 9:47 | 1 comment

I’m very busy at the moment, as friends and/or blog readers and business partners surely have noticed. I got the opportunity to do some paid work, which is always a nice change if you know what I mean.

So I’ve put everything on hold for a while; trips, publishing projects, my writing, etc. Everything except my Japanese studies. On the contrary, I’ve become even more devoted to them since I withdrew into this antisocial bubble.

Last night I changed my Japanese radio station from FM Tanabe to Shonan Beach FM. Maybe I was just very receptive, but I got more than just single words this time. I could make out small fractions of sentences, like:

みんなさんおはようございます！今朝は。。。

(Good morning everyone! This morning …)

六時二十八分。。。

(The time is 6:28 …)

今からざんねんもう。。。

(From now on, it’s unfortunately already …)

Unfortunately (ざんねん) Shonan Beach plays much more music in English than FM Tanabe, where most of the songs are in Japanese. And this morning, there was only (English) music and no talk at Shonan Beach, so I’ve now switched back again to hear my regular High School show in the mornings.

Anyway, grasping larger parts than I had before, I realised that language learning is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. The more you devote yourself to it, the larger the parts you can fit together. Later on, those separate entities of three or four pieces (words) will connect to other entities, forming larger and larger blocks until one day the puzzle is solved. The difference is of course that with a language, you constantly get new pieces. But the principle is the same. I wonder when I will have solved my Japanese jigsaw puzzle.

Two days ago I received a package with new text books. The postman was kind enough to deliver it to me instead of the customs, as it said he is obliged to do on a note from the German Zollamt. Here are the unpacking photos:

Category: English, Japanese, Personal
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花見 in Berlin

April 10th, 2011, 11:12 | 3 comments

It’s 花見! (Hanami.) The Japanese tradition to enjoy the beauty of 桜 (sakura), or cherry blossom trees. I was reminded of that when I saw some beautiful blossoming trees in Berlin the other day. On the photo my friend Aarone enjoys some sakura at Schlesisches Tor.

Category: English, Japan, Personal
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Takeshi Kitano-vecka på Silver

April 4th, 2011, 11:27 | No comments

Jag fick ett pressutskick från filmkanalen Silver. Enbart detta är anmärkningsvärt, att jag numera får pressutskick om japansk film. Vad kan man säga annat än – jippi! Silver skriver:

Den 8 april 2011 har Outrage, Takeshi Kitanos stora comeback till maffiagenren, premiär på svenska biografer. Med anledning av detta passar filmkanalen Silver på att hylla den japanska mästerregissörens mångfald genom att visa tre mycket olika Kitano-filmer som uppladdning i premiärveckan. Drama, action och det fullkomligt absurda väntar Silvers tittare under vecka 14.

Och filmerna som visas är:

  • Achilles and the Tortoise (bilden) – Måndag 4 april klockan 23.00
  • Zatochi – Tisdag 5 april klockan 23.00
  • Glory to the Filmmaker! – Onsdag 6 april klockan 23.00

Ta chansen och se en av Japans mer egensinniga regissörer. Silver finns “hos operatörerna Boxer, Comhem, Canal Digital, Telia, Tele2 med flera, samt som mobil tv-kanal hos 3″.

Jag har sett två Takeshifilmer tidigare.

Category: Culture, Swedish
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