Christopher Isherwood

( Portrait of C. Isherwood by Don Bachardy...The world of Interiors April 2011...p.169)

A friend loaned me Christopher Isherwood's novel..."Mr. Norris changes trains".
She was soon to be on her way to Berlin and I had only recently returned.
I knew very little about the life of Isherwood the writer, before going to Berlin. But  while there, my niece set up a tour for us...

 

 with Brendan Nash...

 who runs the "Cabaret Berlin"web site and gives talks on the era of the Weimar republic..
His tour takes you around the relatively small area in East Berlin, that was the location for so many of the novels. Absolutely facinating. And if you are thinking of Berlin for a long break and like the works of Isherwood or Auden...an absolute must!
Having been on the tour first ...and then read the book ...it was clear that most of the characters were familiar faces to him during his stay there.
The theatres and buildings of the "Golden Era" of the late 1920s and 30s still exist..

...though more often than not, have assumed a very different way of keeping themselves going!
More than anything, the tour opened my eyes to how speedily change can happen, from a decadent "demi-monde" to a police state, in Weimar.

 This is the actual site of the famous Cabaret Theatre..."Eldorado"...where artists such as Marlene Dietrich and Josophine Baker..strutted their stuff. Now a food emporium...it still has the photos of the great and good hanging on the walls..
.

A plaque has been put up on the wall of the apartment shared by Isherwood and many of his literary friends....
...but perhaps more moving were the pavement brasses installed in front of the homes where the Nazis had taken the residents to their deaths in the concentration camps.

Cynically...the fascists took over the "Eldorado" as their voting centre and hung the windows with the Nazi flags proclaiming it as the place to vote for Hitler.

Christopher Isherwood eventually lived out the rest of his life in California with this partner Don Bachardy on that famous road...Adelaide Drive.

( An etching of them both by David Hockney...W o I...April 2011  ..p.165)

I went into our local Waterstones bookshop yesterday to buy ,"The Berlin Novels" and "Goodbye to Berlin". I think that his insight into the personalities around him then, resonate even today.
I have been visiting Germany since the '60s and had never made it to that city...and it was  a real treat to share it with my sister and  her family.
I'll be back...I hope!

Jazz x 2 in Berlin.

We held a garden party on Saturday here at the Potters House...

"Jazz in The Garden" ...

It was fun, and we raised some money for our local church,

well actually quite a lot of money when realised it was made by selling cake

and what wonderful cake!

But I digress....

I sing a bit and when I do it's.... lets say ...jazzy!

So to be taken to two jazz events in one day by my niece in Berlin, on my birthday, was a truly double delight.

First we made our way to Tauro Restaurant where there was a shady garden, a non-stop buffet of the most wonderful goodies and

 !!!oh!!!!

 joy of joys...a jazz quartet playing all of those smooth listening pieces that just go to help the food

 go down easy!

Just look at that elegant man in his snazzy grey suit and his fabulous shoes!

His black hair swept back...with... could that be the Brylcream look?

I adore the way he holds the mike...and that great old fashioned mike as well.

The music was mainly from the 20's and early 30's and we could have been there in the days of 

"The Blaue Reiter" art movement.

I didn't know at that point that we could up the jazz stakes in the same day...

...but we did!

We walked along the river by the Bode Museum in the early evening...

...stopping only to watch the starlings perform a murmuration above the domes of Berlin.

 and admire the tango dancers by the bridge...

...and then as we crossed the bridge , the music floated out over the Berlin dusk.

There in the portico of the museum was the Kuba Stankiewiez Quartet.

What a setting and what sounds they made....a magic night!

It was my niece and her husband who organised our trip to hear the group, and I managed to take this pic of her as she crept up to the front to photograph them as they played. 

Jess is a professional photographer and Neil a football blogger!

We sat at the tables near the bridge with the dancers clicking their feet, and watched the stars come out.

It's taken me a while to get this together...trying to find where my pics are on the new "box".

But I'm getting there...as we say in the Snapes...

..."Little by little"..

or even

"Paulatim".

Friday in Berlin

My lovely niece...Jessica...she of the "Berlinified" blog...took us to the Martin Gropius Gallery where there was an exhibition of the late Diane Arbus's photographic works.

  Jess studied Fashion Photography at London School of Fashion...and knew about Arbus's work, but to see the results of a life of photography in the many rooms used is such a different thing from learning about it in the lecture room.

Some quotes from the show...
"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you - the less you know"

"I see the divineness in ordinary things".

"Photographs are like a stain - it was there, but no longer is".

I like these quotes.. ...but to be honest I'm still thinking about what they mean for my photography!
I made lots of little squiggley drawings about the pics that really interested me...

I was most interested in the way that she set up the photo....light and form and filling the space in ways that I might not have thought of. Some reminded me of "Hopper lighting" or even Hammershoi.She was seeing images and taking shots of people and situations that were way out of the normal photographer's scene.

One of her interesting quotes  ..."late afternoon, early winter sunlight" the best light to take pics!...I'll remember that !

The problem with East Berlin?...tooo many things for me to snap!!I kept getting left way behind the others!

Yes....you know it...not really a worker...a very BIG model!!
But it took me in!

Very excited as the family have bought me Photoshop...so let's hope that my pics improve!

Berlin

I'm just home from a week in Berlin stayuing in the east of the city. It's gong to take a good night's sleep before I can put down all that happened as I also had my birthday there....wonderful. For now I just need sleep.