By Daniel Kingery
A man with a Manchester accent spoke to me. He was talking about the Fall. “Mark E. Smith, the toothless bastard, bloody genius!” I told him of my fetish for Joy Division and New Order.
“I produced two records with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr in the late 80ies.” He talked of Tony Wilson (RIP) and the heady days of Factory Records. We had just seen Spiritualized sonically destroy us, in a beautiful way, Jason Spaceman never looking up, never standing up. We left Columbiahalle, Berlin.
“What do you want to do?” Andreas asked.
“Let’s go somewhere and listen to music and smoke weed.” He looked at me surprised for a second.
“Okay.”
At Boris and Rebecca’s apartment near Urbanstrasse Andi talked about seeing Spacemen 3 in Stuttgart in 1987, the group on heroin with hair in their faces.
“Have you seen this new collection of short stories about Berlin?” Sandra asked. “I’m in one.” In the story a luckless journalist locked out of her apartment in Prenzlauerberg wanders into Sandra’s work, a hotel in Mitte, and talks with her and sleeps on the couch as young tourists come back, drunk and rowdy.
“That’s immortality,” Andi said.
“In 100 years, that’s still there, someone can read it and they’ll read about me.”
Rebecca stood up. She had just finished acting in a film. It was a secondary role, but she had lots of screen time. That was immortality, up there on the screen, something to look at, celluloid dreams.
We all agreed. Once you’re in a movie you’re immortalized, you’ve made it to Mount Olympus, you’ve flown to the sun without having your wings burn off or melt. We all had to find a way to become immortal, I said, in Berlin, now.
We all agreed.
Daniel Kingery
Feels Like Heaven III (Dreams of Heaven, Visions of Hell), 2006-2008
Oil on canvas
90 x 140 cm (approx. 35.5 x 55 inches)
Oil on canvas
90 x 140 cm (approx. 35.5 x 55 inches)