November 20, 2009

TO SQUAT OR NOT TO SQUAT

PLAN A

"Art = money"

Collect 6000 Euros through projects and sponsors to pay the December costs. Put on enough action to regenerate this money. Develope and continue the monthly programme until the beginning of renovation.

PLAN B

"Art = vocation"

Cecile and I need access to the ex-Wallywoods rooms in order to finish our wall paintings. We need December only. No heating required. Electricity essential. Water would be a marvellous advantage.

PLAN C

"Art = the solution to all problems"

1 December 10am:

If diplomacy and reason and all else fails. Keep the keys. Display them lit under glass on a substantial pedestal at the center of the empty gallery. Cost of this artwork: 6000 Euros. As curator and self-appointed protector of Weissensee's cold and empty Culture Center, I lock myself in until January 1. One key remains in my pocket (until I am happy to pass it on.)

August 10

MICHELLE SAYS
the bees are wasps. He picked one off the window sill from a dozen dead. I used to hate wasps. But, like the huge spiders we get in this building, they hardly bother me now. It's an intellectual thing. Mind Over Beatles. So far I've avoided a sting. Not that I'm more intellectual than before; the plain fact is, I've never been stung. It made no difference when I was terrified as it makes no difference now I don't give a damn...

Stop avoiding the point.

I 'jumped' for the first time on the eve of the 'Spirit' group exhibition ("Art from the Invisible"), inspired by and starring Stefan Sachs (aka Incal), the German astrological healer and artist. I mean, the exhibition was inspired by Stefan, who knew nothing of the Jump which had been in the works since that eighteen-month incubation period on the Island. Like then, only here and now, on the south shore of the Weissensee Lake, have things been remote enough, has the atmosphere been right enough, has the spirit been free enough...

Stick to the facts.

On 23 August 2007 I took the plunge and made use of the Gift which I finally possessed. I may have assembled the thing myself, but I see it still as a Gift. However, (predictably! predictably! predictably!), I made the mistake I had often and clearly foreseen. I jumped in the wrong direction. Unable to explain my sudden incapacity - not least to myself - I blamed the (broken rib) on Cecile.

The second Jump I scheduled for the eve of the 'Apocalypse' exhibition (subtitled "When will the World end, and Why?"), inspired by and starring Damien Cox, the Australian astrological artist, now based down the road in the laughably named 'European Creative Center' run by that foolish Herr Pete. Again, Damien knew nothing of the thing he had helped put in motion. This time I went out in the right direction. And behold.. I landed. This time, not in a bad place.

"You could have knocked me down with a feather", Mum would say.

The third Jump was the smoothest. On the Sunday afternoon, the day after the Apocalypse closing party (The Ugly Americans staggeringly supported by that eternal idiot, Graham Clayton from the Other Side) the procedure was successfully reversed, setting an important record straight; to my mind at least. Yes, both directions work.

Top secrecy was critical around then. But I've learned since, I could have yelled out my guts to the world. Which was what in fact I was doing. According to plan, no-one listened. Boy was crying wolf.

The Utopia era, upon which I stood on the threshold, was short.

August 9

DEAR FRIENDS
Long time no words. Seven months and eight days no words. Been in Weissensee so long. No, wait.. stretch of memory.. I assembled numerous words on the Island in January and February, from letters and school books and family tales. For P.P.'s increasingly complicated but possibly resolvable novel in which new fantasy overrules all realities previously expressed within these ordinary notes. Ending abruptly upon the successful construction of a self-made Black Hole and the instantaneous publishing of The Book. Today's Mensch now knows the make up of a Black Hole; all the ingredients. A few are working on the recipe. Valid men, beneath valid words of research to benefit the world, shall continue us all to the brink.

It will soon be illegal to trawl for Black Hole fanatical comrades online. Right now it is not. The end of The Book* is nearer than I have long dreamed.

*The Book is the new working title of this online preparation in most time zones.

"And Thou Shall't Disappear Within Thine Own Vacuous Pocket Of The Universe!"

There are presently two variations of the Time Trip. There is the Dream Trip and there is the Event Trip. In the Event Trip, one can interact with the past, and achieve relative influence to within a two earth-hours' degree. Travel in Anti-time is thus proven practicable and all such disputes are laid aside. In the Dream Trip, one may accomplish future goals targeted previously within the current X-Moment. So called 'Future Power' has a role to play. This is not under discussion.

In 'real life' modus, I touched base for the first time in four (or five?) years, drank tea with Russell a couple of times, but survived three weeks almost without drugs. The Island does not change, nor the folks, nor Mike - the only brother to come down for a game of pub pool. They just get older. Mike gets impossibly bigger. From what I hear, James has new problems, sinisterly paradying my own handicap of the ten years previous to the Wallywoods Cure.*

*Marie-Cecile has taken the Wallywoods Cure. Wonders have been accomplished for others too; too many to recall. Angel, on the other hand, relapsed, and still boasts I tried to strangle her at the stupid Art Pub.

Remarkable how differently we began, Jim and I, and how mirrored our stories later became. Mum has been quite sick. Very sick – the reason for absconding, plus guilt – but she was jollier than the Pankow Job Centre on my return. They quickly secured reimbursement of a month's money and I quickly got used to starving again; at least between Cecile's painting bouts in the studio and yelling bouts in the gallery, in which she's been working for over a year. God, nearly two. Wallywoods has been her second home for so long, it seems odd we haven't slept together since (finally!) splitting after our fall-out at the Babel Embassy 'Bye Bye Weissensee' show. Well done Wally.

Since then I have TWO occasionally dislocated arms.

It is peaceful now, under almost no schedule. Time to think. I'll be going away for a while, at times. Testing the Time Machines. In Cafe 'Oderquelle' with Norbert at Peter Woelck's photos opening, we watched under the fullish moon a card-playing hustler, an apparently casual professional. He didn't like my remarks, or advice to the impressed lady to watch better his other hand. Wherever I put my eyes even seemed to bug him. After this thousand-times spontaneous show ("I'm new in town") he handed everyone a card and a smile, but me. I didn't mind. I was the most impressed of all.

Later. Hard to believe, but still here in Weissensee. Last soul in the deserted 'Kulturhaus', almost forgotten by now as any kind of venue in the area, at least for those blind to Wallywoods - Weissensee's weirdest secret. After giving notice and announcing the seamless moveover to a huge and wonderful industrial space behind the Magnet Club in Prenzlauerberg, I reapplied to stay a bit longer, and was granted the favour. The other place has a floor poisoned with Phenol (used in Auschwitz as murderous injection cheaper than gassing) which I would have sealed with paint and plastic. There was also zero heating, but it was high Summer, and Wally was high on the idea. Then the man – an Englishman, Goddammit - impressed by our meeting at the current pad, suddenly wanted a two grand deposit which I didn't have, don't have and will never have under the current Time Influence. So I decided to stay at White Lake City, which is pretty after all. Inside like outside. I'm slowly seeing to that: the renovation will be complete on the glorious day I depart.

There are bees now. They live in the planks painted white (recently Eddinged by Cecile on more finishing instructions) above the newly painted white side door. I like that door, it's pretty too. It got broke, recently, trying to keep her out and the noise of the UK punk bands in. She screamed for half and hour, stripped, and turned all the tables over on the terrace. Ronnie still has the bite ring ten days later. He took an injection for it against rabies and whatever. I do need to curtain the windows and doors sometimes, at night, for various reasons. So I banged into that nice door a nail, around midnight; and they swarmed out. Not out, IN! Into the room! I pondered taking a Trip, but retreated depressed to Jack's old shoe-box instead, the remotest corner, which smells like it did before I kicked him out. Almost no-one misses Jack, by the way. Back there in the dark, to the sound of sleep-flying bees (I had woken them up) I hunched on that decrepit couch till morning light, which I never saw, 'cos it was very dark. The decrepit bed is the one I cut out of Miriam's film. She asked too many questions. Imagine asking Jack questions and sticking the thing on YouTube! At least the rats disappeared after I kicked Klausie out. Another bonus: the drain in the floor of that littlest room doesn't stink anymore, since the rest of the house isn't used. But yes indeed, it is 'nice' here. People admire the place, backstage and front, or are jealous. Those who despise me for creating this palace of trash, despise anything they envy and cannot influence through, among various advances, aggression and meaningful violence. But they are not myriad.

...And then I decided to end the adventure. The whole Wallywoods thing; on October 31 this year (midnight, November 1). On the five-years anniversary of its birth in that Kreuzberg corner shop, when a chick with a flute nobody saw before or since, joined Nikki do a couple of sets in his purple suit. Bob was there. And Paul Hester, Chris Russell, and Sir Thomas.

...Because I've had enough of this Doing For Others What I Can't Get Done For Myself; and getting so little back, outside compliments and punch-ups. What am I, a fucking philanthropist? Piss off. From 1 November, I'm no-one again, just another conceptual artist, some kind of conceptual writer; homeless, penniless, womanless, gone...

It has to be said, though; that WAS fun. "Five Years Fucking Wallywoods!"

But if I launch the 'Wally Lounge' events thing (idea formalised on a rare visit from Gaby's Teo last night), taking place around town from November, then it's back to square one to the square root of a Big Chair. Not at all certain if that would be a good move or a terribly bad. Shall attempt Forward Projection tonight and hope for more than a fraction of a return.

On the theme of Travelling, the side-effects are wrecking. May have been overdoing it. Gotta cut down the partying too, on all sides of the Fence.

(Starts taking shape, but need more Time.)

December 31, 2008

GALLERY WALLYWOODS IS DEAD
Awoke with 39 cents in my right trouser pocket and an approximately matching bank account.
During the course of the day, received a five-euro note from a generous female, then a twenty-euro note from Fred the dentist-drummer who practices now and again with the guy whose name I can never remember in the invalid loo. It's tight back there; they used to be a trio, but lead-man Zottel opted out. Fred built his drums around the toilet upon which he sits. His was also a generous contribution, being seperate to the little fee the guys irregularly pay.

That makes 25.39 in cash, which, subtracted from the 50 bucks still outstanding on the December rent, brings the total Wallywoods profit since the grand start, in money terms at least, to minus 24.61 euros.

So. What have we learned from all this?

We have learned that Wally and P.P. need gather no more experience. Not a drop. Das reicht! "Studio Woods" must move to Mitte. Basta. Till then, Wallywoods is dead, Wally collapses off-duty in a tee-shirt crying "brother can you spare a pizza", and Paradox Paul blunders casually ahead beneath his hateful, meaningless, over-sized banner written in his own blood and shit:

"Sieg Art!"

December 31 (5am)

CONCLUDED LAST NIGHT
semi-spontaneously, after much recent deliberation, to bury Wallywoods, here and tonight, in Berlin's frozen Weissensee outback.

(Soon decided against that. Just changed the name from Gallery Wallywoods to Wallywoods.)

Why? Because Wallywoods means many things. Too many things, and I, Wally, now 44 and tired, have never found the partner, the Schlussel-Person, I've been seeking since even before its birth as a gallery in Kreuzberg in 2004. I can't and won't continue to manage, alone and ever penniless, to present the art and music, great and small, of other creative amateurs, professionals, fellow twerps and geniuses... or rather, I could indeed continue, and of course will. But in a more "refined" way, if I can work out what that means; and (here's the rub) no longer at my own expense.

Above all, Wallywoods has meant, "Good evening, I'm Wally. Come use my space. Come use my walls, my stage, my furniture, my instruments, my materials, my talents, my contacts, and my precious time. Come bathe in Wallywoods limelight, where everything's pretty, where whatever you do sounds and looks great, where people create, and have marvellous drunken fun doing it..."

FUN FUN FUN

Instead, I grant myself 2009 to compile at last this elusive book:

"How to Become an Artist Overnight"
subtitled something like, "50 Months of Wallywoods on the brink of Berlin"

See you tonight, then, at yet another pointless avand-gard Wallywoods party, now officially declared:

THE LAST WALLYWOODS EVENT EVER

December 26

PARADOX PAUL REPORTS
"I now know the worth of what I'm doing, therefore I can put it into words..."
Darwin, on the brink of his lying theses, Origins of a Spy (unpublished)

(notes)

First, I'm building two throwns from a piano...

(Decided against that - at least the idea of doing it on the terrace on New Year's Eve; for practical, technical and logistical reasons.)

on December 31, 2008, at midnight.

Second, in 2009, I'm building a book.
Word for word.
Since fucking forever.

Chorus (...)

This is the latest new beginning of my all-encompassing never-finished book, presently called,

"How to Build Two Throwns from a Piano Overnight"
subtitled, "50 Months in the Short History of Wallywoods"

I'm happy with those words, these words,
They make a fine new start.
Or do they?

But the chorus is (...)

(Live and stoned from Stephanie's birthday party. She's one of half-a-dozen mädels I'm in love with these days. In another new offensive I'm tellin 'em all again, one by one, "Wally wants a new partner, so get your knickers off, quick, or bugger off and leave me alone forever.)

Need too, almost as urgently, a new space.
In Mitte, best, at the hub of Berlin.
Funkiest city in Europe, no doubt.
Cheap and exciting still,
Like a favourite whore.
Fuck London (for now),
Tehran and New York...

Chorus:
I'm a... in Berlin.

(Needs work)

July 24

SORRY FOR THE SILENCE
Hi Dad,

(It wasn't silent here!)

Our 1 year in Weissensee event was a big hit. Too big. 200 people came. All apparently thrilled to bits. Quality art, arty-farty entertainment; countless broken beer bottles. Incredible creative atmosphere. Underground meets mainstream (as I've propaganded for some time, and witnessed fully - frighteningly - on Saturday).

It took exactly a year. We finished painting the ceilings, and therefore the gallery, just in time.

As an artist I've worked this year not on canvas, but on the rooms. As gallerist (curator) I "use" the numerous artists' works to decorate my pad. Simple. Its something I do well, automatically. Moving things around till the whole, some kind of "vision", enters others' realities. Comprehension.

Pictures you've no doubt seen on the websites (check MySpace for the newest). Common references to Warhol and Beuys. I'm approached by amazing artists and performers, or groups of, every day. The point is I find them (almost!) all amazing. And here is the space, one everyone appreciates, to present them. Working with them in every case, no matter what they are up to. And they get up to everything and everything, often inspired by the atmosphere to surpass themselves.

Please, if possible, stop worrying about me ever again.

I've found my "thing".

Of course, the trip home... Has been put off the last year by the fact that...

Ah, that brings us to the real meaning of a "successful gallery". Money.

That will come.

Wally and his gallery are on their way up. I forecast, sometime next year we will sell enough, of whatever, that I can pay my own way from then on.

Till then, business as usual, with knobs on. Like decorating all the pianos, some with bottle-tops, brass handles and knobs on. They cost now 500 bucks each. The Broken Pianos Orchestra is a big hit. They underline Wallywoods' place on the new Berlin Map.

Must run, love to Mum, take care...

July 14

FINALLY
started painting the ceiling, with help mainly from Hanjo, now out of prison and wearing a painter's spacesuit, in a general attempt this week to finish the gallery for Saturday's "One Year Wallywoods in Weissensee Exhibition and Party". Twenty-three artists from twenty lands, plus entertainment from Isondú Tribe (touring Argentinean performance crew), Kakawaka (one-man flip-out show), Matthias Brozio from Babel Embassy (Theremin Remix), Marachowska (Siberian Blues), Stefan zur Nieden (Italian, French and own chansons), Dancefunktion (Micha on drums accompanied by DJ), the Broken Pianos Orchestra (already a local favourite), and of course the Uglies.

Sounds great. Feel terrible. On the edge of exhaustion.

Yesterday was the first day in many months, if not a whole year, without beer, fag or multiple spliffs. Will try to keep it up this week. No choice. Seem to have damaged the ribs and/or chest muscles whilst moving pianos, banging on pianos, arm-wrestling drunk and/or moving Gert's big ugly wood, metal and granite Berlin Bear sculpture (unlike the common Berlin symbol, female. Nice tits - good for grip). Extremely late with any kind of promotion for this international and, I expect, highly charged extravaganza. Haven't even finished postcards, fliers, posters. But fuck it, that's Wallywoods at any age. And naturally, if only due to the number of creative people taking part - the most ever in one mad night - quite some interest within the various scenes.

No need for concern, however. Saturday, if not Friday's preview show, will see Wally boozing his old self fit again, kiffing, banging on pianos and arm-wresting large-breasted animals of all nationalities. One day, as the oldest Wallywoods cliché goes, he'll get paid for it too. (7pm. Have eaten nothing today.)

(Regarding the last entry: some probable bullshitter, an intensely tiresome energy-absorbing neighbourhood nerd reckons one of the pianos is worth 1500 euros just as it is.)

July 5

PEERED THROUGH THE DIRTY WINDOW
about three weeks ago, of a piano shop seemingly gone bust. Place was full of dusty old stand-up pianos. Rang the number for rental enquiries and met the guy there a day or two later. Nice enough geezer, he cared little about the instruments, just wanted them gone. I chose the best one (far the best tone, anyway) and knocked him down to fifty bucks. At last, a real piano at Wallywoods! And dead cheap, even for Wally. It's eight minutes away by foot further down Berliner Allee, so we got it here on a trolley, as the ground is flat between us, not even a kerb. As an afterthought, I says, What's happening with the others? Oh, he says, there's a buyer willing to pay a tenna each; he wants them next week. That was bullshit, I think now, but no matter. Hold on! I says, and soon enough I've bought myself another ten of the buggers, all completely detuned, if not wrecked, for another hundred euros. Problem was of course, how to transport them all; certainly can't afford professional strong men, they charge a fortune. But the trolley worked well enough for Piano One, so last Monday at midday we mustered best we could (mainly Jack, Norbert, Klausie and I, and later on a big fat guy who couldn't see us struggling without wading in) and spent four and a half hours rolling them in, one after the other, with as little as three men per piano, on a very hot day. Turned out - relatively - a pinch of piss. Mission accomplished!

Wallywoods is now the proud owner of eleven pretty fucked pianos. In the first three days six people said they wanted one. Crazy. Next thing realised was, how many people we know can actually play the things - almost everyone who comes in the door! So; the Broken Piano Orchestra is born. First session, featuring whichever ten plonkers turn up, to take place tonight before the concert, as a kind of audition in preparation for a more formal "debut" next Thursday.

Next thing to dawn on me, banging away drunk and stoned last night, plotting away with Jack, who turns out to be a natural talent if not some kind of kindred genius, is the obvious necessity of turning each of them into art objects, almost regardless whether we later tune them or not. I will begin by painting Piano One with a bunch of left-over white paint, who cares what type, and with Cecile pen it full of chairs and figures, same as the walls, immediately adjusting the price from fifty to a thousand euros or whatever. Then invite other artists to help decorate the rest. None should remain untouched. Stuff the puritans - they're already muttering, Oh these lovely antiques; you simply MUST take care of them... Yes, indeedy, I shall take care of them.

Main thing is, as we sell them (assuming we will - if not in Weissensee then next year, if all goes well, in Mitte), the buyer should pay cash, pick the fuckers up themselves, AND deliver a replacement, no matter how kaput. Eventually a grand piano will turn up, which we can fill with Smarties. And one at least is surely destined for P.P.'s hammer.

So, that's the new plan. When Piano One is ready, I'll post a picture here and elsewhere - and Bam! the gallery has a new image... and a new route to make the small fortune I've been planning all these years without the foggiest clue how. After all, selling pictures or art in general, at least here and now in Berlin, is a wildly funny contradiction in terms.

Another afterthought and an aimless question: If it works, was it all down to luck, having stumbled upon those first dozen Kaputte Klaviers practically next door? Forget it. I've been optimistic ten thousand times before with absolutely zero result. Let's wait a bit and see.

Meanwhile, after a twelve year break (the only one I've owned before was at Norbert's in Danziger Strasse) I'm regularly bruising my fingers and frightening my guests on the greatest instruments ever devised.

June 17

A PAGE A DAY. HA!
Got bogged down at the outset in the Mire of Possibilities. Same problem as Ark of Colours. Too many ideas, avalanching, jumping on top of each other, all vitally important, down to the weeny details, all jostling for a place. A place they shall surely find; but only after constant re-starting, endless reworking, tireless rethinking. Who knows how long this will now take. What about some order, like, when does what happen, when are which texts revealed? And what do they in turn reveal? Should there be groups of text-discoveries? Six working days a week, so six texts a week - for three weeks, or six? Forget the details; who is writing them? dammit! Above all, the characters, the Father and the Son; they must be set, human and believable, from the start. Mustn't they? And who in fact are they?

Well, at least that one I'm becoming sure of. And at least I know where they are leading. Ha! Life will be sweet when I reach that end. Sabotage the world, why not! If something enormous is within ones power, and this power, this calamity, is the single proof and reward for ones existence... Hold that thought.

Am reading a lot, now, as compensation. Ignoring other "pressing" duties like organising a flea-market and a drummer for the coming weekend's Blumenfest, perhaps even making some money at it; generally postponing the piecing together of other events. Reading is easier than writing. So let's read till black in the face, till the legs drop off, till the boat comes in, till the doors open and all these characters, new friends and old, saints and idiots among them, disturb me from my thoughts within the thoughts of others. Even so, wandering in wasted time inside other men's dreams and nightmares, the brain is working without pause, in sleep too, on one's own Creation. Each book recently, each tale, writer, style, or lack of style, an inspiration. Even revelation. Including the crap-lame thrillers in between. They all have worth, all contribute, to the end game, or whatever it is that I'm headed for. On the other hand, how much you gotta read, man, before you've read enough? A mountain of books the size of a pyramid? Would that make you wise and great? Wiser and greater than you are now?

There's one last book, mine, right on the top of Cheops. Or buried under it.

As for the top three of late: Eco's Pendulum landed the religious and pompous historical themes, with its vague and comfortable promise of glory, or at least ultimate knowledge. Let us join the Masters of the World, why not! They are, after all, flesh and yellow teeth, like us. Bobby Seale's Seize The Time did something revolutionary to Wally's character, as it did to Wally himself (though very mildly). He goes from prophet to terrorist in a couple of easy moves (remaining, for the moment, both). Circumstance and reason behind those heroes' or fools' heroic or foolish actions, laid bare, understood - if that is possible for white-boy who never could dance or fight. Huge respect duly given, from now, in that sad direction. For the best language of the three, caught between the cleverest living Italian (uses too many words, impossible to look them all up) and a caged Panther (repeats himself tenfold, and is forgiven for it), and the most romantic, pathetic and uncomfortable subject, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach thrusts into the plot (my plot) the side-tracking and wholly unnecessary demand for sentimental love.

Now is confirmed, again as if it were needed, the true reason I do not read sentimental claptrap, and frown, for instance, on mum's eternal "women's books" collected by the sackfull every week from local libraries throughout her life. In fresher years I was simply afraid of the stuff, what it threw up, and I would relentlessly feign boredom, refusing ever to weep over film or tragic documentary in front of any other living person. Those pains - her pains (J.G.; I hardly dare utter that name after finishing that last horrible-marvellous chapter an hour ago, lest I burn this fucking borough down and all the cunts in it) - that pain is long buried. As the brain survived and then evolved, defining to near completion my own character as I have, at last, come to understand it, the heart has hardened, and all appears finally bearable. Things have been so for almost four years, a mega-record; practising this endless diversion of art and punk and drugs and more art and plans between binging and more drugs and binging between more plans. All that distracting shit'n'showbiz.

Edward should have killed her dead with his pebble. After she denied him that last time - yet again! - on the shingle beach, wreaking within him a hole (a "mess" was all they could agree on) he would never really recover from; even through the good years, the amazing years which incredibly followed. Hard to imagine Florence swinging through the sixties. No matter what her excuse - unfair! we know there is a darn good one! - he would never see her again in any case. He should have smote her pretty, sexy, frigid fucking brains out. Not even the nightingale, for it wasn't a nightingale, would have mourned at that moment. Edward could have finally nailed her. But thanks to his weakness, which is McEwan's own, I do the job myself. Sentimentality is a slow death sentence. It can be lifted from the self, thrown to the winds, though it takes much time and self-cussing.

Long live abstract violence, eternal binging, and sex with unlovable strangers.

(Regarding the last entry, below, I had just come third out of eight in a rigged poetry competition, and vowed never to do one again. Was shocked speechless - it was easily my best effort to date, appreciated by all but the unqualified jury. Went home muttering, kicking tin-cans, if there were any. Am over it now, but will stick to the vow. Occasional dull readings shall suffice.)

May 23

AS THE MONKEY
put it with his typewriter, after an infinity bashing it on his head,
"Three Solomons don't make a democracy."

May 21

THE LIBRARY OF BAD IDEAS
by Paradox Paul

"There is a Librarian, this much is true. Whether awake or asleep, he is built like every other, of perishable flesh; this much he knows. He listens at night to his heart while it beats, and it is his own heart which beats. He hears it, and he knows it. It is the heart of a good man." (Is it? - he is a sarcastic bugger!) "He also believes - has always taken it for granted - that his mind is his own. And it is a good mind...

Of course, there is also a Library. A big one. But to begin with, it is merely a library, the place of his work and pastime..."

Starts pretty much like that. Although it sounds so familiar, I imagine ten thousand books have begun exactly like it. Have written, and/or assembled, 4,600 words in three days. That's record-breaking for P.P. I expect the job will still take years, but I would never have dreamed how easily the 'stitching' ideas, even the writing itself, now comes (comparatively - do not be fooled, Wally!). The trick so far is hardly to backtrack, simply plod on from point x, reading only (after any break - there are many around here) over the latest paragraph or two, before taking up the story. This is very new, but seems to work, because the old way makes large texts simply impossible. Corrections and embellishments must all come later, and that is particularly hard. Looking back sober at what was written the night before, it reads pale, even Bad. But - the Ideas are good. Cecile and Damian say so, and I think, not only to please me; even if the professional, the Ugly One, thinks the whole thing nerdy.

Appear to be reading, at intervals, the correct reference book. This Pendulum epic. Encyclopaedic. As I said at the start, painful. Read a couple of pages from 222 (all references are somehow demonic) as I just have. That writer, too, is looking for keys and connections to everything and anything that pops into his head (and that is a lot!); including the tricks of books selling. "We disguise ourselves as a flower," remarks one crazed editor, "and the bees will come swarming." Around there, he also mentions that, the Place we are always looking for, is often right under our noses. Like the gallery, now, it seems. I have made the perfect place for creation.

The difference in our scholarly backgrounds (I don't have one) and skill with the pen are enormous. I rarely use words a ten year-old won't understand, for instance, have very limited expressions covering "he said" ("he mumbled" "he enthused"); there just don't seem to be enough. And just look here, how often I use the word seem. Whilst my references to history and classic culture are almost non-existent. But I am not put off. I invent my own schooling, my own style, as other maniacs have in the past, and always will. Perhaps I am even a futurist - whatever that means. There are so many other books for reference, encouraging, heartening, through their simplicity. I won't even name them. Except: as literary genii, Eco pales in comparison to the hugely more exciting, original, witty, and strange worlds of Alice and her Creator.

May 18

IT'S CLEAR NOW
that I need another story (another!). The Librarian's story. The one to tie all the others together. He, the Librarian, the Narrator, the Author, (Paradox Paul), and the stitching. Some kind of quest, riddle, mystery is required. Not worlds apart from The Name of the Rose; that's a damned good launching point. It's very odd, but for as long as the Library has developed in my mind, I never saw it as an actual library - now with an actual Librarian. Is that strange? Until now, it was just a title. A collection of short stories. Now it becomes a novel.

The alternate idea, also relatively new, is to take the stories, two at a time to begin with, and merge them into one another. The end of one flows into the beginning of the other. Literally stitching. Here, the Librarian can help too. Where one episode ends and the other begins, though they may be violently differing in style and mood, the join must be subtle. The simplest example: the Librarian is leafing through manuscripts, and deciphering connections.

To discover the mystery is my task now. That will be fun. To discover the method of stitching, that is the challenge.

Idea: The Librarian awakes every morning to discover he has again written in his sleep. The texts which appear at his bedside, in an array of handwriting styles, could have been written by possessing spirits, the ghosts of writers or adventurers, or the disturbed fellow himself...

Yes, you're right Ken. It's easy. That's the story I shall write, starting tonight. And I hope you'll agree, if it ever gets finished, that it's a novel.

Response:

yeah yeah. better is to start fresh. write a very very long story from the beginning starting now. just tell the story. leave out the philosophizing. should take 2 months or so to get to the end. tell a story about man meets woman. man has no money. something like that. the tension is in the real life difficulties.

Reaction:

No!

May 17

TODAY
and next Saturday, too, the gallery hosts a private function. They are birthday parties, for up to forty people, tomorrow for a girl of eighteen, the next, a guy of forty. In fact, these nice locals whom I don't know from Adam, came separately to me, simply because they like the rooms - and I get dosh for it! For doing nothing except taking the night off. In fact, there is a website offering party venues in Berlin (of course there is!) through which I should soon advertise. Apart from that, yesterday I rented the redundant invalid's toilet (previously our little workshop) to Zottel's 'primitive rock' band - drums and all, loud as you like. In that poxy little room! But the band seems happy enough, and they know they can venture out and set up, often as they like, in the bigger space for recordings, parties, or whatever.

Can it be that the financial pressure is off? I don't dare stop to think about it. Either way, and coincidently, I find myself booking fewer music events (even if we have had a humdinger of a season of artsy-fartsy evenings since Christmas) and almost no exhibitions (the last artist cancelled at the last minute - don't talk about it - so Cecile is hung all over the place). After all, what do they bring, these magical nights, other than self-imposed stress for Wally, and joy and creation for every other sod and his drunken dog, who mostly hate to pay for their pleasure?

Then I received this from Ugly Ken Shakin, in his typical lazy American hieroglyphics,
(I normally correct his English), regarding the recent diary entries:

paul. you fucking cunt. it's now or never. write your book. i know what kind of books you like to read. write that book. now. people would not respect bob rutman if he wasn't in the smithsonian. nobody gives a shit about anything except success.
do it. you have the possibility. do it.

followed five minutes later by this:

this is clearly the first page of your book. just write the rest of it. don't worry about perfection. just write the stupid thing.
each day a chapter. that simple. i'll help you publish it. fucking cunt. you have the style. just write it. stupid fucking cunt. working title: HORNY FOR THE POPE.

Response:

Going back to my point, "a novel is asking too much of me. All I have are unfinished short stories, poems and inadequate diaries."

Get it into your head - I am incapable of writing a looooooong story. I love to write shrt stries, bits and pieces. I also like to build things, assembling a monument from shards of old food and rubbish I find on the floor around me.

But you may have something regarding the timing. "Now or never," is attractive.

What about a compromise book, like that Frenchman who just jotted down endless, apparently unconnected lists and ideas - experimental and quirky, in that it is not a novel, i.e., not one looooooong story, but a tapestry, a collage, taken from The Library of Bad Ideas, the poems, and chunks of the diaries (as the librarian's foot-notes, for instance, helping draw the fractions or "discovered manuscripts" together).

It's a possibility I've been kicking around for a year or two. Originally I assumed The Library would be a 'book of short stories', one after the other, straight, probably illustrated (as much to fatten it up as anything else). Even so, I always imagined a fairly thin book.

What I can try, and this begins to look interesting, even accomplishable, seeing as even highbrow lunatics like Umberto Eco do the same, i.e., waffle on through themes and history as if they are laying in bed bombarded with too many ideas (happens to me often), is find ingenious ways to connect them all. And, I suppose, if I'm not ripe for it now (I was always waiting for ripeness) then I never will be.

So what I do - and you probably won't like it (though if you agree, I'll start right away) - is begin to make connections, to thread a narrative through the likes of Little Giant, The Popes Whores, Unfinished Bath, Coin-Armour Man, The History of Wally, Black Fairy, Bucket, Lounging Lad, and the others, the poems, and even chunks of the more fanciful diaries.

That's all I've worked out so far, but I reckon its do-able. I would need perhaps one year. On the other hand, I've never finished anything in my life...

What you reckon?

P.P.

Then:

almost impossible to publish an experimental novel. easy to write though. blank pages sounds experimental. or just mental.
writing a novel is a different story. here's how it's done: one day you start writing. you don't have to know where you're going. like eastenders. it goes on and on. like a bedtime story. you make it up as you go along. each day you add some more and soon enough you've got 80,000 words. a very long story. all you need is characters, a place, and some conflict. a murder, or something else to propel the action. when you get to 80,000 words, end it, and you've got yourself a novel.

May 16

WENT TO TRASH WITH CECILE
last night, to Bob Rutmann's 77th birthday bash. Otherwise rarely there. Feel uncomfortable. No, odd. "Oddfish". But looked smart enough in spiky new shoes and trousers sponsored by Cecile that afternoon ("No Cecile, I can't go. I have no shoes and no trousers") and my TV appearance shirt, the only other thing not sordid with holes, cheap paint and suspicious stains. Hardly recognised in any case, with my ridiculous hair, now longer than its ever been. Arrived stoned and quite early, as we had conspired, (Bob will later be inundated with present-givers, groupies and other annoying flatterers), though he was already performing, upstairs, bearably loud for the sexy, chomping clientele, this time around with Kristof Hahn, Yoyo, and a handsome tattooed Latino guy with a marvellous deep voice. This stuff is always impressive. So we go for an equally impressive rare and wonderful Prenzlauerberg curry - Weissensee food is dismal - come back, meet a few odd people we know from here and there; then Cecile gets a chance to talk to birthday boy. ("Go talk to him," I encourage, knowing he used to adore Cecile and hoping he'll finally agree, or at least consider anew, doing something or other at Wallywoods; if he remembers what Wallywoods is). Cecile wishes to present, and explain to him, our gift; a chairs-and-figures picture by the both of us. (We're producing more and more together nowadays, all types of crap). She panics when she can't find me in the crowd, barking my name across the room, sees my beaconing shirt, lunges through the throng to pull me to them, ripping it wide open; drawing stares, as she is adept at doing. "Where were you! You disappeared! I'm telling Bob about the picture..." I bend over old Bob, just stepped off the stage, who looks shaken, I suspect from Ceci's enthusiasm as much as the weight of his seventy-seven years spent inhaling all kinds, in places like this, and much grottier besides. "Hallo Bob!" I shout in his ear, "Cecile's really excited about tonight! Happy birthday, mate..." and I update the revered artist, top-speed, on where the gallery is at, i.e., its general brilliantness, and why he should drop in for a beer and a spliff some time soon.

If Bob Rutmann wishes to exhibit here, it would launch the gallery into immediate and longstanding respectability. However, his first comment was, "Do you sell?"

We all know the fellow is far from well-to-do. But if there is a lesson there, I refuse to learn it.

End up having a brief word with Papenfuss in the red, black and dirty-cream socialist cafe Baiz, where Freygang and other homeless ex-Art Pubbers now hang out (didn't see them, nor miss them), across the street and polar-opposite to the other Wally's Trash-classy den of commercial sin and success we'd just escaped from. Baiz is hard-core, in a dull, lazy, boozy way. The ill-looking lanky, bony-faced skinhead behind the bar, with his smart red braces over white t-shirt pulling up skin-tight jeans, could have been the real thing, direct from Rostock. Except that this is Baiz, one of the last bastions. Both in Trash and Baiz (actual headquarters of nearby Burger), I was angling for new external events, some little out-of-the-way adventures, ostensibly to promote the gallery's looming one years' existence. Perhaps just to get a feel for it again - and access again to a potential audience.

Doesn't matter if neither gig comes off; indeed, I think I've dropped it already. The gallery gig takes priority across all soirees so far this year, and will surely swing well. Now set for July 19, it features (officially since yesterday) special guests, the splendid "Isondu" crew of light-juggling performers and sweaty tropical dancers wrapped in Clingfilm, touring Europe from Argentina. And a bunch of other stuff on top...

Meanwhile, am dragging through Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, on loan from Alan's dopey, secret-stuffed, A.C. bookshop (do not heed rumours of the Anti-Christ) for seven or eight bucks. Probably seven bucks - for obscure and obvious numero-mystico reasons invented by queer and deadly masons who bricked themselves up with the Grail, thank god, long yesterdays ago, in pre-futuristic ghost-plagued library cellars and kitchens and rune-smeared bat-caverns. All in all, best seven or eight bucks reluctantly spent since I paid that damned tab at my own damned bar the other week (already I owe the guys twenty more bucks). The resulting degenerate offspring of this eye watering, scroll deciphering, penance of an activity is, thus far at least, two fourteen year-old Latino virgins:

The Popes Whores

Two young girls seek, separately and independently, the help of a renowned medicine man. They complain, separately and independently, and, according to the medicine man's careful researches, one never having come in contact with the other (they are from quite different regions and very different backgrounds), of identical ailments, unusual aches, mental disturbances, nipple and groinal twinges, painful wet dreams, voyeuristic, expressionistic and exhibitionist tendencies, violent sexual fantasies and occasional true perversions, reverse-paranoia, the hearing of harmonic alien melodies, undeniable visions; and above all, the overwhelming urge to screw the Pope on his death bed.

The medicine man can do little for them.

He believes they have been temporarily possessed by Illiodine, one of four banished spirits of the Indonesian Larthinals' Temple of Debauchery. The Larthinals, a sub-christian splinter sect originating from the Egyptian Aahrin dynasty, announced that she had seduced all twelve Priests of the Inner Ring and therefore damned their souls to anti-martyrdom. The priests were tortured into confession, then exorcised, drawn, quartered, and burned in the underground Crypts of the Eternal Dead. Their ashes were collected and cast over Illiodine, who had been prepared for twelve hours with burning palm oils, after which she herself was cast alive into the Well of Demons, beneath the remote desert mountain secretly named Mourgaloine, known later as Le Castile der Wüste, and later still, Ararat.

The medicine man can only suggest they travel to the Well beneath Ararat, which is open until midnight for pilgrims on certain religious holidays, into which they should cast all their bodily hair at midnight, a fortnight before the approaching Last Solstice. Whether either of his clients do this, he will only discover fifteen years after, upon the publication of a book called "The Library of Bad Ideas".

A month later, he discovers over breakfast that the young ladies have met after all. They have been arrested, surprisingly, or not very surprisingly, together at the Vatican, amid a flurry of headlining bustle and scandal.

Interviewed separately and thouroughly, their stories, including detailed knowledge of the Pope's most personal situation and habbits, coincide to a tee. They claim to have enjoyed carnal bliss with his Holiness in a threesome, over three nights, in his private chambers, with not only his Papal blessing, but with his tireless sadistic-masochistic Papal participation. They claim to have evoked from him one-hundred-and-twenty ejaculations, with his spitting on the cross at every orgasm, whilst cursing in a language they fervently maintain was non-Human. They claim, too, that each is pregnant, and that they shall soon enough prove it: one of a boy, one of a girl, whom they will baptise "Adam" and "Eve".

They also claim that the Pope, the most popular and 'modern' in years, probably centuries, will be dead at the end of another three days.

Further, the girls coolly dictate that, on the seventh day following their first blessed encounter, they will be freed from all proceedings and return to their separate family homes (both rural) to rest. Thereafter, they will continue their lives... decently.

Beyond that, they have little to say.

The Pope officially damns them as liars, thieves, theological terrorists, political assassins, non-believers, "Devil's Whores", (and in a private excess one night, witnessed only by tight-lipped minions, "God's Bitches"), brainwashed into it by a fundamental, intolerable, state-sponsored deficit in modern and traditional values, across all levels, institutions, subjects, spilling over all borders and accepted standards in Christian education, thinking and behaviour.

At noon the next day, appearing haggard yet inspired after a night of vigil and consultation with his Master, on his knees before a full court of outraged or simply curious worshippers and tourists, he proclaims that Vatican City is suddenly and forever exorcised of all "dark undermining influences", blasphemies and other affronts, and on this day, after a secret battle which has stretched through centuries, all physical, spiritual and political infiltration has, at long last, been "evaporated". He orders that every mosque within three-hundred-and-thirty miles of the Vatican close for one month - and they do close; although the reasons are unclear and hotly debated, both nationally and internationally. And then he sets into immediate effect, a comprehensive list of religeous reforms, the likes of which have hardly been known since the Inquisition.

He has much support among his immense following. Yet clearly, on the wider stage, among so many watching Powers, he has become, literally over-night, the most feared man on the planet.

Two days after their arrest, the girls are condemned to prison, each for seven years, in a whirlwind, extraordinary, securely closed trial. Essentially, the verdict is "witchcraft".

Then, early on the third day, as the girls had foretold, the Pope is discovered dead in his bed...

May 15

THE UNFINISHED MAN
Idea for a story. On an old theme. It starts a hundred times. Tonight like this:

"Keep starting things I can't or don't or won't finish. I've said it before, and don't believe it: maybe they shouldn't be finished. But if the process really is more important than the result... Where am I then?

Not very anywhere.

Here are some recent starts:

The Unfinished Man

(Alternative name for these diaries?)

______________________________________________________________________________

Coin-Armour Man

An ex-medical student implants coins under his skin, covering the whole of his body. Not to die of shock, he allows himself one year, vanishing from life to work on himself, and recover, sections at a time. Finally, for the parts he cannot reach, he persuades an old medical student buddy to do for him. The buddy, now a foot-doctor, is horrified but agrees...

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The Priest and the Maid's Hand

A priest believes he can smell the 'good' or 'evil' about a person, through their hands. He visits over some years a cafe and grows enchanted, and then obsessed, by a waitress who works there. He believes she is a saint, and forgets his theory, leaves his church, and pursues her with the aim of marriage, carnal indecency, or whatever bit of her exquisite existence he can get. One heavenly evening, as she finally accepts all his proposals, he indeed gets close enough to smell her hand...

______________________________________________________________________________

Skinny Man in Fat Skin Suit

Yes, the time has arrived at which modern surgical techniques can offer a whole new suit of skin, according to your desire. You may have a terrible skin complaint, be of the 'wrong' ethnic appearance, be covered in blotches or wrinkles of natural ageing, or have suffered terrible burns (for which the research was uncontroversially begun). You can order and wear that of a black person (recently deceased), or of a Caucasian, of course, or of a tattooed freak, of a silky-perfect teenager, or a darling celebrity (most expensive). However, the procedure at this stage in its history, for reasons concerned with hormones, immune-systems and something too technical for this writer to understand, has only been successful in deploying the transplanted body flesh of females. This however is no great problem. When prepared for a male patient, the breasts are removed, the chest area sewn tidily, hair implanted where and if desired, and the vaginal slit fits snugly around the male genitals (clitoris and suchlike removed, of course - although...)

______________________________________________________________________________

Digestion

A man wakes up (why is it always a man?) on the operating table. The surgeons have gone on another blitz strike. He is still doped up, feels rather well in fact, and slowly realises he is hungrier than ever before. He is restrained, grows uncomfortable, and has a series of waking-dreams. He is at his own tenth birthday party munching ginger-cake, he is at a business dinner with his fat boss and his fat boss's wife, he has been condemned to death and is enjoying immensely his last supper.
His innards have been opened, of that he is vaguely aware. And then he is aware that the surgeons have returned. He hears them gasp. He has been eating his innards...

______________________________________________________________________________

Little update for H.H.

Helge der Hinterhofdichter said, Why do you just have boring e-mails on your diaries? You should write about the crazy people and events, like you used to, about the real shit!
He was in fact alluding to something specific. So here you go Helge, a quick update.

Since Christmas, first two months collecting trash thrown out of this "culture" house to exhibit as "Peter Edel, What's Left?" ("Was Bleibt?"), which sparked interest and sympathy and no great results; and other occasional exhibitions, including young Tacheles artists, and a growing interest in the Big Chairs thing. The art takes care of itself, as there's always enough of it to dollop around, and anyway the place looks fine without much on the walls, which after five months are now totally covered in the sketches of Cecile and I. In a word, the place looks great - innovative, freaky, unique. People love it here. Music-wise, have been concentrating on "experimental, industrial, improvised, noise" and all that. Not much rock'n'roll, which we hardly miss. The weird stuff fits the gallery better - experimental rackets within experimental walls. That's not a concrete rule of course, there are no concrete rules at Wallywoods (excluding my hatred of drunks and aggression). For instance, old Jacobites Dave Kusworth and Jeremy Thirlby played last night (April 25), and good old-fashioned fun it was too. If you don't count the guy who Marachowska brought to shit on the stage between sets, or rather, in his hand, to smear on his face and people's beer bottles: "He is great Russian performer. He is crazy like you..."

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Google translation

Am Samstag, den 20. Juli 2007, Wallywoods öffnete seine derzeitigen 300 Quadratmeter große Galerie Raum, in Weissensee's "Peter Edel Kultur-Haus" mit dem Start einer Ausstellung namens "10", einer Gruppe zeigen, an denen "10 Künstler aus 10 Ländern" - und ein denkwürdigen Nacht im Wert von musikalischen Darbietungen. Ein Jahr später, und wir sind glücklich - überrascht auch - noch hier zu sein (wenn der Tat sind wir immer noch!). Das Original "vorübergehenden Verwendung" Vertrag wurde für eine Dauer von sechs Monaten zu laufen, Ende Januar, nach diesem, sah es zweifelhaft, da wurde das Gebäude zu privatisieren, und alle Arten von Gerüchten vorgeschlagen hätten wir bewegen, wahrscheinlich im ersten Teil dieses Jahres. Doch unsere Vermieter, der örtlichen Bezirk Pankow, dann freundlicherweise angeboten Erneuerung des Vertrages, über den Zustand eines gegenseitigen vier Wochen geben-Kündigungsfrist. So, hier sind wir immer noch, in welcher ständig der Entwicklung als eines der am meisten gesprochen, einzigartige und unabhängige Ausstellung und Veranstaltungen Räume in Berlin. Zur Feier unserer ersten (und wahrscheinlich letzte) Jahr in Weissensee, ebenso wie die Gründung der neuen Wallywoods "Verein" (eingetragene Gesellschaft oder Vereinigung; Papierkram jetzt im Gange), die Ausstellung jetzt in der Planung ist mit der Bezeichnung "20" ( für den Zeitraum vom 19. Juli bis 9. August). Natürlich dann, "20 Künstler aus 20 Ländern" wird eingeladen, daran teilzunehmen, beginnend mit der 10 beteiligten im letzten Jahr zeigen, wenn sie finden sich in der Stadt. Unnötig zu sagen, belegbar exotischen Musiker und Performer finden sich auch eingeladen...

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Berlin Big Chairs

In 1999, Woods painted the flattened geometrical image of a chair, the ninth of ten canvases in the series "Learning Games for Babies". It appeared to be constructed using a simple block system (seven blocks high, four wide; later standard dimensions) but the picture is deceptive and the object would prove tricky to build in reality. In this case, the "electric chair for toddlers" symbolised spiritual death at birth. However, as the artist became interested in the two, three and other dimensional possibilities of the ambiguous symbol he had accidentally devised, particular meaning fell away, and he began producing canvases, drawings, models and montages in a great many contexts and styles. In 2001 Woods bought his first modern computer, and over the following years manufactured numerous variations of the now named "Big Chairs" in conceptual-digital form, including hundreds of Big Chair posters, 'finished' versions of which illustrate either side of (this/front page) column. Emerging from years of depression Woods took a risk and, with little financial means, opened and developed the first Gallery Wallywoods in Kreuzberg. Since then he has organised, on his own initiative and without outside funding, over seventy exhibitions for other Berlin-based and international artists, embracing all media, subject matter and levels of professionality; as well as hundreds of music, literature and experimental arts events, at Wallywoods and other venues across Berlin. Two years 'underground' (i.e., mostly unadvertised) activity at the Kreuzberg gallery, was followed by a year or so as events-manager at the 'Art Pub' in Mitte (jointly opened by Thomas Heger and Wallywoods in 2006). Then, in 2007 arose the exciting opportunity to move into, on a temporary basis, a 300 square meter space at the 'Peter Edel House of Culture' in Berlin's otherwise culturally unexciting Weissensee.
Right now, officially, Gallery Wallywoods' term at Peter Edel has almost run out, in its wonderful, long-neglected rooms right on the park and lake; due to something called 'privatisation'. Unofficially, Wallywoods is in debate with the local authority, the private theatre school which will eventually take over, and various agencies and persons, with a mind to holding out in Weissensee for as long humanly possible. This now with principally one objective in mind: the BBC Project.
During these almost four years as curator and events organiser, Woods' own Big Chairs art has remained on the back-burner; notwithstanding sporadic small-scale BBC exhibitions presented at Wallywoods locations...

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Was ist Galerie Wallywoods?

Na, das ist ein lange Geshichte - angefagen mit der erröffnung der original Galery Wallywoods in der Kopischstrasse in Kreuzberg, am 1 November 2004, mit den erste Ausstellung-event (von uber 300) und ein kleines Konzert gegeben von dem gestorbenen Nikki Sudden. Projektleiter und Kurator: Paul "Wally" Woods (geb. London, seit '92 in Berlin)
Und jetzt sind wir, seit July 2007, hier in der Kulturhaus Peter Edel, mit Terrasse direkt an diesem wonderschonen Park und See. Das ist immerhin ein Zwischungnutzungs arrangement mit Bezirksamt Pankow...

Galerie Wallywoods ist auch
Ein Verein in Grunden
Ein Treffpunkt für verschiedenste Kreative Menschen aller Herkunft - anders beschäftigte Menschen auch - wir glauben fest das "Jeder ist ein Kunstler!"
Eigenartig und schon, serious und locker, und (fast) professionel!
Eine Website...
Besuchen sie unsere aktuellen Program und reichlisches Archive bei...

Was bieten wir an?

Ein helles, kreatives angerichtet 300qm "Plattform" hier und jetzt in Weissensee fur Kiez, Berlin-gebased und internationale Künstler, Performer, Musiker, Schriftsteller, sowie Workshopleiter(innen) u.s.w. Ins besonderes ist den Ort sehr gut geiegnetet fur:

Kunst Ausstellungen
(z.b. Malerei, Plastic, Zeichnungen, Installationen, Foto, Konzeptuelles, Fashion, Architektoral, u.s.w.)
Kleinkonzerte
ins besonderes, experimental, ungewohnliches, visuelles, aber auch singer-songwriter, Bands verschiedene Art.
Lesungen
alle art, auch Performance-/Theateriche-lesungen
Workshops
Wenn es ihnen die Räume gefallen, dann alles möglisch, von Theater, Kunst-bastelstunden, Tanz, Kinderkram, Kunst-therapy, meditation, Puppentheater.. schlagen Sie etwas vor!
Probemöglischkeiten
(ehe für singer-songwriter, Theater, kleine Ensemble)
Private Feiern
Buchen Sie die gesamte Räume, oder ein Teil der Galerie, fur Ihren kulturelles Event oder Private Party...

Was brauchen wir?

Was braucht Weissensee? Wir glauben (gerade jetzt!) Kunst und Kultur alle art, von alle mögliche Ländern und Richtungen...
Den "Plattform" die der total Unabhängig und nicht offizielle unterstuzt Galerie anbietet ist nur möglich durch den Hilfe und Support von Gäste, Freunde und Kultur-interesierten (und dich!)...
Kunstler, Musiker, Performer...
Video-Beamer, sowie Filmemacher...
Materialen, sowie Wandfarbe...
ein grosser Fernseher
Vereins mitglieder, sowie Hilfe in richtung Sponsoring, Werbung...
Praktikanten(in)...
ein Klavier
und naturlich, ist jede Spende wilkommen...

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Satzung des Wallywoods e.V.

§ 1 Name, Sitz, Eintragung, Geschäftsjahr
(1) Der Verein trägt den Namen Wallywoods e.V.
(2) Er hat den Momentanen Sitz in Berlin-Pankow ( Stadteil Weißensee )
(3) Er soll in das Vereinsregister Pankow eingetragen werden.
(4) Geschäftsjahr ist das Kalenderjahr..

§ 2 Vereinszweck
Zweck des Vereins ist die Förderung und Pflege von Kunst und Kultur, ins besondere die organisation und Durchführung von Ausstellungen und anderer Kultureller Ereignisse, wie Lesungen und Konzerten die dem Verein zur Berreicherung des Vereinszwecks geeignet erscheinen. Desweiteren, die bereitstellung von geeigneten Orten, Räumen und Plattformen für jegliche Künstler im Bezirk Pankow, vorerst im Stadtteil Weißensee und stellen somit Nachhaltige öffentliche Kulturarbeit im Bezirk Weißensee sowie innerhalb der Gesamten Stadt dar. Momentane Sitz des Vereins ist das Kulturhaus Weißensee.
(2) Der Satzungszweck wird insbesondere verwirklicht durch den Verein selbst und angeschlossene Künstler, Performer, Musiker, Schriftsteller, Workshop Leiter(innen) u.s.w.

§ 3 Selbstlosigkeit/ Gemeinnützigkeit
(1) Der Verein ist selbstlos tätig, er verfolgt nicht in erster Linie eigenwirtschaftliche Zwecke.
Der Verein verfolgt ausschließlich und unmittelbar gemeinnützige Zwecke im Sinne des Abschnitts "Steuerbegünstigte Zwecke" der Abgabenordnung (§§ 51ff) in der jeweils gültigen Fassung
(2) Mittel des Vereins dürfen nur für die satzungsmäßigen Zwecke verwendet werden.
Die Mitglieder des Vereins dürfen in ihrer Eigenschaft als Mitglieder keine Zuwendungen aus Mitteln des Vereins erhalten.
(3) Die Mitglieder dürfen bei ihrem Ausscheiden oder bei Auflösung oder Aufhebung des Vereins keine Anteile des Vereinsvermögens erhalten.
(4) Es darf keine Person durch Ausgaben, die dem Zweck des Vereins fremd sind, oder durch unverhältnismäßig hohe Vergütungen begünstigt werden.

§ 4 Mitgliedschaft
(1) Mitglied des Vereins kann jede natürliche (und juristische) Person werden, die seine Ziele unterstützt.
(2) Über den Antrag auf Aufnahme in den Verein entscheidet der Vorstand.
(3) Die Mitgliedschaft endet durch Austritt, Ausschluss oder Tod.
(4) Der Austritt eines Mitgliedes ist nur zum ende eines Quartals Möglich. möglich. Er erfolgt durch schriftliche Erklärung gegenüber dem Vorsitzenden unter Einhaltung einer Frist von 4 Wochen
(5) Wenn ein Mitglied gegen die Ziele und Interessen des Vereins schwer verstoßen hat oder trotz Mahnung mit dem Beitrag für 3 Monate im Rückstand bleibt, so kann es durch den Vorstand mit sofortiger Wirkung ausgeschlossen werden.
Dem Mitglied muss vor der Beschlussfassung Gelegenheit zur Rechtfertigung bzw. Stellungnahme gegeben werden.
Gegen den Ausschließungsbeschluss kann innerhalb einer Frist von .4 Wochen nach Mitteilung des Ausschlusses Berufung eingelegt werden, über den die nächste Mitgliederversammlung entscheidet.

§ 5 Beiträge
Die Mitglieder zahlen Beiträge nach Maßgabe eines Beschlusses der Mitgliederversammlung. Zur Festlegung der Beitragshöhe und -fälligkeit ist eine einfache Mehrheit der in der Mitgliederversammlung anwesenden stimmberechtigten Vereinsmitglieder erforderlich.
Der für kulturelle Zweckssetzung des Vereins zu entrichtende Mitgliedsbeitrag; sollte Monatlich mindest 5 € betragen. Eine befristete Mitgliedschaft ist möglich.
Ein ausgeschiedenes Mitglied hat keinen anspruch auf das Vereinsvermögen. Geleiste Beiträger können nicht zuruck verlangt werden.

§ 6 Organe des Vereins
Organe des Vereins sind
a) der Vorstand
b) die Mitgliederversammlung

§ 7 Der Vorstand
(1) Der Vorstand besteht aus 3 Mitgliedern
Er vertritt den Verein gerichtlich und außergerichtlich. Je zwei Vorstandsmitglieder sind gemeinsam vertretungsberechtigt.
(2) Der Vorstand wird von der Mitgliederversammlung für die Dauer von 2 Jahren gewählt.
Die Wiederwahl der Vorstandsmitglieder ist möglich.
Der Vorsitzende wird von der Mitgliederversammlung in einem besonderen Wahlgang bestimmt. Die jeweils amtierenden Vorstandsmitglieder bleiben nach Ablauf ihrer Amtszeit im Amt, bis Nachfolger gewählt sind.
(3) Dem Vorstand obliegt die Führung der laufenden Geschäfte des Vereins. Er hat insbesondere folgende Aufgaben: Der Vorstand übt seine Tätigkeit ehrenamtlich aus. Der Vorstand kann für die Geschäfte der laufenden Verwaltung einen Geschäftsführer bestellen. Dieser ist berechtigt, an den Sitzungen des Vorstandes mit beratender Stimme teilzunehmen.
(4) Vorstandssitzungen finden jährlich mindestens 4 mal statt. Die Einladung zu Vorstandssitzungen erfolgt durch den Verein schriftlich unter Einhaltung einer Einladungsfrist von mindestens 7 Tagen. Vorstandssitzungen sind beschlussfähig, wenn ........
(5) Der Vorstand fasst seine Beschlüsse mit einfacher Mehrheit.
(6) Beschlüsse des Vorstands können bei Eilbedürftigkeit auch schriftlich oder fernmündlich gefasst werden, wenn alle Vorstandsmitglieder ihre Zustimmung zu diesem Verfahren schriftlich oder fernmündlich erklären. Schriftlich oder fernmündlich gefasste Vorstandsbeschlüsse sind schriftlich niederzulegen und von zu unterzeichnen.

§ 8 Mitgliederversammlung
(1) Die Mitgliederversammlung ist einmal jährlich einzuberufen.
(2) Eine außerordentliche Mitgliederversammlung ist einzuberufen, wenn es das Vereinsinteresse erfordert oder wenn die Einberufung von 10% der Vereinsmitglieder schriftlich und unter Angabe des Zweckes und der Gründe verlangt wird.
(3) Die Einberufung der Mitgliederversammlung erfolgt schriftlich durch den Protokollführer unter Wahrung einer Einladungsfrist von mindestens 2 Wochen bei gleichzeitiger Bekanntgabe der Tagesordnung. Die Frist beginnt mit dem auf die Absendung des Einladungsschreibens folgenden Tag. Es gilt das Datum des Poststempels. Das Einladungsschreiben gilt dem Mitglied als zugegangen, wenn es an die letzte vom Mitglied des Vereins schriftlich bekannt gegebene Adresse gerichtet ist.
(4) Die Mitgliederversammlung als das oberste beschlussfassende Vereinsorgan ist grundsätzlich für alle Aufgaben zuständig, sofern bestimmte Aufgaben gemäß dieser Satzung nicht einem anderen Vereinsorgan übertragen wurden.
Ihr sind insbesondere die Jahresrechnung und der Jahresbericht zur Beschlussfassung über die Genehmigung und die Entlastung des Vorstandes schriftlich vorzulegen. Sie bestellt zwei Rechnungsprüfer, die weder dem Vorstand noch einem vom Vorstand berufenen Gremium angehören und auch nicht Angestellte des Vereins sein dürfen, um die Buchführung einschließlich Jahresabschluss zu prüfen und über das Ergebnis vor der Mitgliederversammlung zu berichten.
Die Mitgliederversammlung entscheidet z. B. auch über
a) Gebührenbefreiungen,
b) Aufgaben des Vereins,
c) An- und Verkauf sowie Belastung von Grundbesitz,
d) Beteiligung an Gesellschaften,
e) Aufnahme von Darlehen ab EUR ...........,
f) Genehmigung aller Geschäftsordnungen für den Vereinsbereich,
g) Mitgliedsbeiträge,
h) Satzungsänderungen,
i) Auflösung des Vereins.
(5) Jede satzungsmäßig einberufene Mitgliederversammlung wird als beschlussfähig anerkannt ohne Rücksicht auf die Zahl der erschienenen Vereinsmitglieder. Jedes Mitglied hat eine Stimme.
(6) Die Mitgliederversammlung fasst ihre Beschlüsse mit einfacher Mehrheit. Bei Stimmengleichheit gilt ein Antrag als abgelehnt.

§ 9 Satzungsänderung
(1) Für Satzungsänderungen ist eine 2/3-Mehrheit der erschienenen Vereinsmitglieder erforderlich. Über Satzungsänderungen kann in der Mitgliederversammlung nur abgestimmt werden, wenn auf diesen Tagesordnungspunkt bereits in der Einladung zur Mitgliederversammlung hingewiesen wurde und der Einladung sowohl der bisherige als auch der vorgesehene neue Satzungstext beigefügt worden waren.
(2) Satzungsänderungen, die von Aufsichts-, Gerichts- oder Finanzbehörden aus formalen Gründen verlangt werden, kann der Vorstand von sich aus vornehmen. Diese Satzungsänderungen müssen allen Vereinsmitgliedern alsbald schriftlich mitgeteilt werden.

§ 10 Beurkundung von Beschlüssen
Die in Vorstandssitzungen und in Mitgliederversammlungen erfassten Beschlüsse sind schriftlich niederzulegen und vom Vorstand zu unterzeichnen.

§ 11 Auflösung des Vereins und Vermögensbindung
(1) Für den Beschluss, den Verein aufzulösen, ist eine 3/4-Mehrheit der in der Mitgliederversammlung anwesenden Mitglieder erforderlich. Der Beschluss kann nur nach rechtzeitiger Ankündigung in der Einladung zur Mitgliederversammlung gefasst werden.
(2) Bei Auflösung des Vereins oder bei Wegfall der steuerbegünstigten Zwecke fällt das Vermögen des Vereins an Verein scherer8
(Bezeichnung einer juristischen Person des öffentlichen Rechts oder einer anderen steuerbegünstigten Körperschaft)
- der - die - das - es unmittelbar und ausschließlich für gemeinnützige, mildtätige oder kirchliche Zwecke zu verwenden hat,

alternativ
b) an eine juristische Person des öffentlichen Rechts oder eine andere steuerbegünstigte Körperschaft zwecks Verwendung für gemeinutzige tätichkeiten (Angabe eines bestimmten gemeinnützigen, mildtätigen oder kirchlichen Zwecks).


..........................................
(Ort) (Datum)

Vorsitzender        Stellverträter        Kassenwart

______________________________________________________________________________


Occasionally though, something appears through the fog so nearly finished, that it nearly makes up for all the rest.
Like the gallery, how it looks and almost functions now. If I make it to July 20 without starving (now I've left Cecile again), it will be one year at Weissensee. Longer than any of us expected, and another excuse for a big party (followed I dearly hope by a holiday - and after that, honestly, I hardly fucking care).

Here is an eerie picture of the front gallery area in early May, 2008 (click to enlarge). Taken by Alexander, who spent four days photographing in black and white every square meter of wall-space so far covered in chairs and figures. Then he took some general colour shots like this (the only one I've seen - he dissappeared shortly after). The wish is to produce a neat little catalogue for the one year anniversary, and if possible, finding sponsorship to produce a few hundred. Another unfinished project then - I never completed a book of the old gallery. Why should I think this will see the light of day?

Or like this, also nearly finished, sent off last month for possible inclusion in Bordercrossing 4:


Little Giant

Once upon a time there lived a little giant called Little Giant. He was so little that when he met the other giants they beat him and laughed at him, calling him Little Gi't, among other unpleasant names. Not only that, but every day they stole his food, so he always went to bed hungry. No wonder Little Giant was little!

Little Giant enjoyed rubbing his face in pastures of wet flowers, so wonderful were they to him. But the other giants called him Dim Dum and broke his nose for doing it. They broke his nose so many times in fact, that he could no longer smell the pretty flowers, nor anything else come to that, no matter how he secretly tried.

One day, at the end of his tether, Little Giant abandoned his horrible home and set off for faraway Human Town, in search of Love. He had heard that in Human Town the houses were filled with Love, the streets ran free with Love, and for miles around the air was thick with the sickly-sweet scent of Love.

After a lonesome, perilous, dinnerless journey of one year to the day, he at last arrived at the little city wall which encircled Human Town. But when he stepped over it, rather than welcome him beneath banners and bouquets of Love, all the humans screamed and fled for the surrounding hills. All, that is, except for three of them.

A handsome young soldier met the giant crashing down Big Street and opened fire with his musket, hitting him in the big toe. But the musket back-fired and the young soldier was killed on the spot.

A crooked old woman saw through her basement window, the giant's blood-spurting big toe, as it whooshed passed her crooked old cottage. She immediately dropped dead in surprise.

In the centre of town, the Mayor awaited the monster's arrival at the Town Hall, on the ceremonial balcony below the ticking clock. The Mayor's elbows and knees shook so badly beneath his robes that he had to fetch a Big Chair from the Big Hall upon which to sit and assume, to the best of his many abilities, an atmosphere of unchallengeable calm.

When Little Giant literally stumbled upon Human Town's seat of power, he was weeping buckets. Not only had the single little fellow he had come across injured him painfully in the toe, but he felt more alone than ever before. Not noticing the Mayor sitting stock-still and wide-eyed in his chair upon the balcony, Little Giant plonked himself down among the tile-clad turrets of this rather comfortable old building. He folded his face in his arms and wept, and wept, and wept. He wept so hard and for so long, that the sun that evening sank beneath a flooded city.

Built as it was upon a small steep hill, the Town Hall was the last place of refuge to succumb to the tide. As the waters reached the Mayor's chattering knees, Little Giant noticed the soothing cool upon his toe, and slowly ceased his weeping. He rubbed his eyes with house-sized fists, then looked far and wide about him.

He saw in the distance that all the town's people had hushed and gathered to stare, from the surrounding foothills, at their giant new lake, and in awe at the giant himself, illegally squatting in the middle of it.

"'As it been raaainin'?" Little Giant asked himself.

"Yes it bloody 'as!" answered a little voice from one of the turrets.

"Oooh," the giant remarked, more to himself than to anyone. "I wonders if dat's why dey's up and left?"

"No that's not why theys bloody up and left!" came again the voice from the turret.

"I knowwws it!" admitted the giant. "They's left cossa me. I knowwws it!"

"Yes they bloody did!" chirped again the voice, and this time Little Giant looked closer about himself, to see where it had come from. When he spotted the miniscule, brightly clothed figure on the balcony of the largest little turret, he knotted his great big brow and bent closer to look. Just at that moment, the roof of the Big Hall upon which he had half been sitting, creaked and collapsed into the Big Hall itself, and three of the oldest turrets crumbled with it.

"Did you 'ave to do that?!" squawked the Mayor from his perch, so loudly this time one might think he addressed all the surrounding towns people.

"'Owww'd you get to be so little?" asked the giant, forgetting the question entirely.

"'Ow'd you get to be so bloody 'orrible?" retorted the Mayor, bold as his lungs would permit.

"'Ooo told you I was 'orrible?" the giant demanded to know.

"There's 'orrible to be told about, and there's 'orrible plain for the eyes to see!" sniped the Mayor from his cubby-hole, his little red face in a huff.

"I reckons", snorted the giant in a grumbly voice, "yous don't knows wot impolite means!"

"And I reckons," daringly reckoned the Mayor with a raised finger which shook back and forth, quite of its own accord, "You oughts to up an' offs out of it, before I up an' offs you out of it, for you!"

Little Giant, growing fairly cross himself by this time, shifted on his enormous bottom to get a squarer look at this weeny, unlovable fellow. At that moment the chapel roof collapsed into the chapel, the Mayoress's wing collapsed into the dungeon, and three more turrets collapsed into heaps of soot and treasure. That left the biggest turret, and the hysterical little chap in it, the only prominents yet clear above water. Little Giant, now crouched on all fours, placed his big nose on the weakening balcony for a sniff of this nasty midget; but could smell neither fish nor foul, so he set about roasting the Mayor with his eyes.

"Yooous truly de most rudist little fella I's ever clowped me eyes upon. I's could well 'ave 'urts meself jus' den! 'An yooous all goin' on about meees a-bein' 'orrible!"

Feeling the big stones in the big walls creaking beneath his reluctant chair, the Mayor, educated and worldly sharp as everyone knew he was, considered changing strategy. But he could only think of one other strategy, and that was to ceremonially or otherwise, run as far away as his sparrowy legs would carry him. Which, of course, would not be far away enough.

Unable to endure the suspense sitting down, he jumped to his stockinged feet.

"What do you want?!" he pleaded. "What do you bloody well want?!"

There followed a dramatic silence, the likes of which is impossible to describe in words, not-with-standing the many who have since tried.

"LOOOVE!!!" boomed the giant.

There followed a further dramatic silence, again quite impossible to describe in words, nor even songs, nor even Hollywood movies, not-with-standing the very many who have since tried.

"Love..?" mumbled the Mayor.

"LOOOVE! LOOOVE!! LOOOVE!!!" re-boomed the giant.

"And you... you reckoned... to find such a thing here?"

"YES! YES!! YES!!!" erupted the giant, and his big tears began again to waterfall out of his big eyes.

"STOP! STOP!! STOP THAT!!!" exclaimed the Mayor, convincingly at the last, hopping up and down on his disintegrating platform. "Hold your tears at once, and tell me: What within the wide wide World made you think Love was here?"

Little Giant snivelled a bit, then blew his nose and scratched his chin.

"Ain't it truuue den? Ain't dere no Love, a-runnin' in dese streets, a-fillin' up dese 'auses, a-smellin' up dis Human Town air?"

"Who told you there was?" the Mayor wished to know, astonished.

"Why... Evryone knooows it. Even the Dim Dums knooows it. AN' I AIN'T NO DIM DUM!"

"You ain't?" ventured the Mayor, his honesty damping his wits.

"I ain'ts! So where is it!? I wants it! I wants it!! I WANTS IT!!!" screamed Little Giant, and he too jumped up, and crashed down, and jumped up, and crashed down, again and again in a frenzy, in his home-made, waist-deep lake.
For the very first time in his lengthy career in political bossing about, the most powerful human in Human Town could see no solution, clever, quick nor otherwise. As the monster sploshed about peevishly wailing all Doom and all Woe, the Mayor muttered something beneath the din, as much to himself as to anyone:

"If its Love you wants, matey, I'll loves you all right, if you drowns yourself!"

"WOT did you says?" snarled the giant, who, as the Mayor now fearfully noted, wore fearfully big and, by all accounts, superbly functioning ears. Returning to the rude little turret, Little Giant flexed his muscles and clenched his fists and beat the skies and waters, causing some waves and not a little wind.

"Er..." explained the Mayor. "I said..." explained the Mayor. "I mean... by which I mean... "

"Yooou said, 'If its Love I wants...'" quoth the giant, "'an den you said... sumfink else!"

"Er..." explained the Mayor, "I said..." explained the Mayor; and he might have explained something more just then, but he was loudly interrupted:

"Wot did you tell me's to do?" bellowed the giant, and the breath of his fury shook the turret and loosed all the slates in the roof, which fell off all at once, almost relieving the Mayor of his head, which he possibly wouldn't have minded, convinced he was losing it anyway.

The giant shrieked, raised both arms high, and higher still both fists, as want to dash this silly cuckoo-clock and the silly cuckoo in it, into soggy bits of history:

"WOT DID YOU TELL ME'S TO DO!!??"

"DROWNS YERSELF!" cried the Mayor at his end, and he sank in a shuddering pile into the deepest recess of his magnificent chair, awaiting nothing beyond the heavens to end his dread...

Little Giant stopped dead in his wake to consider these words. Forgetting his tantrum he dropped to his sides his great fore-arms, and asked, in all genuine curiosity, "Drooowns meself? Why den?"

The Mayor, half-dead with shock, the other half all but given up to it, conceded and blurted aloud as loud,

"IF ITS LOVE YOU WANTS, I'LL LOVES YOU WHEN YOU DROWNS YOURSELF! There, it's said! Take it or don't! And then, for all the Love in my lovely wretched city, leave us in peace forever!"

"'You'll loves me... when I dran's meself..." repeated the giant, as much to himself as to anyone.

"For all the Love in the World!" blubbered the Mayor.

Once more, Little Giant looked far and near about him, an amazing expression taking shape on his big features, reflecting the amazing idea taking shape in his little brain. He gazed at the faraway folks in the hills, who did nothing but humbly gaze back at him. Some held wincey babes in their arms, whilst youngsters played at the water's edge, for the tide had now spilled over the city walls. His big ears caught a bird-like voice there, as it beckoned to another, "Do come on in, the water's Lovely!" He regarded the lake, now soothing and clear, which had so magically appeared to refresh him in his darkest hour; and then again, the wonky little turret and its wonky little master, mysterious and brightly robed - teetering on the edge of existence.

"All rights, me tricksy little chum!" he surmised with a wink, "I's told yous, I ain't dumb," and he thumbed a big thumb at the water. "Dat's where your secret lies, an' I's discovered it! Right 'ere, in dis luvely liquid!" Upon which, under the sceptical gaze of uncountable witnesses, Little Giant suddenly, yet casually, yet even gracefully, strolled away - this time to the deepest part of the lake he could find, where he chanted three words, as much to himself as to anyone. But all for miles around did hear them well:

"LOOOVE! LOOOVE!! LOOOVE!!!" he announced to the heavens and all, and there in the deep, clearly convinced that his quest had been right, he threw himself under.

Unfortunately for the Mayor, still quivering in his electoral chair, the giant's unexpected submersion caused a bit of a tidal wave. Only a bit of a one, but a big enough one to topple that turret and topple it's Master with it.

All through the night bubbles rose from the deep, some from the royal ruins, and some from the monster's last dunk. And the townsfolk held their breaths till next morning, when the sun rose very prettily indeed, and the flood began to diminish.

It took a full fortnight before all and sundry returned to their homes, and when all and sundry did, they learned an agreeable fact. With thrills and sobs of relief, they found that all the mice in Human Town were drowned and gone forever - And, OH, there had been many mice in Human Town! For, as history and legend will show it, that Human Town had long been cursed; by a witch who dabbled in plague. Cursed with hordes of unnatural mice, thieving and biting and cruel, which filled the houses, ran wild in the streets, and stank up the air for miles around!

And as it turned out, that hideous culprit, the cursing witch herself, was dead too. Discovered in her dreaded nook, that basement filled with toxins. Rumour abounded that she had developed the ultimate concoction, to birth the ultimate rodent, nasty and BIG as the World has seen. Like the one she thought she saw through her window that day, its giant big toe at any rate; which hexed even she into death.

The Mayor was drowned, too. But, Lord, had he been unpopular! Tyrant dictator, king without soul, etc, etc. And his son, spiteful widget, dead too! Chief of all the army, hardly out of school. Handsome in the eyes of simple girls; but arrogant, rich and deadly. Now arrogant, rich and dead!

"Not nevermore missed by no-one" the plaque to the both of them read, before it sank in the mud.

"But what of our giant?" the humans perplexed. "Where did he go?" "Is he dead?"

Till an apple-man found him in an apple-field, face down in a crater of sludge. "He's here!" "He's drowned!" "He's dead!" they said, and they set about to eat him. Yes, eat him. For, hungry had they been! Taxed into rags and robbed out of meat, by the Mayor and his brat, whom they would have eaten too, had they found them, which they never did.

Before the supper, they flipped him over, their giant, for a very last glimpse of his face; which they quietly washed, amid prayers and culinary charms. Till there he lay, in that pasture they filled with flowers and veg, his face in a beam of tea-time light, which appeared to radiate outwards.

After the feast, merry with schnapps, a group of the Town's finest craftsmen gathered about and pledged to build a statue. "A big one!" "Enormous!" "Large as the fellow himself!" they announced, amidst cheers and more schnapps. Indeed, they cast it to perfection, out of perfect front-to-back moulds, shaped from those imprints he'd left in the pasture floor.

One year later they raised him aloft, big as he was, now immortal. They stood him on a plinth, atop of Townhall Hill, and inscribed thereupon, in glorious, golden, man-high script:

"LOOOVE! LOOOVE!! LOOOVE!!!"
Our Beloved Giant

February 25

Dear friends, You are warmly invited to a special "secret" concert tomorrow given by 2 excellent sound-performance acts passing through Wallywoods from the Russian Federation. Check them out:

Volga
www.myspace.com/volgamusic

and

Alexei Borisov
www.myspace.com/alexeiborisov

Hope to see you,
Wally.

February 22

Dear Friends,

Wallywoods is proud to announce, playing live at the gallery this Saturday (23 Feb.) the great London-Berlin band:

THE SAILPLANES
www.myspace.com/thesailplanes

supported by

OHMNOISE
www.myspace.com/ohmnoise

and

UGLY ONE + guests
http://www.myspace.com/uglyamericans

______________________________________________________________________________

Hallo Paul,

So, the exhibition must take place in 2008.
I must have an invitation card... something to show that it was done... some response from the local newspapers.
I don't know yet how much money I can get from the Ministry, but if I start I must do it well...
I'm interested in interesting people, an opening party etc.
What is happening with your space? And, otherwise - yes, it would be ok if you could look around...
I like the combination with the OK gallery and strange places. I already exhibited in prisons, castles undergrounds, trains, public shelters etc...
Ok, I`m waiting for your suggestions...

Bye,
Goran (Ljubljana)

______________________________________________________________________________

Hey Paul

Alan only bought the three tables with marble tops and no paintings on them. I do not know what happened to the other tables, good luck with your search for them.

Talk to you later,
K.

February 21

Ok T.

But please don't sell or give away any more tables before we talk about it. Thankyou.

P.

______________________________________________________________________________

T.

You now talk about laws (yes, very German!)

You see, you just don't get it.
First I wait all afternoon and most of the night, and you can't even make one quick call to say you are not coming, which is rude and yes, un-English (same as with problems at the Pub; you avoided all possible communication, getting you often into a bigger mess).
Then you phone the next day, and I understood we will meet here at 4pm. By that time you are already gone (the stuff outside) and there are only chairs (no bar either, as was clearly agreed - though I don't care about the fucking bar). Why didn't you say on the phone you would come earlier? It felt like you were avoiding me purposefully. I wanted to talk to you about a business chance here, quickly and easily to make a Cafe ("Kaffee Kuchen & Kunst") and a little bit of money, before I too am thrown out. But without those tables the plan at the moment does not work. I just don't have enough of the same kind of table (all our different 'odd' furniture is too wierd for normal people). They were perfect, and there was a beautiful, simple, logical chance - gone.
It is, as much as anything, the WAY you do things. You promise or agree to do one thing, then you change your mind, so easily and so often, as if nothing really matters at all.
In this case, it brought back those feelings of extreme frustration from my time at the Pub, so many maddening times when you worked as much against me as with me. I thought I had gotten over that (though never forgotten), but it seems I haven't.
As for "..you got paid for decoration.." well, that leaves me speechless.

P.

______________________________________________________________________________

T.

"I actually had no eye for these kinds of problems" you say.
That is exactly it T. You don't see, do you?
The most difficult thing concerning connection to the Art Pub over these 17 months was witnessing, again and again, the way you treated the artists, the musicians, and their works; even to the point of humiliating them. Again and again. Often, even the audience was embarrassed, again and again and again.
But you never saw it, and I gave up trying to explain this fundamental blindness in your character, and other things you don't see, because my words never changed your attitude or actions. That is why Wallywoods left your Pub.
Once more: as an artist, gallerist, and co-founder of Art Pub, those table-tops are of importance to me.
Of course you don't see it. You will never understand what I am talking about.

P.

______________________________________________________________________________

T.

I believe it was totally ignorant of you to dispose of those tables without consulting me. Dont forget, I made them into art-pieces AFTER you bought them - making them part of the Big Chairs project - therefore changing completely their meaning, worth and future-worth.
As a conceptual artist, I have made very few pieces of 'real' art that I can refer to in any way. I trusted the tables were safe at the Pub, and they were. I trusted and expected you to bring them here for a while (it was your idea and I agreed) and then you show no regard for my art, for my time, for me, or for our friendship.
Of all the let downs, even pain, I had to suffer through your incompetent pub venture, and there were many let downs, not least your intent at the beginning to make me a 50 per-cent partner which came to nothing; this is the last ignorant insult you pay me for all my earlier input.
By the way, the one table you brought here, has YOUR drawings on it, which means it is the one people didn't want. They only wanted mine, yes?
I don't know if we can be friends again T.
Either way, I don't accept your disposal "around town" of my art-objects, something I would never do without permission of any artist, let alone a 'friend'.

ps (separate mail)

I wish to bring together, for a while at least here at the gallery, all the tables painted by me.
Firstly, I've written to Stefi and Another Country, asking if I can have any such tables, or buy them, borrow them, or exchange them with something here at the gallery.
Secondly, I would be grateful if you would help me in bringing the remaining collection together again. I know you are tired; if transport is a problem, I will arrange it. I just need to know where they are.
This can all happen quickly and easily - problem solved.
However, if you don't reverse your attitude of ignorance in this respect, it could be long and painful.
Either way, they are MY WORKS OF ART.

P.

______________________________________________________________________________

Hi Christoph

Thanks for your mail and encouraging words - and thanks for the night, it was super (too few people, yes, but super.)
Sure you can have another evening here, that would be great. Whatever you suggest. I just don't know at all if I will still be here in April! What I can do for now, is offer Sat 22 March?
Please let me know first if that is any good for you..?

Bis bald,
Wally.

______________________________________________________________________________

Hello Wally

First I would like to thank you for the opportunity to play at your gallery. I think it was a good concert, even though there could have been a bit more audience, we liked to play and choose up people.
May be you would like to make another concert with this kind of music. I can offer you an evening with a friend of mine, Jürg Bariletti (maybe you know him from stralau68, he managed it), playing his self-built klangkoffer, and the duo .adol. .adol is a duo with Marc, the guitarrist of Tomorrow Collective and me, playing more compositions in a new musik style mixed with improvisations. You can listen to it at:
www.myspace.com/adolberlin
Please let me know what do you think, then we can talk about a concert in April(?)

Best greetings, Christoph.

______________________________________________________________________________

Hi T.

You might as well come and pick everything up, as loads of chairs and no tables is no use. I thought you would bring both - that seemed to make sense.
About the other tables. As the artist, I would like to know what happens to them: where they are now, and if/when you sell them, who gets them. I think you will agree, that is my right.
I seriously don't like the way you do things T.

ps (separate mail)

They belong to you of course, but as far as I can see the tables should be here, where Wallywoods can make good temporary use of them - NOT in any Keller, and NOT with that asshole Wieland. In fact, if they are at Wieland's place, I will consider taking court action to get them away from him.

Where are they?

P.

______________________________________________________________________________

Hi Tim

Anytime after 7pm will be fine for soundcheck.
I've come up with 2 surprise acts to plump out the night (aha!), both noisy/experimental/improvised. Ohmnoise (www.myspace.com/ohmnoise) is Markus Schwill's apocalyptic shock therapy, in short sharp bursts. Farfisaman is fun-seeker Ken from The Ugly Americans (www.myspace.com/uglyamericans) - funk-punk with add-lib vocals from various nutty women in the audience. Can play earlier and/or later, doesn't matter - both acts informal, no stress (just loud).
Our 'PA' system is minimal - couple of monitors, one small amp, small mixer...

P.

February 20

Hallo T.

Your number doesn't work.
Please can you call me right away. Right now please!
Thankyou,

P.

______________________________________________________________________________

Dear Wally

Was at bookshop tonight. Heard you did many terrible things. Spit beer in face of Rashidi... bad Wally.

Checked wallywoods.com. You want the Uglies this Saturday to support band?

Ugly One

January 11

POLITICS

Hi Dad,

To expand a bit on the situation I touched upon in my last mail, here's a message I just sent to H., to pass on to her sympathetic friend in the Green Party:

Last night, Thursday, the Vorderverein held a meeting upstairs. Agenda: to discuss whether to 'dissolve' themselves, or continue as best they can. The chairman, nice old Herr Görner, announced he is stepping down. He is depressed, tired, busy with his wife who has MS, and feels he cannot push through any of the organisation's wishes. However, the rest of the group (VERY few attended this important meeting), decided to stick with it, for now at least.

Afterwards four of them, all good people, came down for a drink and a long chat. They like the gallery, and seem to regard my opinion with increasing respect. Certain things became clear:

1. They are ALL unhappy with the situation, and see it (until our talk last night, I hope!) as hopeless. General opinion: politics is killing culture in the borough of Weissensee, but no-one can do anything about it.

2. The chairman gone, his temporary replacement is Dr so-and-so, a gentle man, who believes in diplomacy and communication with the Theatre School; even though they AVOID CONTACT as much as possible with them, as the avoid contact with our gallery. They simply want the building and don't care about any of the cultural projects based here, which for them are a pain in the arse and are not seriously addressed in their master-plan.

3. The Theatre School AND the Bezirksamt (local authority) are showing NO-ONE the school's concept, or giving out any details except the bare minimum.

4. When I pushed them (they must be pushed) to tell me what they REALLY think, off the record, more than one last night used the word SCANDAL. A small example: U. was angry to learn that the Kulturhaus is throwing away tons of stuff, which we find every day in the Mullhoff, including historic signs and posters from the eighties through the early nineties. They also say that the Bezirksamt has invited the school to simply take/keep what furniture and other effects they like from the building, and get rid of other stuff as and how they wish.

5. The local people, and Berlin in general, may know that the Kulturhaus will be "changing hands", through occasional small articles in the papers - but none of these articles tell the wider story. Weissensee's inhabitants, who are only partially interested in any of this, seem to believe that whatever happens they will at least be able to keep their precious concert-hall. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY SO.

So, after listening to this and more besides, I asked them what their plan of action is. But they are part-time, unpaid volunteers. As said, they believe they have no power. I told them, THIS IS ALSO NOT TRUE. They are the only ones, right now, with the influence to begin to change the course of things. Their answer at first was (of course), "na ja, we will wait and see..."

I then told them what I think.

The Vorderverein must call a press meeting as soon as possible (I suggested Monday after next, in the concert-hall - in any case it should take place before the end of this month, when the School may well be signing the papers, which they have not yet done!). Call it something like "Peter Edel - how does the future look?" They/we must invite EVERYONE with an interest, and of course all involved parties, including:

The Verein and all its hundreds of members, who seem lazy, or uninterested (so far).

Kulturamt Pankow, i.e. Frau Juresko.

Bezirksamt Pankow.

The Theatre School.

The Weissensee Art School.

Leersandsinitiative Weissensee (though it is currently no longer funded or functioning!)

Brotfabrik, and other local culture projects, including Experiment City.

Political parties / the Burgermeister, Herr Nelken, Herr Thierse, etc.

The general public! After the conference: open questions / free debate.

Very important: Journalists, radio, tv...!!!

They think it's a very good idea. But (of course) they said, "na ja, but they probably won't give us the concert-hall." I said, they MUST give you the concert-hall! If they don't, it's part of the cover-up; in which case simply document the reason they give, and hold the bloody press conference on the street in front of the Kulturhaus!

Those are the main points I remember for now. Will be in touch as I learn more.

Wally.

December 10, 2007

ONLY A VAGUE IDEA
where all this is leading. Life vital enough, rich enough with art, creation, action, people.
Good people. Super gallery. Rarely bored (boredom, the inherent fault in life since childhood). On the brink of something like success. Yet far more unaccomplished than accomplished, notwithstanding so much accomplished. Plenty of reasons for pride - healthy pride. Healing pride - after so many years lost in space, lost inside. Tides of satisfaction, in out, in out, in out. Inspiration, anticipation, preparation; immeasurable investment. Accompanied still, often enough, though less sharply than ever, with doubt - that doubt beaten down, drowned in guile - followed by reflexion, limbo: cynicism and void. Increasingly, the urge to
a) be lazy, watch tv forever, read an occasional book, retire; escape the sapping stress of running this naive, idiotic, fantastic project with only fluff in the pockets.
b) breakthrough and smash the world, with brilliance, into brilliance.
What's it all about? What's it all for? Dumb questions, easy to answer. To suppliment all the chunks missing from the heart. Twenty years ago, most always in fact, that was impossible through art, or anything else. But now, claps on the back, at least. At last. "Hey Wally, great party!" Hearty and often. Winston's Dog, a rare visitor since Kopischstrasse began to function three years ago.

But not that rare. There is no magical cure. Only relief through activity.

Activity, activity, activity...

Words are harder to organise. Need a lot more; more time, different drugs. Can't do it - can't write - used up somehow. Begin to hate all computer work. Seems impossible even to jot down milestones, even fractions, of this year's history. So I hardly try.

The point of life is, continually and actively to search both universes, the inner and outer, for the point of life.

Better not stop to think.

(Still hungry most days. Not directly a factor in depression, but certainly contributes to lethargy, frustration, non-accomplishment.)

October 5

THE INTRODUCTION WHICH DIDN'T APPEAR IN THE 3 COPIES FINALLY PRODUCED

"...NUTS is a new occasional guide to art & music events in and around Berlin's Gallery Wallywoods... Nuts. No it isn't. It is the monthly program of art, music & spoken word events taking place at Berlin's... Nuts. Gallery Wallywoods is now in Weissensee, which is just about in Berlin. Nuts. Weissensee is the cheap new, soon-be-trendy soon-be-thriving alternative bit of Germany's capital rich in three resources; empty spaces, low rents, and the notorious Gallery Wallywoods which has now settled at Weissensee's historic Peter Edel "Culture House"... Nuts. At least until the end of 2007, after which it is yet unknown whether Weissensee's historic Peter Edel "Culture House" will remain a house of culture or a shopping centre... until 31st December events at and around Weissensee's hottest new events & party location... documented... advertised... Nuts... Nuts..."

It is now Friday 5th October. Release date: 2 days. Am taking time out to write the Intro, however difficult without a joint. In the early hours of this morning Alesh turns up, a bit less smelly after a dusch in Kreuzberg, to peer over by now extremely smelly Wally's shoulder while he begins (yes begins) to assemble in Photoshop the various bits of material scattered between his computer, the Red Monster, his head and the litter of his desk, destined to become the limp and Champaign-smudged object of information you hold (presumably) before you. Nuts... destined to mirror new underground trends, as they happen (or shortly before they happen), throughout Berlin and, come to think of it, anywhere else that takes the editors' fancy. The editors, by the way... Nuts. Forget the editors. Just send your material, whatever it is, adhered to the motto "any style, any language" and having relevance here at the new centre of Europe, right now, as Berlin booms again...

"Nuts," says Alesh, as Wally gets carried away with the fantasticness of it all.

'Alesh One' is Wallywoods' new partner since last week. Since he bothered not just to yap about it, but to stick around in Berlin until Christmas to aid a deserving cause, which deserves all it gets. "That's crap," he says. "You can't make a magazine in two days in Photoshop." "With no money," I added. "Is it that bad...?" and after a little consideration, "Ok, it's crap; but I told everyone it's gonna be crap, and not expect too much of the first one. It HAS to be black & white..." "Forget it," says Alesh, "Just cancel it for now, work on it later. Let's make a flyer for Sunday. I mean, if we make a magazine, it has to be a FUCKING GREAT magazine. And this... Well, I don't know if I want my name on it."

The problem was, as Wally gently explained, it IS possible to make a magazine in two days. But it is EXTREMELY difficult, indeed painful work, without a jointski in the house. An empty stomach has long since been neither here nor there... "Ah!" Alesh at last agrees. We gotta get you a jointski. But where from, at three in the morning, here on the edge of nowhere. Couldn't be sure the Pub (that mad mad Pub) is open, and anyway, Mad George, back from his rituals, took his bike back, so Wally can't even get to Dealer's Park. Even if he had any money. "Ah!" exclaims Wally, "let's phone Thingy and get her out of bed, she'll cross town from K-berg when she hears how serious the situation is." Problem was, loitering in the phone box outside with a few actual monetary coins found under the fridge or someplace, Thingy had knocked herself out with her own nightly ritual and could only, between snores, promise to visit the next morning.

Well, it's afternoon now. Still no sign. Wally spent the night battling with style, cheap technique and bad-to-boring taste in Photoshop whilst Alesh slept comfortably on one of the dozens of sofas now stuffing the gallery. In the morning Wally retired, absolutely sober and absolutely convinced he was on the right track...

"Nuts to the magazine," he mumbled, passing out on another sofa. It's the contents which count - and the contents are the gallery, and all the gallery gets involved with...

The current Wallywoods exhibition is (or was if you missed it) "Invention". After three hard months clearing the dirt of years of disuse (called "Hexenkessel" it was some kind of sex restaurant) and four successful, though under-visited, under-promoted, under-financed and absolutely un-supported by any cultural organisation outside Wally's personal dole-money and tit-bits from friends like Thingy, exhibitions entitled "10" (ten artists from 10 lands), "Spirit" (6 artists), "Apocalypse" (6 artists) and "Utopia" (6 artists - all in fact the same artists, due to general lack of artists who love the project but can't get their arses all the way out here), and umpteen performance, music, noise and reading gatherings including THE UGLY AMERICANS (naturally), GRAHAM CLAYTON FROM THE OTHER SIDE (UK & D & sober), RICHARD DE BASTION (UK & old-timer), LEE VIAJERO & THE EDGY DRIFTERS (USA & co-organiser of Wallywoods Rock Art week), HUGO RACE (Australia/Prague), LADY GABY (Australia/Berlin), THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT (ditto), TIM MCMILLAN (from Naked Raven), MARACHOWSKA (from Siberia), GEORGE NICKELS (from Hell), GEFFEN3 & ALEX TORNADO (from Another Country), ALAN LAYTON (from UK & "Stories in Colour"), BABEL EMBASSY (Wallywoods Best Live Act in Berlin 2007), The INNENSASSINEN ORCHESTER (quite the opposite but fun-crazed German avand-gardists), INCAL (Astrosoph lectures), BORDERCROSSING BERLIN (English language writer's club), DAVID HULL (fellow ex-pat), BIG DADDY MUGGLESTONE & JESUS PRICE SUPER RAHB (escaped from USA), DJ FRANZ UNDERWEAR (brand new from Italy) & DJ JACK (Berlin, naturally), the *Leerstandsinitiativ-Weissensee's Benefit Party for Wallywoods with local incredibly loud primitive-rock band EKKE who now practice Thursdays at the gallery, Wolfe's birthday disco, a nice visit from Verushka (Blow Up,1966) who lives around the corner; and while we're dropping names, the Mayor of Weissensee...

NUTS. Only joking. Not even the lady upstairs who organises the scarce events program for Ghost House Peter Edel has popped in for a cuppa tea. She's still livin' in the DDR.

Whereas Wallywoods, described by a dear friend once as

"a classical punk art revolutionary movement based upon the 10 (actually 13) "Principles of Wallyism", which may be summed up along the lines, "everyone's an artist" or "even if you ain't, art improves your existence", involving all media, influenced by all other movements, adaptable to all environments, committed to finding spiritual, psychological and physical spaces in which creativity and positivity are encouraged to flourish beyond expectation, and solutions therefore, to all imaginable problems, are tackled and eventually, even easily, solved.."

lives everywhere and nowhere.

NUTS. If we're kicked out of this Utopia of an all-arts space, it won't be through lack of trying.

Paradox Paul

(Quick spell check, then back to Photoshop where 4 sides are already complete)
(Fancy that, Microsoft Word Spell-check translates Weissensee as "Essence")

September 29

ROCK ART WEEK
taking form. One of the numerous and varied events Wally is up to his neck organising, now half way through the first and quite possibly last Peter Edel term. If Katja and I are any way successful in our new promotional attempts, the next three months should take off. Amazing stuff going down in Weissensee's "coolest gallery". The first three months have been too quiet. Mainly, it is the artists who are too lazy to come out all this way.
This to Phil H. today, who's organising with me R.A. week:

Hi Phil,

Yes, I like Prima Primo a lot. They could play on the Monday, Tues, Weds or Thurs. Hopefully Babel Embassy will also confirm one of those dates, they're also electronic sounding - the two could play on the same night..
Will you ask Prima Primo if they want one of those days?

Regarding your own doings, that's totally up to you - just tell me soon what to write, like L.V. for the 3rd and L.V.& the E.D.s on the 10th...?

And yes, let's persuade Dave Clemmons to play at least with drummer.

Last night, local Weissensee band "Ekke" played here with full drums - primitive rock - LOUD!!!! as fuck. No complaints. Not amazingly good, but friendly, fun, and only 5 songs or so. We should invite them for Rock Art week?

And don't forget to please (SOOON) get in touch with the bands who don't yet have the gig showing on their MySpace - if there are doubts, it's silly for me to put them in the magazine, which I'm putting together this week.

Otherwise, all hunky dorey.

Next year, let's do "Wallywoodstock"...

P.P.

September 17

STARVING
so Katja invited me to potatos and mincemeat rolled in black peppers followed by chocolate-coated vanilla sponge-cake. Chatted (about local literature, and about the Art Pub and that sickening Wieland, who has rediscovered it) and drank water (she's off the booze since the accident) whilst zapping through various movies interupted by tireless assaults of crappy German adverts.

Wonderful. Homely. Short-lived.

Hard times. Especially with Cecile, my unpaid nanny, off in the homeland for a month or more.

September 16

SICK
from financial worry and the resulting gallery challenge, so spent a long rumbling night sucking herbal tea-bags whilst clicking around that stupid-brilliant YouTube. My loose theme of the evening, for a healthy change: 9.11. Mentioning this to Tim McMillan, who has just confirmed a 'secret concert' at the gallery and one at the Pub (don't talk to me about the Pub, today at its one year anniversary), he asked me in all seriousness what I make of it all. I sent him this:

"As if another opinion matters:

I believe the Twin Towers collapsed as a direct effect of the planes hitting them. The planes were flown by America-hating religious fanatics. Whether any of them were double agents is beside the point, anyway I don't believe they were.

WTC-7 (overshadowed by other events - but in most other cities it would be about the biggest building) was without question "pulled" on instructions from its owner Silverstein (who made a MASSIVE fortune as a result of the whole affair). Impossible is, to have rigged the building to demolish it on that short chaotic day. It needed weeks, or longer, to arrange.

Flight 93 was either shot down or the "crash" was rigged.

As for the Pentagon, no large pieces of that plane were ever found or offered in evidence - though that does not mean 100 percent that that plane did not hit it.

A conspiracy did take place. Mainly afterwards, to cover up enormous, costly, even ridiculous blunders made by the government and many of its major agencies for years before and since.

Among the endless outstanding questions, key for me is what happened with building 7. That collapse was definitively planned by US businessmen and agencies long in advance of 9.11.

Any clearer?

(Nope)

Wally."

Might as well qualify some of that (as if it matters).

It may well be that no other steel-structure building has ever collapsed through fire. But no other steel-structure building was ever so fucking big as the Towers - each about a New York block in area - and therefore as massively, unbelievably heavy. And no other such building was ever hit full-power by fully-laden passenger aircraft. As commonly quoted, it is true that steel only melts at x degrees. But it is also true that at a temperature of significantly less than x degrees, the steel, and therefore supporting capacity, is significantly weakened. With x number of core pillars destroyed on impact, and the following raging fires weakening and bending the steel skeleton, the incredible weight of all the floors above impact was simply too much to bear. Soon as one floor gives out, you truly have an unstoppable force, headed, where else, but straight down. As for the demolition "squibs" occurring shortly before collapse, refer again to the tremendous kinetic energy going on inside the guts of these buildings in their last minutes and seconds. Lift shoots, ventilation ducks, gangways, all outlets through which boiling air, liquids and gases will seek to escape under great pressure however they can, not to mention (to a lesser extent) technical units like generators and electronic equipment going up in secondary explosions at the climax.

However. Adding paradoxically to any sceptic's ammunition that the Twin Towers suffered a controlled demolition, Silverstein clearly and candidly admits giving the instruction to demolish, or "pull", WTC-7. Just watch that bit of interview footage, a couple of times if you need to. And in this case the film and sound footage, and all other evidence, including the pre-knowledge of the block's demise by numerous servicemen, points to a demolition by engineers. Later, attempting to cover his blunder, he stupidly suggests he was referring to "pulling" the firemen (out) because of the danger to them. This is clearly not what he originally says and means. Besides which, there were no firemen in building 7 to pull out.
Detracting slightly from the point - or maybe not - during the insurance claim, quite sure he is going to get a return of three and a half billion (from an outlay of some millions) he decides to go for double-money by calling the attack two separate attacks - and wins easily his 7 billion dollars. I believe this is called profiteering.
It's amazing Mr Silverstein he hasn't received the good duffing up he deserves.

Interesting WTC-7 facts & theory website: www.wtc7.net

Flight 93 apparently crashed in the woods. Maybe. Apart from one small crater, show me an engine, or anything in fact "larger than a phone-book" as one reporter early on the scene put it, expected to be found at any major crash site. Regardless of how far or locally spread, the fact that nothing but small shredded bits and pieces remained, put that "crash" into the ground somewhere between hardly likely and impossible. (Had it sunk in a lake, wreckage should certainly have been detected by now.)

As for the Pentagon... Well, apart from the same lack of great twisted chunks of plane, like two Rolls Royce engines, each big as a fucking bus, which would not melt or evaporate even in a super-intense fire, which there wasn't; the President should lose his job if for one reason alone. The withholding of evidence at a serious crime scene, i.e., the confiscation by his authorities and continuing withholding of all the videos in the surrounding area which they could quickly get their hands on. Add to that the almost inhuman speed with which practically all evidence from the combined sites was cleared away, sold, destroyed, or vanished away under lock and key...

Why? Mere incompetence? Tidiness? Panic? Fear? Fear of what?

Mr Bush's own fear of the truth, presumably. Or rather, his fear of others knowing the truth.

To digress again on a personal note, he deserves a good duffing up too, I reckon.

September 12

DISCOVERED
this write up referring to the grand opening on a website called Tulip Enterprises.
No idea who they are...

"Impressions from the new Wallywoods location in Berlin Weissensee. The travelling art space/atelier/home of British artist Paul Woods has landed in a derelict GDR "Kulturhaus" (culture house) located deep in an unfashionable and slightly scary Eastern part of town. The local authorities don't seem to be able to fund art and culture at the "Kulturhaus Peter Edel" anymore, the future of the impressive set of buildings is now hotly disputed. In the meantime, as so often in Berlin, artists can create their famous 'temporary spaces' there. Good how flexible this is made possible, but bad how few of these kind of initiatives get proper funding. Also good how nobody expects "Wallywoods" to set some kind of gentrification in motion. A very busy idealistic sub-cultural impresario, Paul Woods works with a pool of some 150 maladjusted emerging talents; his taste in musical performers is superb.
The first exhibition at the new place, called "10", seemed decidedly "unfertig" (unfinished), unlighted and chaotic, the artists seemed a bit unconnected. Yet somehow the whole exhibition worked like one big brilliant art installation: Summer of Love meets squatter Outsider Art, Berlin 1980. You never knew if the whole set up was all very self-conscious or very naive. It sure made a great bohemian party setting, at a very unexpected place. My favorite art pieces were a series of austere logo mash-up paintings by Kai Pohl (Germany), and the truly eerie Lady Macbeth painting by Marie-Cécile Lutta (Switzerland) (*pictured above. Check out her poster work as well.) The musical program was unambiguously fine: the polysexual subversive electronic glamfolk act of Alex Tornado was amazing, at once re-inventing and parodying the classic singer-songwriter stance and mixing it with spoken word elements that require great memory and composure. The Ugly Americans played some great distorted punk-jazz."

"...Very self-conscious or very naive?" Spot on!
Tulip also posted this ugly nonsense (film) on YouTube, explaining:

"The Ugly Americans gave a brilliant concert at the opening of the "10" exhibition at the Wallywoods gallery.
This underground artspace, freshly relocated to a derelict GDR "Kulturhaus" in Berlin Weissensee is the closest thing to Warhol's Factory to be found in the city. Its director, British artist Paul Woods, heads about 150 maladjusted unrecognized local talents. The musicians are the best though. This is my first mobile phone clip; I'd like to dedicate it to Andrew Keen..."

September 9

NICE
Mrs so-and-so, who organises general running of events at Peter Edel (and gets paid for it), caught me sticking a poster for the gallery in the main entrance at the front (opening hours and an arrow to send people around the corner). Rolling her eyes whilst pacing up and down, she was concerned with the amount of sticky-tape I was using, murmuring through a pained look, "Not so much". That's all she has said to me since our first meeting (last paragraph, last entry).

This is indicative of the practical help I'm getting from the establishment here and elsewhere: None.

Kathrin met Frau Juretzka, boss of the Pankow Culture Ministry, last week and mentioned on my behalf the gallery's desperate need for assistance. Answer: "too late to bother applying this year, and next year you're not in the Peter Edel building anyway, so no chance."

I will continue inviting artists to make use of this fabulous space until they throw me out of it. The documentation (photographs, film, published articles etc.) as well as the attention and respect Wallywoods is at last receiving from scenes across Berlin and further, should help -
no, must help - land another gallery space as soon as possible in the new year.

September 5

THE WEBSITE
right now looks like this: website snapshot

That's for the bloody history books.

Been here a bit over two months. Time spinning on by. Realised there are less than three months before the contract runs out. Is of course the possibility to stay on, formally or informally, a month or something longer. Six months would be great, though unlikely. Twelve months, and Wallywoods is definitively made. No question at all. But the bastards want to sell out, to some big bucks investor-in-the-community (sure); who cares who. Culture be damned, gimme the bucks. Politics and nonsense.

Why the snapshot? Clearly, I'm not getting around to writing. So many holes in these diaries, they reflect my life about as well as the article in ExBerliner this month: "..has lived in wonderful Weissensee since 1992..". Crippled financially, with time running out, all I can do is compute this series of imaginary events and try to get the people out here. Yes, crippled indeed, tied to the computer. Health diminished after every marathon bout - just like the old days. Am, however, reading in public whenever I can. Confidence growing - as I starve. Kai and I did on Monday at Burger what we should have done in front of a bigger, sexier audience that time at Bastard. We read "Scarecrow", just published in the new Floppy Myriapoda. Was fun. Fun too was reading from "Lounging Lad" at the English writers group. Went down a treat, Katja reckoned, watching the jolly faces. She didn't understand a word.
Well, so what if it's not getting written. I'm having so much fun, beating this new respectable path. And the rewards will fill all gaps.

Cécile is home on an Alp for a month. She sent me some cash in a letter. I can't afford the public transport fare to go pick it up. Only just paid off the last fine. No idea how. Meanwhile, I'm funding a high profile arts project, in a high profile arts centre (don't laugh, it's a ghost house, I know), with my dole money. Without a doubt - not only to my mind - the trendiest gallery-stroke-events-location in, honestly speaking, piss-limp Weissensee. Gateway to Nazi Land, some will insist. Have rarely seen one myself, as I rarely go out. Anyway, they don't visit art. Not so far, (unless those two creeps are the real Macoy: "Gallery wie bitte? Gallery wat? Vallyvutz? You are now in Germany!" He was a real creep. I said, "I am not calling my gallery, Gallery Hexenkessel.."). If I met one, so what. Wouldn't be the first. They are the smallest problem in the world.

Biggest problem is, how many poxy skinny black and white flyers can one print for a looming event on a budget of one Euro thirty (discovered with joy in the donations box, at the end of another twenty-four hour, stay-alive day). Forget it. Treat yourself to another mini-pizza.

A note on the Peter Edel Culture House. They said I should speak to nice Mrs so-and-so when she gets back from holiday, about putting a sign on the front of the house, and possible use of one of the three pianos in this building, (I heard one played through the ceiling once - just once), for kids lessons we want to start, and various gallery functions; not to mention my own desperate urge to play and practice. I heard she was back at work and went up to introduce myself. No, the pianos can't be moved, because being pianos, they might get damaged, and would certainly need tuning. I swallowed, but hardly flinched. I invited her to pop down and visit me in the space, which she hasn't seen yet, for a chat about this and that. She said she was busy at the moment, but would come by sometime. I swallowed again, and suggested an appointment. "The week after next," she said, and keeping to her word, she hasn't looked in since.

August 17

MINIMAL
Last night's Thursday reading at the gallery, a cosy affair amongst eight candle-lit die-hards (would have been ten, but Mr Grant couldn't change his shift and ExBerliner didn't turn up), comprised some camp-fire songs by Big Daddy Mugglestone, Clive (almost sober) and
Alan "SiC" Layton; and two short texts, from Cécile and myself. We had agreed to write about a particular evening last week, but neither had managed to finish. I had planned to expand upon her aptitude for exploding for no just reason, but in the end, never felt like putting the knife in. Cécile's piece is part of the massive diaries she's been scribbling every day for many years:

"Found my bicycle. It was standing in front of the King Kong Club, as I remembered. But the other day I was on the wrong side of the street.
What a funny evening. It started at Hazelwood. Leave my house and I feel I am in a strange mood. Like being in a bad mood, and aggressive. Don’t know why. But I don't take it seriously. Take the U-Bahn to get there. Arrive and call Paul, and he says we are there in ten minutes. I ask who is we? He says, Jack and me. I ask, why is Jack coming? That’s where it started. So they arrive and we enter the place. I was in a good mood. Paul was the first who read and the microphone was so shitty, you couldn’t understand a word. But Paul continued reading. After that I went to speak to Rob, who is the responsible person, about the microphone. I complained later again. When another reader started to read, I went towards him telling him he should work without, so we can understand him, with the microphone we can’t. I shouldn’t have done that, should have sat quietly and not interfered.
Went to the bar for a wine. Everybody was speaking in English. So with the barkeeper I spoke in English, he spoke perfectly. Then a waitress arrives and suddenly they spoke in Spanish. Immediately I started to speak to them in Spanish. And it turned out the barkeeper was from Portugal. And everybody thought I was from Argentina. When it turned out I'm Swiss, they were a little disappointed. But anyway, very nice.
I go to the loo. Come back and the young lady is already reading. I can’t go for another wine. So I stand behind her in a bad mood. But I didn't yell or scream or become loud in any sense, no, just stood and listened. Didn't like her text. But all these feelings just happened inside me, I thought.
But Paul took me outside, he had to talk with me.
He had to talk with me about my weird mood. But at that moment I felt ok, so what is the problem? My mood bothered him so much, that he didn't feel like going back to read his second part. He felt bad and too insecure to read more. Again, I was too much for him. Now we are outside and we will never go back. We walked through the park, we sat in the grass and we were arguing. I now got loud, and felt ridiculously attacked by him. Didn't understand why my mood can affect him so much. So much that he can't finish his reading night."

P.P.'s version:

"New poet on the block Robert Grant (UK) turned up at the Pub Monday before last, for a beer with Xarkos (US), who has read with us once before. They were there on other business, not for our little reading, which almost didn't take place, as it was late and almost no-one had turned up. Around eleven, that's a couple of hours later than usual, we were half a dozen, so with a nod from Thomas we strutted our stuff never-the-less, and the guys were happy to join in. Rob enjoyed the informalities so much, he invited Paradox Paul to take part in his new 'Beat Street' poet's night on Tuesday, a week later, at Hazelwood, that nice restaurant-bar diagonally across the park from the Pub. This flattery from Rob's blurb, describing himself, Andy Snelling, Xarkos Ataktos, and:

"Paradox Paul has just had two texts published in 'Bordercrossing'. This talented poet, writer and musician is a welcome guest to Beat Street and will be performing both in German and English. This clever, satirical poet is not to be missed!"

And indeed P.P. did take part, reciting 'Bucket' as the first to go on, accompanied by Jack, his new Lieutenant at the gallery and regular short-storyteller in German, who followed up with René's translation of the same story. After the others and after a break, Cécile and I would perform 'Scarecrow' together; though, we agreed, not using the hideous sound-system through which Jack and I had hardly been understood. The room is small and the audience perfectly attentive, and the crappy microphone had been seriously unnecessary. (My mistake and lesson learned: never perform first in a new situation.) But it didn't come to Cécile and I because one of us had a crises - which one is a matter of pure opinion - and we had to leave, without a word of excuse or apology to our polite host and all his polite guests.
In the street shortly after, Cécile's mood deteriorated from foul to full-blown tantrum with screaming fits, drawing looks of careless amazement (and a bit of sympathy for me, I like to suppose) from the surrounding coffee and cocktail-drinking Prenzlauerberg society, prettily massed outside the countless cafes in the warm evening. I was fairly sure she could yet be heard through Hazelwood's open windows, and painfully managed to lead her further away, ending up in Dealers Park, where she finally came down, on the soft grass, beneath a few wispy clouds and nine stars (she counted nine. I counted ten, but felt too exhausted to disagree)."

Besides that, tonight is the closing party of the first exhibition. The Tornado heads the show, supported by some Uglies and whoever else feels like making a fool of themselves. No money for drinks. Have advertised an auction, and may well get wrecked enough to sell Cliff Falls for fifty bucks - if anyone we know could be persuaded to part with such a huge sum...

August 6

SPIRIT
Coming down now, after a whopper of a learning curve, since the end of the Kreuzberg gallery. More than one curve, on various levels, making for a whopper of a roller-coaster ride, as I've mentioned here before, albeit in little detail. Moments close to flip-out, close to breakdown. Until, a little over a month ago I felt, indeed knew, everything would change again; fundamentally, spiritually, as the New Plan finally and neatly fell into place, to subvert and greatly improve upon last years New Plan. Though, of course, things we know now could not have been forseen last August and September. We were all learning together. Enthusiastic amateurs and friends, on a brave, mad venture. Those friendships quickly and severely tested.

As I suspected, and intuitively intended, with the appraoch of Peter Edel, everything did change. Life leaped to a better place. Yet, much remains the same. Basic hardships and worries in the pit of an empty stomach, at the back of a hyper-active brain, from which it seems there is never escape. But nothing intolerable. All stuff gone through, and survived, before. Again and again.

A new place to be at, this place, that's good. VERY good. Practically living in a pretty park; quiet mostly, healthy even, when I step beyond the terrace into the sunlight and the breeze. A stone's throw from the city we all love and only partly hate. Various reasons to feel detached, now, from the Pub; too many to list. Regardless of how good the good times were, the people, the events. The artists, musicians, writers and others, from Germany and everywhere else. Too many to remember (I wrote about almost none, the task too great): classic little evenings, intimate, thrilling, romantic, experimental, avant-gard, astounding, productive, drunk. Jason's birthday party. Marachowska's birthday party. Angel's birthday concert. The Jacobites without Nikki. Bruno's son on his debut, Bruno released from the hospital for it. Horse and young Zorro - Zorro, heaping shame on Wally, smashing the first Pub organ to a pile of wood, plastic and metal on the floor. Barman Karl, graffittiing bar and walls. The Uglies, blasting guests and neighbours into Wallywoodsian frenzy. The lady performer nights, all those stoned lesbians. Lee's stony-faced student friends in shock at that rude Alex Tornado. The antics of rare German comedy group Anarchopower, and the weighty words and steady presence of Papenfuss. The serious silliness of Stories in Colour. George Nickels' toilet party. Martina and Michael's 'Ex-Con' fortnight. Freespirit, arriving from Austria expecting bed and food, to play in front of approximately no-one - twice! And troups of other first class artists (always heartened by the quality of those we, somehow naturally, attract) who have exhibited and performed at the loved and disputed 'Fart Pub' since that crazy opening bash almost a year ago, during which Wally sieg-heiled everyone present and dear Cécile went missing.

But I'm here, now, and happy. Wait... Happy? At least, unusually content, unusually calm; and typically optimistic about... just about everything. As for that old case of wind, Money; Wallywoods has hardly ever earned a fiver. So fucking what. That will all change within the next two years. In three years time, five at the outside, I shall be a millionaire. That's the joke I share with my best and worst friends these days. I say it as if I believe it. As if it's clear as a comet I can see before anyone else, as it crashes its way towards us - towards me - through the stars.

The second exhibition here in Weissensee, to open (already!) in less than three weeks, I opted to call "Spirit" - for a convergence of reasons, foremost, my new astrologer buddy (an 'Astrosoph' actually), supporter and forthcoming artist, who calls himself Incal. I don't expect to write much about "Spirit" in these pages - I've written nothing about the first show, "10", as pleased as I am with the results. Eventually I'll post photos - if and when I find Holicska, who took tons at the first party, then dissappeared, more legless stoned than I've ever seen him. These exhibitions, and this space, should be visited. There is a peculiar energy here, already at least matching that of Kopisch Strasse, or the Pub on a good night. Regardless of creepy shopping mall investors, warnings and occasional hints of Weissensee Nazis, financial quagmire, and a new chapter on hunger I've hardly known since before Cécile; I find myself at peace. A well-deserved bit of peace, too, if I may say so.

Things are coming together in odd ways. Moving here has awoken much interest, not only from close aquaintances, a few bods in stiff suits and dresses, and drunkards like Mr Clayton, who lives too close by. I could never have attracted the attention the project is now receiving, had I stuck at either of the two previous locations. This is the perfect gallery space, as well as the perfect club space, within the perfect building, no matter if only till the end of the year. Until then I can do with it exactly as I please. And that's a lot - from just as soon as I get on the net (with big luck, later today). What happens after the end of December will clearly be seen by all who peruse the shifting, unpredictable heavens...

August 5

CREEPY
Sitting, reading crap, as like without a care in the world, in the rocking chair which René from Infamis recently donated to the space, drinking tea from the pot which Susan, of the doomed Tea Room, presented to me on the opening night - that mad and amazing opening night just two weeks ago - in the cosey sitting-room corner established to one side of the wide open gallery doors, beneath the Big Chairs picture which hung so long at the Art Pub - in desperate trouble again since Wallywoods moved on - half-listening to the insects, birds and families on the park grass outside.
A geeky looking, mildly stocky guy stands just inside the doorway. It is twenty minutes before closing time on a beautiful Sunday evening. I assume without much thought that he has been walking at the lake, soaking up the warm rays and pleasant Weissensee vibe - and it is very pleasant just now - and has dropped in out of good-natured curiosity, boredom or cultural interest, as others, loners, couples, small groups, regularly do. Clean grey tee-shirt, clean short hair, nerdy glasses. Clean jeans or baggy shorts (can't remember now - half an hour afterwards). Cocky smile, half-knowing, half uncertain. A step or two inside, and with hardly a glance around this fabulous new Gallery Wallywoods; he says to me, rocking in my chair, breaking off my Steven King with a smile of genuine welcome,

"Ah. They are your paintings, yes?"

German, or close to German, but could be Scandinavian. Immediately, probably without reason, I am guarded. His assumption I consider a stupid one. The many exhibits are blatantly various in style.

"No, just three of them are mine. It's a group exhibition."

"Ah."

He loiters on the threshold, without any inclination to come in further or examine the artworks. I decide quickly he's creepy, but remain, as ever these days, diplomatic, patient and friendly. Besides, I heard some marvellous news last night, a true revelation, whilst with Cécile at The Sameheads enjoyable, even inspiring, one year anniversary party at the new 'Kita' club across town. In very fine spirits then. (More about that revelation next year.)

"Oh yes, greetings from Maria," he says; and I think, oh great. Everything fine.

"Which Maria? Maria Marachowska?"

"No." He grows vague.

"Which Maria?"

I lose his sense, or he does, as he starts to converse in various languages.

"Parlez vous Francais?" (blah blah for a while in French), then "Espaniol? (blah blah..) What language..?"

The German I believe we were speaking was fine, but, "English" I say. Now I decide he is tripping, or a simpleton, or both, or who-cares-what. I've known him not two minutes, and only think, just fuck off out of here, I'm reading. Fuck off, twat.

He says, still half smiling, "Ah English. Much better. That's much better."

After another short, tedious and apparently meaningless exchange, he then says, "But unfortunately, I want to construct a shopping centre here." Pause. Now I am listening. "And then you cannot stay."

"Well.." I pause, too, for some seconds dumbfounded. Absolutely can't tell if he is indeed the fellow we know is trying to buy this Peter Edel Culture House, with as many back-handers as it takes, to construct a fucking great shopping mall where none is needed, or if he simply heard the rumour and is making a cynical but harmless joke.

I can only say, clear as bells, through a wide and hardening smile, "So what?"

Because somehow, oddly, I believe him.

"So what? yes?" he repeats, and now he is slightly at a loss. He simply turns to go. With a "well, ciao," and a half-hearted wave to go with his half-hearted smile, he departs.

I watch him saunter off the terrace and down the steps, still rocking in my chair. Then I stop rocking in my chair and look at my stupid Steven King book, "Cell". It's crammed with telepathic zombie-creatures like him - like that - and then I look at Susan's nice tea-pot.

A little computer break, next, to jot down the bones of what passed between us, like a dream before it disolves. Still waiting to get on-line, so couldn't do much more than that. I spend half my life waiting to get on-line. Only then (early this week I hope, thanks to nice chap Ulrich connecting me to his little office at the top of the building) can I get this project functioning right. Very right, if the early signals are to be believed; and I believe them.

Darkness now descending. Done.

In peace again now, within the light of Jack's candles, stolen from some church, I shall finish both: the stupid book, instead of e-mailing, and the pot of tea, instead of eating.

July 23

SETTLING IN
What a week that was. And what a party. Thanks everyone. The ten artists, of course, and especially the performers, all of whom played for free: A.Tornado, Geffen, Babel Embassy, The Uglies, Lady Gaby, David Hull, Lee Viajero, Marachowska, Mr King, DJ Jack, Frau Phiasco, Johanna X, Stefan X; and Hugo Race for a surprise set. Photos coming soon. Wally's best opening. Wally's best place. Fresh air and endless space. With endless opportunities. Only for six months perhaps, but a leap up the ladder. Drop in soon.

Not on the net or phone yet. Impossible bills to pay. Burocrats to satisfy. Huge floor to scrub. Am as poor as ever. Don't have a kettle yet. So what. Onwards, onwards...

July 2

ENJOYED SENDING THIS:

Dear friends,

I am at last very pleased to announce the unofficial opening of the new Gallery Wallywoods in Weissensee (address at bottom of page):

Tuesday 3 July, 3pm - 9pm !!

I will introduce to the space the 10 artists who are working on the first group exhibition (details below) and begin to clean and quickly renovate.

"Galerie Wallywoods, Weissensee" is 300 square meters, plus terrace, includes lounge and art-storage areas, and is directly on the park. So it's a great opportunity to develop and expand the ideas and principles born at the original Gallery Wallywoods in Kreuzberg (now a legend, as you may have heard). The new gallery will be supported, in the beginning at least, through the generosity of the artists themselves, as well as a growing number of interested parties and sponsors.

Of course there is a lot to do, starting Tuesday(!) So I'll be MORE than happy to accept input or practical help from anyone who can spare a bit of time for a good cause. Sorry - for an excellent cause. Right now, the place is empty, as it has been for many years (like Wally's bank account); there is not even a broom, nor a Besen. Loan or contributions of the following items would be especially welcome:

a broom / all kinds of cleaning equipment / buckets / white paint / brushes / rollers / sofas / chairs / tables / lights / electric fittings / extension cables / a fridge / an electrician / a piano / good door-bolts / a bottle of Champaign!!

Wear old clothes - or none at all - if you want to help get dirty. If you want to drink or sit down, bring own drinks and a chair.

Regarding the first exhibition (in less than 3 weeks!) here is what it says on the website:

"THE NEW GALLERY WALLYWOODS IN BERLIN'S WEISSENSEE
OPENS AT 3PM ON FRIDAY 20 JULY
WITH THE GROUP EXHIBITION ENTITLED: "10"
Presenting 10 artists from 10 lands
with music, performance, DJ and VIPs.
Press release is on its way!"

What it doesn't say is this - hot off the press:

The "10" contributing artists are

Young-Sik Lee (Korea)
Nicolas Vargelis (Greece)
Holicska (Transylvania)
Timur Çelik (Turkey)
Marie-Cécile Lutta (Switzerland)
Zabo Chabiland (France)
TJ Korst (USA)
Maria Marachowska (Russia)
Kai Pohl (Deutschland)
Paul Woods (UK)

So far booked for the live entertainment on 20 July (I hope!) are:

Alex Tornado
Geffen3
Maria Marachowska
The Ugly Europeans

(Please contact Wally sooon if you wanna perform - just don't ask for any money. Ha ha!)

Drinks service will be performed by "Cocktails on the Road"

However, before Wallywoods puts on its most important event, establishing it once and for all in the cross-over mainstream of Berlin cultural institutions, Wally needs help mopping the toilets!

So see you Tuesday. (If you can only make it on another day, or would like a private viewing, please phone me first.)

Wally
Gallery Wallywoods
Kulturhaus Peter Edel
Berliner Allee 125
Weissensee, 13088-Berlin

June 28

FUCK
the Verein, enough other stuff to do.

Picked up the keys this morning, stinking of beer - after a long Wednesday booze-up at the now regular and, actually, practically thriving "Lady Chansons" evening-into-morning affairs at the Pub. One of our successes there. More and more lesbians every week. So many talented sexy young singers, of all persuasions and nationalities. Unbelievable. I've put Marachowska in charge as weekly hostess with the mostess. She's brilliant. Then spent the afternoon, with a just handleable hangover, with the lovely and helpful Kathrin and her lovely and helpful man Zottel, visiting burocrats, verging on politicians; chatting between-times at the beer and sausage stand. All fascinating stuff. Only understand half of what's going on. They're putting a lot into this, lapping up the forms for me. They call Wallywoods the flag-ship of their Leerstandsinitiative project. They've even lent me the money to buy a palette of cheap white paint for the walls. I could never in my best or worst dreams do the Amts alone. Thanks guys!

June 26

CONFUSED?
Not really. Just giddy. Overloaded with the burocracy which needs tackling after hearing yesterday that I can have the space in Weissensee for the rest of the year. That's fantastic news, assuming everything works out. What's 'everything'? Where to start... Went to the job centre today to tell them about the plan and ask for information and financial support. Got little information and no support. They said I should come back in July for the appointment which is already booked and discuss it then. Kathrin says I should go straight back and protest, as it's my right to go self-employed when and as quickly as I like. Like before 1 July, this coming Sunday, which is when the lease starts. Should start. I've already begun inviting people to the unofficial opening, though I can hardly imagine having the keys by then. Regarding the contract, which they tell me is pretty good, Kathrin recommends adding an escape clause for myself (there are enough on their own behalf) in case I can't make the thing function due to, for instance, burocratic blockages. Good idea. Let's see how long that delays the process. The people renting - I know by now vaguely who they are - want to be sure I will take care of the necessary Things To Do (their list, not mine), like security, insurance, fixing wires and loose paving-stones, registering with the fire-brigade, police, by-laws police, noise-police, god himself. Says in the contract I am pardoned from paying rent as such, rather basic costs only, which turn out to be 450 Euros a month. Although that's cheaper than we expected, everyone on my side, and some at the Peter Edel house itself, reckon I should pay zero Euros, which would suit my empty pocket better. The rooms, inside a long established 'house of culture', have been unused and empty, but for an inch of dust, for who knows how many years. Along come I with a dense and wide-ranging six month plan, funded wholly by myself as a foreign unemployed artist, detailing how to bring the place to life, injecting new and international art, music and energy into the tired Weissensee district. This at exactly the time it is needed, seeing as the house is sinking, i.e. losing funding (though no-one but Dr Nelken really knows what is planned for Weissensee's most important arts centre), and will probably fall out of state grip after December, to go onto the commercial market, or the top-buddies market, to get turned into a hotel or some bollocks.

Back to the point: Things To Do...

Apart from the above and more paperwork besides (I won't mention here the tangle I've got myself into personally), and apart from the fact that I can't pay my own rent this month let alone pay the materials and help needed to open a new gallery; I really have decided to form a Verein. Soon as possible. Much better chance at tapping, at long frigging last, a bit of that elusive sponsorship money someone keeps bragging is out there for the taking. I'm almost sure Bert will be a member, and that's a huge start.

And, if there's a spark left in my giddy brain, if and when it becomes clear I can move in, there is that little part-time, unpaid thing I do of organising a program of juicy exhibitions and events. People do enjoy them! Me too. Why else would I bother with all this crud? Everyone knows I fucking hate paperwork, applications, grovelling for permission to do Berlin a favour; destroying my health in the meantime. STILL often enough without the money for a pizza. Truth is, I should let the gallery thing happen or not, and go paint that restaurant at Kollwitz Platz - I saw today they've finally started renovating. Earn huge money for putting colour on walls, with meals and drinks and prestige thrown in.

Obviously I'm not normal, because I prefer owning only one pair of trousers and being a 'gallerist' - a word I can't even find in the dictionary.

*Footnote to the last entry: Fiona wanted me to read the "Notes", so I did, but re-wrote them beforehand. T'was my favourite reading till now. In front of a hundred or more people, my right hand and right knee shook so much I almost gave up after the first text. But my voice was calm - amazing! - and I ploughed on. Very pleased indeed. And a big success overall for Bordercrossing Berlin. That night, quite full of myself, I presented the single copy I had been given, proudly inscribed, to "Alan and Another Bookshop". They sell them at St Georges Bookshop, however, around the corner, so I'm saving up eight bucks till I can buy another one.

June 13

DEAR DIARY
Thank you, fairly well. Actually, very well. But often lethargic. I know, I should write more, but I keep getting sidetracked. Well... it's the social life wot's doin me in. Hard to get out of bed. Other than that, nothing to complain about. Summer in full blast. Berliners relaxed, or most of them. I just got another message from the "perhaps, perhaps not" new gallery space. Discussions now taking place within that esteemed house: I will be informed very soon. Going over with a toothpick, I don't doubt, the latest concept I wrote with Katja at her place a couple of weeks ago (click here). Included a list of 229 artists, photographers, bands, solo-musicians, writers and other performers presented by Wallywoods since October 2004. Got them down to ground & facility costs only, with Kathrin's essential assistance; five-hundred and twenty-five a month, which I ought just to be able to afford. Stop. Rubbish. I'm broke as usual. Must pay a couple of serious bills, one of them two-hundred bucks for electricity at Kopisch Strasse I never used - I apparently failed to inform the right computers I was moving out. This nice and irrelevant news from Gerhard, who I bumped into at the Bergman Street festival this weekend. Was living at Cécile's for ten days, while Lukas' mum came to visit at the flat. Just like old times. TV, bathroom, steak dinners and chain-smoked pot. Anyway, good man, Gerhard. Never deserved for a moment what those Sendelbach wankers did to him. Did to all of us. He's now out of the place, too, set up in Wedding or Neukolln or somewhere. Before he cleared out, he had to clear out my crap left behind in the gallery; a couple of sofas, chairs, posters, old food, A.P.S. socks; and Wally's big box of private photographs, I believe (can't find them anywhere); irreplaceable evidence covering twenty odd years of his previous lives. Oh well. They were exhibited once, strewn out on the carpet in the back room there. Wally's an idiot, if I may say so. Half, if not all that stuff, he should have rescued months ago. I need a sofa for my agreeable yet spartan room here in Prenzlauerberg, and another for brave new Weisensee - if it goes ahead. If it goes ahead, everything will change again. Good job. I've emotionally amputated myself from the Fart Pub by now, and need a new great challenge. One I can control fully, and therefore make function correctly. Starting with a group exhibition called "10", as described in the application, of ten artists from ten different nations. Bit of a cliche, but a good idea none-the-less. Will ask them each for donations, to go towards the first month's rent. Everything worked out, just need the damn space. And money. Dream on. Weisensee... Perfect place for a Big Chairs assault. Will design some monstrosities to plonk around the lake. But first the paperwork. Once again I'm thinking hard about finally setting up a Verein, a club or association, getting more bodies involved, with better chances for sponsoring, easier to promote. Easier to sell booze. Katja lives around the corner from Peter Edel, and went sun-bathing in the park yesterday (she gave up work recently, after years of feeding and washing handicapped people) and spotted a little man cleaning the filthy windows. "Them's Wallywoods windows!" thinks she, rightly or wrongly, and phoned Wally, who then wrote the e-mail which prompted today's response: please wait a bit longer, the gods are creating the paperwork.

On Friday I will read for five minutes in the garden at Acud, for the second issue-release of Bordercrossing Berlin. This evening is the pre-gathering piss-up of organisers and others included in the publication, in a flat around the corner at Kollwitz Platz. Besides Fiona, I don't recognise any of the names in the line up. That's how much I read. So, let's see who they are. Main aim of the evening; make sure I can present at Acud something other than the two texts they've chosen to print, "Note on Brown Paper" and "Note on Blue Paper". I sent in ten texts and poems, and they managed to select the two least well finished. Not that that matters - I am indeed happy and excited they accepted anything. (Had they not, a dumbfounded Paradox Paul would have stamped around town in quite a temper, for the rest of the year probably.) What matters, and this I've fast been learning at the Monday Pub sessions and elsewhere, is I read something I am confident is finished and/or good enough to be launched at the world. Otherwise, I stumble, and even foolishly give up before the end. The more I look at the two "Notes", as much as I like them (Dad always liked the Brown one - I imagine for the same reasons the Bordercrossing panel liked them), the more I regret sending them. For the book, they will be re-written in any case.

May 22

MONDAYS
now taking off, slowly but surely, with weekly writers and performers' open stage evenings at the Pub. The Monday after Fiona read, four of us sat on the stage, the only ones in the room, perusing various texts. Xandi's new translation of that old Broken Love Letter to Krisztina was a slog for him, but it turned out fine. Then went through odds and sods with Cécile, who volunteered to translate The Spy; both versions of which we read the following Monday, that's yesterday already, which was better visited and very pleasant. Civilised, like. Readers were chairman Alan Layton, Giles Schumm, Birgit Kreipe, Sir Thomas (he's suddenly started writing short riddle-poems), Jack of Tea Room fame (who read randomly from a book he found on the street that day), Cécile reading a story of Katja Koschmieder's (fabulously erotic, something about priests and petticoats: Katja said after that she had sent Cécile the wrong text!) and Paradox Paul.

Mondays, then, a new high point in Wally's week - especially as the last Kaffee Burger party (featuring the brilliant music and performance from Babel Embassy) was indeed the last, until September.

May 9

BEEN DOIN' A SPOT OF READIN'
around town, gettin' some practice in. Still don't like it; get too nervous. Took along two poems to the Creative Writing Group last Friday, out there in the West. Decided on the train somewhere over Parliament that "I, Your Bribe" is either slightly unfinished or totally bloody unfinished, and did "That Sticky Place" again, instead. One chap recognised it from the MySpace Bastard recording, which was a bit embarrassing, for uninteresting reasons. But the aim above all was to find a translator for it, and I reckon I did. The young German chap, looks about nineteen, sounds about Oxbridge, volunteered at the end when I mentioned it. He recited a humorous if tedious, tightly-typed, three page rock history of a naughty Spinal Tap-like band called... er... can't remember a thing about them. Cécile sighed and tutted while he read the damn thing, like half the group, who sighed and tutted more inwardly. The text was good however, his English first rate; reminding me and others how we used to write when we were cleverer than we are now. He even laughed at his own jokes, great stuff! Whilst I and Cécile wondered how many times he had ever even been back-stage, his critics gently rebuked him for bringing in a gender of rock'n'roll journalism better suited at "some young peoples place". Well, whatever. What else was there? A learned German, fairly elderly, read some learned German. Again the African lady read, two poems, and again got generally lynched, for the weakness of the first one. After the assault, the last of the lynchers muttered something about the second poem - in all respects, a beautiful little thing indeed - "...blah blah! Blah blah blah. As for the second poem... it's o.k."
After sneaking out at the break for a swig and a puff of something (the only ones needing air - we are rude) we returned, and then I done my bit; upon which a leaden silence descended. Someone mentioned Shakespeare for no reason I could gather; another wondered (rightly) if the thing was indeed a test. Someone else said, had he written it, he would have thrown it in the garbage. Pressing him on this, he conceded, that he wouldn't have been brave enough to leave it in that form. The bright bloke opposite was miffed that this brain-soup was hardly fathomable, "..one must, after all, consider the reader." Yes, yes. Then, gesturing wonderfully, a big old German chap thought "That Sticky Place" belonged somehow to music. He said it should be recited in a bellowing voice in front of a thousand people and then, with the last line, an orchestra should jump into action.
After the fray, forgetting to get the young guy's details, we nodded goodbyes to some of these good people, and left in good spirits.

At 'Lauter Niemand' on Sunday, Katja read from an old Gegner magazine, A.Krohn's translation of the recently resurrected "Fish Fuck". It's fairly erotic, I don't deny. But Katja, at least, appreciates the pitiful romance, too. Three or four men (two of them younger than I) absolutely did not appreciate the overt and repeated references to sex. No no no no! Too much sex. This is poetry after all; please be a little dignified. With twenty people in the place, half of them women (half of them, fishy as any dream), not one lady complained about the sex. I have no idea what this means. I mentioned (fending off the men) the existence of cynical romantics, like Leonard Cohen. Then a politely accented man from Iraq, slowly known to me now for his abstract, if not absurd, comments, said there could be no such thing. I told him I come from London. The only technical input came from one of the older fogys from last time, the one who said I should chop of the beginning and end off 'Bucket'. This time, he is quite sure, 'Fish Fuck' would work better as a whole, if it lost all the first paragraph.

On Monday, we did another "Stories in Colour" writers open stage at the Pub. 'Twas the best yet. Extremely English despite her name, Fiona Mizani, brought guests (guests!) and gave us three of her extremely English Mr and Mrs stories. Alan, practising happily for his now two-weekly evenings as host, read typical bits and pieces, as did P.P., joined by Cécile doing some of Wally's first diary translations; Birgit read a story in German so touching and so serious, I wouldn't have understood it had it been funny. A young lady with wet feet (most of us arrived during a freak downpour, the sloping road outside gushing towards Mitte), I think she's called Natasha, recited two poems in English and two in German. Lovely jubely! Later, after a bit of piano and song, such as it was (P.P. and M.C.), two young guys stepped up, one after the other, to impress everyone in the smokey, damp and boozy Pub. One done Yeats. Right out of 'is 'ead. A bleedin' great long one, like 'e'd lerned it at some ponsy school. Good on yer, mate!"

I've been invited by Kai, tonight, to storm the K.B. stage, whenever I feel like it, and read that stupid bit of spam they've included in the new Floppy Myriapoda. Its about eight lines short. Hardly worth getting stoned for. However, I asked him to let me know when Bert was reading. And, after another however, with the green light from Cécile, I announced to those left conscious at the Pub on Monday, that I intend take and smash up that useless little synth I bought, sabotaging marvellously Bert's part of the show.

However, however. Don't feel like it now. Have mostly slept for two days, and feel I need a hair cut. Shall sheepishly wait for Bert to finish, shall sheepishly read the lines, then sheepishly leave the stage without a bang. If all goes well.

May 4

ACTUALLY
it was flatmate Lukas, the 3D engineer, who solved the problem and nailed the final version. The English was confusing. He thought the electric cables shouldn't really be dunked in the bucket of water. O.K. Therefore we now have:

"Zurück in seinem Zimmer nahm er die Drähte und Röhren ab die den Motor mit dem Gefrierfach verbunden hatten. Dann gab Er die Kühlelemente mit improvisierten Verlängerungen in den Zinneimer, der Kohlen entledigt und mit Wasser befüllt hatte."

and in perfekt englisch:

"Back in his room he disconnected the pipes and wires which linked the motor to the freezer compartment. He then fed the freezer elements with make-shift extensions into a tin bucket which he had emptied of coals and filled with water."

May 1

WELL UNDERWAY
to getting a bunch of texts, eventually ALL those I reckon are up to scratch, and that's rather a lot, translated into German for P.P.s first book, or books. Could take most of this year. Rubbish. It will take a bloody bit longer. Doesn't matter. As far as the diaries go, Cécile is bashing away at them every day (link, top left of this page); faster than I write. She says she's addicted. That fits her character, as well as my schedule, perfectly.

The texts must be checked again and again. (Click here for those worked on so far.) For instance, I thought René's version of 'Bucket' was finished and faultless, and it almost is. Until Helge spotted numerous minor mistakes, now put right; things I will never notice, and one glaring one, as quoted below. His own version of 'Manthing', recently finished after three nights' hard labour, I find a difficult case to decide upon. Technically, it's tricky in various ways - starting with the title, which is apparently silly in direct German. The perfectionist I am is doubtful about such loose translations. The pictures in my head which I try to describe are somehow too altered, somehow distilled (or do I mean, watered down?). On the other hand, Helge is one of the best in the business; he knows well my writing, and my person. So I will stick with 'Dieses Ding' (the compromise title I insisted upon; Helge preferred 'Mann'), until or unless a better comes up: or rather, a more grammatically and vividly accurate. As said, there can be no hurry in this work.

Here's a BIG THANKS to all those helping so far!

And here's a little correspondence between two piss-head poets:

Hi Wally,

This is a free translation again (I always prefer free translations). Maybe you should ask another German to compare both translations in order to get a third, neutral opinion:

"Zurück in seinem Zimmer klemmte er das Gefrierfach vom Motor ab. Er leerte den metallenen Kohleneimer und füllte ihn mit Wasser. Dann verlängerte die Kabel und Röhrchen am Motor, um ihn mit dem Eimer zu verbinden."

(René Schwettge's:) "Zurück in seinem Zimmer klemmte er die Kabel und Röhrchen ab, die Motor und Gefrierfach verbanden. Er zog diese mittels Behelfsverlängerungen bis in einen Zinneimer, aus dem zuvor Kohlen und in den Wasser geschüttet hatte."

(Original:) "Back in his room he disconnected the pipes and wires which linked the motor to the freezer compartment. These he fed with make-shift extensions into a tin bucket which he had emptied of coals and filled with water."

Also, I send you a happy German classical Springtime poem which I raped this weekend, transforming it into a depressive cripple bitch:


Er ist’s (Eduard Mörike, 1829)

Frühling lässt sein blaues Band
Wieder flattern durch die Lüfte;
Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte
Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land.
Veilchen träumen schon,
Wollen balde kommen.
– Horch, von fern ein leiser Harfenton!
Frühling, ja du bist’s!
Dich hab ich vernommen!


Sie ist’s (Helge der Hinterhofdichter, 27.4.07)

Schwermuts schwarzer Schreckenszwirn
schneidet durch die Frühlingslüfte.
Ätzend: wohlbekannte Düfte
martern schonungslos mein Hirn.
Teufel lachen schon,
woll’n mich bald verdrießen.
– Horch, ganz nah: der schrille Peitschenton!
Schwermut, ja du bist’s!
Dich will ich erschießen!


**************************************

Super Helge,

Thanks - I will use it straight as it is.
Nice poems too. I like the second one.
Must run to the witches..

P.P.


**************************************

Wally,

What do you mean, nice poems?

Of course, the original is nice, stupid!!! It's one of the most famous German poems of all time! And the adaption, written by Helge the Hinterhofpussyeater, is not nice at all!!! It's deep depressive brain-bullshit. But it's okay, I see that you're in a hurry. Say hello to the bitches, ah, witches, and tell them about the golden flower-shower that will run out of my pulsating power-tower when I think of them.

A bientot,
Helge, l'idiot de l'inter'of.


**************************************

Ps Helge!

Actually, I think your (Bucket) translation in this case is TOO free! Do you think you could to try again?

Wally.


**************************************

Hi Wally!

No second try!!! I squeezed the best out of my brain yesterday and I am just not able to give you a better translation, sorry. However, the free translations are the best, I'm sure! Example: Paul Zech's translations of Francois Villons poems! If you prefer the first (René's) translation, never mind, it's o.k. for me. Ask the neutral opinion of a GERMAN!

Helge.

(Helge, I though you were a German?)

April 30

"GOOD EVENING..."
That's how "Willy Blood" starts. Began writing it tonight, Valpurgisnacht, the German witches night. First bones of a short story attempted since don't know when. Hard to tackle such an over-used subject; perhaps because it comes so easily. Vampires. Ho hum. It's crap, needs surgery, but never mind. It may one day live, in one shape or other. Regarding the witches, I did indeed meet some, sexy as Hell, later on at the King Kong Club.

April 25

ONLINE
At fucking last.

April 8

TIME MACHINE WORKS BUT STILL NO INTERNET
Dear Sir or Madam,

My name is Paradox Paul. I am a conceptual artist from London, currently living in Berlin.

I have invented a Time Machine. I am serious, and it works. I have sounded out the theory on a scientist and an engineer of economics here in Berlin. The technology, as well as the theory and functionality, already exists. The idea is very simple; other entrepeneurs will slap their foreheads for not having recognised the opportunity themselves. It must be pointed out that no great number of years can yet be skipped, but certainly mili-seconds, if not seconds. That is a start. The Time Machine will be a developing and WORKING prototype, and something of an exclusive experience for anyone who can afford a ticket, which will not be cheap.

Again I will state that all the components already exist and are, ignoring my own financial constrictions, readily at hand. The project can be realised, offering "rides into the (very) near future" and generating profit within two years.

As important as the machine itself is a widespread and solid marketting plan and investment. I have some ideas as to whom to appraoch, and will first contact Richard Branson, asking whether he and/or Virgin would be interested in sponsorong the project.

In the meantime, I am testing the waters, hence this e-mail, regarding conceptual and commercial plausabilities; as well as keeping further details closely under wraps.

Whether you consider this correspondence comic or not, I would be interested in your response and/or advice, not least due to my interest in viral marketting.

Paradox Paul
(conceptual artist, writer, inventor)
Berlin
13.04.07

I noticed after sending this historic document that the fucking date is wrong. I did not send it next fucking Friday. Now they really think it's a fucking hoax. Am sick and fucking tired of bumming between fucking internet cafes, rip-off merchants, Paki-shops, half of which can't even set their fucking clocks and calendars right. A few days ago, we actually got internet access here at the flat. Whoopie. Problem is my computer, the Red Monster, won't fucking accept it and needs a massive overhaul. Operating system reloaded, all that. Can't do it myself, too fucking technical. Easier to invent a fucking Time Machine. Can't afford a fucking technician. So Wally, after having no fucking internet since fucking Christmas - hence the booking service and god knows how many other fucking projects have all but fucking died - is fucked, fucked and fucked again.

The e-mail is genuine by the way. The Time Machine works.

April 6

BASTARD
Decided the night before with Kai Pohl to take part, for the second time in my case and the first in his, in the Poetry Slam at Bastard. 'Scarecrow' we would read, I the English original, he the German translation by Ann Cotten, who I now know is not his sister. Meeting at the Pub at 8pm, Kai was already drunk, in fact still drunk from the night before. "You know, we may not go on till after eleven," says I, suggesting he take it easy. "Don't worry about me," says he, and I thinks, bollocks, who cares, and says, "All right, carry on," which he happily does. We get to Bastard and they are booked up since days, but one or two remember Paradox Paul from two years ago and he gets attached to the end of the list. Problem is, no-one knows in what order the speakers will go on. You can be called straight away, two hours later, or anywhere between.
The first act was three guys doing some god-awful poetry rap with a guitar and a barrage of schoolboy jokes. Kai hates it, me too. But they are the warm-up act, and the audience, mostly girls in their early twenties, react as if they like it. They clap and cheer this nonsense as if all present are old friends, which most of them are. Those three go on and on. It's hardly bearable, and far away in the back room P.P. is getting edgy. There are monitors hanging above our heads, but the picture is badly distorted and the camera, covering mostly an under-lit audience, is filming only half the stage. Then some guy from Dresden rants some stupid crap. Kai remembered performing with him in Dresden, recognising the stupid crap from then. We discuss the plan. I will introduce my colleague as a drunk German, which he likes, as he is unwilling to be named, serious writer and vehement anti-capitalist that he is, in this hall of cheap entertainment, expensive beer, yowling students and cruisers waiting for the disco. Then a lady is called to the stage, but she is still on a tram, and then some other guy, to whom we are also not inclined to listen. "I'm leaving," says P.P. "Absolutely not," says Kai, "you must read your text! It was your idea, that's why I'm here." Ok, maybe he's right. I can hold out a bit longer. Then the next freshman is called up for his five minutes of stardom (five minutes maximum, the rule in this first round), is marked by the jury, and the house is again asked to measure their favour by applauding, howling, booing, whatever. I only heard one 'boo' while we were there, it came from Kai at my side. I was neither stoned nor drunk enough to boo, listen or participate in any other way. "Don't worry, I'm sobering up," says he, over his fourth beer since we met. Another name is called, and it be not Paradox Paul's, so Paradox Paul gets up to leave. "You coming?" "Yes," says Kai, "this is total shit."

So we go to the King Kong Club where Lady Gaby is performing her punky texts in nasal Aussie-English, a black dood, whose birthday it is, leads some youngsters in a horrible jazz combination; and Sister Chain and Brother John, certainly the stars of the evening, get up to do there Gothic thing just as P.P. walks out the door and heads back to the Pub. No money left, no smokes, no patience.

When Paradox Paul was summoned to the microphone at Bastard, those few pregnant seconds of silence, before it became clear he was not in the building, were his poem for the night. A wordless ditty entitled "Bastard".

April 4

HOPEFULLY MARRIAGE
The Fatal Shore's record release concert at White Trash was groovy, though it seems I was the only twit who paid ten bucks to get in. Could have used the other door. Loadsa faces downstairs, including at the merchandising table, Orla's, which is odd, but very nice. I haven't seen it since Bruno's son's debut at the Pub, and only an hour before received and answered an unexpected e-mail. Conrad played this time also, with Chris R., and so did Infamis; but I the twit missed all that. Arrived in time to witness the Aussies' whole show, though, during which they proved again that they are one of the top 'underground' bands (i.e. not blatantly commercial) occasionally caught live in Berlin. A.D.III filmed; so did Bob, and so did Oli, Bruno's old Once Upon a Time comrades. Therein lie the makings of a great little movie. Rock'n'roll history.

Difficult of course to make the 11am meeting today with Kathrin and the mysterious Dr Nelken at the 'Bezirksstadtrat' (city council), a few minutes down the main road, in the complex of red brick buildings I hated so much when on the social there. Remember Frau Löffel? I wrote a poem about her. It was more than she deserved. Anyway, as top dog, Dr Nelken's office was bigger, brighter and more amiable than hers, furnished with antiques and sofas. I understood only part of the interview, which was conducted mainly between the other two (Kathrin's agenda was wider than mine - and less murky), but I was able to present the Doctor, who appeared tired or bored, a hastily made book of photographs taken at Gallery Wallywoods (outlay of seventy-five euros and two hours at the copy shop). We didn't reach the best stuff, how the gallery looked during the last three shows, of which I'm immensely proud; a few pages were enough, accompanied by stumbled, hungover explanations, upon which his comment was something like, "Ok, I get it. You've put on some events." But in the end, it seems there is more than the hint of a chance of using the old bar at Peter Edel for a temporary gallery space: only need to work out a little hillside of technicalities and paperwork. Oh fuck. Here we go again. However, still not yet having seen the interior in question (who knows, maybe it's a dump and I can drop the whole thing), I asked Kathrin if I could, soon as possible, and having a few minutes spare, she drove us over. Last time I saw it from outside in the freezing dark, this time on a sunny Spring midday. The caretaker let us in, and...

That's the place for Wally.

Will need all the help I can get.

April 2

MARRIAGE OR EXCECUTION?
Hallo Wally,

ich wollte Dich darauf aufmerksam machen, dass man die Gastro-Einheit im Peter Edel durchaus besichtigen kann. Uwe ist dort heute (Montag) bis 16.00 Uhr und zeigt Dir gerne die Räumlichkeiten. Leider konnte ich Dich nicht telefonisch erreichen, da Dein Telefon abgestellt zu sein scheint. Kein sehr guter Zustand, um als Hoffnungsträger eines in Verfall geratenen Kulturhauses zu fungieren.
Bis Mittwoch, um 11.00 Uhr beim Bezirksstadtrat, Dr. Nelken in der Fröbelstr. 17, Haus 6, im 2. Stock.

Wir treffen uns ein paar Minuten vor dem Termin vor dem Haus 6, dann können wir zusammen hoch gehen.

Liebe Grüße,
Kathrin.

Had to explain that I still haven't worked out how to use my first mobile phone.

On another subject; I don't enjoy readings as a rule. But I did walk over last Wednesday to hear Mr Pappenfuss at Burger, special guest at the 'ExBerliner' English language magazine's regular evening there. Other featured guest was Alistair Noon from England - I heard he's on the 'Bordercrossing Berlin' panel of editors - who read some of his own stuff, some from someone else (it was often unclear who he was reading at any one time) and some English translations of Bert's material. I imagine the translations were good, but Mr Noon, although he read more, or seemed to, didn't have the master's mesmerizing touch, or gravity, (Bert casts off his phrases and meanings as if from a cliff-top, apparently not caring where they land), and I didn't listen much. The Northerner emphasises the importance and wonderfulness of every syllable, as if afraid we ain't gonna get the whole wonderfulness otherwise (fair enough, his technique worked for the Germans, like A. Krohn, who was surprised and happy he understood everything). Chatted instead to Katja, another active reading and writing fan (there are so many, sexy chicks and all), and irrepressible poet B.Burgess, who is forgiven for wanting to punch Wally out last month at the Art Pub for coming between him and his last beer, though he never apologised for it. When the band started, they were clearly awful and we ended up back at the Pub to get drunk. There, Brian arranged a literary evening with his friend Hal (not present, I've never met him yet) and Bert together, while I mentioned to the latter that I am now collecting translations of various texts to go alongside the originals in Paradox Paul's first book. He agreed I send him some, which I did the next day. They are among the best and worst; at least the most finished: Ribcage, That Sticky Place, Game Rules, Note on Brown Paper, and Bad Words. Curious to know which, if any, he will work on.

Inspired and disillusioned after Wednesday night, P.P. went with Cécile on Friday to posh Charlottenberg across town and a meeting of, something like, the Creative Writers Society, mostly in English language. Katja knew about the group and refused to come along, denouncing it as boring. Well, it was a bit, but not for too long. Surprised (but not very surprised) to find our own Sabine in the chair, which certainly helped as we knew nobody else (I was particularly nervous); then, in front of sixteen or seventeen pleasant and interested peers and professionals, the brave enthusiasts discharged their latest masterpieces and were then criticised one after the other; at times needlessly, at times quite painfully. But I suppose that's part of the sport, which they all agree to and support. The nice lady of African or West Indian heritage who first read her poem, an earthly, motherly thing full of wind, fallen trees and emotional caves, left the circle later on with hardly a word to the others and something like a scowl on her big motherly face. Eventually, butting in somewhat under the pretence that we hadn't much time to 'hang out', as fun as this all was, I was invited to recite my extremely short bit of nonsense, entitled 'Abducted'. It was the African lady who noticed first, a little indignantly I thought, that the spoken words differed slightly to those on her copy of the text (one must bring fifteen copies, if possible, for the others to follow and/or doodle on). In fact, no two copies I handed out were the same. This I put down to the fact that I have never yet finished a poem or a text (perhaps only the Jesus poem); I am always going back over them, so mass printing any one of them makes no sense at all. I explained that each sheet which came out of the printer, I read, disagreed with somehow, and slightly changed. But no noses were broken, and after a deserved break (a beer and a spliff in a posh restaurant across the street) Cécile and I returned in fine spirits. We were starting to enjoy ourselves. I handed Sabine one more text, Man-thing, and when the time came, happily sooner rather than later, a darling of an old English chap called John accepted my invitation to read it, which he fittingly did; he was theatrical and classy. Before Cécile and I departed, the guy to my left asked me to sign the Man-thing script (there were no copies), which most appeared to enjoy, or at least not to criticise into an early grave; and we decided we should come along next time. Maybe I should bring this text. Anyway, the atmosphere was finally friendly and relaxed, unlike the slightly more treacherous atmosphere at the 'Lauter Niemand' spoken word evening we attended on the Sunday after.

Sunday night was fun, though at times very mildly harrowing or mightily annoying. Started at the Pub, expecting to begin the first 'Tresen Theatre', or 'Bar Theatre' rehearsal, or preliminary chin-wag, co-thought-up and organised by Helmut Ruge, the distinguished stage and radio writer, director and performer, and active supporter of his favourite Art Pub in Berlin. Everyone was late. All activities in the first two hours focused on the chess playing between Boss Tom and barman A.Krohn. Kat's recent idea of sticking a performer on a stool behind the bar impressed me so much that I brought my new piece-of-crap synthesiser along to try it out. Yes, it certainly is a piece of crap, but the idea is marvellous and simple. Then Holicska with his psychologist wife and some friends turned up, and though I stopped playing, or because of it, more people arrived than a Sunday has long-since seen, including a brilliant English guitarist and songwriter called Justin Lavash who lives in Prague, recommended by Bob who caught his act the night before in Friedrichshain. Before Justin performed, dear old Helmut read on the little stage René Schwettge's translation of 'Bucket', the one intended for the Bastard Poetry Slam a couple of years ago (I decided then to read something else, chickened-out, basically). Initially I thought Helmut should do the thing behind the bar, following at least some semblance of our bright new plan, but his stint in the lounge was good practice for things to come. Earlier, I had stopped off at 'Lauter Niemand' (English version of their magazine is No-Man's Land) in the same street, to ask the pretty lady who organises it if Paradox Paul could bring by a text around 10pm, with maybe someone to read it. Perfect timing. Justin was done, Cécile had arrived with back-up, and at two minutes to ten she and I wobbled over with Helmut, his good Lady, Helge der Hinterhofdichter, Alan Layton and Sir Thomas, who was curious to know what we were up to.

With perhaps thirty people already there (the room fuller than I've seen it before), Helmut was on right away. Clemens, the quiet, firm and competent moderator, suggested I sit at the front - otherwise, how should I defend my piece in the resulting cross-examination? For in this place, novices and regulars alike are slaughtered every week. However, Helmut survived without being thrown off (sometimes they stop people in full swing, and not too politely). I was glad his rendition was slower, louder and more clear than an hour ago at the Pub (people were unsettled, the bar there was loud), and unusually, I believe, he received a nice round of applause at the end. I shook his hand as he left me in the arena, or on its edge, without a beer or a cigarette, and a long silence followed. Clemens again invited me to take a more centre stage, but I stayed put in the stillness, suggesting there were possibly no further questions. He said, don't worry, they're coming. And then they came, some erroneous comments concerning an apparent confusion at the beginning of the story, almost entirely from one member of the audience, a regular grey-bearded critic and lip-flapper who prefers always the words his own mouth produces and cannot let an episode go without commenting upon it until everyone else is snoring or gone. Joined later by another regular gentleman, they decided between them that the text should lose its ambiguous beginning and ridiculous end. It was all very German, and I had a little trouble understanding the exactness of a couple of minor points they could not seem to drop. My defence at these times is to become Paradox Paul, with his unshakable confidence in the work, something married to arrogance, unapologetic lust for ambiguity and anti-logic, and simplicity, where possible, on answering. With moral support and comic comments coming from Cécile at the back ("What you mean? Walt Disney is frozen in Disneyland!"), Helge at the front ("All right, the beginning and the end are shit, throw them out!"), Thomas from a window seat, normally shy, who enthused surprisingly, especially about the imagery ("You have to see that, it is about a man with a bucket on his head. THAT is the main point!"), and Helmut, retired to the back row with his Lady, who agreed before returning to the Pub that the text, and René's translation, is fine as it is.

The day before going on that mad weekend with Freygang, and right on the last deadline as usual, I sent ten texts to Bordercrossing Berlin, the English language literary magazine (Wallywoods hosted one of their opening events last June). Whether something is accepted or not, it is clear that Paradox Paul needs to continue with these appearances, quietly and roughly subverting dry occasions, challenging constrictions, and spreading the good word that seriously good reading events can be as absurd as you like, creative as you like, and FUN FUN FUN.
I mean, while that last guy at Lauter Niemand was telling us his Second World War fighter-bomber story (he was almost making the machine-gun sounds) Cécile in the back row couldn't stop laughing. As I had hardly listened, so intent was I at keeping her quiet, I asked Helge, was it a comedy, even partly? Certainly not, he said, and we all laughed the whole thirty seconds trek back to the Pub.

April 1

FAKE SPAM OR GOLD DUST?
"Dear, Greeting,

I wish to bring to your notice an offer to be our international agent for the sales of AU Gold.

My name is willie Frimpong and I hail from the royal family in Takwahregion, in Ghana which is naturally endowed with the highest quality of gold dust in Africa.

I have been nominated to represent the whole of the village as the spokesman with the main objective of finding a reliable, competent and honest international buyer or agent.

We the youths of the village as taken it upon ourselves to find a lasting solution to the poor roads, cheap and standard education, rural infrastructure, good hospital and medical care and hygenic drinking water for ourselves and our entire villagers, despite the fact that we are blessed with rich natural resources like gold dust.

I hope you will be kind enough to assist us make this dream of ours a reality.

Kind regards,
willie Frimpong."

(I accepted, naturally, but upon a number of conditions. Investment enquiries through contact)

March 31

DEAR SABINE
Cécile and I enjoyed the writers group very much, thanks for the chance.

I came partly to test myself as a reader, something I'm still unhappy about, of course to test the material on living people, but especially here to meet some translators. I'm slowly putting together a selection of texts, to be published as a small book, each of which will be accompanied by a German version. I have five done already, that's a start, and would like to invite others to work on more.

Would you consider translating something? There are cynical pieces and fanciful pieces, and I would suggest sending you some of the latter, if you agree.

As for John, I would love to invite him to translate 'Man-Thing'. Do you think he has the time? I never met him before the writers group; do you have a contact e-mail or number?

In the end, I have so much to translate that the book will only happen if I can get a number of others interested. I could mention this at the next meeting, when is it by the way?

Best bald,
Paradox Paul.

March 26

MORE NIGHTMARES
Wonder if the room is haunted. Don't believe in ghosts as such, but if something terrible happened up here, could be I caught the residue again. First time was the night I moved in, or the night after. This time, goose-bumps in the cold (the oven had gone out) and dreams of a man in a long grey raincoat and Bogart hat, looking in through the window, like a Salem's Lot vampire, or standing near the door. A murder, a knife through a bleeding book, into an unknown victim. Teeth and jaws chattering uncontrollably with fear, turning to hysterical laughter and staged fun. A woman, don't know who she was, thought the book itself had been murdered, hence the blood which flowed from it. Somewhere there were children. I remember little more. Struggled, half awake in the dawn light, to shake it off, and not turn on the bedside lamp. Anything could have happened here. On the other hand, my rhythm and senses are all mixed up. Get feelings like this usually after going to bed not totally drunk.
Emotional brain-fuck.

Clocks went forward yesterday. After a late bout of freezing wind and sleet, the sun has arrived again with the Spring. Not that I see much sun. Sat on Lukas' balcony just now with tea and chocolate cake and almost dissolved into the pretty day. Opposite the Post Office on Prenzlauer Allee. All those busy people down there. Feels like Berlin. Will begin to use Lukas' second bike or buy a second-hand one. Need the exercise. Need the air.

Other good stuff include events like the opening of Holicska's abstract oil paintings exhibition "That There is This" at the Pub on Saturday. He's from Transylvania, so Rumanians, Hungarians (made me home-sick for Krisztina and Budapest), Russian songs by Maria Marachowska, in whom everyone is in love, improvised silliness by drunk Clive and Paradox Paul, guitar passed around among Mr Layton and various others in various states until morning light broke through the windows and destroyed the last of us. Two large bottles of Unicom consumed, umpteen bottles of cheap sparkling, a dozen baguettes and a huge wadge of cheese. After half a dozen friendly Poles arrived in the small hours, in Berlin to see Nine Inch Nails, Kim left things to me and I must have left things in a right mess; but I've stopped cleaning now. Peter's friend Kat, new bargirl from England and his replacement (he got a job in Erdbeer, or 'Strawberry', around the corner), does a bit of that.
Slept through the next day, missing an appointment with Martina in Friedrichshain. Was suppose to look at her paintings, which I haven't seen yet, so I can write a text about them. In three weeks she is putting on the next exhibition at the Pub, and her boyfriend Michel has lined up a healthy two-week music programme. They do a better job than I with publicity. I booked Bev Lee Harling through Michel and they brought a hundred people. Last Friday Steve Binetti played, but almost didn't because there were so few guests. In the end just enough arrived, though, and it was a fine evening (till Mad George, Maria, Stefi and I were thrown out to binge on elsewhere). The night before that, Klabunde and Fuse Empire performed before just three of four lucky guests, minus myself. But combined with Sabina's current work advertising coming shows in the right places, things will get busier. Thomas is finally doing some sound-proofing, too, after I nagged him for six months, and before the neighbours get together and close him down; and it's time to put some tables outside. Tables rescues from the Tea Room. Too cold until now. Eventually opening afternoons, park visitors will be able to enjoy coffee, cake and Kunst (Kunst is an anagram of 'art').

Far as the Summer goes, over a close game of chess the other day, Andrej forgave me for desecrating the Freygang flag (I scrawled 'Free' across 'Frey', which made good sense at the time), and with A.D.III we are again invited to join them, in August at a festival in eastern Germany. Want to practise in the meantime and conceptually do something with a piano.
I don't paint anymore.

March 25

CONCEPTUAL PEACE
Have decided to become a conceptual artist. Have always been one really, but now it's obvious. Will make things a lot easier; most of my ideas are too big to finance anyway. Paradoxically, realised this while considering how to paint an ant-shit sized Swastika for Birgit, i.e., whether to use one hair of a brush and powerful magnifying glass (paint would be too thick, so then ink, or don't paint but cut with a scalpel-blade) or just print it and stick it on the canvas...

Two alternatives came to mind, each saving time and precious energy. The first is best:

1. Don't paint it. Hang the magnifying glass, write the inscription, tell her there is one.

2. Paint a big one on the back.

(Probably won't make the thing at all.)

March 23

HAVEN'T WRITTEN A
poem for yonks. Literally. Don't quite understand why. I mean, I like writing poems, man, even if writing poems is hard work, time-consuming and mostly pointless. Just don't like reading them. Not other peoples anyway. Never have. All a bit baffling. Over the last couple of years interests have been elsewhere, no doubt about that. Music for instance. Listening, now, here in my big white room below the eaves, to Lukas' jazz while he paints the kitchen white (so nice to live in a normal living-place), as much as I hates jazz, maybe there's a start. Is it possible to write a poem like improvised jazz, or better, like classic-modern keyboard bashing (more to the point, on just three beers)?

".. .. .... .. ... . . .. .. .. . . . . . .... .. ....,
. .. .. .... . ..... . .. . .. ... . . . ... . ... ...;
... .. .... . .. . . . ...... .. .. ...... .. . .. ...?
.... .. .. .. ... . .. . ... .... . ... .... .. .... .!"

...Just tried it. No. Not tonight.

What about a second great Swastika poem then. That should be easier. Let's see...

"Adolf, you old boy-fondling, boy-slaughtering Uncle von Shit!
Why do the boys still miss you?"

That's for the boys we filmed in Dresden city centre last weekend as they graffitied a wall. Good work, A.D.III and I agreed. Then one of them Sieg Heiled us.

March 22

INTERESTING
discussion this evening in a typical Prenzlauerberg bar (name irrelevant, cosy, darkish, warmish, pretty relaxed people) over a mountain of salad with Birgit, who is not fat.

We meet a couple of times a week in various locations; I, glad to be away from the Pub, she the professional lady, squeezing in another coffee between the hundreds of things she does every day. Birgit doesn't drink or smoke or almost anything else; gave it all up the hard way. Therefore I limit myself as best I can. Otherwise we have many things in common, from favourite authors to historic battles, from her specialty as therapist in 'difficult' children to my having been one. Chat may touch upon her work-load, which can involve extremely disturbed children, my opinions here and there, which she listens to whether they are relevant or not, problems with co-workers, problems in her own past and present, problems in my past and especially present, her advice on them, whether I listen or not, problems at the Pub, my depression, addictions, aspirations; films we would like to see together. Easy in each others company, despite my reckless destruction of the physical relationship as briefly touched upon before, we seem to be taking time out from our very different real lives to compare notes, laugh at the passing world together, all that.

Topic turned for whatever reason tonight to my interest, purely as an artist I might add (already clearly on the defensive), in the Swastika. 'Heated debate' is cliché but a fair summary, although we later departed best of friends, fully to my relief. For I am on thin ice in this country saying things like, I'm an artist, I can paint what I like, I can do what I like. To which the answer comes, the Nazis also did what they liked. You see, gets tricky already. Her face dropped further when I admitted to painting a Swastika on stage at Dresden on Saturday, but of course immediately obliterated it with a heart filled in with blue. Her comment: yes that's great, make a Swastika and then paint a love heart as if you love it.. What about the those in the audience who saw it like that? Well, that, I never even considered. Typical. Exactly here we see things very differently. T'was a bit of a cold shower. I understood at one moment she questioned my morals, and naturally grew shirty. Either way we both agreed the discussion was next to useless; I, demanding she stop accusing until she see at least one of the works, which speak far better for themselves; she sticking to the point that I will never, ever, de-terrorize this symbol of irreversible evil by building one out of 'Gummibärchen' (the great German sweeties, wine-gums in the shape of little bears) or constructing one from the text "Sieg Art!". I harped on that the symbol is freely used in the States and elsewhere and wondered whether it is right that it is publicly banned in this country. Yes, it is right - and I don't necessarily disagree. Should I be able to display one within an art gallery space? No, I should not. And there we differ hugely.

I understood her disgust for the thing, and distrust in those who use it, and referred to a good friend, who here remains nameless, though he wouldn't care if I named him, who collects repulsive images which disgust me too, of severed feet, pickled babies, obscene deformities, necrophilia... That crap leaves me cold. Nor do I wish to see a series of excrement behind glass on a posh London gallery wall (the Hayward - since that impressionable age, I've never forgotten it. I was truly 'shocked'). Along those lines, who was that disgusting paedophile German artist and buckets of blood film-maker? I can hardly believe it, looking back now, but I asked Mr Evans, please NOT to show that movie with the woman fucking that dead swan at one of last years Wallywoods Kaffee Burger shows. He was certainly as miffed at my censorship as I am at being told I should not, and cannot, paint or make whatever I want.

After this banter, Birgit and I knew one another better when we parted. I knew my subject a little better, too. It's a more prickly and painful pet obsession than I fully realised, even after the great Hakenkreuz disaster at the gallery in April '05. I thought at a certain point this evening I had busted our friendship for good. But needless to say, I won't drop it till I myself have had enough, no matter how it bores or sickens others. It is both an unhealthy and healthy interest, and nothing to do with shock value and ego.

Am now working on a conceptual piece for Birgit to hang above her fire-place. After all, she's helped me a lot and deserves it. It's a little black Swastika painted in the middle of a large white canvas, with big inscription, "the best for Birgit, love Paradox Paul, Berlin, 2007". Attached to the picture frame on a bit of string is a magnifying glass. Only using this can she occasionally admire the tiniest little ant-shit of a Swastika ever painted anywhere.

Sieg Art!

March 21

FREE BUSINESS
Made it, albeit with little documentation and no idea what to expect, to the Peter Edel "Culture House" sponsorings society meeting, or whatever it was. Mostly older professional men, clever, serious, respectable, considering, among other things, under neon lights and over wads of paperwork how to spend their limited city grant. A couple of ladies, one taking notes. No drinks on the table, not even water. Kathrin Hülsse, who I've known and admired since her 'Experiment Lab at the End of the World' gallery housed my first Big Chairs exhibition in 2001, knows most of them through her developing 'empty spaces for art projects' scheme. She introduced me early on (I felt it dragging on for hours, though it can't have been that long) and I waffled awkwardly for a few minutes about the project and what I want. Quoting some figures of my own, I concluded that I and my hundreds of international Berlin-based artistic associates don't have two pennies between us to rub together. When asked how I ever intend to finance anything at all, I mentioned the fabled 'Friends of Wallywoods', in which I have complete faith, though the theory is yet to be tested. One or two board members were not much impressed, two or three were, as far as I could tell. Quote of the night, amidst all the bureaucratic verbage and non-conclusion, says one friendly old chap, "I think an artist from London around here would be sexy and bring fresh life." Good on ya, mate! I think so too. But only if independent from these meetings, budget discussions, internal strife, raise your hand to speak and so forth. Felt like a university student before his esteemed professors, most of whom know more about filling in tax forms than what is current in Berlin art today. The place would be absolutely perfect, though, with the Spring coming and right on the lake. Possible use of the old bar as a gallery-cafe, as far as I could work out, for between five and twelve months, at as little as no cost. Other spaces, too, eventually available, in this big old cluster of graffiti daubed buildings. Easy tram ride into the city. Should try to have a concept written and illustrated with past adventures (nothing too sexy) for the next meeting, if there be one.

Hard to separate this wonderful, if slim, opportunity from my old antipathy concerning all official art business, especially sponsorship applications and the such like, with which I've never had success. Official culture bods sense immediately my anarchic, sarcastic, offensive-defensive nature, and no matter what they may think of my art, which is more than good enough for any of them, I will always have difficulties meeting them in the mainstream.

March 20

TOTALLY APART FROM
pretty Australian Mary, whose forefathers come from Dublin, a small number of Ugly people showed up last night, whose forefathers come from Hell. We made music, scrawled on paper with scented kiddies pens a small exhibition's worth (to show next time?), got stone drunk and felt a lot better for the free therapy. I certainly did. The show was Wally's again, no pirates to upset or take orders from, and when the show is Wally's and he be jolly, he believe as right is wrong that everyone is jolly. And, as I endlessly, needlessly state, Wally is never wrong. On top of that, he had a brain-wave. 'Club Wallywoods' doesn't exist yet, and Sundays at the Art Pub (the last brain-wave), like all days, upset the neighbours. Jason and the Uglies feel at home at Burger, we all do by now, in fact our escapades are politely tolerated beyond comprehension; so next month's already advertised Art Therapy should be the last, followed by a monthly Club Wallywoods party, getting the membership idea off the ground at last.
Why does it take me so long to think of these things?
Answer: too occupied trying everything else first.

Supposed to go to a sponsorship info-gathering meeting-thing this evening. Take some documentation from the old gallery and present my idea for a new one. In Weissensee.
Still not convinced.

Message for Mum and Dad: I haven't forgotten you. On the contrary, I think of you every day.

The Dog is sleeping. Long last the Spring!

March 19

FREE GANG
On the road and two mad nights' rock'n'tomfoolery on the stage with Freygang; in Leipzig on Friday 16th where Paradox Paul on half a bottle of whiskey (no weed in Leipzig) paints a Swastika and the lights go out, and Dresden on Saturday 17th where Egon gives P.P. his electric guitar and Aloysious Dougherty III from Los Angeles (A.D.III from here on) is handed Tatjiana's bass, and they leave the stage. The drummer gives us five minutes and leaves the stage too.

Took easy goin' (but not always!) new-in-town painter and film-maker A.D.III to make the road movie, one of the few things planned; but left Bob and his keyboard and gimmicks behind. Bob was rightly pissed off. No space in the van. P.P. didn't take a keyboard either. Not a hammer, no red paint. Hints of Wally-bound organisational cock-ups to come. Huge lack of planning. Left behind, too, twenty meters of canvas Ceci was sweetly picking up at the Turkish market and also, as sour grapes were needed, a creative little bag of green support. Organisational masters Freigang (been doin' this for 30 years) arrived at the Pub on the dot and couldn't wait the vital ten minutes. But then why should they. Unlike P.P. the van is loaded and the crew only smoke cigarettes. Tons of them. And cigarillos. Five minutes on the road and already documenting the atmosphere, A.D.III announces he only has one hour of tape, connection to the video-beamer looks doubtful and there are no DVDs to burn on. He and P.P. need to go shopping. Captain of the DDR pirate band and living chess-playing legend, Andrej, reckons: sorry mateys, not in the stars. You'll have to wait till Leipzig. Paradox Paul half feels uncomfortable while his other half soon feels cold, and he left behind his extra clothes with his toothbrush. The window is open half the trip to let out some of the smoke. On the motorway the mood is cheery as A.D.III improves his Berlin slang, like how to say "got no weed man", but the temperature rapidly drops and the heater's not on or useless, and it can only be hoped that someone at the gig, like some chick, will donate half a joint, if shivering 'action artist' plank-walking Paradox Paul's biggest trip yet can be saved from titanic disaster. (He destroyed their sacred Freygang flag they've been hoisting up for years - at least one of them went to prison for it. (t.b.c.))

Returned on Sunday to move out of the Art Pub (come to think of it, left two days before with Freigang on the six month anniversary of our official moving-in party. Ceci, since then recovered, and Bob, getting over his disappointment, together made music and green smoke the rest of the night at the anniversary party I announced knowing I wouldn't be there). Moved into a pleasant, decent sized flat-share with an outside toilet and, inside, a coal oven, fresh white paint on the floor-boards and new flatmate, technical wizard and inventor in 3d graphics, Lukas. Top bloody floor above the old Tea Room, which is tragically deceased since last Tuesday, now a shell of a place for rent at around 1,700 euros, dollars or bum-licks.

Have heard, and this be no bullshit like most of above, the Mayor wants to sponsor Wallywoods a 300 square meter hall in a Weissensee cultural complex, the Peter Edel building, whatever that is, near the lake, with jazz club attached, for putting on, well, culture events presumably. "Neighbourhood-friendly" is a requirement. No Swastikas, no kids clothes in the window printed with KICK ME TO DEATH and no George Nickels pubic hair. Mr Bean cakes then. Starting with a big group exhibition and a punk band. Stop. Harp, flute and a grand piano to hammer on.
Crossed fingers touch wood.

The fourth Wallywoods Art Therapy at Kaffee Burger is tonight. Haven't organised a thing for it, not even sent an e-mail. Hardly organised a thing for the last one, and that was the best. Will put some paper and crayons on the tables and provide the bar staff and one or two other patients with some soothing noise of bearable nature (been practising with Freygang) on Kaffee Burger's synthesiser. The Ugly Americans may turn up. Been practising with them, too.

March 7

UPDATED THE WEBITE
with the first German pages. Should have been done long ago, but now Sabina is helping,
some kind of Praktikum. How nice. Will get some advertising done too.

Pushing on.

March 6

THE ETERNAL OPTIMIST
The world has stopped moving. In a hidden part of it I am swimming in mud. In a small back room filled with mud. Swimming, however, is an exaggeration. Swimming suggests productive physical and spiritual activity. I lie perfectly still in the mud, trying not to breath too deeply. At night, there is no-one on this side of the Earth. What has happened? Six months ago life was better than all right. The gallery was everything. The Pub was the future. Now things have ground to a halt. Drowned at the bottom of cloudy bottle of beer. Yet, at the same moment, within the few hours each evening I am conscious, even active, I am ceaselessly working, and things do not stop. That is never a bad thing. Ceaselessly working as ever and always to fend off the Dog. Inventing, plotting. Heroically, stupidly. Meeting an endless stream of people. But for what? With what result? Who gets paid? Should I pay them? Who, one glorious day, will pay me the mountain of money I've earned until now? And here, at the edge of the world, with whom do I belong? Friends, enemies, witches, saints, total fucking idiots all around. Time-wasters, vampires, children and wizards. Princesses, Goddesses, sluts. Keep me well occupied, they do. Occupied I am, too, whether sleeping or not, with imaginings, imaginings, imagenings. There is no end to my creation, yet nothing is created. At least nothing of handy weight, cast in concrete or bronze. There still does not exist a Big Chair larger than a single meter in height. Not anywhere. That's not ridiculous, that's scandalous. The spark never dies, however. Is in fact as strong as ever. But it seems right now that nothing catches fire. Living in the Mud Age. How long did it take to invent that first fire? And how long will it take for the world to budge? That final budge, when all is released, realised, accomplished and payed for?

Chronic depression, like ewige einsamkeit, alcoholism, colour-blindness or low intelligence, can't be healed. Faced and fought often enough in this mud-filled cell, it wins battle after battle. But so what. I am winning the war. This wounding, this cramp, this choking on mud, more annoying than painful, will belong to history soon enough.

Birgit told me, in my words here (it was just after my little 'episode' which almost finished us right at the start) that she's rarely met someone so ostensibly stable, socially adequate and whatever else, able to conceal below a fragile surface such a plethora of deep-rooted problems and crud. Correction, mud. She suggested I visit a psychologist, but how silly is that! She is one. And a prettier I won't find.

March 1

ON SOMETHING
more of an even keel right now, despite recent boozing, drug binges, breakdowns and half-fulfilled affairs. A dribble of money coming in. Looking at spaces, huge, tiny, grotty, dripping dungeons and flourescent office cells, top prices to not-exactly-bottom. For the new gallery, or whatever the place should be. Weissensee a sure option, but who wants to be in Weissensee, as pretty as it might be? Odd little spaces all over the place. Will find it before too long. American artist Aloysious Dougherty III is also looking. Off the plane a couple of months ago, living between hostels, only basic needs, space to work, a bit of tap water and a bunk. Will find it before too long...

Interesting Tarot reading by Cécile yesterday. What's your question, she says. What do you think: how can I make money? Not yet expert myself at making money or Tarot readings, this is what unfolded. First card: wheel of fortune. Second: the money card - no joke, pictured a bag full of fat gold coins. Cécile said: don't go straight for the money. Go through the third card. Third card: a man sitting down. She said, intelligence and distance. Work it out. Fourth and last card in this first session: interior of a room with barred window. Outside the window, what do you think, a whole bunch of money. She said, you won't get it. Mildly infuriated but a lot less cynical than years ago, I asked over what time period the reading is relevant. She said, oh, two or three months. So, no problem, everything clear. Carry on as usual; but as recently here suggested, concentrate on Paradox Paul, the performing, the art. Then Cécile performed a second set (her acting days as well as her gypsy roots shine through), a more general life and loves type thing. First card, a beautiful woman. Full blond locks, unquestionably Birgit! Later on Cécile said no, the card had had black hair. So, er.. wait a minute, Katja then! No, better still, Miss O., the girl from Dublin I've adored from a distance over ten years, until a few weeks ago when she turned up for Bruno's son's gig and stayed for an all night smooch and all next day get-to-know-you chin-wag. Not seen or heard from since. Poor Wally. The other eight cards, can't remember, except that they were true enough to life, understandable, playfully helpful. Until the last card, Death. I remembered ending on Death a year and a half ago when Mad George read for me at midnight after that Halloween party at the gallery. Of course, Death means CHANGE...

February 18

TOO MUCH TO REPORT
Apparently, unbelievably, the cooks, if I understand Boss Tom correctly, which is as likely as unlikely, want their jobs back. This while we (stand corrected, I) am considering legal action in the face of almost daily harassment... CENSORED... A couple of days ago I said to Thomas, do you think they will stop at the last pay-off? To say the least, he looked doubtful.
Wrote again today to lawyer friend M.M. There is a new law coming out in Germany regarding stalking. If push comes to shove, this will help. And a bunch of things besides.

Told Thomas this is the most difficult job I ever had. Now, my personal dilemmas, on top of everything else, have made it almost impossible. Had something like a panic-attack this week, more about that and private stuff later; too close to the bone now. Have pretty much stopped booking - cannot function here without internet, phone or money since Christmas - or helping out in practical ways. However, will NOT abandon the project. Too much of me in it, and I don't enjoy defeat. Am taking a 'holiday', time out to find a place to live (have been back in the Pub since leaving the flat-share, under no happy circumstances, unable to pay the rent there) and concentrate on the bigger plan.

Regarding the bigger plan, as murky as this all sounds till now, things are progressing amazingly well. Eternal optimist Paradox Paul has started, especially after advice from his New York astrologer Angel Eye, to take himself seriously as artist and stage performer and is now practising and performing, mostly on keyboards, occasionally with a hammer, at every opportunity. Highlight in his weird career so far occurred about a month ago at White Trash, which, in fact, he has otherwise boycotted, with darn good reason. Angel, in town for a week to celebrate her birthday (her concert-party at the pub was a Wallywoods all time classic, funny as fuck) invited him to join her and play the piano, up in the restaurant arena, along with Sid the Theremin player and a jolly old Berlin bass player who I never saw before, or since. We met on the stage, he said what do you play? I said, I don't really, I do a bit of this.. He exclaimed happily, rightly as it turned out, Hey man, they won't never have heard anything like this! In the place for the first time since the great Xmas concert rip-off, I mentioned the great Xmas concert rip-off to event organiser Wolfgang, who had nothing to say other than see boss Wally (White Trash's Wally - the one who punched Nigel the tatto artist in the face two or three times last week without warning for getting in the way by helping out on the door - lesson: don't get between Wally and his dodgy door income). I said, well whatever. Who does the piano belong to? Wolfgang looked nervous; he does every time I'm around come to think of it. He said it belongs to the club. I said, if you want our performance to be remembered long after I'm out of here, let me smash it to fuck at the end with my hammer. He laughed a nervous 'no thankyou very much' and that was that, until the subject came up again later. Extremely nervous backstage, then after a hasty marihuana binge thanks to sunny girl Mariko X, surprisingly relaxed, actually completely at home during the concert in front of a packed house. Angel's duelling with the Theremin was stunning, a match made in heaven and hell. I didn't do much musically, just banged away a bit sometimes. Thankfully, worried that I had wrecked the show or at least degraded it, Sid told me later they hardly heard what I was doing because there was so much going on, too much, indeed, he thought, including playbacks. For Paradox Paul there is never too much happening on the stage. To Angel's high anoyance, a second set didn't occur because Wolfgang suggested we were too loud. Relaxing afterwards on the kind of ship's poop-deck overlooking the restaurant, Angel, earlier sceptical at the idea, and by now pretty pissed off herself, agreed I should have hammered their fucking piano to shit anyway.

Regarding stage chaos, in fact a heap more chaotic, the open stage jam night at Burger a couple of week's ago was mad as nuts, but great fun for all involved. All stone-drunk and free wheelin. P.P. shared his keyboard with anyone who wanted it (actually Thomas' keyboard, which he found at the junk yard whilst dropping off the deceased Ugly American's 'Martian' piano which Wally was permitted to hammer to death for his birthday present in January), Maria M. and talented new friend Stefan wailed some kind of Siberian Blues opera and Johanna whatever-her-name-is (Streisand meets Maclaine) chain-smokes, loses and shares so many joints that no-one noticed when Ken unloaded his Farfisa for the grand finale. The youngsters, who arrive before midnight for the silly free disco that takes place every night, didn't know whether to dance or leave, never to return.
A repeat of the fun will take place at the next chaos jam on March 8, under the newly invented title: NUTS (New Underground Trends, Berlin).
Tomorrow night sees the third Wallywoods Art Therapy at Burger, with Birgit, Cécile and Farfisaman. All very fascinating. Mostly improvised on the spot. Why not. I always hated homework, Wally hates practising and Paradox Paul's love-hate relationship with chaos is probably the reason he has been invited by Freygang to appear on stage with them in March at Dresden and Leipzig, each time before 300 screaming fans. What will they make of P.P., what will he do? He hasn't a clue. Who fucking cares.

Urgent message for anyone still reading this irregular and extremely short-hand blog:
Wally STILL needs a place to stay, cheap, with internet and phone.
Wally STILL needs a space, any suitable venue, to launch the next gallery-club-thing he has been formulating over the last two years or more. Stay tuned, some interesting options have very recently come to light...

February 1

HALLO WALLY
ich freue mich immer von Dir zu hören. Schön, dass Du noch an uns denkst. Wir sind noch dabei und haben eine Verlängerung für ein weiteres Jahr erhalten. Jetzt soll es erst richtig losgehen. Die letzten Monate waren die Vorarbeit, jetzt wollen wir Vermitteln und Leute in Läden versuchen reinzukriegen. Unsere Aktion sieht kurzfristige künstlerische Aktionen für bis zu 5 Monate vor, möglichst günstig bis umsonst und Jahresverträge gegen Betriebskosten - zusätzlich soll schon eine Gegenleistung erfolgen, nur eben nicht monetärer Art. So weit unsere Idee, jetzt müssen wir die Hausverwaltungen noch überzeugen, das wird unser Geschäft sein und mir graut noch ein wenig davor.

Wir haben viel gelernt in den den letzten Monaten und Erfahrungen gesammelt, uns vernetzt und eine Reihe Ansprechpartner und Unterstützung erhalten.

Wenn Ihr Interesse habt, seid Ihr gerne zum 15. Februar in die Brotfabrik gegen 20.00 Uhr eingeladen. Hier wollen wir Interessierte einladen und unsere dezentrale Kooperative Weißensee mit weiteren Ideen befördern.

Erstmal Grüße,
Leerstandsinitiative Weißensee,
Kathrin Hülße.
E-mail: kontakt@leerstandsinitiative.de

January 30

HI KATHRIN
Hope you are well in 2007 - long time no see, how time flies.

Are you still involved with the empty spaces project in Weißensee (or anywhere)? I know a number of artists now, including myself, very interested in finding gallery/atelier/events space(s) in Berlin.
Otherwise, do you know where else I can get some info?

Wally.

January 23

WINDY ANSWER
to the e-mail invites sent out this week:

Yes. Come all you proud slaves and females to Wallywoods, the place to be, the place one would have to invent hadn't some idiot done so already. The name 'Wallywoods' refers to Hollywood (severely untrue - Ed), a happy place in the United Shit of America. Here, films are made for the sole purpose of confusing its viewers. The concept of Wallywoods is similar. Only Wallywoods instead presents ART. Big Fucking Chairs, for example.

Nobody really knows why Wallywoods was created. Some people say it is an excluded part of Paul Woods' soul. Others say it mirrors the very chaotic lunacy of the dreadful contents of a little box, deliberately bound and gagged and sunken to the floor of the dark abyss that is the mind of Paul Woods. Again others say, it is the materialization of the ill-favoured thoughts of the ill-fated artist that is Paul Woods.

But. Whatever it is. Beware! Beware! Beware! You may encounter what you thought you had left behind: silly fat drunken old ladies with big tits and bad breath, arse-airing baldies accompanied by heroin addicted ghosts of Nicky Sudden and other intoxicated Old Nicks. You may ask yourself: Why is this place existent? Is it an adult playground? I do not know. But I go there. And it makes me feel fucking HAPPY! At Wallywoods we are ALL happy! We are so happy! So happy! We are so fucking HAPPY!

Alex Tornado.

January 17

POSSIBILITIES
Due to the number, range, quality or sheer wackiness of events, as well as the vibrant community of artists and local supporters which Art Pub Wallywoods is now home to; constant visual change and weird technical developments, often involving every bod who walks in the door with just about every aspect of running the place; Boss Tom's fanatically relaxed attitude and tireless commitment to his pet project of a lifetime; the charming but nutty-to-a-man-and-girl team of personalities who work in the bar; and I assume not least, my own ceaseless never-get-bored creative energy in spite of (or due to) a stack of personal worries; the Pub has more character and positively notorious history already than most of the trendy, or simple yet popular, bars which surround it. Man, are those places dull. They stick to one or two winning gimmicks and NEVER redecorate. But more bums on seats are needed, here, if bills are to be paid on time, or at all, in the coming year. People need to pigeon-hole establishments they enter before leaving, never to return, because nothing particularly stuck in the mind. Sure, the Pub is a NICE place to hang out for an hour or an evening; the walls, guests and happenings are coming along NICELY thankyou. Yet something fundamental is missing (I don't mean advertising, which I intrinsically don't hold with, although true enough, the slightest bit would certainly help). Something very simple. So I wrote a list of possibilities which I will present to Sir Thomas upon the new opening up time of 6pm this evening. My favourite is number ten:

1. Topless bar staff

2. A weekly TV show

3. Art Pub beer mats

4. Free drinks for black ladies

5. Fish & chips

6. Afternoon discos

7. 24 hour surveillance of lounge and stage over internet

8. Art auctions hosted by someone a bit famous

9. Dating service

10. Happy 5 minutes

Happy five minutes means, every day all drinks are free between 7pm and 7.05pm, followed by half price drinks until 7.30pm. We gotta get the people here earlier in the evening, simple as that. What do you reckon guys? (Boss Tom unfortunately reckoned: no thankyou, too crazy, too risky. End of widely agreed brilliant idea. One of countless classic examples.)
Here are the guys:

Sir Thomas (Boss Tom. Photographer, ladies man and debonair entrepreneur. Technical genius. Eats paperwork. Buries Wally's best 'trashy' ideas).

Prince Pete aka The Punk Scientist (Shy lad, came to visit and fell in love with Berlin, has since blossomed and decided to stay and make a family. Is now writing a play. Sometimes gay).

Maria (Beautiful young painter and velvet voiced singer of her own Siberian Blues. Mostly gay).

Frau Puschel (Shocking blonde hair with tongue to match, and mistress of rising importance. Sometimes gay).

Kim (Enthusiastic, large and reliable uncle figure, ideas man and cocktail specialist. Unobviously, but permanently, gay).

Guido (Struggling singer-songwriter. Once had a terrible accident. Slow but solid chap behind the bar. Girlfriend plays chess).

Xandi Krohn (Writer, artist, musician, quiet intellectual. The only local working in the bar. Girlfriend just kicked him out, but he'll get over it).

Zeppy the Art Pub cook (He doesn't know it yet. Had his first working shift last week and didn't turn up. Musician and Austrian, but well loved in the scene. Girlfriend is A.Moon, ex-girlfriend of Mad George).

Wally aka Paradox Paul (Most disputed member of the team. Both indispensable and completely superfluous. Has never had a boyfriend).

January 10

ART THERAPY

Changed the title of last month's 'Group Therapy' at KB to 'Art Therapy' and the theme from 'How to stop drinking' to 'How can an artist make money in Berlin'. Much more fun. Phoned to invite two dozen artist mates and acquaintances (also musicians, writers and Mad George the actor who turned up too late to get treated) and a dozen or more came along. That's more than twice as many as came along last time. They sat in the circle of chairs set out on the hushed dance floor (forming a perfect semi-circle of guests and an imperfect semi-circle of empty seats) to take part in the supposedly serious yet informal discussion, which Ken led. Infamis René later said the atmosphere was stressy and didn't wish to stay. Bert also sneaked off early, preferring treatment with his usual couple of beers a couple of blocks away at the Art Pub. But Joachim, also present at the first (and last?) Group Therapy, said it was far better and functioned well on the whole. Wally himself listened to the chat from the stage whilst painting on Cliff Falls, hauled over from the Pub, which will never be finished. The original plan was to offer it for a cheap price, like 800 bucks, which of course no-one in the room would have handy, being mostly piss-poor artists, then hack it into 80 pieces to sell off at 10 bucks each (a variation of events in Paradox Paul's "1001 Ways to be a Fashionable Artist"). May do that one day when the room is full, if ever that occurs, or if I get angy, which can occur any time these days; but decided to keep the thing whole for longer because, well, I'm starting to like it. I've always like it, really, in a dissatisfied way, but at last I begin to see a day when it may seem almost finished, which might well be enough; and then sell it on some sunny faraway future date for at least its 4000 worth. (Here is a compressed Photoshop enhancement of the centre of the picture, recently discovered in an old file usefully named 'Pauls folder'.) In the middle of the arena was plonked the pedestal made last year for the gallery by that social misfit Edgar, carried over too by good Art Pub colleagues, with scrawled upon its front face the words 'for Wally, the poor artist', on top of which was arranged in a minimal manner the gallery's old red cash box, opened wide and empty like a gaping mouth. Which is just how it stayed until the end, apart from the mysterious appearance of a 50 cent piece and, ultimately, a five dollar bill, thrown in by Kim, latest member of the Fart Pub team (Ugly's One's alternative name suggestion), who told me he thought it would encourage others to put in more. Ha! Little knows he about the paupers I invite to these things. So Wally felt guilty and wanted to give it back to him, but was gallantly refused. Encouragingly, Prince Pete, now back from England, said it was a super little set up, with Klausie among others plopping away therapeutically on the old Martian keyboard, Ken throwing in bummers to distract the otherwise seemingly useful discussion, Birgit the recent-met blond bombshell psychologist who did a grand job of spontaneously co-hosting, musical pauses advertised as 'Shock Therapy' with just about everyone banging on the Martian and Alan of 'Graham Clayton with the Long Name' on angry poet's rap; and, hardly surplus to the arty guests, a couple of Italian programmers or something just landed in Berlin for a beer, getting pressed by Ken, who's mind seemed pressed the whole time with one fundamental question, "..but what is your FEAR?". Whilst Wally, pleasantly stoned and unusually relaxed, highlighted his Cliff Falls away, back turned on the event for most of its oddish duration. Thanks also for their participation, Thomas Franz (singer-songwriter), Peter Hecht (sculptor, singer-songwriter), Johanna Martin (painter, sculptor) and Elvis Soundman.

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