Miniatures #22

I've already mentioned how much I get a kick out of British understatement. Recently Ursula spent the weekend with a friend of ours in London. Arriving at Heathrow and finding her way through the check-out she was uncertain which line she needed to stand in. She asked one of the officials standing around. He pointed to a line on the other side of the room and replied: "You may enjoy the queue over there."

Miniatures #21

Before I started running cinemas my pals and I were avid record collectors. We had our own mail order, traveled around Europe (especially England) to find rare stuff and organized regular exchange markets with collectors coming from all over Germany. Of course, you got to know a lot of people and soon you knew what they were searching for.
One day at one of the markets a fanatic collector of Rolling Stones records came to our booth and asked about something completely different. I helped him out, then asked him about his Stones collecting. "Nope, I'm out of that for good. After 70 live versions of Honky Tonk Woman I realized that I must be out of my mind."

Miniatures #20

One afternoon while working at my cinema I got by a gypsy who more or less forced herself upon me to read my palm. Besides other dubious predictions about my love life and enemies she predicted that I would reach the age of 85. Since I'm convinced that I'll become at least 100 years old I objected to that statement. The gypsy replied: "But that's not what your hand says!"

Miniatures #19

British understatement is proverbial, and I always get a kick out of experiencing the real thing. In the movie An Education there's a scene in which the 16-year old girl is in bed with the intention to lose her virginity to a much older man. The man makes a silly and quite inappropriate suggestion, so she get's out of the bed and calls it all off: "I might have lost the feeling."

At work I had to speak to a customer in the UK personally, so I called up his number and asked the person taking the call: "Am I speaking to Mr. (the customer's name)?". The Englishman on the phone replied: "I'm sorry, I'm afraid so."

Miniatures #18

Recently I watched the 3-hour-long documentary Die große Stille (Into Great Silence) that tries to emulate the everyday life of the silent order of Carthusian monks.

Therefore there's hardly a word spoken during the whole movie, although the monks do make a lot of noise without chatting. Since they are allowed to speak at a certain allotted amount of time, I think once a week for a short session, I was very much looking forward to hear what such men would be talking about after so much silence.

Since the movie is in itself a bit of a meditative experience my attention drifted off for a moment till I realized it had arrived at the monks' colloquy. They were obviously talking about cleanliness, and I heard one monk saying. "It's not that I forget to wash my hands, but that I forget to make them dirty."

Miniatures #17

One of the main reasons I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning is that I don't like to have my dreams interrupted. Once the alarm goes off, and I'm half awake, I close my eyes again and try with all my might to continue that interesting dream I was just having. Usually it doesn't work, though...

W.K.

Miniatures #16

I usually wear a Borsalino-style hat, but this year my mother bought me one with a buckle around the rim, so it's now a bit more Western-style than classic.

This weekend in Berlin Ursula and I were at the subway station under the Alexanderplatz. A woman walked by shoving a pram with 2 wee kids, a boy and a girl, in it. The boy pointed his finger at me and exclaimed: "Look, Mommy, a cowboy!"

W.K.

Miniatures #15

I generally express my personal opinions moderately, and in verday life I hardly ever get into an argument. However, online, especially on discussion baords, my moderate opnions very often get drastic reactions from my friends. It seems that in the realm of virtual communication your standpoints appear to be so much more offensive.

W.K.

Miniatures #14

It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Aphorisms

Miniatures #13

It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the railroad station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me feel uncertain of the way, I was not very well acquainted with the town yet, fortunately there was a policeman nearby, I ran to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: 'from me you want to learn the way?' 'Yes,' I said, 'since I cannot find it myself.' 'Give it up, give it up,' said he, and turned away with a great sweep, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.

Franz Kafka: Give It Up

Miniatures #12

A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life
by David Foster Wallace

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed very hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one.

Miniatures #11

I'm always irritated when I hear someone saying that they are trying "to find myself" as in: "I ended the relationship, because I need more time to find myself". I imagine split personalities running down the street in search of their other halves.

The accurate reply should be: "Go look into the mirror."

Miniatures #10

At work there was a young female colleague who sat at the desk next to me. One day I heard her talking to a friend on the phone. She was complaining how much she hated the movie Lost in Translation she recently had seen and even went into details with her disgust.

Since I love the movie and consider it to be a masterpiece I kept my mouth shut.

It was maybe a year or two later I heard her again complaining about the same movie, she must have watched it again. I asked her: "I knew you hate that movie, why did you watch it again?"

She replied: "I thought I might have been wrong the first time, but now I know I wasn't."

Miniatures #9

I never have believed in anything supernatural and never have been superstitious, I've always been sceptical about these things.

So, when I got hands onto the I Ching, I thought I'd test it out with a question I thought would reveal its shortcomings. After all its answers were generated by chance operations, I used flipping coins.

My question was whether I would ever win the jackpot at the lottery.

The I Ching's response was that I had asked an illegitimate question and that I should not misuse the I Ching by mocking it.

Miniatures #8

Just to see Ornette Coleman, one of the last living legends of jazz, in concert, I drove down to Austria with my pal Gerhard. It was 7 hours driving back and forth, all-day standing in 4 separate concerts with a lumbago killing my back, bumping into an oldtime pal I hadn't seen for 10 years.

And then the sensational music of Ornette Coleman, still sounds fresh, although he's already 79 years old and not physically fit anymore.

The day after you're back to work, and it all seems it was just some kind of phantastic dream, and the rest of the world appears to be like in a haze.

- W.K.

Miniatures #7

(Rembrandt, Bathsheba)

An acquaintance of mine had once worked as a museum attendant at the Louvre in Paris, and he told me that very often American visitors would ask him: "It is an interesting collection, but why are there so many nudes?"

W.K.

Miniatures #6

A scout burst into the room, through the door. "Porcupines!" he shouted.
"Porcupines what?" the Dean asked.
"Thousands and thousands of them. Three miles down the road and coming fast!"
"Maybe they won't enroll," the Dean said. "Maybe they're just passing through."

Donald Barthelme: Porcupines at the University

Miniatures #5

A colleague of mine came back from a trip visiting an aunt of his in New York City. It was his very first time there, and since it's my favourite city I really wanted to know how we liked it.

"I was not impressed", he said. "It's just a very big and loud city."

Disappointed I replied: "Well, isn't it THE big and loud city?"

W.K.

Miniatures #4

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie sleekly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.

Franz Kafka: The Complete Short Stories

Miniatures #3

[John] Cage was asked to provide music for a film on the work of Jackson Pollock. The directors, Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg, had thought to use Balinese music, but Pollock wanted something more American; his wife, Lee Krasner, approached Cage. As Cage later told Irving Sadler, "I couldn't abide Pollock's work because I couldn't stand the man." He recalled elsewhere, Pollock "was generally so drunk, and he was actually an unpleasant person for me to encounter. I remember seeing him on the same side of the street I was, and I would always cross over to the other side." This is probably the strongest expression of dislike by Cage on record. Cage refused Krasner's request but referred her to [Morton] Feldman, who accepted it in return for an ink drawing.

David Revill: The Roaring Silence. John Cage: A Life