Next to the Opera House and the Stadt Theater building in Dortmund, Germany, is a corrugated, metal structure resembling an abandoned boxcar, or the foreman's office on a large building site. An echo of the Opera's retro-futuristic curved green roof has been tacked onto one end, a completely useless attempt at architectural unity. This is the "Kinder Oper." (Not a nicer opera, but an opera for kids). Contemplating this structure next to the larger buildings in the complex inspires something of the Spinal Tap Stonehenge effect. That somebody hauls a Peavy guitar amp out the door as I'm staring at the thing completes the impression. And then I notice the activity across the spotty, dry grass. Darting everywhere are rabbits. Not one or two rabbits, but five, six--maybe a dozen just at first glance. They scurry under the Kinder Oper; hop out the other side. Stop in the middle of the lawn to sniff and nibble. Everywhere I look there are Rabbits. They practically run into each other, there are so many of them. Maybe it is a kinder opera...
Over the course of the week in Dortmund, every time I walk past the Kinder Oper on the way to my new office, the rabbits are there, happily ignoring me. If only they knew how good they make me feel. I ask my friend and future boss, the new artistic director of the theater, if he knows about the rabbits and he says no. Am I the only one that sees the rabbits? Are they the bunnies in my head? I see the rabbits at the restaurant around the corner where I go for daily cappucino; I see them in the park by the subway. Dortmund is lousy with bunnies! What a wonderful surprise. The only place I don't see them is by the meth clinic--right across the street from the theater offices. My walk to work every day will end with hookers and hares. An appropriately thespian right of passage, somehow.
Dortmund. The Pittsburgh of Europe. I've been saying this for a while now--since I've known that's where home base will be for the next year or two. Nobody knows where Dortmund is. They always ask where the nearest big city is. I answer "Duesseldorf," but Dortmund's actually bigger. It's just that nobody's ever heard of it. The forgotten city. Everybody in Germany seems to have heard of Pittsburgh, though. Or maybe they just think it sounds funny. There are still people in Dortmund because they had nowhere else to go after all the jobs disappeared. Unlike Detroit, for example, where fields and forests are reclaiming the land we used to build the machines we needed to raze more fields and forests. They're farming in downtown Detroit these days. But not in Pittsburgh or Dortmund. Incredibly, there are still people in Pittsburgh too--down by the river. Enjoying all the new, yuppie cafes and bars. Dortmund hasn't quite made it there yet, but is definitely in the process of trying.
Andy Warhol is from Pittsburgh. On the amazing album, Songs For Drella--(maybe not quite the best thing Lou ever did, but definitely, outside of the viola drones with the Stooges, the highpoint of John Cale's career)--Andy's exodus from Pittsburgh is well documented. One of the reasons the people stay in Dortmund is probably because Germany is--or has been--slightly more inclined than my little country--to take care of those who can't quite take care of themselves anymore. I don't really know why they stay in Pittsburgh. Maybe it's because people who mine and forge for a living are proud of what they've done and justifiably a bit tired when they're done doing it for a lifetime.
Germans--Europeans in general--are less likely to move; change cities, that is, than us peripatetic North Americans. We'll follow the money--and our whims--wherever the trail may lead. Europeans are always amazed that there's no place for an address in a U.S. passport. I just spent a week looking for an apartment in Dortmund and the first thing I learned is that there are no kitchens in German apartments. There's a water pipe sticking out of a wall. That's it. IN the U.S., the kitchen comes with the place, on the assumption that you literally cannot take the kitchen sink with you when you skip town. Let alone the oven and the fridge. Not so in Deutschland. Don't these folks ever have to steal away in the middle of the night to set up a new life in some god-forsaken Bavarian village? Well--they do move--more and more, but they still don't think they do. So--no kitchens. And no closets either. You have to carry your dresser on your back too. That'll teach you to go live somewhere else where you don't belong!
They're planning a production in Dortmund called Heimat Unter Erde. A look at the the recent history of the city from the deep perspective of the mines--and the tens of thousands of immigrant workers who went down all those miles and if they were lucky enough to come back up, stayed in town beyond there allotted time. Everyone's black a mile underground. So one afternoon I got to play with a Turkish Saz virtuoso and then an hour later I was in a church meeting room 3 meters in front of 30, drunk 70 year-old men singing mining songs in four-part harmony. I'm supposed to be the one that brings 'em all together.
Also last week I met a guy who plays guitar in a theater production of Songs For Drella that's a big hit in the "Ruhr Gebiet"--at the big theater in the next town over from Dortmund. The Germans turn that album into a musical and at least some of those old miners from the Pittsburgh of Europe love it. Go figure.
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