At midnight on January first 2011, all hell breaks loose right under my living room window. For the next hour, half the people on our block methodically light sparkler after sparkler and launch rocket after rocket, joining with millions of other Germans in an explosion of light and sound as incendiary as any battle--or at least the Hollywood incarnation thereof. The men--these pyros are all male and hundreds of liters of beer past boyhood--methodically walk to the center of our neighborhood crossroads and take turns lighting up. We open our window wide and contribute feebly to the merriment with a couple of inaudible champagne corks, while the rest of the non-arsonist population keep their windows and doors tightly shut. By 1 A.M. it's all over. The surprising hour of anarchy is done The citizenry retreats, leaving a white Christmas newly toasted in reddish brown as the only evidence of sudden chaos. Now, after a few days of rain and decay, I confuse the waterlogged and decaying dynamite for canine land mines as I stroll to the store for a bag of rolls. The Germans--so enamored of silence, cleanliness, punctuality; all the trappings of order--erupt like a woman in labor with a doula and no drugs. But only from midnight to 1 AM on the first of the year. They also profess to clean up after their abundant, beloved dogs--while generally neglecting to remove Prinz's poop as in no other place I've ever lived. This is modern German rebellion.
Germany is a still place. "Still," in the sense the Germans use the word: quiet. I welcome this stillness. I've never heard anything like it. In Italy the people are loud, the cars are loud, the bad disco music plays in every trattoria, when the football isn't turned up to 11, or the opera fans aren't around. France is not quite so loud, but the streets still buzz with the tension of dispute, dismay and even love. In Spain, no bar worth the designation could confine its regulars indoors. London thrums with the 24 hour urban struggle of man and machine, not to mention the sound of a million teenage girls vomiting together every Saturday night. We're not allowed to buy fireworks in New York City, but America, as nowhere else outside Africa and parts of Asia, makes it her business to bring noise into the lives of all her residents. Europe as a whole is a quieter place than the United States, but Germany in particular is another order of magnitude down the scale of sonic peace. This is the only country I know where a bar or restaurant with music playing is the exception rather than the rule. Oh yes--Berlin, Hamburg and all the big cities have their share of djs spinning trendy platters in trendier dives--but more often than not, you can eavesdrop on the domestic drama playing out at the next table, over a soundtrack of cutlery and clinking glasses. Walk down any major artery; hop on a bus or the subway--on a Monday morning or a Saturday night--and the sound you hear is inside your head. My refrigerator just switched to the off portion of it's cycle and it's so completely silent that when I pause momentarily from attacking my laptop, I swear I can hear the blood running through my veins.
My 13 year-old son is lately enamored of a white ukelele he found and decorated in gold sharpie. The pop appeal of the ukelele is just something in the air. He knows nothing of Beirut or Amanda Palmer, (at least he didn't till I told him all about her). Strumming "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in the Dortmund U-Bahn on a recent afternoon, a seemingly friendly older woman approaches Roman and tells him that "here one is still." Since he doesn't understand and I don't hear, I ask her to repeat what she said and she explains herself to me. As the sound my son produces from his 4 string axe seems to be the only joyful noise in the entire city, I call her an old Nazi and we go our separate ways.
I've been wondering about German identity these last few days. I'm looking for something big, loud and provocative to put on stage next year. A production with music to blow the roof off the whole damn country, or at the very least Northrhein-Westfalia. Before beginning its inevitable decline, the American Empire did manage to culturally conquer most of the planet. Nowhere is this more evident than in Germany, where every other advertisement is in English and hipster magazines are almost as likely to be published in the language of Kerouac as Kafka. The shopping here puts the U.S. to shame, And at the same big-box stores, no less! Every large nation I can think of has a compendium of clichés we can call up from the collective card catalogue that shouts: this is my dumb-ass fan-fucking-tastic-country! Germany has Nazis. 65 years from the end of World War II, the cleansing of the German soul has been so nearly complete that an Alex DeLarge style Clockwork Orange relapse most certainly need not be feared. But the first and often only association you get from anybody regarding Germany is: Nazis.
When Germans make things to put on stage, they adapt books and more often films; most commonly American films. A question posed to a room full of hyper-talented and overeducated theatre professionals regarding the question of German identity draws a complete blank. Yes--"Stille." I suggest the following: Sometime in the future, Europe has really become one land. The uniformity has completely taken over, as Ikea, Starbucks, H & M, TK Maxx and all the rest of them have swallowed the landscape. National languages are withering and everyone speaks a diluted English--enough to retrieve the information they need from the constant flood of meaningless noise. Out of nowhere, a small band of Germans decide to find and defend what has been lost--(whatever it might be!) A group from another country also materializes and the battle is launched, complete with internecine love affairs etc. I do realize there are only a few basic stories in the world!
It looks like what will happen on that big beautiful stage a year from now features a large cat, naked women, death, sex, the devil and a lot of flying. From Russia with love. I'm happy about this, as I get to write the music for a book that was much too fantastical for me when I was younger--hunting for information. In 1988, Elia Kazan said that "wonder is what we need today, not information." Sometimes I'm afraid that my son will be overwhelmed by the avalanche of facts. I'm hoping there will be enough white ukeleles in his life. I know the "Stille" here can be very conducive to finding the wonder when you need it most. But sometimes blowing the whole place up is a good idea too. And I still don't really know about this German identity thing.
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