The first chapter of Thomas Pynchon’s monumental novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, is preceded by this quote. The title of the first chapter is Beyond the Zero, and after reading just a short section, it opens up all kinds of questions that were never even asked in math class, let alone answered.

As you continue to read the novel, you experience a wild ride through the times of chaos and order in the final stages of World War II. London, Los Angeles, but above all Nazi Germany, which was obsessed with ultimate victory through the use of the V2 annihilation rocket, for which they strived. In between, plenty of historical excursions into the darker sides of history: evolution, religion, revolution, colonialism. A complex network of relationships between organizations and people. And far and wide no figure with whom one can identify. Some go under, evaporate or lose their way, others continue to manipulate, unabashedly and unflinchingly, to the very end, their own interests always firmly in view. Above all, symbolically, there is the ballistic trajectory of the rocket – the parabola that Pynchon describes much more poetically as a rainbow in the title of the novel. As the reader, I am left amazed, confused, frightened and sometimes appalled, but always alone. Keeping it up to the end is exhausting, but worth all the effort.

I was unaware, when I started reading, that this novel, which was written in the sixties and first published in the original edition in 1973, almost fifty years ago, and has been subjectively interpreted by exegetes again and again, with great delight in their own view of this world, is now considered a masterpiece of 20th Century American literature. I had not even heard the name Thomas Pynchon until then. So I began to read without thinking about all of that, which was a good thing.

The one who caused me to dedicate a considerable part of my limited lifetime to these 1,200 or so pages, printed on gossamer-thin hymnal paper, was OUBEY. He bought the novel before the fatal accident, which meant that he would never be able to read it himself. When I first held the book in my hands, by chance, while cleaning up or rearranging a few years ago, I was as fascinated by this find as I was by the blurb on the dustjacket.

The interplay of chaos, order and entropy in the interaction of dynamic complexity, as it is scientifically studied in thermodynamics, was one of the topics that occupied OUBEY very early and particularly forcefully. Fascinated by turbulence of all kinds, in which this interplay of forces takes shape as wildly as mathematically calculable, he developed his own technique to reproduce his insights and feelings in colors and structures, which he transferred to the coated hardboard as his own artistic expression.

This is exactly what Thomas Pynchon does in Gravity’s Rainbow. He uses his own unique language technique, full of references to poets, philosophers and novelists, to lend his own literary expression to the interplay of the forces of chaos and order, and the dynamic complexity of world events.

In the end, entropy, the force of self-destruction, which is probably inherent in all dynamic-complex systems, no longer appears to be something threatening, but rather something that is almost natural and essential. For it opens the alternative perspective of transcendence. Not for everyone, but for all who attain a second level of reality in their lives, that goes beyond the two-dimensional linear course of earthly events. These are the people who, according to Pynchon, are those who have been “struck by lightning”, in a figurative sense, during their lives – who have experienced and survived an impact that called everything, including their own existence, into question. This experience opens up an individual way out of entropy, through the possibility of transcendence.

And yet, it has something good, this immanent movement towards entropy. If it did not exist, mankind would possibly still be at the point of development where we were many thousands of years ago. Instead, we have experienced and historically documented the downfall of so many glorious systems – from the Mayans, Aztecs and Babylonians to the Greeks and Romans to the “Thousand Year Reich” – and in our collective consciousness, we are actually not much further along than we were a few thousand years ago. Technically, however, we are, not least of all because we are waging industrially and economically desirable wars, such as were not even remotely imaginable one and a half centuries ago. And this is what the novel is about.

But what role does nature play in this story of the rise and fall of human empires? What about our understanding of nature? In Pynchon’s work, nature is a true refuge and solace for those who have been disregarded. At the very end of the novel, on Page 1,150, it says: “trunks and branches groan, full of grief over the technical wound that has been cut through their terrain.” More than fifty years after the publication of Thomas Pynchon’s novel, nature no longer merely groans and sighs – she rebels, and she is trying to teach us a lesson that man may not learn until it is too late – for him, not for nature. Man, whom Pynchon calls a “devastator,” is approaching the “tipping point” of his own existence, solely due to his own actions, intentions and a fatal lack of understanding of interrelationships. Real entropy in sight.

In 1992, OUBEY led and recorded a discussion, it which he also made clear statements about the relationship of human beings to nature and their home planet, Earth. I think I understand why this novel interested him so much that he wanted to read it. How exciting it would have been, for exactly this reason, if OUBEY could have read the novel himself and commented on it. What a pity, that this was no longer possible.

 

Das wahre Leben

I didn’t know at the time that it was Bob Dylan’s voice – I had never heard of him until then. I also didn’t know the title of the song. Today I know it was “Positively 4th Street“. Thus began a story that continues to this day. Bono wrote in his foreword to the collection of quotations “Bob Dylan – In His Own Words”, “He accompanies you throughout life”.1 I can confirm this.

Today Bob Dylan turns eighty years old. Just last year he added another great album to his repertoire called “Rough and Rowdy Ways”. In the first song on this album, he sings about himself. Not as a lyrical subject, but as Bob Dylan himself: “I contain multitudes.” He has proven time again in his now six decades of artistic work that this is true and he remained true to himself in his adaptability. As a result, the attempts of various critics to categorize him compulsively through their classification system have all failed. It is still a treat today to see how, even at a very young age, he didn’t dutifully answer the inane questions of journalists at a press conference in Los Angeles in 1965, but skillfully let them slip away with wit and intelligence. That alone would be reason enough to love him.

Like no other artist of his notoriety, he asserted his inner freedom against all the changing currents of the zeitgeist. Similarly, he stood up the expectations of an audience that preferred to hear the old familiar songs in an accustomed way and accused him of betrayal or predicted his imminent demise when he failed to meet said expectations for the first time. This is not arrogance; it is lived resilience, which in combination with an almost inexhaustible creativity and creative power is unparalleled. This combination makes Bob Dylan an exceptional figure in a world that is changing at breakneck speed and yet somehow seems to stand still at its core.

I remember how, at the beginning of his concert in Oberhausen in April 2002, I tried to recognize the song he was playing with his band at the time, which could only be recognized with difficulty, due to the fragmentation of lyrics. After three or four songs, I decided to stop this nonsense and instead just surrendered to the rhythms and melodies, the voice and the sound of his great band, transforming the concert hall with an energy I had never experienced before. Most concert attendees shared this phenomenal experience. The very subdued initial reaction gave way to a collective willingness to embrace and fully enjoy what he was offering us. He did not serve our expectations of him. On the contrary, he did what he wanted. He played “Blowing in the Wind” in waltz time and delivered one surprise after another – confidently, at the highest level and with impressive grandeur and elegance. By neglecting the expectations of his audience, performing his old songs in a completely new style, he ignited endless enthusiasm. His 45-minute encore showed that he seemed to have had his fun, too.

Bob Dylan is a musician, singer, composer and more than a songwriter. He is a great poet. However, his poems are only understandable as songs, he himself once said. That’s true. The fact that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years ago satisfied a few exegetes who had been trying for years to prove the high literary quality of his work in meticulous analysis and interpretation. Probably more so than Bob Dylan himself, who didn’t attend the award ceremony in Oslo. What had long been obvious would not have needed this proof, which of course does not diminish its justification. If you read the lyrics of his songs, you immediately have the sound of the song in your ears and the images of the stories he tells before your eyes. There, Desolation Row seems just as real as the true story of the wrongly convicted boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter or the epically depicted scene of the sinking of the Titanic. His stories become our stories.

In a time obsessed with the future, he creates arcs that bring the past into the present. Bridges that lead from the personal to the general and back again. In his songs, Ovid, Dante and Baudelaire live as if they were our contemporaries. He does what good art always does: he brings us into an exchange with what was before us, but also with what will be after us. He disregards the zeitgeist, but he is not a defeatist. He simply expresses what is really vital and important in this life, time and time again. Bono called him a “caller from a timeless past”1. No wonder OUBEY was thrilled when he discovered Bob Dylan all over again in the early 2000s. While painting GENESIS and the StarPixels at night, the two samplers I had put together for him at his request played regularly.

More than anything else, however, Bob Dylan is a “performing artist. In his concerts, nothing is reproduced or even repeated. That’s what the more than 50 albums are for, on which his songs are available for all time in the familiar studio version. Those who want to witness his development, visit the concerts. These are also the people, to whom Edward Dcox´statement in his excellent tribute to Dylan’s 80th birthday in the Guardian applies: “A common experience when seeing him live is to discover that a song that you thought was about rage is suddenly transformed into something tender. Ten years on, at another concert, the same song you now think of as a tender turns out to be a wry throwaway burlesque. The burlesque later becomes an elegy. And on it goes”.

In his Nobel Prize lecture, Bob Dylan explicitly acknowledged the value of the uniqueness of each event on stage. Using Shakespeare, as well as the value of telling stories like those of Homer, inspired by the singing of the muses, as an example: “The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert, or on record, or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story’.”2 

“If you ever want to look me up when I’m ninety, you’ll find me on a stage somewhere, “1 Bob Dylan said when he was just fifty in 1991. If it were not for a pandemic, he would probably be doing just that on his eightieth birthday today: standing on a stage.

 

_______________________________________________

1 From Bono´s prologue for “Bob Dylan – In his own words, London 1993

2 Bob Dylan – The Noble Lecture, New York 2017, Page 23

Highly Recommended: Bob Dylan – Chronicles Volume One, New York 2004

 

 

 

 

 

As banal as this question may sound, a concrete answer is usually not as easy as you might first think.

 

Elephant and Rider

This is because we are completely unaware of a great number of our habits. We have internalised them as routines to the point that they have become predictable behaviour. The unconscious is powerful.

Someone once compared it to an elephant on which the conscious sits like a person who thinks they are in charge of the elephant and can steer it when they ride it. But in fact the balance of power is the exact opposite. The elephant will only do what the human wants when he himself also wants to do it.

Therefore the question of whether we have our habits under control or whether our habits have us under control is a very interesting and vital one. It leads straight to the issue of whether or to what extent we are capable of changing our habits. This question is so fascinating and important because habits can make our lives easier, yet they can also make them difficult and may even harm us. The fight against bad habits that lead to addiction is by no means hopeless but it is very demanding. Breaking out of this prison of physical or psychological dependency is a feat that many people can’t manage at all and most people can’t manage without help.

 

Collective Standstill

What applies to individuals also applies to interpersonal relationships, to companies and organisations of all kinds and also to whole societies and cultures. There too habits play a role in everyday life that should not be underestimated. Like all customs, practices and traditions they create a feeling of community and belonging and thus a certain security in a world beset by uncertainty and risk. Good habits hold a society together, bad ones do the opposite.

Adapting to the habits of a group is an ambivalent process. As soon as it happens due to social pressure, it usually does one’s self no good. If due to the power relations in an organisation or society, it becomes a collective habit that existing norms, procedures and decisions may not be interrogated, there is a threat of development standstill. “We’ve always done it like this” and “We’ve never done this before” are two variants of one and the same killer argument against even the smallest move to change. Such organisations lose their ability to change and thus their ability to develop and improve because this is only possible when criticism is allowed. Otherwise mistakes are swept under the carpet, dangerous weaknesses remain undetected, and conformity and opportunism take hold. And this can have drastic consequences – from material damage to human catastrophes.

Vivid examples of this can be found in the findings of various studies of the still young discipline of habit research. Charles Duhigg, business editor of the New York Times and investigative journalist, has compiled many of them, based on findings from brain research and behavioural psychology, in his highly readable book “The Power of Habit“.

 

Space for the New

Let there be no misunderstanding: habits are basically a very good thing when they relate to the right kind of actions. They take the strain off the brain. What still requires the utmost attention and effort from a small child, such as walking or eating with a knife and fork, runs automatically as soon as it has been practiced. We then don’t need to spend another thought on such habits. The same applies to everything else we take up and learn later in life – from playing an instrument to driving a car – if we practice intensely. As soon as something is practised and becomes a habit, our brains no longer need to make such an effort. It saves energy which we have  for other creative or difficult tasks.

It’s simply a matter of developing and maintaining the right habits and, if necessary, saying goodbye to wrong or bad habits. Anyone who has ever tried to give up something that is obviously unhealthy or anyone trying to get into the habit of something healthy will know that this is easier said than done. Winston Churchill solved the problem for himself by declaring his unhealthy habits a personal lifestyle. That was his conscious decision.

 

Another Way

Habits can be changed, even from one day to the next, if you first understand how they function and if there’s a sufficiently strong incentive to change them. Individually the incentive might come from an “aha” moment, a completely new realisation or insight, coupled with the ambition to prove to oneself – and sometimes to others –that things can be done differently. In other cases it’s being confronted with a medical diagnosis or the wish of somebody that you love or respect a lot.

Sometimes social events, economic or political crises, and in the worst case even natural catastrophes or wars force us to give up what we were used to. Then nothing is the way it used to be – an existential challenge. The spread of the corona virus pandemic is one such challenge. It has led to restrictions not seen in this country for more than seventy years, with serious economic, social and, not least, socio-psychological consequences. Isolation in quarantine and the prohibition of all kinds of communal live cultural events in the lockdown also take their toll.

These negative consequences must be taken seriously. In particular with a view to their long-term effects and the weak points in our country that existed long before but which have now become so blatantly evident as a result of the crisis that they can now no longer be overlooked. Not the least of such deficiencies is the country’s bloated bureaucracy that impedes swift pragmatic action and sometimes makes it even impossible.

Many things will return to normal once the pandemic has subsided. Will this be an unthinking return to a previous normality or will it be a different new normality with new habits? I hope that we will not let the opportunity to learn from last year’s experiences pass us by. Because experiences and opportunities of this kind do not come often.

How great sympathy on Earth for this device is now is shown by the fact that its “round” birthdays are properly celebrated – its thirtieth one almost exactly one year ago. It’s also evident from the fact that –unlike the LHC at CERN in Geneva for instance – the billions it has cost to build, equip, run and occasionally update have never been seriously criticised.  This is highly unusual.

It wasn’t always so from day one. After all, the telescope still hadn’t shown what it could really do. The initial criticism became really vociferous shortly after Hubble’s start in April 1990 when the first images it sent to Earth turned out to be blurred and thus unusable. Even terrestrial telescopes could produce better pictures.  Criticism of the costs was reinforced by ridicule and scorn. It could well have meant Hubble’s early demise.

But it didn’t. Everybody deserves a second chance carried the day. And Hubble got one. After all, it was human error in the manufacturing of the mirror, undetected before the launch, that was responsible for the poor quality of the images. It had been ground incorrectly. To prevent Project Hubble from becoming a grandiose billion dollar flop before it even got started, a servicing mission was sent into space in 1993. Two astronauts with great courage corrected the error 550 kilometres above the Earth’s atmosphere. And the telescope immediately started streaming breath-taking pictures of star clusters, gas nebulae and galaxies as well as images of objects in our solar system. Asked about its high cost, Hubble veteran Mario Livio once replied: „Well, it’s given us the universe – it’s cheap at the price.”  This is how Hubble became our eye in space.

This eye made visible to us what had long been mathematically calculated but what up till that point had been abstract and unimaginable. The incredible beauty of the universe is revealed to us in individual fantastic formations like the “Eagle Nebulae”, the “Three Pillars of Creation” or in the fascinating forms of diverse galaxies – from spiral galaxies to sombrero galaxies. This moves us and inspires us. Human feelings are not triggered by mathematical formula or equations but by sensory perceptions and experiences. Hubble provided us with picture experiences like no other and still continues to do so. Pictures that trigger feelings of happiness, amazement, astonishment and also awe in us. We are simply enthralled by what we see and can’t get enough of it. This is probably one, if not the most important, reason for the love that so many people feel for this flying “tin can”, the size of a school bus.

Beyond the images that practically everyone on the earth is now familiar with, Hubble’s eye also gives us insights into far-flung regions of our universe like the “Ultra Deep Field”. It thus provides us with a unique photographic history book on the creation and expansion of the universe. Because “far away” in the universe always means “long ago”.

In 2009 Hubble was equipped with a completely new camera – the Wide Field Camera 3 – and can now photograph galaxies beyond visible light in the infrared of the Ultra Deep Field, galaxies that were formed shortly before the formation of our own universe some 13.7 billion years ago – just 700 million years after the so-called “Big Bang”.  This is sensational. Hubble lets us look back almost to the beginnings of our universe and at the same time lets us track its expansion across over billions and millions of years. It can make you dizzy. For those who would like to see all this explained clearly, we recommend the instructive and entertaining 30 minute video Hubble´s Universe Unfiltered: Deep Universe which is ideal for beginners, provided that they can speak English.

That OUBEY back in 1984, twenty five years before the Hubble Space Telescope with its new space camera was able to look into the beginnings of our universe, had fixed this view so definitely in his mind’s eye that he was able artistically to capture what he saw in his picture Einstein’s Tears, defies belief. Yet the astronomer Dr Cecilia Scorza from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg noted just that with a mixture of astonishment and wonder when she encountered this picture in February 2010. She explained, using OUBEYs painting what can be explained to us today using the Hubble telescope’s shots from the Ultra Deep Field.

At some point, Hubble’s time will come to an end. Development of a successor is already well underway: The James Webb Telescope, an infrared telescope with a mirror diameter of 6.5 meters, will be ideal for peering into the oldest regions of the universe. Until then, Hubble will continue to orbit the Earth fifteen times a day from a great distance, providing us with ever new images and insights.

“I hope that we’ll know well in advance when and where Hubble will come down in the South Pacific. Then all of us who have worked so long with Hubble can charter a cruise ship and be present at its end. It will be sad and we’re sure to cry. But at the same time, there’ll be this joy around for all this wonderful science that Hubble has given us over the decades” says Heide Hammel, Voyager project scientist, who together with Hubble is observing the atmospheres of the gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptunet1. This doesn’t sound like the decommissioning of a machine. It sounds like leave-taking of a good friend.

 

 

1Quoted from the programme “Das mit den Sternen tanzt” on the DLF Kulturkanal on 9.4.2020

For more information about Hubble, please click here.

 

Like almost all of his works, Kiefer’s “Palm Sunday” evokes a long chain of associations in me. In this case, they are mental bridges that, for once, reach back even to my early childhood. It is the connection between the material quality of the installation and its meaningful title, that builds these bridges between what I felt as a child a long time ago, what has developed since then, and what has emerged from it today. The time frames blur as if swept up by a river. I cross the bridge.

More than ten years ago, I encountered this monumental work for the first time by chance, at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Those were the years when I was in New York very often because of the work on the MINDKISS Book. A walk through the galleries in Chelsea was always part of it. The second encounter happened recently, when I finally visited the Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim after months of lockdown two weeks ago. This encounter was also an unexpected one for me, as I had not informed myself about the works on display in advance.

There it lay before me a second time, this sculpture that had once been a living palm tree. Its huge, sharp-tipped fronds covered with cement-like dust, its trunk supported by sandstones, its enormous ball-shaped red roots. And I allowed everything to flow freely through my head, everything triggered by this phenomenal sight and by the words “Palm Sunday” themselves.

Firstly, all I see is this monstrous, long-dead plant lying in front of me. It used to be a marvel of nature, part of a species that has existed on this planet for 70 million years. Even under the most adverse conditions, it can live and survive. As it lies here, uprooted, the sight saddens me at first. And even now this dead specimen is still imposing, full of strength and spirit.

“I don’t consider myself a Platonist, but I believe that the spirit is in matter and that it is the artist’s task to extract this spirit,” Anselm Kiefer once said. I think of OUBEY and our conversation in 1992, when he spoke about Joseph Beuys and said that the latter’s unerring sense of the matter led to his ability to make a spirit recognizable out of matter.

At the same time, a motion picture summary of my cultural and historical knowledge plays in my head: “Palm Sunday” – the day of the great “Hosanna”. The jubilant celebration for the new King in the streets of Jerusalem, followed by the betrayal of the authorities in power, the arrest and the condemnation, for which the person responsible washed his hands of the matter, and finally the brutal death on the cross. But death is not the end. That is the message. Death is not the end of life. Death is overcome by the resurrection. What a story. They praise You, they deny You, they crucify You. But You overcame even death. Since this story has been told, every “Palm Sunday” contains within itself the prophecy of this story. A somber message of encouragement.

But there remains a distrust in the fickleness of people’s feelings and whims, especially when people appear en masse. They’re excited today and tomorrow, deny exactly that, which they were excited about the day before. It is hard to believe that until today there is an unofficial discussion between two world religions about the question of guilt in this story.

How can one question the eschatology of such a story by discussing a culprit? This is perhaps the drama of all theistic religions, that although they are still believed today, they have never really arrived in today’s world. They have become mere pictures of an idea. The religions do not try to understand themselves or to fit into the evolving world. They adhere to their partly obscure, yet well-told stories, which they have been telling for such a long time, recounting them as the unchanged truth. If they did not, these religions would probably be lost.

This subjective-associative sequence of thoughts lacks any art historical expertise. I am grateful to Anselm Kiefer for his magnificent and unique life’s work and hope that it will continue to reach many people in the future and enable them to recognize a previously unrecognized or repressed part of themselves. Because that is precisely why we humans create and need art: not to understand art, but to understand ourselves and the universe in which we live at least a little better.

Our understanding of the world is formed over the course of our lives. It does not begin with visual impressions, but rather with acoustic ones of this world, as the outside world. Because the first thing we perceive are the noises, sounds and voices of our environment, which we – still unborn – begin to perceive, from a certain stage of development of our hearing in the womb, and pass on to our brain.

This outside world visibly expands with each day, month and year of our lives. But it always remains an outside world. We are in a state of permanent exchange with it as long as we live. As we develop ourselves, so does our image of the world. It changes and expands – depending on what we do, what we experience and what we have to deal with. The time in our lives during which all this takes place is the time we spend in the waking state. At least that’s what we think. And what we perceive and experience in the waking state is what we consider to be the world. We assume a congruence between how we (want to) see the world and the world itself, based on our sensory perception while we are awake.

But during this time of wakefulness, only a part of our image of the world is created. The part of which we are – more or less – conscious. But there is also an unconscious image of the world, of ourselves, and of what we call life. It arises both during times of life when we are awake and during the time we spend sleeping – that is an average of 6-8 hours per day. So, we spend about one third of our lives sleeping. A person who is 60 years old has therefore “slept through” 20 years of his life. Was he not alive during those 20 years? Bob Dylan sings: “Sleep is like a temporary death”.

Sleep is a state of powerlessness. It comes upon us. We can keep our body awake for a while, even when we are tired. But at some point, sleep overtakes us and puts us in this state of powerlessness – whether we want it or not. But we are still alive, of course, because our brain stays awake. It not only maintains all bodily functions; it even organizes their regeneration. And it creates new worlds.

It rehashes all we have ever seen, experienced, felt or thought while awake. And that is not all, by any means! Associations with which we are already familiar, spontaneously pop up every now and then in our waking state, as amazing links of independently arising thoughts or experiences that can drive our brain into the wildest associations while we are asleep; uncontrollable fantasies, the effects of which can sometimes be as exhilarating as they are depressing on our next waking state, regardless of whether or not we can remember exactly what we experienced while asleep. “The real adventures are in the head. And if they’re not in the head, they’re nowhere” sings Andre Heller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGUHGeUJ02g That makes it sound as if our inner world is the actual, real, true world, to which the outer world merely serves as an inspiring background image.

In sleep, we experience the world all over again, in a completely new way. In this inner world, the boundaries of space and time are suspended. Wildly and freely, we skip through entire eras there, as we link surreal images and events with real people or events. When we wake up, we can usually only remember fragments, if anything at all. They are mere fragments of dreams, but they give us an idea of how awake and active our brain was while we were asleep.

Even what we cannot consciously remember participates in the development of our image of the world, thus making it part of the world in which we live at the same time. Nothing is ever really forgotten. The fact that we cannot remember does not mean that something has been forgotten. I will never forget a ten-year-old girl’s comment when, upon seeing one of OUBEY’s pictures, spontaneously exclaimed that the picture “reminded her of something she had never seen before”. Perhaps she had seen something similar before – in her sleep?

The third of our lives that we spend asleep is just as much a part of our lives as the two-thirds that we experience awake. The fact that we are mostly unaware of it does not change the fact. And I would dare to surmise that people who are capable of creating what is referred to as art, develop a particularly intense and close connection, not only to the outside world they experience consciously, but also to what they experience unconsciously – while they are awake and also while they are asleep and dreaming. Both the terrible nightmares and the free-flying daydreams.

Young children learn by playing. It has more to do with fun and basic feelings of happiness than about winning, although such feelings of happiness are often triggered by little feelings of success – or bigger ones. When a child starts school, a clear distinction usually develops very quickly, between learning and playful pleasure.

The desire to play

This makes the desire for actual play all the greater. In addition to the well-known and seemingly timeless board games, dice and cards, new sociable games appear year after year, the best of which are even awarded prizes. They often involve clever word creations, general knowledge and quiz questions, or solutions to tricky problems or very big challenges, that players must find together. In the end, however, it’s almost always about winning, which, of course, on the flipside, means that it’s also all about losing.

Fun or serious

That’s why, when you play, you get to know character traits in people that often are not seen so clearly otherwise. Some, who usually seem rather reserved and shy, come out of their shell. Others reach unprecedented heights when things get really close and exciting. And there are others who don’t give up, even though they suffer repeated setbacks.

For most of them, above all, playing is about one thing: having fun. For them, playing is a great way to spend time together. They are happy when they win, but they can also lose without their spirits falling. After all, life is serious enough. For others, the fun of the game stops as soon as someone else wins, or even if they simply do better. That’s when the game becomes serious and that’s the person who does, in fact, get angry.

Ego plays along

Whether or not someone can lose graciously is not dependent on a genetic predisposition. Rather, it is a matter of attitude. The idea that a winner is generally superior to a loser becomes an attitude when a person lacks experiences that prove the opposite. The consequence is that they develop an ego that cannot lose, because they then feel inferior, and the person takes offence. If someone with such an ego beats another person with a similar ego, the joy of victory is usually especially great. They both approach the same game with the same level of seriousness.

To be able to accept that the other person was simply better or luckier than oneself requires self-confidence, which is the prerequisite for playing games in the first place. Because in the very next game, things could go in exactly the opposite direction.

Competition as a celebration

In this respect, playing games is a good lesson in life, which some say is, in itself, a great game. Not everyone can or wants to see it that way. And yet there are parallels. For example, when the games involve a sporting competition. When it comes to the Olympic Games, despite commercialization, for many athletes, it is still a case of “just being there is everything” to this day. Each of them has qualified to participate during national championships, through their outstanding performance. And at the same time, everyone knows that in the end, only three athletes in each discipline will ever take home a medal. Only a few will win, many will not. Are they all losers? In my opinion, at least, they are certainly not. After all, it’s only because everyone takes part that the whole thing becomes a big celebration.

Losers can also be winners

This is the idea that still inspires many people around the world today. Both athletes and spectators. Even the very last marathon runner to reach the stadium is celebrated. And his reward is his achievement, and the unique experience of having made it. He knows that he could never have won. But he also knows that he can be proud of himself for what he did achieve. Because that is worth just as much as a victory. Whether or not you can deal constructively with defeat is a question of taking a realistic view of things. Disappointment included.

No game without rules

Every game follows its own rules. You have to know them and abide by them if you want to play. If you don’t play by the rules, you’re playing the wrong game. What might pass as a little cheat in a social game is nothing short of fraud in social and sporting competitions. When it comes to competition in the professional and political sphere, it’s scheming; in competitive sports, it mostly involves doping, by which individuals fraudulently gain advantages over their competitors. In soccer, entire games and even referees have been bought. Those who cannot win by fair means do not deserve to win. But even if a referee makes his decisions as independently and objectively as possible, he can still make a wrong call, and when that happens, the defeat is not only harsh, but also unjust and bitter.

Measurability helps

In high jump, the bar is the objective and incorruptible referee. It is either knocked down or it remains in position, measuring the height of the jump beyond all doubt. In the game of darts, the dart hits a specific segment, in the game of billiards the ball lands in the hole. In running competitions, the inaccuracy of human eyesight has long since been replaced by photos of the finish line from several perspectives, in soccer, video evidence is now available in case of doubt, and in tennis we have the Hawk-Eye. Correct measurements ensure clarity. That doesn’t necessarily make losing any easier. But at least it helps the loser to accept the result. After all, it’s usually only a matter of a few hundredths of a second or perhaps a centimeter. Often, however, a lot of money is at stake.

Trust decides

In democratic societies, too, confidence in measurement, i.e. in the correct counting of votes, plays an important role. Acceptance of the election results is a prerequisite for the peaceful transition of power. The question of political rule is not settled by succession or usurpation, but by the votes of emancipated citizens. This is a valuable achievement of our recent history. It is based on the votes cast by eligible voters, on the one hand, and their trust in the correctness of the counting of all electoral votes, on the other. Part of this concept of a peaceful transfer of power is that there are winners and losers – for a pre-determined time.

Winner for a time

Losing in a democratic election is particularly painful. Because what is at stake here is the free decision of people for one candidate or another – be it that of the people within a party or that of the voters in the country as a whole. Different people and parties are up against each other for power. Sometimes one party or person wins an absolute majority. When this isn’t the case, coalitions have to be formed and compromises made. This is exhausting, but a good thing. Because, in the end, the winner of this “game” is democracy, which is, as Sir Winston Churchill once said, “the worst of all forms of government – except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Our early ancestors lived according to the transition from day to night, in the alternation of the equinoxes. They oriented themselves according to the position of the sun, moon and stars, and with the help of those heavenly bodies, they developed a feeling for the rhythm of life. They did not know anything about the thing that only began to be called time thousands of years later – and only much later did it become what we understand it to be today, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: measurable time, this thing that has become the central heartbeat of human life.

Katie Weeman’s article of her three-week experience of perfect timelessness on the Polar Star expedition in the Arctic winter at the North Pole reignited my thinking about this thing we call time. At the North Pole in winter, there is nothing that gives us any clues about what we perceive as time. The North Pole has no land – it consists of nothing but water and ice, and there, at the top of the world, all the time zones of this world merge into one, and in this case that actually means none at all. There is nothing by which human perception can determine the passing of time. There is no difference between day and night, because there is no sunrise and no sunset. It is dark all the time. Everything is always the same. An existence without structure. An extreme experience of the absence of time, which, precisely because it has nothing to do with the reality of life in our latitudes, once again leads us to the question: What exactly is time?

This chronometric reality of life is comparatively young. Even as late as the 14th Century, an hour was understood to be a period of time that was 1/12th of what lies between sunrise and sunset. An hour was therefore something that changed continuously over the course of a year and according to the different seasons. In summer, the hours were long; in winter, they were short. There was still no mathematical basis that equated one hour to another, irrespective of the time of the year during which it occurred.

The minute did not even exist in man’s understanding of time back then. It was not until the invention of mechanical clocks that the kind of time measurement that determines our lives today emerged – since these times began, in which we sometimes get upset because our train is a few minutes late, and we are afraid we might miss our connecting train for our onward journey at the next station.

Not to mention the second, which was only added another 300 years later. Since then, the extreme precision of time measurement, even down to hundredths of a second, has become a matter of course for us. This self-evident fact, along with many other scientific calculations, is one of the prerequisites for our being able to fly to the moon and also to come back to earth again. In this respect, measurable time seems to be something absolute. But Einstein already proved otherwise more than 100 years ago.

Let us leave the seemingly safe ground of our chronological understanding of measurable time for a moment and enter the somewhat less certain terrain of the subjective experience of time, which knows nothing about seconds, minutes, hours or weeks, but rather focuses on happy moments, favorable moments, intense experiences, critical situations, formative experiences – both memories and visions of the future. A realm in which time does not move in a linear fashion, as time measurement would have us believe, but rather with complete freedom, forwards and backwards, within the haven of the thinking space inside our brain – linking everything together, even merging it. A realm in which time, in the sense of a regulatory system, is suspended.

If we take it one step further, and include the universal constant of the speed of light in these considerations – that thing that separates us humans from the physical experience of the universe – then an extraordinarily creative power arises from this liberation of our thoughts from the fetters of time. Because the constant of the speed of light “keeps us in a kind of quarantine, whose borders we can overcome only with the help of the imagination,” as OUBEY once formulated it in reference to his art, the Photon Painting, as reminiscent of this border character. This is the true freedom of art: It puts the one who opens himself to it into a state of equally strange and wonderful timelessness. Who would ever think of time when listening to Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata? It is the true freedom of love. Who ever think about time when doing something they love.

Yet, we are born into a world of measured time. The minute of our birth is recorded just as bureaucratically as that of our death. Age is measured in years, not maturity of mind. Time measures everything equally. Thus, everything apparently has its order. It is hard to imagine the chaos that would befall this world if there were no clocks for a month or even a year.  In her experience report from the North Pole, Katie Weeman writes that she got the impression that time is nothing more than a “ritual with the aim of creating the illusion of regularity.”

However, she also tells us how happy she was that when her stay at the North Pole was over, she could rely on the fact that the plane that was to whisk her back home would actually take off as agreed, and also at the scheduled time.

 

I could imagine that, for the first time in a long time, the desire for change is greater than the desire for everything to remain the way it is. This could be an opportunity.

Man changes the world

Since humans began their existence on this planet, about 300,000 years ago, they began to take their development into their own hands. They found out how to make fire. They invented language and writing, the wheel – probably one of the inventions that has changed life on earth more significantly than hardly anything else – and at some point, they also invented the computer. Humans are curious creatures who love their habits, but they also love improving their living conditions.

For about 200 years, man’s influence in this world has been growing rapidly. This has by no means only had negative consequences, as it may seem to some people today. On the contrary. Thanks to medical developments, for example, many diseases have become curable and others have been eradicated. Light and heat are no longer dependent on the time of day or year – they are available at all times. At least in Western industrial societies, we have created a life of unprecedented prosperity. Many take it for granted, and therefore, they no longer appreciate it – this prosperity that our ancestors would probably have dreamed of, if they could ever have imagined it, and that even today, people in other parts of the world can only dream of.

Everything is possible, but nothing should be taken for granted

The restrictions on public life this year, in an attempt to protect us against a virus, have exposed many breaking points in our society that have been ignored for years and that demand change. And they have also shown that none of the things we have become accustomed to can be taken for granted. This situation has shown us that everything can change completely from one day to the next.

Nowhere is it written that we are entitled to the prosperity we live in, or even that it is guaranteed that we will have it forever. It could even be that this kind of prosperity – which, by the way, excludes a large part of the earth’s population – contains an element of self-destruction within it, if it continues the way we are accustomed to. Perhaps the meaning of some of the experiences we have lived through this year involve questioning and changing our previous understanding of what we refer to as prosperity? For me, the opportunity of the new year lies in the fact that, for 2021, we should not wish for the quickest possible return to the old normality, but rather for a new, sustainable version of normality. Looking back at the start of last year, the mere willingness to even admit such a wish would have been progress.

From Wanting to Doing

Moving from wishing and wanting, to doing, to being able to do, is the challenge of any change, no matter how large or small it may be.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a personal resolution, such as doing more for the good of one’s own body, getting more exercise, going out for a run in the woods or somewhere else to strengthen the muscles, organs and immune system. Or standing up for fellow human beings who don’t have it as easy as we do. Or even showing civil courage, raising one’s voice when one hears somebody saying something, or intervening when one sees someone doing something that violates another person’s dignity.

Who or what is stopping me from doing something when I really and sincerely want to do it? “There is only one confirmation of wanting to do something, and that is doing it,” a wise person once said. And that’s how it is.

More than a fairy tale

Every now and then, my father used tell me the fairy tale of the Musicians of Bremen to get me to sleep. It’s the story of the four old animals from a farm that have become unprofitable for their owners: the donkey, the dog, the cat and the rooster. When they hear that the donkey is to be sold to the butcher, they get together and say to themselves: “We can find something better than death anywhere.”  “No sooner said than done” is the magic formula of the story at this point, because stout-hearted as they are, they flee together, and after some adventures along the way, they finally arrive in the town that will go on to erect a monument to them.

Well, that is only a fairy tale, you may say, and furthermore you may object that it is not always wise to put an idea or a revelation into action immediately and spontaneously. That’s true. Decisions of great consequence need to be considered and thought about before they are put into action. Collectively, we experienced enough of how difficult this can be in 2020.

In the end, however, what matters is what you do, and often whether you do it in time. Some revelations and good intentions that we have been carrying around with us for years are just waiting to be put into practice. That would be a good resolution at the end of this year: to follow up our thoughts in the new year not only with “said”, but also with “done”, as often as possible. I know from my own experience that it is possible. And it does us good. Because some of the things you didn’t do today, you won’t get the opportunity to do tomorrow.

 

 

 What paths have been walked so far?

The “Reflections of OUBEY” now open up a way that does not require speech as well as other tools. Bearing in mind that artificial intelligence even makes it possible to “read” the feelings of a person when they look at a painting from the slightest expression. This may seem strange to some – like other things to do with artificial intelligence. In the case of “Reflections of OUBEY” what is created has made the visitors to the “Art of Resonance” so curious and fascinated them so much that they sometimes waited patiently in a long queue to get in touch with their own emotions when viewing a painting by OUBEY. Likewise in Moscow four weeks ago, where the “Reflections of OUBEY” had their dress rehearsal at the “Art & Science Festival”.

It was not just the joy of discovering one’s own emotions but also the curiosity of linking your own emotions in an interplay with the resonance to colors and patterns from different paintings by OUBEY. What is really interesting here and lingers are not the emotions but always this new, individual and unique painting, which was created by combining one’s own emotions with unfamiliar art – an emergence of OUBEY’s art and the feelings of a person when looking at the art. It could also be called an emotional OUBEY resonance painting.

Each color stands for one of the elementary human feelings. The surface portion of a color in the patterns of the painting stands for the intensity of the emotions. Some visitors have expressed the fear that their feelings might be too negative. Especially for them, the ultimate result could have rendered a valuable insight. Regardless of which emotions are in the mix – the paintings created through resonance are altogether an optical sensation. The artistic transformation – just like the art itself – frees the viewer of the resulting painting from the established evaluation of human feelings.

The quality of the emotion or the aesthetics of the painting have nothing to do with whether a painting is dominated by bright red, shiny yellow or dark black-blue, or if nearly all the colors therein are shown as a mosaic . This is also why many visitors used the opportunity to have their own painting printed to take home with them.

The code by which the registered emotions are converted into colors and structures from OUBEY’s paintings and into new paintings, as well as the entire application were developed by our wonderful project partners Juliana and Vrady.

There can be no peaceful coexistence, and certainly no constructive cooperation, without mutual respect.  And this holds true not merely for human society.

Respect is not a one-way street

There was a time when respect wasn’t a matter of mutual consideration between equals as is the case today or at least should be. It was the time of figures of respect, our “elders and betters”. The authoritarian structures of the German Empire, for instance, expected subjects to show respect for representatives of the state without the state itself being in any way obliged to show respect for them. Respect was a matter of hierarchy that went in one direction only, from bottom to top. Nobody would dare contradict figures of respect whose orders were to be followed. Failure to obey resulted in trouble or something much worse.  This understanding of what respect is was prevalent in Germany until well into the 20th century and in our times can still be found in authoritarian and totalitarian societies.

An enlightened democratic society that builds on fundamental rights and human rights and protects them has a completely different notion of what respect is.

 

Respect is the foundation of civilisation

This is a notion of interpersonal respect that is independent of all forms of hierarchy. Relations between adults and children should be founded on mutual respect just as relations between different genders should be and also, with particular force, relations with people of different cultural backgrounds and skin colours. This modern understanding of respect is the vital precondition on which diversity is founded – diversity of opinions and lifestyles, diversity of cultures and political standpoints.

Discussions and sometimes disputes are necessary to promote further development. All this is constructive as long as waging parties show fundamental respect for one another. People listen to one another, contradict one another, reflect on the other side’s arguments and even if they cannot or will not share them, this changes nothing in their basic respect for one another.

Just like a house with a shaky foundation is liable to collapse if there’s an earthquake or a hurricane blowing, the stability of civilised life is endangered in turbulent times and crises when there’s a lack of mutual respect.

 

Respect has no expiry date

Respect has nothing to do spontaneous feelings or even sympathy but is based on a fundamental immutable stance

You’ll remember the people standing on balconies and at open windows earlier this year applauding the work done by doctors and nurses? And the banners unfurled from motorway bridges honouring the work of truck drivers – not usually the most popular figures in the public eye – in continuing to deliver essential foods to supermarkets and shopping centres? They were moments of collective shock, triggered by the alarming pictures of overcrowded corona intensive care units and empty supermarket shelves that brought the existential importance of the work these people do more to the forefront of public consciousness than ever before. The applause was an expression of a spontaneous feeling of gratitude. Showing it was the good and correct thing to do. Only now the applause has fallen silent. The outpouring of emotion is over and what remains is the need to maintain respect.

 

Respect doesn’t stop with our species

What some people might find difficult to show in interpersonal relations is subject to nothing less than a form of collective ignorance when it comes to the co-existence of the human race and nature. Because when it comes to respect this is something that obviously should be accorded not merely to our own fellow beings but to everything that lives in the natural world. Does this strike too strong a note of pathos for you?

For me it’s by no means pathetic and you don’t even have to be religious to hold such a point of view. It’s simply the expression of a clear scientific view of the real relations of dependency which govern the world in which we humans live on this earth. When we make ourselves the measure of all things and subjugate everything else to our own interests, this view gets lost and with it every form of respect for nature. We are now living in the Anthropocene age in which humankind dominates the earth, rampantly and recklessly exploiting its resources and destroying it at our whim. Without the slightest sign of respect. In such circumstances, respect becomes not merely a question of basic attitudes but also a question of intelligence. Because if we don’t respect the resources on which we depend, at the end of the day we’re simply destroying the very basis of our continued existence.

It’s true that recently a growing number of artists have been exploring the possibilities offered by digitalisation. Their outcomes, however, frequently depend on overwhelming overpowering effects. They use artificial intelligence to process huge amounts of data into immersive scenarios that are projected on vast walls in great rooms that overwhelm and amaze the visitor’s senses. All this is fine and very important because it opens a new gateway to experiencing art over and beyond the traditional way museums present it.

Yet the digital experience space created by the next phase of the MINDKISS Project is light years away from such a hunger for the big and spectacular. What it rather does is to build a bridge connecting OUBEYs original art from the analogue world of the early 80s with the digital world of our modern times. This opens up the possibility of discovering facets and aspects of his paintings that many people who had seen them might have already suspected or associated with them only which can now be actually visualised in a way not possible before. In virtual reality and with the aid of artificial intelligence optical effects can be staged that the human eye had previously seen only in dreams or under the effect of drugs. Given such alluring perspectives, there’s a huge temptation to turn what is technically feasible into the measure of all things.

Yet first and foremost the MINDKISS Project is not concerned with showcasing all the great things technology can do but rather with engaging with the technological possibilities to show what OUBEYs art can do. The project holds true to a statement OUBEY himself made in 1992 in response to a question about the role played by the computer in his art – a statement that clearly restricts its role; “I always start with an idea and am obsessed with realising this idea – the medium I use plays a subordinate role. If the process calls for it, I look for the proper medium whatever that might be until my idea can be materialised. I only stop when I get the feeling that the picture has become part of me.”

This was exactly the trail I followed together with my partners from Kubikfoto when I began to sound out the new openings of technology to see if they were capable of leading to experiences of OUBEYs art that had the potential of becoming part of the viewer.  OUBEY scorned superficial effects in his work. His art is free of any outside expectations and influences. It’s the expression of a view into the deepest depths and the uttermost limits of the cosmos, from which we come, in which we live, and to which we’ll return at some point.  This is why his paintings can move and fascinate Maori people in New Zealand just as they move and fascinate young people in Uganda, astronomers and complexity researchers, and schoolchildren, and sometimes even company managers.

And this is also why the MINDKISS Project, in its present use of cutting-edge technological opportunities, is not interested in mere sensationalism. We’re simply realising what I myself have been dreaming about for many years, and what some people met with on the Encounter tour have often yearned for when they stood in front of one of OUBEYs original paintings – to be in the middle of the picture, to vanish into it This kind of becoming as one with the painting is only possible in the virtual world. And that is simply fantastic in the literal sense of the word.

What’s now become possible is a thrilling journey into the depths of the painting. You can get an inkling of what this is like from the short videos Samurai, Journey of the Monads, and Cosmic Voyage. If you have the right VR headset, you can also download this virtual adventure world free of charge. We’ll be showcasing other parts of the present show in another article that will appear after the exhibition at the Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig. By then we’ll have collected the resonance to the Digital Playground of a great many more people and have assessed its effects. True to the spirit of the whole The Art of Resonance presentation.

In my view the real meaning of art is not that it’s a luxury item for elites or an object of speculation for investors. Nor should it serve as a preserve for expert analysis. On the contrary, I believe that art is an essential part of life and that it’s open and accessible to everybody – whether for pleasure or for understanding yourself and the world around you.

Art comes from life

Where does art originate? It originates in the questions that the human spirit asks of life and in the experiences that the spirit gains from living. Art comes from life and belongs to life. These are the original impulses of art.

If we now look at the cave paintings that our early ancestors made over 30,000 years ago we can get a feeling for what art meant for them. And we recognise that they were endowed with astonishing artistic ability. With only the simplest means at their disposal they painted spiritual pictures of their lives on the walls of the caves where they sought shelter from wind, weather and wild animals that can still amaze us and move us and which even today we immediately and intuitively understand when we see them without any need for grand explanations. Their wall drawings captured scenes from their lives which they held to be important and that were imbued with strong feelings. Through art they expressed what they had lived through and what moved them deeply, and shared it in a lasting way with other members of their tribe and other people across the ages down to us today. Art conferred a different and new quality on the lives of our ancestors. And the same still holds true today – art gives our present lives a special quality.

Art is good for the soul

Even if the world we now live in is totally different from that of our Stone Age ancestors, the basic questions confronting us still remain the same. Never before has humankind disposed of such a huge body of scientific findings on life on planet Earth and the universe that surrounds us. Yet science can give no answers to the age-old fundamental questions of where we come from, why we are here and where we are going to. The religions of this world believe that they can. But art gives no answers. It asks the questions and encourages us to think about them yet leaves the answers to the viewer, listener or reader – the independent thinking and inquiring individual. Art creates a free space for the spirit and is good for the soul. This is why it’s valuable and important – and not because it brings in money.

Let’s take music as another example. When I listen to Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony, Debussy´s Claire de Lune or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, there are instants when I feel as though I were at one with the universe.  I don’t find any scientific explanation in these sounds and harmonies nor any definite answers to the deep and fundamental questions of existence and life. What I do find is a kind of inexplicable presentiment or inkling. Art satisfies the hunger of the spirit and the thirst of the soul seeking to understand the nature of its own being. This is why art is also called balm that soothes and heals the soul – in viewing and listening just as in the act of creation, in making music, singing or painting.

Art is a stuff of life

In this sense art is basically a stuff of life. What would life be without art? When it’s a question of physical survival, obviously factors other than art take precedence. We need water, food, protection from heat and cold, and we need medical care. But even so, it was in the time of the hard lockdown due to the corona virus that the evening concerts from people’s balconies radiated an energy and vitality whose effects couldn’t be measured on the thermometer but which certainly had a tremendously uplifting impact on people’s spirits – particularly in Italy but also in Germany and other countries too.

When the Titanic sank, it went down to the sound of violins being played by the musicians engaged to play in the liner’s pompous ballroom. And even if their music didn’t rescue a single passenger from drowning on that fateful night, at least it saved those desperately seeking to save themselves from the icy bleak silence in which that dramatic event must have unfolded. These are pretty grim cases you might be thinking. And they may well be – but they do tell us an awful lot about the meaning of art in the lives of people – right up to their point of death.

Fortunately, even during the lockdown there was no complete dearth of artistic and cultural events for months on end. Alongside the official cultural media programme on TV and the internet, solo artists and theatre communities began – and will continue – to use digital opportunities to maintain or re-establish the connection with their audiences and so with life itself. Now this is no substitute for a genuine concert experience, a real exhibition or a film on the big screen of a movie theatre. It’s more liked tinned food in contrast to a freshly prepared meal but at the very least it does cover a basic need.

And finally there’s the question of how and from what all these freelance artists are going to live when they’re not allowed to appear or exhibit. If art is a stuff of life then artists are the very ones who provide us with such nutrition. Especially in such troubled times as ours we should take care not to forget them but treat them well and value them like a glass of water in the desert.

 

So listening to “Take a Pebble” may not only be an inspiring, almost mindblowing experience but also let you understand a bit better how OUBEY was.

Lyrics

Just take a pebble and cast it to the sea
Then watch the ripples that unfold into me
My face spill so gently into your eyes
Disturbing the waters of our lives

Shreads of our memories are lying on your grass
Wounded words of laughter are graveyards of the past
Photographs are grey and torn, scattered in your fields
Letters of your memories are not real

Well, sadness on your shoulders like a wornout overcoat
In pockets creased and tattered hang the rags of your hope
The daybreak is your midnight, the colours have all died
Disturbing the waters of our lives,
Of our lives, lives, lives

Quelle: LyricFind

 

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