Lost In The Grooves

So this morning I found out that one of my favorite authors, Chinua Achebe, had won the Man Booker Prize. It said so on the BBC, so it must be true.

This made me happy, although I was sorry to hear of his paralysis. Achebe drew me into the world of Nigerian authors writing in English, which drew me into a world of my very own language, artfully re-cadenced, where aphorisms said things in a way that deflected anger: “Since men have learned to shoot without missing, said the bird, I have learned to fly without perching.” Chew a kola nut and think about that for a minute.

Anyway, as I often do when I hear news, I headed over to the Well to post this in the Books conference, where I was astonished to see there wasn’t a topic devoted to African literature. Surely I’m not the only one of those folks reading this stuff when I can find it! And I concluded my post by saying that now that Achebe had the Booker, it was time to get a Nobel into Ousman Sembene’s hands before it was too late.

A couple of hours later, another fan of his work noted that it was already too late.

My reaction to this is twofold. First, I urge you to go out and find any of this great man’s books that you can find. Second, I urge you to rent as many of his films as you can find, because he was an amazing filmmaker as well as an amazing novelist. Usually he’d write a novel, then film it, but be warned that his early masterpiece, God’s Little Bits of Wood is, thank heavens, unfilmable. Nor is it an easy read, but in order to understand Western Africa, and Senegal in particular, it’s a mandatory one.

Now, what does this have to do with Berlin? Something. Because after reading that superb obituary, an anecdote came back to me, and I stuck it on the Well, and now I’ll put it here.

There used to be an African restaurant here in Berlin on Pappelallee called the Chop House. It served West African food — Senegalese and Ghanian, for the most part — and, like many restaurants in East Berlin, scammed tax credits by being a “gallery,” in this case for African artists.

Because it was cheap and good and one of the few places where they’d actually put enough chiles in stuff, I went there often, and one night I went there with a couple of friends, only to find out there was some sort of gallery opening going on, and most of the tables were filled. We were seated at one with some Germans and Africans talking animatedly and minded our own business until one skinny, tall African guy said “Hey, are you speaking English? I need to practice my English because I
have a scholarship to a university there.”

So we did the conversation thing, and of course, I asked him where he was from. “Senegal. Dakar,” he replied. “I’ve always wanted to go to Dakar, ever since I saw a film by Ousman Sembene called Xala,” I said. The guy’s eyes got real big.

“Ousman, he is my father! He is my mother! He saved my life!” I figured this was metaphorical, but he went on. “I was a little boy, living on the streets. I never knew my parents, like a lot of street kids in Dakar. They just throw us there and if we live, we live. And I lived by begging, because Muslim tradition is to give to beggars.

“One day, I went into a bookshop and begged the man behind the counter for some money. He laughed at me. ‘You’re a strong young man,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you work if you want it.’ And of course, I told him yes. ‘I edit a magazine, a literary journal, and it’s printed across town. I never have time to go pick it up for my shop here, and they’ve just told me the latest issue is out. I can make money if I have copies here to sell, but I have no time to get them. I have a cart in the back. If you can go to the printer, I’ll give you a note you can hand them, and they’ll load the cart with my magazine. Then you bring it
here and I’ll pay you.’

“So I did. It wasn’t hard work, and when I got back to the shop, he asked me if I’d like a copy. I had to tell him I couldn’t read.
Naturally, he said that a young man like me should be in school, and he knew a church-run school that would take me. He told me that once I could read, he’d give me a job in the bookshop, and that was how it was: I learned to read, and I lived in the back of the shop.

“Now, that man was Ousman Sembene, as you’ve guessed. But what you probably didn’t guess is this: Do you remember the scene in Xala where the businessman is arguing with his daughter, who says he should stop speaking French and talk to her in Wolof?”

I said I did.

“And you remember that there’s another child at the table, doing his homework, his son, who’s younger than the daughter.”

Yes, I remembered that. The kid was obviously having a horrible conflict between the father he idolized and the sister who he knew to be so smart.

“Well, that child, that boy there, that was me! Mamadou! And that was really my homework!”

He’s not listed in the IMDB, and Senegalese can be notorious scamsters and hustlers, and it had been 20 years since I’d seen the film, but I figured it was okay to believe him. Because what if it were true?

So why do you suppose Berlin has so much graffiti? Does it contain large gangs of disaffected black or Latino youth? That’s one demographic from which graffiti springs in the States, and although I do think there are some Turkish-German posses behind it, that’s only a part of the answer.

And why do you suppose so much of Berlin’s “graffiti” actually falls under the rubric of “street art?” Sure, there’s a large contingent of international artists who work in this fashion, and even the suddenly oh-so-fashionable Banksy has his rats around my neighborhood, but that, too, is only part of the answer.

And I’d say that another part of the answer that’s being ignored is simply this: because Berlin’s official public art sucks. Really: I’ve never been in a place with so much bad outdoor sculpture, eye-straining murals, and, of course, all those damn bears.

So I want to spend just a minute here examining three works of art. The first is public:

This sucker sat under a tarp for I don’t know how long before being unveiled at the Hauptbahnhof a few weeks ago. It should have stayed there. There’s a plaque on the side, which explains that it’s a memorial to the Lehrter Stadtbahnhof which used to stand where the Hauptbahnhof now does, and was created by a Prof. somebody or other using stainless steel and “high-tech elements” to symbolize, ummm, this and that. The horse has a clock-like face set in its side with bad mask-like faces which revolve, so I guess having an electric motor is high-tech. Underneath, in the base, are various gears the “artist” has modified with more faces, as well as bits of the brickwork from the old Lehrter Stadtbahnhof, although whether they’re original brick from the old building or part of the multi-million-Euro reconstruction which was torn down a couple of years after it was finished is hard to tell. The whole thing, towering over an outdoor eating area, is of such amazing ugliness that it’s breathtaking. Hard to figure how the Ponyhof missed something this size.

Now, Exhibit B is a very small piece, currently hard to find because trees obscure it.

Yup. Nike again. What’s disarming about these paintings, besides the lack of formal skill, is the feeling one gets when one comes upon them, always in an unexpected place, and almost always cheering you up by the very act of discovery. That’s something I think public art should do, and it informs my own reactions to things like, say, the wall rabbits or the long-gone, intricate cutouts by the New York master (mistress?) Swoon.

And then there are the works which proclaim mastery:

I have no idea who’s behind this (and another one I’ve found), but a huge Russian icon-on-acid popping up on the corner of your street (this is at the end of Torstr. at Oranienburger Tor) is something you notice. It’s taller than I am, and, needless to say, many times wider. The palette of color is quite basic, but used with the kind of skill any commercial artist would envy. And the subject matter, well, it makes you think.

If I were running this city (and there’s a nighmare I’ve yet to have) I’d discreetly channel funds to the likes of Nike, Swoon, and the Acid Iconist in hopes that they’d continue to beautify what’s not a very beautiful cityscape. The more obscure the place beautified, the bigger the fee. Meanwhile, it’s encouraging that you don’t actually have to walk past the Iron Horse to catch your train, although it’s hard not to cast it a glance if, as I do, you take the bus to the Hauptbahnhof (well, when I have luggage I do, anyway). And it’s further encouraging that these other artists are out there, continuing to surprise us.