When Michael Cohen was still living in Rochester/IL they called him MC. Master of Ceremonies. MC was the guy, everybody wanted to hang with. Life was a party with MC. He knew all the right people moms and dads called the wrong people. The night people. The misfits, dropouts, oddballs, the losers, bohemians, freaks, pimps and drug lords. Life changed when they busted MC and called him Mickey Cohen. Just like the famous gangster. The Jewish gangster. MC didn‘t even know he was Jewish. Half Jewish. Until that day in court. „Ever been to the Holy Land?“ the judge had asked before sending MC to the penitentiary in Marion for seven years.

Like famous Mickey Cohen MC spent his time in jail studying the bible and observing the Sabbath, but unlike famous Mickey Cohen he left the slammer as a different man and did what the judge had said.

„Go back to the Holy Land!“

hat Gold im Mund.

REPLICA

Can a replica be a piece of art?

Is a replica a replica or is it a counterfeit?

When young Picasso painted this replica (1898) of the famous King Philip IV portrait by Velasquez (1655) he never thought about it ending up in a museum one day.

He didn´t sign it in the name of Velasquez.

He didn´t sign it at all.

What is it then?

It is a great painting.

It is a replica.

It is no counterfeit.

What is it?

ART

The day we hoped we'd never see. The 100th day of the new Potus.

No matter how you call him, the Antichrist, Trumputin, Agent Orange or Orange Utan, he's still around.

Like the poor. Still around, trying to understand why they got fooled again. Didn't Orange Utan promise to make them great again, bring their jobs back and fuck the Chinese? Empty promises.

No wonder the poor return to the promises kept.

All you can eat buffets, freebie soda and a car bigger than their living room. God save the Poor!

Even in the land of perpetual communication they do exist. Dead spots. No communication with the rest of the world. The outer world. The other world. Like before. In our analog youth.

One place at a time. Like animals.

The Place: Death Valley.

The Time: March 8/2017, 47 days after the crash of civilization.

Nothing here will ever change, whoever sits in the White House. The whole world could be taken over by Aliens. Or worse. Trump.

It doesn't matter.

If countries were children Italy would be the spoiled old kid on the block! Not what you think. We're not talking about growing up under the Mediterranean sun, surrounded by eternal beauty, nor are we talking about the pervasive principle of Bellezza, the bella figura, the bella way of driving, dressing and dining, we're not even talking about the dolce vita as such.

We are talking about that certain attitude spoiled kids have when suddenly confronted with growing up and having to leave some of it behind.

Italians don´t like that!

Imagine an extraterrestrial looking down at earth trying to make sense of the way humans appoint their leaders. They had created a system that gave everyone the right to choose the best among them and wound up with the worst. They called it democracy.

Every year we go to the Palio when we´re around. The Palio is not only one of the most genuinely fascinating events in the world, it is very simply the oldest horse race still on. It is taking place twice a year in the same city which also hosts the oldest bank in the world still on. Siena. The more you think of it, the Palio might just be the perfect metaphor for Italy. It is historic, it is beautiful and nobody knows how it works. Yesterday however was a truly historic day, even for Sienese standards. After winning the first Palio of the year in July, the contrada „La Lupa“ also won the second one in honor of the Madonna Assunta. Il cappotto. The last time this happened was 231 years ago. 1785. The year the first U.S. government gathered in New York City, Napoleon became a lieutenant in the French army and Mozart published his „Haydn Quartets“. This is the true dimension of the Palio.

Back in a city completely built and populated by refugees. Tel Aviv. Is there a better role model for the world of today? It seems like everybody is getting in one way or another paranoid about the “refugee problem” which is not a problem but the oldest pattern of the world. Rome, Paris, New York, all built by refugees, without them the world would be a different place. Pretty boring I suppose. In Tel Aviv, that youngest of world metropolises, the refugees at first only came from some parts of the world, then from some more parts of the world and now from all parts of the world. It works. Well, but aren´t they all Jewish? Just another lesson to learn over here. As with “the refugees” there does not exist anything like “the Jews”. They are as different as can be and the idea of a “Jewish look” is probably the oldest form of discrimination around. Just imagine, how people in Oslo perceive it in contrast to people in Cairo or Tel Aviv for that matter. The “Jewish look” is a myth and as such a sad proof of the fact that discrimination is still the origin of most problems we have. Let us stop discriminating people and start looking at them, one by one. A refugee is not the refugee, just as a Jew is not the Jew.

On the 8th of January 1959, his 12th birthday, David Robert Jones opened a strangely looking brown leather case and found a brand new Selmer alto saxophone inside. It was all white with golden keys. His father asked him if he liked it and young David just nodded silently. He would have loved a guitar. He wanted to be an American rock star just like the one on TV who was dancing wild with the guitar hanging around his neck. He only started to like the saxophone when his teacher Ronnie played him a record by some good looking American guy, whose alto saxophone sounded crazy and wonderful like the birds in the sky. David immediately wanted to stop even playing one more note. 

I will never be able to play like that.

Nobody will.

What a great name that is, „Art Pepper“, it sounds so cool, almost like a song. I want to have an American name too. Do you think I could call myself David Pepper?

Why?

Because „Jones“ sounds boring.

Rubbish, there are tons of great musicians by that name.

That is the problem!

Listen Dave, first you become a musician then you change your name not the other way around.

Driving around Liverpool in the perennial december rain. Ringo behind the wheel, the fab three looking out the window, blurred images of the town they know so well. When they arrive at the waterfront it is raining so hard they can´t get out of the car. Paul is humming a melody and John starts to sing, „if the rain comes they run and hide their heads, they might as well be dead if the rain comes, if the rain comes...“. We should call ourselves the Rainbirds, George says, whenever it is raining we start singing. Right? It is always raining. Without the rain we wouldn´t even have a band. If the sun was shining the whole day, we had not written a single song. We need the rain. We are not the Beach boys. We are from Liverpool!

When the the Statue of Liberty was given to the United States of America by the French people in 1886, it was officially called „Liberty enlightening the world!“ After the terrifying events of last week that very obviously tried to darken (eclipse) the free world people asked themselves, why France, why Paris?

I guess we tend to forget that after all France still represents the ultimate power of enlightenment, the secular stronghold of the free. No Burqas.

When I took the picture of Lady Liberty back in 1989 the World Trade Center was of course still standing. The picture was taken from the South tower platform. That afternoon nobody was using the tower telescope so I tried it as an additional lens and through it did this picture.

The torch. The ultimate symbol of the free.

Irretrievable.

1957, a small town somewhere along the Bible Belt. Norman Potts a married man of 36 years, having his own house, a wife, two kids and a great love for music steps into his favorite record store to buy some new music to listen to after dinner when his wife Laura is cleaning up the kitchen and the kids are in bed, smoking a cigar like he does every friday evening after a hard week´s work. While Norman is talking to Tony, the local record shop owner about the latest stuff by the likes of Sinatra, Herman and Brubeck he sees this.

NORMAN

What´s that?

TONY

Isn´t she hot? Really nice voice too.

NORMAN

Is she from London?

TONY

No, it´s just the name, all American girl!

NORMAN

Unbelievable.

TONY

Wanna have a listen?

NORMAN

Guess not.

TONY

Come on.

Back home Norman puts the record on and listens all the way through to „Go slow“ when Laura is coming into the living room, „Go slow Baby, ooooh honey, take it easy on the curves...“. She throws Norman an irritated look followed by a shy smile, that Norman returns the same way before they both start to undress in front of the fireplace. What a great record!

Walking down the beach yesterday I was hit by a copy of the Gazzetta dello Sport the most notorious and extravagant of the three daily sports papers in Italy, headline letters saying „Grand´Italia!“ Living in Italy now for a while the Gazzetta strikes me as a perfect metaphor for the country. The day before the Gazzetta had published a slamming report on the state of the „Calcio Italiano“ doomed to perish in the global waves. First of all, the tag line doesn´t say something like „All the news that´s fit to print“ but „Tutto il rosa della vita“ which besides the double meaning of „rosa“ as „squad“ could easily be translated as „the bright side of life“. Thus reading the pink paper is a fantasy, it is not about the news and buzz than about your favorite team but about the inexplicable formula of Italian life as such. Only hours before the Gazzetta had slammed the Italian „calcio“ as mentally crippled doomed to perish in a couple of months. Dolce Vita, the Roman decadence of its origin, the golden abyss, the Italian way of life, reading a slamming report on your favorite player while drinking a black espresso in the morning, riding to work in a red Alfa Romeo or diving into the blue ocean, it is an all Italian fantasy come true.

Now this. Patti Smith is performing her 1975 record „Horses“ in Florence, the city of modern man, or maybe more accurately postmodern man. If they had the word back then they would probably called the renaissance just that. Postmodernism. Modernity reborn. But to play a whole album of music 40 years later of course is more than that, it´s classical music.