Berlin

19/5/22

Arrived late at night. Got on the S-bahn to meet Annina in Neukölln. I joined her and her choir (or who were left of them) sitting on the street outside a Lotto drinking store-bought beers. It was hot in the city and the tarmac still retained the warmth of the sun. Hearing Annina dip in and out of German to speak to me and her friends was a joy. She had bought me a bottle of pilsner with a bottle-top you pop open. After you finish drinking you should leave the empty beer bottle next to a bin, so that someone can come and collect it and get 8 cents from the state. ‘Never throw a beer bottle away into the bin Rimi, or else they can’t get recycled.’

20/5/22

We woke up in the spare bedroom of her cousin’s. It had a high ceiling with long white curtains that let the light in softly; outside I could see green treetops and blue sky and hear the hum of the city. We went to a coffee bar called Bona. The interior was decorated with wheat sheafs hanging from the ceiling, bare lightbulbs and raw wood. As with all of Berlin, their practical carefree attitude and cobbled-together cool aesthetic makes everything look interesting while simultaneously being nothing special. We shared a pecorino salami croissant and chimichurri avocado bagel, got two black coffees and talked about our parents’ generation. 

Next, Annina took me to a large disused airfield called Tempelhof nearby. She had brought her roller-skates and began drifting along the smooth tarmac of the air strip, while I mounted her bicycle which was too high for me and pedalled up and down. I returned to find Annina had done a backward somersault after crashing into a skater girl. We went back to Wedding where she lives and dropped off my bags and had a shower. For lunch Annina cooked me white asparagus with brown butter – crunchy, fried, wholesome – and freshly boiled potatoes.

I put her arm into a makeshift sling then we left the flat to go to Alte Nationalgalerie to catch a Paul Gaugin exhibition. There was surprisingly little of the modernist painter’s works on display. A few paintings of the sensual forms and vivid tropical colours of the Pacific, but really the exhibition was dealing with the controversy of the character. Gaugin was a French colonist who promoted an idealised version of himself as a native while continuously marrying underage indigenous girls (his first wife was 13, the second was 14 years old), contracting syphilis, becoming badly in debt and then dying. There were pieces by Polynesian heritage artists which off-set the white man’s cultivated image of Tahiti as a “primitive, pleasure-laden land”; contemporary video footage of women on the island remaining voiceless and a political poem that I liked called Guys Like Gaugin by Selina Tusitala Marsh.

We walked around the plaza of Museum Island with the newly built Homboldt Palace and heard the Berlin Cathedral bells tolling. There was going to be a storm, so we headed to where Annina works at the Kino Arsenal (an independent cinema) to watch a Frederick Wiseman retrospective. I met her cute colleagues who gave us bottled beers from behind the box office window. Before the 4-hour film was set to start we ran across the road to get the best fast-food burgers I’ve ever eaten from Burgermeister. The film called Belfast, Maine was a documentary detailing all the elements of an American town: church, school, healthcare, hunting, factory work, social care. It was a bleak and at times poignant long-ass film.

21/5/22

We woke up late and went downstairs to get food for breakfast. There is a fresh produce store on the corner of the street called Katofferladen, which translates to Potato Shop. We bought a punnet of strawberries, two sticks of rhubarb and homemade jam. Down the street there was a bakery where we got white crusty bread rolls, croissants and a pastry filled with spinach and cheese: Breakfast of Champions.

We visited a flea market where the stalls were crammed full of inexpensive wares. Mangled screwdrivers, phone chargers, chipped china. I rifled through some boxes as is my want and got two porcelain Chinese soup spoons for a Euro. Annina foraged a wonky golden candlestick and a beaten-up bell with stars like asterisks carved onto its body for me. It threatened to rain, so we ducked into a fancy Turkish café where we had sweet snacks and coffees and talked about what we feared the most.

It never did rain. The stall-owners were packing up and Annina bought a ship in a bottle and a vase with a broken lip that had been glued back together. We walked home stopping off at a well-stocked Asian supermarket where I bought soba noodles to make for our lunch. Annina read me an interview with Frederick Wiseman and I watched her 17-minute documentary she had made about Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Georgia. A quiet, thoughtful, melancholic film. 

We walked through two large parks near her house: Goethe and Reheberge. Animals were being kept in the latter – I got to see wild boars! Dark and bristly fur, their bodies densely compact tapering down to tiny trotters, keeping themselves very clean. One was making satisfied grunting noises as it rubbed up against a wooden post to have a scratch. Small white tusks were visible above articulated snouts, a little longer than a pig’s and seemingly more dexterous. The three boars were happily rooting around and throwing glances at us humans who were watching them, while in the far distance we could all hear the thudding bass of a techno gig. The park has a beautiful lake with a fake beach on the other side. We sat overlooking the lake in the setting sun and talked about cultural differences in expressing emotion, as a businessman stripped off to have a swim in the lake.

We walked to Moabit where Annina’s friend Clara lives. Clara had invited us to a dinner party where she'd made the most delicious Syrian food. Stuffed roasted peppers, aubergines, courgettes with rice and meat, a rich red sauce, white creamed veg all served with helpings of olives, dill and lemon juice. The guests brought an interesting mix of heritages to the table I’d never experienced before. One girl was Jewish and had returned home to Berlin after living in Colombia for many years. An Iranian couple where the wife had lived in Tehran and Toronto. We spoke on the topic of strangers. How in some places strangers are suspicious or people in exile, while in some they’re welcomed or even seen as courageous for having boldly set out to find their own path. I realised that in Japanese there is no word for "stranger" only "someone you don’t know", apparently this is also the case in Farsi.

22/5/22

I packed my hold-all bag and wrapped my trinkets from the flea market in dirty socks. We had delicious breakfast and coffee again, then headed out to walk to Gesundbrunnen where I would catch my train to the airport. We stopped off at the Silent Green and enjoyed the summery garden there. We walked along the river and had an ice coffee in a café next to the flat where Annina used lived. At the station I bought currywurst sausages with a white bread roll and said ‘so long’ to my friend. It had been a real holiday from my norm and I'd been happy to see the city opening up post-Covid. I’d be visiting again while Annina is set to come to London in June. Good times ahead.

Lockdown London

Lockdown has not been so bad for me. I live with two brothers, both of whom tolerate my ups and downs – mainly ups to be honest, shouting at films and munching crisps and drinking wine. They let me come and intrude on their peace, which I am grateful for because it would be less entertaining living alone through isolation. Although I find I have begun to miss the oddest things during my waking hours, while in my dreams I have a very busy schedule these days, like managing a successful touring band.

During my one piece of exercise allowed per day, I began to miss King’s Cross. Not anywhere in particular but the concept of King’s Cross (the sensation of being in it.) There’s this pub I like called King Charles I which used to be more of a dive if you can imagine it - only enforcing the smoking ban about a year or ago, from what I recall. The pub has these stuffed proud-looking animals nailed to its wood panelling, like little deer and stoat, and the beers are really cheap. They put on these mad drag pub quizzes that descend into mayhem whenever we’re there, usually after a poetry and music night at Housmans, the radical booksellers down the road. The member of staff there, I think her name is Luna or Lyra, or neither, chills at the back of the shop not really into whatever’s going on on stage, but overseeing the crowd, in case they fancy buying a humanist badge, or a manifesto on something very important.

I used to work at a venue that’s changed hands many times over because they over-spent on branding and not enough on selling tickets, but it was fun and I’d get to see shows for free on my way back from flyering. I used to flyer-drop places all around King’s Cross, cafes, kebab shops, hair salons. They’d let me stick posters of comedians across their windows, which I thought was dumb because surely, you’d prefer natural light to seeing a scruffy poster every day. I traipsed over the streets with a rucksack full of A5s and poster tubes and blue tac. I would end up walking from King’s Cross through Somerstown, across the tow paths to Camden Lock and Kentish Town. I’m not a North Londoner, so I’m not sure why I feel such nostalgia for these places, or even this time of life because I was broke and living on a boat. Yet, I miss it. I miss it because it reminds me of the hubbub and what it isn’t anymore. You can’t walk from shop to pub to club. You can’t knock into people like billiard balls on a table and have awkward chit-chat.

But. That is not the whole story. Because there are some things I have done for the first time ever during isolation and these things have been good and cannot be overlooked just because they are slightly less exciting than going to the pub. No. So here they are, in no particular order:

·      Watched a MET Opera production of Sigfried from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Phooey that’s some intense singing (4.5 hours of it) and the production value was heinously high. You can stream a show every day for free.

·      Roasted a butternut squash! I have never roasted a squash before. I had assumed that they were a legume but they’re not – they’re their own class of plant and actually a courgette is a squash, how about that? Also, what was fun was after the squash had been roasted to a pulp, it sat in the oven squeaking for a few minutes like a mouse until I took it out to film, then it shut-up.

·      Getting engrossed in a terrible overly technical low-budget film about time-travelling called Primer, which by the way, won the Sundance Festival in 2004 beating Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite to the title, which let’s admit are very Sundance-y films. I watched this bad sci-fi film and then spent the next 3 hours reading all the forums and watching a 20-minute explanation video about what happened in the film, and now I am wondering when I can watch it again, to look more closely at the wardrobe changes.

Old stuff old me

I have recently been sifting through a lot of old stuff. My mum is moving house and by way of being her daughter, a lot of my old things I don’t use or think about anymore have ended up there. I emptied a cardboard box with frayed edges, scraps of old tape hanging off its corners. Squished in there amidst crumpled uniforms and a Brownies sash, was a small pencil case that had been zipped up to bursting, stuffed with what I objectively define as “bits and bobs”. A badge pin, small bit of broken wood scribbled with pencil marks, dead yellow feather, lifeless endearing lizard charms made up of microscopic beads, smelly gel pens, a ladybird pendant that doubles up as a watch. Trinkets and Talisman. 

I am supposed to be lessening the load. Of things that my mum will have to take with her to the new place, so I have to make sacrifices, I realise, but I look at these little pieces of me from when I was eleven and I can’t. I remember the feather and that bit of wood. I couldn't explain to you why they mattered or what I remember about them. But I do know them. A certain recognition you feel as with the sensation of seasons. So I keep the pencil case in tact and leave it to the side.

Then there are these textbooks. My school workbooks from Year 3 until Year 8. What am I going to do with these? Will I ever read them - no. Will anyone else ever want to read them - no. But I can’t lightly put them in the bin bag with the the old envelopes and school year planner. I am stuck. I want to get rid of things but they won’t let me! Instead, they draw me closer until I am sat in a pool of light from a cheap lamp staring down at my old work. 

MOVIES (written twice in bubble writing, twice in normal writing)

1. Space Jam

2. BFG

3. Jurassic Park

...

I list ten “movies” in total but I get the gist. My past self is listing my favourite films in order. And let me tell you, my description of Jurassic Park is nothing like Jurassic Park. I manage to list all the main characters and I am glad to say that Jeff Goldblum then, made as much of an impression on me, as he still does today. And Space Jam? That was a pretty good movie. I can still remember all the words to I Believe I Can Fly. I believe I could touch the sky. I think about it every night and day. Spread my wings and fly away. I believe I can SSSSSOAR

So. What makes me me now and me then? Am I really the same person when I have no recollection of watching the BFG, yet I still love Jurassic Park and remember Michael Jordan playing basketball against aliens? If I throw this stuff away and I forget it all, do I stop being the old me because nothing reminds me of her?

I have a job now. And in that job I get given a quarterly review, which is an assessment of your character in a professional light. I guess that’s a little bit like a school report. I have a school report open in front of me from when I was eight and it says under Listening Skills that ‘Rimika is a good pupil at listening. She always asks questions in class but in some cases, she asks too many questions about things she already knows the answers to...’ The teacher continues. And it strikes me that my line manager gave me exactly the same criticism last week; I ask too many questions to things I already know the answers to. I’m twenty-nine! How have I never taken this criticism on board?

I imagined an eight year old would be different to their thirty year old self, and seventy year old self. For one: different priorities. I am eight and I worry that my tamagotchi is dying and Olivia doesn't like me. I am twenty-nine and I worry about a flat leak and the cost of commuting. But I guess immediate thoughts play no outcome in the way you are. Because clearly I still am - very much like I was - when I was at eight. Just bigger with more money. I don’t know if this is worrying or the facts of life.

So I gather my things and place them in to piles, I throw some away and leave others to ponder over. I have a week left before they all get judged. To keep or not to keep. What about all those kids who's parents never kept anything, maybe they couldn’t, simply lack of space and time. I’m sort of lucky to have these things that remind me of a person I don’t know anymore because they morphed in to me. I’m pretty happy with things as they are so I don’t feel too bad about it. Thankfully. And that pencil case. When did I make the decision to put all my worldly treasures in to that khaki zipped sack, like Noah’s Ark adrift on a voyage until the time was right.

I remember something from my archaeology degree.

Burials and shipwrecks are what we call “closed contexts”. They remain untouched for years and years until their own civilisation forgets, and when we find them, they give us precious insight. A snapshot in time otherwise lost forever to the noise of history.

Making Mochi

In 2011, my friend Rachel came to stay with me and my grandparents in Japan. She took footage of them making the new year rice cakes, or mochi, and six years later I have edited it together to make a short film.

In memory of Ogiichan

Halloween horror spoof

I shot this horror spoof called Halloween at Bromfelde Rd (Part 1). Featuring the haunted housemates who are Georgia Margaret from the dead Murphy, Jesse All hell break loose Lamb, Neil Spade, Louise Demonic Son and it's by me Rimi Solloway on Vimeo. Original score by Jesse Allam and Lou Dickinson. Boo!