Me and My iPal
I’ve been a poor friend to my little old 2rd Generation 10gig iPod lately. It was my closest sidekick for many years, went to beach and mountain alike together, she played with me at a few DJ gigs, provided a soundtrack to my travels in Japan in the car and train… We were tight. Recently though, TSO got the new iPod touch and her 4gen black 30gig ipod has sort of taken over in the car, at work etc. But the last few days, as this job winds down, I’ve had the Bose Sound Dock in the office, cranked all day. Yesterday I saw my old pal sitting on the shelf and felt guilty so I brought her in.

Man alive! Does she hold some sweet secrets! This morning she has taken me from the 5,6,7,8’s to Neil Young, through The Soul Swingers, to Pachelbel’s Canon by Canadian Brass and finally, now to The Undertones and Guillemots without alarming of upsetting the balance of the room. She’s a better DJ than I’ll ever be – I’d never have the balls to make those kind of shifts and think I’d get away with it. There are songs on this iPod that I’ve no idea where they came from how they got on there which is a great part about the mp3 music revolution – the “physical” (CDs, tapes etc) has been taken out of the equation. You get songs from friends, from downloads,, from tons of sources, but it’s all kept in this little pocket archive that you never touch till it gets chocka and you need to have a throwout.

This iPod though, has always had a great mind for shuffle. I’ve written in the past, on Gaijinworld (my now defunct longstanding Japan blog) about the mixes she has thrown out – brought me to tears on trains whizzing through the rice fields, inspired me to kick over dustbins in the back streets of Hokuriku etc. There have been times I’d swear that this little lump of plastic and chrome is connected to my mood, to my very subconscious. The least used button on this grime-encrusted pocket wonder, is the skip forward button. I consider it an affront to her to snub her choices and for that she reminds me how good songs I’d previously thought played-out, really are.

As things move up and down, it’s the little constants that keep me grounded. I’ll never give this iPod away. We’re still tight.

Monumental The Holocaust memorial. I'd had some trouble locating it in the months I've been here in Berlin, and it turned out to be very central and I'd even driven past it many times. Took a look at it the other week. It's considerable. I'm not much for Holocaust memorials any more though. I've been to the Jewish museum here too, to see the amazing building and you know I come away from these things wondering if they aren't so much remembering the dead, as keeping resentment alive. It makes me uncomfortable.

Walking away from the Jewish museum with the message "never again" ringing in my ears as it's raison d' etre, and I walked past a kindergarten with a yard full of blonde kids, Turkish kids, black kids, oriental kids all running around together, their parents at the gates chatting, waiting for them. and I just thought, you know, it's not gonna happen again, is it, realistically? So, then, to what end all these endless museums and memorials with their 24 hour security guards on patrol and their metal detectors and pat-downs at the door? It has to be said, I think it's keeping hate alive more than respecting the dead who are hatred's consequence. Is it just me?

Treptowering Monuments
Yesterday, TSO and I, on the advice of good friends, went to check out the Soviet monument in Berlin's Treptow area. We'd been apprised of its scale and stark nature so we had some prep but still, it was a stunning sight. The centerpiece is a series of 5 stone-topped sarcophagi containing the remains of 5000 soldiers lost in the battle for Berlin. At one end is a cubist incomplete arc of marble with the soviet hammer and sickle device, each fronted by a kneeling soldier, hand on machine gun, tired from battle. From the vantage point behind them one is confronted with the view of the graves, lined on both sides by rows of rectangular blocks of sandstone adorned with soviet propaganda reliefs which are a feast in themselves, more on them to follow. At the far end is a large mound topped with the most impressive bit of soviet-era sculpture I've seen.
It's a twelve meter high statue of a soviet soldier, helmetless, with a frightened child clinging to his left shoulder. In his right hand is a gigantic, slightly over-scale medieval broadsword which rests on a limb of the crushed swastika under his feet. His face is stoic, resolved, right. The sheer audacity of it puts you on the back foot, this is propaganda and you know it, but fuck it, it's convincing as hell - you want to believe that anyone who'd put this much effort in, go to this much trouble, just HAS to be right, you know?
The fact that the whole thing was built by the soviets, who occupied that half of the city, has a sort of eeriness about it all. The info boards at the entrance, showing the start of construction in the late '40s, old soviet-made trucks and bedraggled labourers swarming over the muddy scene. The gigantic hands of the main sculpture, disembodied, lying on the groun awaiting crane-assisted assembly, with a man standing beside them. Visiting Soviet dignitaries in the '50s and '60s even Putin in the '90s coming to pay respects to their troops who served and died in this far outpost of their ultimately doomed empire.
The third sculpture is a Russian mother-figure - "Mother Russia" - honouring, in true communist tradition, the sacrifice of those on the home front as well as that of the troops on the battle front. A great experience without leaving the city.