Do you smoke?

But then I listened to it full blast at night on the German Autobahn with the cruise control on 150 km/h. And suddenly some very low notes (probably from Florian Fricke's moog synthesizer on the second piece Nebulous Dawn) hit me. There are absolutely no drums or percussions on this album but I somehow felt a kind of earth beat. The sound of the earth turning around itself.

Zeit means time. And that's what the music is all about. 75 minutes without anything happening. Pure time. On the cover there is a total eclipse. All animals stop making sounds when the sun disappears behind the moon. Time is standing still.

There is also a cello quartet playing on this record. It gives a modern classical aspect to the music. Like Ligeti (not that I know Ligeti) or something. There is hardly a hint of a tune anywhere. It is pretty challenging stuff. More dark than bright.

The synthesizers and organs evoke helicopters, water bubbles, bird's twitter, fast dripping water and monks humming "OM".

I never tried LSD but I guess this is the ultimate acid record. It has to be played on very good loudspeakers otherwise the cosmic effect gets lost. On headphones it's less good somehow. Maybe because it is more universal than pure mind music. Or maybe it has to do with the reverb which is used a lot.

This album is so far-ahead of any time, it's unbelievable. It anticipates ambient, new age and post-rock. Of course there are no crescendoes. That would have been too generic. It is the music of the stars. The pulsars and quasars.

The first sentence from the first song of the perfect Okkervil River album Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See (think the marriage of roots and sentimentality) .

Das wunderschöne deutsche Wort Schlawiner (ursprgl. slowenischer gerissener Hausierer) steht nicht im Grimmschen Wörterbuch. Das ist doch wohl hoffentlich Schlampigkeit und hat nichts mit political correctness zu tun. Oder leide ich inzwischen auch schon unter Verfolgungswahn?

P.S. Schlafittchen hätte ich übrigens bis vor drei Stunden mit "w" geschrieben. Strange German language.

Donnerstag, den 15.1.2004 liest Peter Stamm im Literaturhaus Frankfurt. Ich werde höchstwahrscheinlich da sein. Seine Kurzgeschichten sind mindestens so gut wie die von Raymond Carver, finde ich.

translation: Agnes asked "Did you ever go up the stairs?" "No", I said, "why should I?" "How do you know then that you really live on the twenty-seventh floor?"

What do you get when you want nothing? Supposing that you are sure that you eventually will always get everything and/or everyone you want to get?

when a four year old girl and her twenty-fivish blonde mother with the sentence "I believe in love at first sight" written on her t-shirt install themselves opposite you in a train bar-restaurant?