Why finish a book if you can start a new one? I do not remember which was the latest book I finished. Was it Richard Brautigan's phantastic tragic story from a child's perspective So the Wind Won't Blow It all Away? back in spring? Was it Günter Ohnemus (German translator of Brautigan who writes in a similar vein as Brautigan) latest brilliant novel Der Tiger auf deiner Schulter (The tiger on your shoulder) also narrated by a teen? So light, rarely has a book made me smile so often during reading. By the way I really love books written from a non-adult angle. The profane world becomes a mysterious strange place full of surprises again. It rejuvenates me. Almost like having kids myself which is said to make you younger and less serious as well.

Back to the topic. In the past months I started at least four books of which I have not finished one yet. The first one was Klaus Kinski's autobiography Ich brauche Liebe (I need love). I liked it in the beginning. Kinski describes a poor and half-criminal youth and many physical encounters with the opposite sex. But suddenly I had enough. It was always the same story. Having sex with every second woman he met in any place imaginable. Too much showing off for my likes. Last Sunday we saw the Kinski exhibition in the Frankfurt Filmmuseum. And it turned out that his autobiography is fictional in places. He grew up in a middle-class family. Kinski's main strategies were imposture and provocation. You could see interviews with him on German television where Kinski only insulted the interviewer. Most films he played in were absolute rubbish like all these Italian Spaghetti Western in the 70s. Kinski would have sold his soul on the screen for a couple of dollars. At the exit there was a small video where Kinski was playing with a butterfly during the shooting of Cobra Verde (without Werner Herzog Kinski would have been nobody). His best role. I will never go on with his autobiography I think.

A couple of months ago I started Michel Houellebecq's new novel Plateforme which is still only available in French I suppose. The story of a guy traveling to Bangkok for sex. I read almost 50 pages and was amazed how easy the French was. Ok i must admit that I have some practice in colloquial French due to Catherine. But the book did not grip me. Usually I hate books and authors which are in, which everyone is reading. Therefore I did not read Les Particules élémentaires which was the French literary sensation in 1998. Somehow it is like with Kinski. Houellebecq is a little bit of a lady-killer. Like a rock star he has got many groupies who adore him and of course he takes profit of the situation. Who could blame him? Especially as he probably did not have a lot of sex in his youth. Look at his photos, he has the sex-appeal of a giant toad. His trick is provocation as well. He says that islam is a dumb religion and another 100,000 people buy his book. The themes of his books are contemporary: alienation, genetics and sex. Interesting and important subjects. So maybe I will continue his book soon.

The third book I started reading was the first volume of Bernard Ollivier's Longue Marche (Long hike). Ollivier is a retired French journalist who began a long walk following the historical silk road from Istanbul to Xian in China in 1999. The march is divided into four stages which he aims to accomplish in the summers from 1999-2002. The first two stages are finished. I do not know if he made the third stage. His destination was Turfan in Western China. And he did not plan to pass via Afghanistan. Walking is the best way to come to know landscapes and people. The most authentic way of traveling. It is not only extremely strenuous but also quite courageous to walk in the mid of Asia. You are at the mercy of the people you encounter. You do not look at the local population from behind a tourist bus window but you are in the middle of the action. You cannot escape. And therefore the locals do not receive you as a tourist who is usually just a cash cow for them. Hospitality is not only a word in the countries Ollivier traverses as we all know by now: just think of the Afghans who did not hand over their guest bin Laden. The book is nevertheless a bit tiring to read. The main themes are hurting feet, Turkish drivers wanting to give Ollivier a lift who always refuses and earns disbelief in return, people thinking that he is crazy to walk all the way, the difficulty and often impossibility of finding a hiking path when there is only a stinking motorway etc. I guess the idea of such a trip is probably more appealing than reading about it or even doing it. Nevertheless a very good read for the many long winter evenings to come.

The last book I started yesterday. Sorry folks but like all others it is not in English. The author is Eva-Maria Hagen, an East German actress who lived with Wolf Biermann (THEE German political songwriter who was expatriated from East Germany in 1976) for many years and is the mother of Nina Hagen who is known as THEE German punk girl back in the late 70s. The book is called Eva und der Wolf (Eva and the wolf) and is a collection of letters by Eva and Wolf. Those letters are very personal and Hagen is snotty and extremely tender at the same time. Somehow it really makes me wonder that these letters passed the censorship of the East German secret service the Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst) who must have monitored the correspondence. The letters which are from the period 1965-76 obviously also contain a lot of information about the political situation in East Germany. Biermann was something like the enemy of the state and Hagen was the national actress (resembling Romy Schneider a little) who met all the political elite including Honecker, Mielke, Mittag, Stoph, Ulbricht etc. She really fell between two stools and was expatriated in 1977 one year after Biermann. I saw her at this year's Osterspaziergang (easter promenade, a part of Goethe's Faust) in Frankfurt performing with Nina. They were singing "Hare Krishna, Hare Rama" and similar stuff. But it was quite funny and it was nice to see how well Eva and her enfant terrible get on. I hope this is the book I will finish before starting a new one. Chances are quite good. Anyways the next book I start will be in English. I promise.

Circulus vitiosus I am still fighting with nicotine. For the time being it is a lost battle but somehow I enjoy it. Last time I posted on this (three entries down) I had not yet started smoking before 12 o'clock. Today I started at 10 am. The first cigarette of the day really cuts the day in two. Up to the first cigarette I feel like a virgin. The world is an extremely slowly moving place before the first dose of nicotine hits my brain. The first cig is like a second wake-up. Before I feel like in a world of dreams. I am very relaxed and the time passes very slowly. The later I smoke my first cigarette the lesser I enjoy it and the more it makes my head spin. Almost every night after having smoked my last cig of the day I swear to myself that I will stop tomorrow. And the next morning I really hate the smell of the smoke in my room and my clothes. I usually change clothes completely as the stench of cold stale smoke really disgusts me in the morning. There are places where I do not smoke like my car or all rooms at home except two. The last bastions which have not fallen yet. My relation to smoking is really bizarre. I think I smoke only to stop smoking later on. When I have stopped smoking I do not really miss something. I enjoy stopping smoking. It is like a challenge. My sense of smell comes back slowly. I can suddenly smell the damp leaves in the road, the bouquet of a red Bordeaux wine, the smell of cigarettes other people smoke etc. But after a while I am bored. I restart smoking which is a challenge again as the first cigarettes (maybe even hundred) are so disappointing and disgusting. But then the floodgates open wide. And I am back to my 20 or more cigarettes by day. That is when it is about time to stop again. When will it end?

Listening to: Howe - Down Home. Howe Gelb, frontman and mastermind of Giant Sand on his own. This cd only available from his excellent site features tracks which did not make it onto his last official release Confluence ('cept the piano solo album Lull which was released a couple of days ago). Laid back and relaxed it is desert (island) music again. Mainly guitar plus Gelb's appealing baritone with some piano/keyboard interludes. It starts very calm and stripped down and gets more jazzy and bluesy later on. The last song "Blue Marble Girl" features his charming little daughter babbling (she is on most of his last albums). Review in Comes with a Smile. Howe Gelb is definitely one of the most underestimated and unrecognized rock musicians around.

Check Michael Goldberg's Insiderone daily report (archive link) today on Velvet Underground's Quine Tapes with before unreleased live material from the late 60s. Another must purchase.

Life on a String In hindsight the title of Laurie Anderson's new album which was recorded before 911 sounds like a premonition of things to come. Mankind's life hangs by a thread now. At the same time "Life on a String" offers a way out of our current dilemma: music. Music is a means used in psychotherapy. Aggressiveness can be reduced by music in two ways. The patient can listen to soothing music like baroque or he can make music himself. Drumming for example can channel an abundance of energy.

Looking at the recent events unfortunately reveals that the two parties involved have replaced music by lethal unlistenable loud noise. Music is a way of communication. There is a perfomer and an audience. The audience listens to the performing artist. The communication between the two parties fighting each other is however interrupted. The terrible noise of the collapsing WTC towers was not a sound anyone could have listened to. It killed the people who did not seal their ears. It disconnected the line of communication. The only possible answer to this could only be a counter-attack in deadly noise production. There was no target on the other side which would have generated a similar deafening noise if it would have been destroyed. Therefore the answer was clear. The response to the apocalyptic blast could only be a long-term noise inflicted to the aggressor or who is thought of as the aggressor. Bombing a country without targets does only produce much less impressive noises than the tumbling down of the WTC. In order to stay on par with the attackers the bombing has to go on for a long while so that the accumulated continuous tone of aircrafts dropping bombs can come closer to the original crash noise. It can never reach it though. Just imagine George W. Bush, bin Laden, Tony Blair and the Taliban leader playing together in a band. It may sound naive but I think it would be a more promising way out of our current dilemma than killing each other with eyes and ears closed.

There are two lyric excerpts from Laurie's album which make me wonder if she is a reincarnation of Nostradamus (metafilter thread).

In the song Statue of Liberty she sings "Freedom is a scary thing. Not many people really want it." This line has become so frighteningly true by now that she changed it in her last concerts to: "Freedom is a scary thing. So precious, so easy to lose." Which is true as well but somehow less poignant and more general.

The second foreboding less known excerpt which really gives me the chills is from One Beautiful Evening: "Oh beauty in all its forms. Funny how hatred can also be a beautiful thing. When it's as sharp as a knife. As hard as a diamond. Perfect."

Though "Funny" does not fit as adjective here. But I see the sharp knife / hard diamond (a metamorphosis of hatred) when the (first) airplane hit the WTC. And somehow the picture was beautiful and perfect in its incredible horror.

Smoking is a bad habit Do you know this setting? Having smoked a cigarette and having put the cigarette butt in the ash tray. And the butt is still burning. And there are ten other butts in the ash tray which are dead. And you try to find the one which is burning. And you cannot find it. This can be a real nightmare if you are in the wrong mood. In that case I cover the ashtray to suffocate the butt. And it works. A fire cannot burn without consunming oxygene. Sometimes the knowledge of natural science can be useful. Thirteen years of bloody school were not completely useless.

Another smoker's experience I like to tell you. Infinitesimal smoking. You have finished your packet of cigarettes or your tobacco. It would be too much of a hassle to buy any more cigarettes. But you have got cigarette paper. What you do is you take the finished cigarette butts and squeeze them to collect the tobacco which is left. And you can roll another couple of cigarettes of it. When those cigarettes are finished some tobacco is left and you can roll another one...

I take a transatlantic flight. Smoking is prohibited on these flights. I arrive on an American airport. No smoking again. But there is a crowded room somewhere full of smoke. I cannot distinguish the faces of the people as there is too much smoke. I light the cigarette I have dreamt of for ten hours. And the taste of the cigarette is such a deception. My body needs the nicotine but the taste is so disgusting. I smoke another three cigarettes and the last one tastes ok again.

I had stopped smoking more than one year ago. But recently I have seriously restarted again. In the beginnimng I had one cigarette per month, then one per week, then two or three per week. Then it was one almost every night. Then I smoked every day but never before 6 pm. Then I started smoking in the office after 3 pm. Then after lunch. That is where I am now. I do not smoke before midday. But I smoke more than ten cigarettes per day. I am looking forward to my last cigarette again. Like in this New York movie by Wayne Wang co-written by Paul Auster. Who was it again who wanted to smoke his last cigarette? Jim Jarmush? Lou Reed was cool as I remember.

P.S. I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE SOME MORE ANSWERS ON MY BEST SONG QUESTION TWO POSTS DOWN. I KNOW IT'S HARD BUT THAT'S LIFE! P.P.S. Thank you Absintheur for mentioning my question in your blog. And thanks Phil and Starchild Starfinder for the answers. Don't you have a favourite song Absintheur?

ILM thread I have contributed to recently: When did music cease being furniture? I love the title of that thread. And Dr.C. has got a very decent taste of music. But our tastes just do not overlap 100%. Gottseidank.

Postscript to favourite song question I have to be a little more precise concerning my last post. With favourite song I mean the song that has touched you most in your life. And by touched I mean that the lyrics have made a lasting impression on you. Could you also be so kind to include a small explanation of the song and its effect on you?

Some words on Nick Drake's "Road": The first time I listened to this song was in Spring 1980 and I was sixteen years old. I think it is the only song of which I know the lyrics by heart (I have got such a bad memory). And I did not learn it by heart but the lyrics were so strong that I could not forget them anymore after I had listened to them the first time. Nick Drake is singing about different ways of how to live your life. Of course he also sings about himself and the blues (as a state of mind) which has dominated his short life. I always wanted to "take a road that'll see me through" but I am not so sure now if I have succeeded. I did not "take the road to the stars" that is true and it is a road which has never interested me at all. The "road" is definitely my favourite metaphor in song lyrics. And roads have an end in themselves for me. Of course they lead from A to B. But the fascinating thing about them is the stretch in between. When you have left A and have not yet arrived at B. That is where I am at this moment.

A blog is an island I have started writing a weblog a couple of months ago. It was very exciting in the beginning. Discovering that people were discovering that I wrote something on the internet available for everyone. Watching the number of visitors grow, hitting the 100 mark (visitors per day). Getting feedback from people (who had read my blog) via email or in the forum (though this is really a sad and inactive place, I do not know why but even regular readers of my blog still have not discovered the forum link below every post). As you (as a regular reader) will have discovered by now this is just a meta post. I have nothing to say. Just one thing. I need more feedback to continue this exercise. Please tell me your favourite song of all times. Deadline next Sunday, 11th November. Naturally all posts/mails will be published. I tell you mine beforehand. It is Nick Drake's "Road" with the song line:

"You can say the sun is shining If you really want to I can see the moon and it seems so clear You can take the road that takes you to the stars now I can take a road That'll see me through"

Still listening to: Pinback: This Is Just a Pinback CD. (if you have never bought a cd purchase this record. I guarantee it won't be a wallflower in your collection). BLISS. Light years better than this Beach Boys release everyone has been talking about for more than thirty years called Pet Sounds which is one of the top ten overrated albums of all times. I just write this as someone from the techno/electronica generation referred to Pinback's music as being similar to the Beach Boys which it is obviously not.

Top ten 1999 My inspiration hits ground zero today. Like Andy and Chris (guess which was my submission) have done recently I post a list today. Almost all my favourites of 1999 are calm, slow and melancholic. Serious stuff. Low profile. Why?

• Blur: 13. "When you see me, please, turn your back and walk away"

• Mogwai: Come on Die Young. no words which hit me

• Negresses Vertes: Trabendo. (FR) "Je cherche l'arbre sur lequel poussent les filles. C'est le plus beau des fruitiers il donne toute l'année."

• Pinback: This Is a Pinback CD. "Sad I'm gonna die. Hope it's gonna happen later than I think."

• Iggy Pop: Avenue B. "Above all I didn't want to take any more shit. Not from anybody."

• Radar Bros.: The Singing Hatchet. "Tar the roofs of the houses that are leaking"

• Smog: Knock Knock. "The type of memories that turn your bones to glass"

• Spain: She Haunts My Dreams. "It's all over now. He knew from the start. It was in the way she walked and the way she moved."

• Tocotronic: K.O.O.K. (DE) "Man wisse zwar nicht wann und wie es passiert und ob man gewinnt oder ob man verliert"

• Tue-Loup: La Belle Inutile. (FR) "Trop nombreux sont ces soirs où le néant s'impose"

• ILM threads on three new releases I am going to purchase soon: Laurie Anderson: Life on a String, Leonard Cohen: Ten New Songs and Bob Dylan: Love and Theft.

• Listening to: Pinback:This Is a Pinback CD. An album to cherish.

My latest CD purchases Friday I received the following cds:

• Barbara Morgenstern: Fjorden
• Fink: Fink
• Kings of Convenience: The Quiet Is the New Loud
• Jeff Beck: You Had it Coming
• Joy Division: Heart and Soul (4 cd box)
• Alex Chilton: Like Flies on Sherbert / Live in London
• House of Love: 1986-88

Barbara Morgenstern is ok but in the second half the electronic music gets a little bit boring. Her German lyrics are oddly romantic and quite good. Fink is a German group from Hamburg musically quite close to Calexico. The harrmonium is wonderful. The mouth harp reminds me of Neil Young. And the pedal steel adds some country flair. There is also some folk rock influence reflected in the violin, banjo and some very sad lyrics. Not to forget a beautiful lyrical trumpet in one track. All songs are quite different but the album has a wonderful flow. There is a dog participating and overall their music is very relaxed and slightly melancholic. My favourite German release this year up till now. Kings of Convenience is a Norwegian duo following the paths of Nick Drake. Adolescent singer/songwriter music with acoustic guitars and very sparse but beautiful lyrics. When listening to this I want to be 18 years young again. An instant classic. The ambiance and the melodies are grand cru. Jeff Beck I did not have in my collection before (except some old Yardbirds lps). His new album is amazingly varied. Starting with hard rock guitar and finishing with very smooth ballad type stuff. The second last track has got birds singing in it which Beck tries to imitate on his guitar. Awesome. Joy Division are probably my favourite rock group. I already had all cds they ever released (except the first under the name of Warsaw). Dark and powerful. The soundtrack to my youth which I only discovered ten years later. Five hours of which not one minute is superfluous. Alex Chilton is an old favourite of mine. He represents the music from the Southern states. Coming from Memphis he sounds like Presley at times but makes me think of Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club as well. A tortured soul. Rockn' roll at its best. House of Love is probably the most underestimated band of all times the late eighties (together with The Field Mice). They were the undiscovered Beatles of the late eighties their time. Melodies I could swim in.

What the fuck? In an USA today interview Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says

• that bin Laden will maybe never be found
• that the Taliban regime will be toppled
• that the US should not be made responsible for Afghanistan's future government

Am I dreaming or what? What was all the bombing for? I thought its whole purpose was to get hold of bin Laden. Now Rumsfeld suddenly realises that "If he were gone tomorrow, the same problem would exist". And what is the point of getting rid of the Taliban when the US does not care who comes after? Sorry this is not a war anymore. In a war there are objectives. There is cold reasoning. Here there is nothing. Only bullshit. A pointless killing of innocent civillians. The terrorists of 911 have succeeded logic has won. The US reaction is now on the same level as the terrible attacks. Rumsfeld uttered: "Yes, I think there will be a post-Taliban Afghanistan" I say: Only if you stop destroying the country very soon. Otherwise there will be a big hole where there once was Afghanistan.

I suspected it before. Now I am sure. The US is governed by a dummy advised by headless chicken (except Powell). That is really reassuring, isn't it? It would be all right if we were all lemmings. Are we not?