Rewiring the Connection

Hi Ghazal, my dear,

When I received your e-mail tonight I realized that I must be a bit more careful in asking you for a favor. It was so nice that you helped me with the article by Gustafsson, but I feel guilty now that you spend your free time of the weekend for this. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no clue that the article about Berlin was written in such an philosophic language. You said that many words you have never heard before – I guess these are solely the Berlin-specific names of buildings, theaters, places etc. Usually, Mr. Gustafsson writes in a very poetic language for my feeling, as long as it has to do with his own life. But since he also worked as lecturer for philosophy in Texas and in Schweden, he probably switches for essays to a more theoretical and abstract language (like this in the article).
I don”t know how popular he is in his home country Schweden, maybe he is seen there as a difficult writer, not the one to become a bestseller. And I”m also afraid that his books are more appealing for male readers, he rarely writes about people that live a simple, happy life. Usually the figures in his books suffer a bit from the modern life and society, but they don”t fight against this situation, instead trying to get around this conflict by fleeing into a world of dreams and memories. Although this kind of literature is not mainstream, I tell you he will get the Nobel Prize. I hope he has still many years to live and write.

I was so relieved reading that you made a trip to Salzburg and exploited the sunny Saturday for this. Did you met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart there ? Sometimes an actor from the famous Salzburger Theater dresses up and walks through the city. Did you visited one of the amazing austrian Coffe-Houses ? These are the second home of many austrian writers and intellectuals and the breedingplace of their books. They like the special atmosphere there of a public place, that at the same time gave them an anonymous shelter.

I told you that we went to the concert of Greenday Friday night, that was me, my son and Iria. Iria met their friends, who came over from UK only to hear the group. Therefore most of the time I was alone with my son. For him it was the first big concert, before he was listening to music only from the computer or from his mobile phone. There were approx.40 000 people and it was very hot, I mean the spirit. It was a warm summer night, with a lot of show and firework. I have to admitt, that I am probably addicted to good music, and this Band from the US was very very good (I still regret that I only asked you by e-mail to come. It would have been much better just to grab your hand and take you to the concert !!). The music by Greenday has an absolute non-commercial base, it is very political, very strong without compromise. I”ll try to get some and bring it you.

I”m sure our communication will be a bit easier now that you told me I must take more attention to your correct e-mail address. Ghazal, its not exaggerating, but I send maybe one message every day the last weeks, obviously to a wrongly spelled hotmail-box of yours, and now have to realize that they all ended up somewhere in the cyber-labyrinth. I think I have them all still as copy on my computer, and if you want I can put them all on a CD for you. What a chaos. I probably confused your name at the hotmail-address with the same at the helmholtz-address (which comes with an . between first and last name, not with space). Strange enough, neither of the messages with the wrong hotmail-address came back with an error-message. I have to write and complaine to the hotmail-people: This can not just cause a privat confusion, but who knows, maybe if politicians exchange there letter through hotmail and things go awkful, this might cause international crisis, economic decline and violent confrontations. Sorry, I”m talking silly things.

Sleep well, see you tomorrow

Michael