Artist: Sarah Cain

Abstraction means: to induce from a concrete example a general concept. In themselves, both the abstract and the concrete are tricky. The merely concrete and particular is insignificant and evades definition, the merely abstract is empty or an illusion/delusion. Yet, in order to be productive, to understand the world and to create, the human mind needs to operate within the spectrum of abstraction and concretisation/substantiation, mirroring themselves in each other. (Note: as I am now done with this note, I cannot find a further possibility to refer to that introductory remark at another occasion in the text, so that it is actually useless, but for some reason, I´ll just let it be.)

Abstract painting – with the first true abstract paintings made by Frantisek Kupka in 1912 – set in at the beginning of the 20th century. A specific desire behind abstract painting was to make visible and tangible the human mind itself – as well as to expand and to broaden it, not only via the means of art and painting but also via science and via spirituality, therein also broadening the understanding of the world. The main figures behind abstract painting, Kupka, Kandisky or Malevich, were deeply intellectual, introspective and spiritual persons. It seemed an undertaking in diving into the depths of the mind and throwing up something new, something enigmatic, that, via its abstract forms, is able express the inexpressible itself: the depths and the frontiers of the mind, as well as the horizon of our understanding of the world, and of what possibly could lie beyond that horizon, or beyond that world (therein both the primordial and originary as well as the „spheres“ and the „divine“). Malevich´s Black Square seems to express a wormhole of introspection, a vibrant intensification of introspection, where you mentally destroy or leave behind common knowledge and understanding in order to come out in a new region of the universe with something new (in the case of Malevich it would enable him to later come up with novelties in figurative painting, while Kandinsky stayed inside the abstract realm and Klee coming up with a childlike and virgin amalgamation of abstraction and figuration). Abstract Expressionism would try to express the divine and untouchable via abstraction and make it tangible, reduce the content in order to open up and expand the mind and the spirit; Minimalism would reduce and shape a content in order to express a metaphysics of (enigmatic) presence and coexistence of man with (objects within) the world. Gerhard Richter´s grey paintings from the 1970s by contrast were about using (monochromous and monotonous) abstraction not to express the „spheres“, the „divine“ or anything metaphysical, but to flat out express its opposite: mindlessness and indifference. From that time on, grand narratives, respectively undertakings of art as a spiritual, intellectual, metaphysical endeavour have become falling apart, with interesting things popping up here and there, yet they remain localised. And new impulses to abstract painting seem even rarer.

Sarah Cain (b. 1979 in Albany, New York, resides in Los Angeles) refers to herself as an abstract painter. Like Duncan Wylie she is no super famous artist today, yet she is the coolest thing I have seen in painting since Duncan Wylie (whom I discovered almost ten years ago). Her art is described as „like seeing a rainbow in the middle of a forest“ by poet Bernadette Mayer. I have to say, such a stunning effect it also had on me. It is a combination of mastery over color and (some innate, finally intellectually indecipherable) mastery over form that produces something mesmerising. A highly sensitive person (i.e. excessively open to perceptual stimuli of all kind), Sarah Cain makes dense paintings, in which there is, nevertheless, astounding room for maneuver. I cannot think so quickly of other painters, at least not in the contemporary period, that have such a room for maneuver in combining colors and forms, and, moreover, that produce such astonishingly exact yet unforeseeable results without an apparent underlying formula, since you actually seem to have but a potpourri of stuff and of elements. There are gestural brushstrokes which often make strict rectangular or geometric (i.e. supposedly anti-gestural) forms that are present in most of her paintings, and which I like because they signify the upright, and the challenging and the (near) sublime, they are stern; and they are contrasted with floating forms, waves, or splashes which creates some kind of interesting harmony (between some kind of opposites). There are often (seemingly unmotivated) big black dots that seem to have no function (apart from creating a hole) but that Sarah Cain, as she confesses, herself likes a lot. There often are textiles or objects included in her paintings and one of her innovations was to expand the painting over the edges of the canvas, into the surrounding, which so becomes part of the artwork. Therein, her paintings also become sort of environments, and often she directly interferes with the environment as she does graffiti, paints whole street corners (for instance a street corner in L.A. where there is the epicenter of the city´s trans-prostitution scene, i.e. making the queerest corner of L.A. even queerer), or paints glass windows (most recently at San Francisco International Airport). All of this seems to happen quickly and fervently, yet out of a position of coolness. Sarah Cain seems to just stand there, or do yoga, then get the brush, paint all over something stunning and indisputable, then walk on. Sarah Cain comes, paints, and wins. So it seems. Sarah Cain´s paintings are – without any obvious formula – extremely robust and stable. Unlike most other productions in art, they are able to stand on themselves. They are, above all, extremely tasty. Very tasty stuff – that cannot be actually explained, but that wins over the intellectual, the critic, as it just is (and needs no addenda). It is true that that this art seems not deeply intellectual nor metaphysical either: the introspective element, the introspective endeavour doesn´t seem to have omnipresence (yet Sarah Cain is still young, and, for instance, Barnett Newman came up with his excessive stylistic contemplations later in life) (my neighbour Wolfgang ruminated that there may be less density and presence in her paintings in the future, but more of a meditative restriction and absence). Yet there undoubtely is an expansion within abstract painting, and you may find that in this combination of elements you may have a display of the totality of the human mind, and it is playful, it is colorful, and it is innocent. Sarah Cain is a GREAT painter and she is a VITAL figure in the history of abstract painting.

Thus spake Zarathustra

Homage to Betty Davis

Miles Davis was a genius within 20th century music and Betty Mabry was the short-time wife who had been „too wild for Miles“. She is considered funk music´s „deepest secret and most painful truth“. For me personally, she ranks #2 on the list of distinguished phenomena within popular music.

Betty Mabry was born July 26, 1945 in North Carolina into a music-loving family and began to write songs already in childhood (she said, she had always felt that something was inside her that needed to reveal itself and that needed to come out). At age 16, she moved to New York, to enroll at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she quickly became part of the hip Greenwich Village culture scene. Due to her extravagant taste she successfully worked as a model and became a center of attention also for musicians, including Sly Stone, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to whom she became especially close. In 1968 she got married to Miles Davis, and although the divorce would come only one year later (with Miles admitting that Betty had been „too young and wild“), she had a considerable influence on his further artistic and stylistic direction. Miles Davis had become outdated in the late 1960s, yet with the help of Betty he managed not only to catch up with the hippie and psychedelic movement but also to become once more avant-gardist in jazz with his album Bitches Brew, where he would introduce electronic instruments into jazz and with which he would initiate jazz fusion. In 1973 Betty Davis released her own and self-titled debut album, a funk album, yet also an album that sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before. Supported by a phenomenal band, you had an extremely heavy and raw, edgy and intense funk that would come in a strangely originate and primordial way, some kind of music that did not seem to have true or logical predecessors and that did not match up with any expectations. It seemed to be even a comment and some meta thing about how music could sound or could be conceived, i.e. something profoundly intellectual and philosophical, while at the same time being profoundly visceral (i.e. an extreme in both the cultural „highs“ and „lows“ (yet, as it would unfortunately turn out as concerns prospects for mainstream success, nothing in between)). Betty herself would come in as something more independent and originate than any woman´s liberation movement could have conceived at that time (and ever since), touching tricky and „forbidden“ subjects with baffling originality and naturalness. She was no great singer, yet overcompensated it with an extremely powerful vocal performance, which you would attribute rather to some big black mama and not a delicate being like her. This mix added up to something that comes in as heavy and confrontational as, maybe, heavy metal, despite metal would rise to such a level of sonic intrasingence and intensity only a decade later. On top of that, Betty Davis displayed a stage personae that was larger than life and more human than human all the like: a dominant, sexualised and forceful woman who is commanding and perfectly in control of herself (therein also not exactly helping herself in turning her into a sex object (for a larger audience), as she remained profoundly subjective). At the same time, her private persona was described as very different: thoughtful, sober and introverted, and, above all, „very spiritual“ in her own manner. Also, despite cranky anthems like Bar Hoppin` coming from her, she reportedly neither drank nor did she do drugs. Two more albums in the same fashion, They Say I`m Different (1974) and Nasty Gal (1975) would follow, while the fourth (and, as some say, the best), Is It Love or Desire? would only be released more than three decades later, in 2009. Tensions between Betty and the music industry and also between Betty and the band had become unsustainable within the recording process. During her career in the mid-1970s, Betty was a paradoxon: both a star and with great superstar potential, yet effectively a niche phenomenon. Muhammad Ali and other distinguished people would come to her concerts, artists like Prince would later cover her and rave about her as a major influence, while a more general audience would ignore her, radio stations would give her not airplay, and the mainstream media hardly touch upon her. Also the support of Miles did not get her much off the ground, and also not in the black community. „Black people are pretty appropriate“, she said, and at that time, after the end of official segregation in the 1960s, the majority of black people in America struggled to be accepted as „normal“ by the whites, i.e. copying some kind of petty bourgeois attitude that is naturally hostile to the extravagant and the exotic and sees it as a threat to their own integrity (as viewed by others). The (white) music industry tried to shape Betty and make her more mainstream-compatible, while she in turn wanted to remain in control over her artistic vision. Yet, with this stubbornness she has basically „ruined my career“, as she would later admit. The Funk Queen Betty Davis disappeared from the scene in the later 1970s. At the end of that decade she would nevertheless record songs in disco fashion that would only be released in the 1990s (Hangin´Out in Hollywood / Crashin For the Passion) – a failed experiment that is not even mentioned in her „official“ and „canonical“ biography. At the beginning of the 1980s, as her musical and artistic career seemingly had become directionless and she probably realised that there did not exist true outfits and outlets for her specific type of creativity in this world, also her beloved father died, which obviously took away a further fundamental source for her stability. She reportedly had a mental breakdown at that time, and began to vanish from the scene entirely. Somehow resemblant to another exuberant but short-lived genius of popular music, Syd Barret, Betty Davis lives in a small apartment in Pittsburgh ever since, although, unlike Syd, she does not refuse all contact to the outside world. There have been occasional celebrations and reissues of her albums every once in a while, and recently there has also been a documentary about her (Betty – They Say I´m Different, by Phil Cox), yet she remains an insider story until today. One wonders what this once highly flamboyant individual has been doing in such a long time and what has become of her. When she talks, she does so slowly and a bit hesitantly, but also in expressing herself in a precise way, with some warmth and interest for the other, while also keen to keep her privacy. Age and events seem to have taken their toll on her, yet at the same time she seems alert and aware, in control and grounded in herself. As she notes herself, her (though not absolute) silence is a (though not absolute) silence for good: (once a tormented creative), she has finally „found peace“.

The story of Betty Mabry Davis. Is it a story of success or of loss? Is it a story of the triumph of individuality or its perils, eventually causing breakdown? Nothing around the story of Betty Davis and the idiosyncratic appeal of her records seems easy to describe. There always seems to be something that evades such efforts. Betty Davis and her records had actually been a profound cultural phenomenon, one that shatters the earth; you would even think of a metaphysical event, a trembling in the universe. Nietzsche says, the genius wants to carve a trace into being, into the universe, he wants to trench existence. Upon reflection, such a thing you might have with Betty Davis. Yet why is there so little effect, of something so universal? Well, the paradoxon of the universal and the absolute is that it puts the local and the relative under threat, and its impact on the world is both little, but also lasting and profound, as it amalgamates the universal and the local anew. Religious figures are hardly those who found and institute a religion, its their disciples that will do. Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky remarks that the story of the genius is of universal appeal and significance, as the struggle of the genius illustrates the struggle of any individual to both become oneself and to unite, realign and reconcilliate oneself with society. The genius struggles for happiness; happiness, according to Tarkovsky, would be „complete freedom of the will“. Yet the more complete the freedom of the will, the more one would become detached from society and its norms and traditions and the possibilities to communicate with society; finally, such an individual would become „as lonely as Beelzebub“. The loneliness of the long distance runner (with Betty throwing the race, because it seems all so futile, for good). When you listen to Betty Davis, you are, and remain, under the impression that you are confronted with something distinctly residing above you, above your head and above your soul, a superior, (yet, as you sense, a therefore consequentially tragically) seperated entity. That does not make people feel they can relate, of course. „If you want to be an original, get ready to get copied“, said Coco Chanel. Yet unlike rebellious female icons within popular music, from Debbie Harry to Madonna to Pink, Betty Davis could not be truly copied. She was an almost insular being, composed of too many qualities – and having taken those qualities to their extremes – that may be in perfect harmony within herself but seen as oppositional or as a confusing mix from the perspective of regular people. She is one of the very rare individuals who are not even a part of society and cannot be influenced by society and its norms (for good) but reside above it; therefore, seeemingly, their powers to influence contemporaries a lot seems naturally restricted. Her problem was that she was not only different, but too different from anyone or anything else. Betty Davis´ records, not only her performance but also the music may seem confusing. They seem to transmit many messages. It is a music that is there, and very present, but also elusive. Vibrating, escalating, punching the line, alongside the pathless path. You´re always under the impression that this music has its own meta level inherent, it seems both music playing and music permanently evolving, improvising, creating itself, experiment with itself, and experiencing itself; frustrating expectations and then coming up with more than anyone would ever expect. It is highly interesting, and so she seems to end up with making music for people who are extremely interested in music. Yet, despite music being omnipresent and making the bourgeoisie and the rebel, most people, and mainstream audiences, aren´t truly interested in music. To reach them, you supposedly need to come up with something more uncomplicated (and who would ever think that the raw and terrifying funk of Betty´s records would be something for mainstream audiences in the first place?). Yet the heart of it all seems to be indifferent to such elitist ruminations: Betty was fed up with being a niche phenomenon for insiders. She wanted to become a true star. Yet, in order to become a great star, you have to come up with catchy music. Among her many talents, writing catchy popular music was not among them and her efforts to leave raw funk behind and turn into contemporary disco sounds proved lacklustre at all. She seems to have been – consciously or not – a philosopher of music, and the philosopher needs to stand aloof from society. She saw too many dimensions, and her music and artistic vision had many layers and was not only multidimensional but seemed to display dimensionality itself, and most people cannot truly see these dimensions, only the shadows which get projected into ordinary world. Betty Mabry Davis´ life probably has been a rare life outside Plato´s cave, the realm of shadowiness and obfuscation. She probably directly gazed into the „ideas“. Who ever gives an idea about the „ideas“? Hardly anyone gives an idea about the ideas! Think of an abstract space where music happens, or where anything happens. Near the coordinate origin, in the void, or in a white cube, something, some vibration, violently emerges, originary, primordial, yet already heavily armed and in full clothing: That is If I´m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up. That is like the heartbeat, that seperates being from nothingness. Who has ever done such a thing? It is a most genuine achievement.

Homage to Natalia Goncharova

Natalia Goncharova, femme fatale of the Russian avant-garde, was born June 21, 1881 in the region of Tula, 200 kilometers south to Moscow. Of noble descent and born into a highly educated family, one of her ancestors (after whom she was named Natalia) had been the wife of Alexander Pushkin (and inadvertedly responsible for Pushkin´s death in a duel about her). She went to school and became friends with Marina Tsvetaeva, who would later become one of Russia´s leading poets, and also a biographer of Goncharova. After school, Natalia tried to study zoology, botany, medicine and history, but after not fitting into the respective environments, she turned to study sculpture in Moscow. There she would meet fellow student Mikhail Larionov, who recognised her talent as a painter and convinced her to concentrate more on painting and to become part of what would soon become to be the Russian avant-garde. Larionov and Goncharova would remain a lifelong couple, living an obviously perfect relationship of equals who share the same interests and capabilities and being collaborators, yet also remain distinct enough to follow individual paths and not to become overpowered or distracted by each other. As an unmarried couple they would be seen as „scandalous“, yet also as powerful and independent: They would marry only late in their lives, in order to avoid legal trouble concerning their respective estates. Natalia Goncharova was described as a strong-willed and provocative personality, causing scandals not only in the art scene and living an exuberant lifestyle. In the 1910s, both Larionov and Goncharova quickly became successful not only in Russia, but also in Europe, and during the first world war both managed to move to Europe, to soon permanently settle in Paris, where Goncharova also worked as an art teacher and as a set and costume designer for the theatre.  Working for the theatre was not her major passion, yet since her flamboyant set designs and costumes would become very popular, it became her major source of income and also a means to continue to promote herself as a painter. In later years, public interest in the art of both Goncharova and Larionov waned, together with declining health of both it would make the life of the couple more complicated. In the mid-1950s the interest in their works would resurge, while their health, however, was on further decline. Plagued by arthritis in her final years, Natalia Goncharova died in her sleep on October 17, 1962, while Larionov had been at the hospital at the same time. He would pass away only two years later.

Natalia Goncharova´s trajectory as an artist was illustrious. Starting as a sculptor, she was soon to become one of the best and most promising students of her academy. Influenced by Mikhail Larionov she moved to painting, starting with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, with Henri Toulouse-Lautrec being a major influence and idol for her. In accordance with the rapid development of stylistic innovations at that time, she would remain aware of what is going on around her, and also especially embrace Cubofuturism soon thereafter. Eager to develop a distinct „Russian“ avant-garde, she, and Russian avant-gardists in general, would begin to rely on „archaic“ traditions or approaches to painting, and amalgamate them with the most contemporary ones, resulting in Neo-Primitivism, therein also trying to amalgamate childlike innocence and spontaneity and sophisticated artistic intelligence and craftsmanship, as well as an affirmation of both future-directed modernity and being and remaining spiritually rooted in „Russian soil“. Religious motives and iconography would remain a constant topic in her work all the same, as well as the depiction of farmers (as a child she had preferred rural over urban life). Larionov and Goncharova would also come up with an original stylistic innovation, „Rayonism“, which is about depicting light itself respectively objects via the way they reflect light. She was a great colorist (and it was her talent as a colorist that originally made Larionov encourage her to shift from sculpturing to painting). She was competent in portraying figures both via contour as well as via the „forces“ and intensities that seem to constitute that figure in the respective environment. Fluent in many styles, Goncharova was able to come up with interesting and intuitive solutions about how impressionist or cubofuturist depictions could look like, displaying an innate command over artistic depiction in general. Goncharova, Larionov and others of their circle would advocate a pluralism of styles and cement it theoretically and philosophically.

Above all, what seems most striking is the sheer humanity in the art of Natalia Goncharova. Without being naive, her depiction of the world, of humans and of animals is of great dignity and sweetness. It seems Natalia Goncharova had a very harmonious soul. Unfortunately, such is a rare occurence, not least in the arts.

Mikhail Larionov: Natalia Goncharove sleeping

In Memoriam Liliana Alam

I recognised that Liliana Alam passed away last year. Once we got into a fight and she kicked me off her friend´s list but we befriended each other again. I printed out her whole novel (The Exposition of Mastery) and mentioned her in my Book of Strange and Unproductive Thinking and I stole and translated a poem from her. This is very sad.

WEAPON

OLD BLOG

Der Flughafen: menschenleer wie nur irgendwas, so wie es sich gehört. Dort vorne biegt sie um die Ecke und kommt in entschlossenem und wiegendem Gang, die stöckelschuhbeschuhten Füßchen eines vor das andere entlang einer imaginären Linie vor ihrer Körpermitte setzend den leeren Gang mir entgegen und singt:

Wenn du nichts fühlst, so besitzt du alles!

Wenn du alles besitzt, so fühlst du!

Nenn das Ego eine Illusion

  • Und so wird alles zu einer Illusion!

Die Show, die Lügen, das Spiel,

Der ganze Pomp, die Umstände, sowie all die Leichtigkeit…

Doch! Ohne es – da ist nichts mehr übrig!

Kein Rückgrat, kein Rahmen, Hände nicht, Beine nicht!

Wenn ich dich deiner Illusionen entkleide,

Wenn du mich meiner selbst entkleidest,

Was wird dann von uns noch übrig sein?

Wie kann das Nichts glänzen, scheinen?

Das aber ist: wirklich.

Du fühlst das,

Genauso wie ich es tue.

Ach, doch dieses Gefühl kann uns nicht nähren noch kleiden

Und diese Lügen gereichen der Liebe zur Schande.

Die Käfige unserer Welt, sie sind erbarmungslos

Ihre Drähte, ihr Stahl blank, trocken, materiell.

Die Matrix hat keinen Ausgang!

Ihre Gänge, die scheinbaren Ausgänge zirkeln wieder zurück zu Punkt A.

Ändere das! Ändere es! Ändere es! Revidiere die Osmose!

Schlag dir einen Weg durch ein Wurmloch

Zu einem Jahrhundert, das lange der Vergangenheit angehört!

Denn das alles, alles mit uns, hat sich schon vor langer Zeit ebenso ereignet

An einem beliebigen anderen Ort, mit beliebigen anderen Namen!

Fühle: Nichts!

Nichts!

Nichts?

Nichts, es ist mein!

Vielleicht kannst du mir einen Ausweg aus der Illusion zeigen.

Doch welche Wahrheit würden wir dadurch gewinnen?

Vielleicht kannst du mir den Weg zeigen.

Vielleicht hast du einen Weg geschlagen, dort wo ich scharfe Messer geworfen habe.

Du hast mich missbraucht, ermordet und vernichtet.

Ich danke dir dafür!

Jetzt ist sie mir schon den halben Weg entgegen, von rechts zieht ein Kerl ohne Unterleib vorbei, der auf einem rollenden Koffer sitzt und sich mit Bügeleisen in den Händen nach vorne angelt; sagt der teilnahmslos:

Nichts, schöne Frau, nichts und niemand

Ist jemals geboren, noch stirbt er.

Da draußen gibt es allein eine willkürliche Bewegung von Teilchen

Die sich zusammenschließen und sich wieder entkoppeln.

Das ewige, planlose Chaos

Das jedoch der ewige Friede ist,

Der ewige Friede.

Allein wir sind es, die all dem Bedeutung beimessen,

Die Lust und Schmerz erzeugen

Und sie für eine Realität halten.

Und uns vor dem ewigen Chaos fürchten,

Und das Chaos für eine negative Textur der Realität halten.

Doch allein das Chaos ist Friede.

Begreife: Nichts und niemand wird geboren, noch stirbt er.

Nichts und niemand wird geboren, noch stirbt er.

Alles allein eine ewige Verwandlung.

Vertrau mir: Ich bin Doktor der Quantenmechanik!

Und jetzt aber komme ich ins Spiel! Ich stehe am Ende des Ganges, sie kommt immer näher lächelnd auf mich zu, der Nullbeinige ist an mir vorbeigezogen; ich öffne die Arme und singe:

Ach Nullbeiniger! Leider! Ich fühle mich in keiner Weise eins und verbunden mit dem Quantenschaum und den Faxen, die der Quantenschaum macht; abgesehen davon, dass es den Quantenschaum so vielleicht gar nicht gibt! Tatsächlich werden wir geboren, sterben, empfinden Lust und Schmerz, das ist das Kreuz, auf das wir genagelt sind! Eben deswegen, weil das real ist, haben manche das Zen- und das Tao-Ding entwickelt, die mich in mancher Hinsicht ansprechen, in anderen Aspekten allerdings abstoßen. Wie aber auch immer, diejenigen, die in den Urschlamm getaucht sind und aus dem Dreck des Urschlammes wieder hervorgekommen sind, siegreich, mit den Konzepten wie Zen oder Tao, waren solche, die zweifelsohne die Matrix gesehen haben, das Über-Alles, den Chaosmos, denn der Genius zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass er die Matrix sieht. Die Möglichkeit einer subjektiven Wahrheit von objektiver Gültigkeit. Wenn du in die Matrix schaust, treffen Laserstrahlen, Sternenlicht, Supernovae und Gammastrahlenausbrüche dein verdammtes inneres Auge! Schau, wie die Blume entsprießt, in Sekundenschnelle wächst und blüht und schon wieder vergeht. Alles in Sekundenschnelle. Und schon eine neue Blume, und noch einmal dasselbe. Und dann: Was für eine umso größere Schande, was für eine größere Desillusion ist die nackte Wirklichkeit, wenn man sie im Anschluss an diese Erfahrung betrachtet, in der man sich gefangen sieht, schließlich ist man ein Mensch, oh weh! Da ist ganz und gar nichts Magisches, alles ist rational und geordnet. Es kann sein, vielleicht, dass, wenn du in die Realität schaust, einen riesigen menschlichen Mund siehst, weit offen zu einem stummen Schrei, vor deinem geistigen Auge. Möglicherweise riecht der Mund seltsam, zumindest aber nicht ausgesprochen seltsam, denn das ist die Realität. Zwischen einem Punkt A und einem Punkt B ist da eine fixe Distanz. Fünf Meter; fünfzig Meter; fünfhundert Meter. Fixe Distanzen: das ist die Wirklichkeit. Und als dir das bewusst wird, löst sich dein betrachtendes inneres Auge von alldem schon wieder ab, rutscht ab wie auf einer nassen, glitschigen Scheibe, in das Andere, die Anderwelt von neuem. Ist das die Beschaffenheit deines Geistes, so bist du ein Exzentriker, ein Außenseiter. Gelingt es dir, dieses Spiel zu gewinnen, aus dem Urschlamm einen weißen Palast zu errichten mit unzähligen, stets neu zu entdeckenden Räumen und geheimen Gängen, all dies in helles, doch mildes Licht getaucht, so bist du der Genius oder aber die heilige Frau. Ich habe gesprochen.

Stirb als Mensch. Erstehe neu als Unsterblicher. Das ist der Punkt des Quantenaufstiegs, sagt sie jetzt direkt vor mir angekommen und in selbstbewusstem Ausdruck, die Hände in die Hüften gestemmt, den rechten stöckelschuhbeschuhten Fuß nach außen vor mir stehenbleibend. Wir verstehen uns.