The last few months I have been writing articles for FULL MOON, a Czech music magazine. It has been a pretty optimal experience: they pay me, let me write about whatever subject I want, and, best of all, publish my columns in Czech translation. It is lovely to see your own writing in print without being able to read it; it really takes the pressure off. You get the fun of filling up pages without the crushing defeat of noticing the typos and editorial mangling. I have no idea if the translations are accurate, I have never received any sort of response or reaction from a Czech person, and, by the time the work sees print, even I no longer have any idea what I’m talking about. You couldn’t wish for a better situation.
Below you’ll find a recent column, from FULL MOON #4, in the original English. Astute long-time readers might notice that paragraph two was cut and pasted from a column I wrote for heartattack magazine back in 1999. But, see, if this was printed in Czech, there’s no way you would have possibly noticed that.
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PLAN B
I moved to Berlin to be among like-minded people– artists, creative thinkers, poets and visionaries, to loiter and mingle with them in cafes, along cobbled streets, to breathe in their air, to belong. But, despite my best attempts, my deepest inhalations, I am still very much a Midwestern American, stuck in a certain mind-set. Quite often, I am shocked or confounded by the indigenous social mores. People act strangely here; there are indescribable activities going on in the basements and back rooms of certain clubs and parties. These artists are too much for me. I’d rather not deal with it. My focus has shifted; I care much less about mingling. What I’m seeking now is solitude, the room of one’s own, the mental and physical space to do something of quality.
I AM AN ARTIST: these are dangerous words indeed. My criticism of people with notions of their own artistic self-importance is summed up in Penelope Spheeris’ film the Decline of Western Civilization Part Two: the Metal Years. In this documentary about the ‘80’s LA glam-metal scene, we get a montage edit of Axl Rose wannabe after Axl Rose wannabe, bedecked in what we can now, from our twenty-first century cultural vantage point, see as grievous offenses to fashion and general aesthetic taste (spandex and scarves? Who came up with that?), each delivering the almost exact same monologue, revolving around their own personal genius and the inevitability of their second-rate Guns n Roses knock-off of a band “making it.” “What if you don’t make it? What then?” the interviewer asks. “What’s your plan B?” The answers are uniform and chilling in their simplicity. “There is no plan B,” each Axl asserts with stoic confidence. Having heard nothing of these bands since, we can only imagine the sad, crushing fates that have befallen these plan-B-less unfortunates.
I moved to Germany mainly to get health insurance. I had heard about a thing called the Künstlersozialkasse, a special type of health insurance specifically for artists. I wanted that, not because I really cared about being insured, but because I wanted the credentials. I needed some new validation. The studio art degree I’d gotten in 1993 had seemed authoritative for a while, but after a decade or so of not producing any paintings it had lost its luster. My music career stalled when, in a desperate publicity gambit, I attempted to bite the head off of a live bat. Unfortunately, the bat turned out to be rubber, and no one paid much attention. To tell the truth, I was getting tired of coming up with new gimmicks to prove I was artistic. At this point, I just wanted the insurance. If I had that seal of approval, it would be official: no one would deny that I was an artist, and if they did, I could call in any doctor to prove it.
But my plan B hasn’t turned out to be the smooth sailing I had imagined it to be. I thought it might involve a check-up, a couple of blood and/or Rorschach tests. Instead, officializing my artistic credentials has been a painstaking process, a series of visits to incorrect offices, stamping of forms in places that have turned out to be the wrong places to stamp. I ended up, finally, at the unemployment office. Having no recent evidence of output to show for myself, except for my column in this magazine, I brought a copy to the office, and showed it to my case-worker proudly. “Multi-lingual music journalist,” I said, confidently. “We in the field just call ourselves MLMJs for short.” I winked at him, then added, “It’s a growing field. Very creative.”
My case-worker was a soft-spoken, slightly rotund man with a well-groomed mustache and a tucked-in shirt, peering at me without expression as he took the magazine out of my hand. He flipped through the pages, and as he did so I scanned the walls of his office. There, to his left, was an AC/DC wall calendar. The current month showed singer Brian Johnson, one fist raised in the air, positioned in front of the cannons firing off their rounds during a climactic concert rendition of the song For Those About to Rock, We Salute You. I began to quietly sing the opening verse: “stand up and be counted/ for what you are about to receive….” Then I realized this might be a bad thing to be mumbling aloud while being interviewed at the welfare office. I cleared my throat, trying to act like it had just been a brief flash of tourette’s syndrome.
The case-worker handed the magazine back to me. “Well,” he said. “I’m a bit into music myself. The harder stuff mostly.”
I nodded, smiling, acknowledging his wall calendar. I was in! Like winning at the roulette wheel, I had lucked into the one in a million social worker who was impressed with my resume. All I had to do was dazzle him with stories, about how the magazine had flown me to hang out back-stage at the “Big Four” concert, how Dave Mustaine had revealed the meaning of life to me, and Kerry King had shown me some riffs. Bedazzled, he’d sign the checks on auto-pilot. This was going to be easy. I leaned forward, ready to launch into my first story.
Unbelievably, my case-worker seemed completely uninterested in the music-related topics I presented, nor could I interest him in discussing my artistic insurance options. In fact, he seemed to be doggedly, single-mindedly interested only in talking to me about one subject: my tax status. Taxes! The commonly acknowledged most boring subject on earth! In America, the first thing I learned about being an artist was that you don’t pay your taxes. That’s for the squares. You think Gorgoroth pay their taxes? But in Germany, apparently, you can feel free to call yourself anything you want, as long as you are paying 17% on it. Instead of becoming my sycophantic toady, calling me too often on the weekends to hang out and pestering me to borrow albums, as I had imagined in those brief moments contemplating Brian Johnson’s upturned fist, my case-worker was handing me a mountainous stack of paperwork. “This is what you need to fill out in order to be a freelance—uh, whatever you called it,” he explained.
At home, I examined the form half-heartedly. Like most German paperwork, the first page fooled you, it asked all the easy questions (name, date of birth, etc), lulling you into a false sense of security, and then from page two on the language switched to dense Orwellian jargon, no question was answerable, and the penalty for any wrong answer became severe. It was hard to fill out such a form, especially when drunk, as I quickly discovered. I gave up after a while, decided that filling out the first page was a good enough start for one day, and tottered towards the door, leaving the solitary room behind, in search of that elusive spark, that eternal disappointment, night life.
I biked towards Alexanderplatz in a light, drizzling rain. It was perfect outside; one of those nights when the journey might, again, beat the destination. The city rarely disappoints, whether for mood or scenery. Soon, I’d forgotten the form, along with all my other troubles. The night life, I have to admit, is pretty good: consistent and distracting. You never know what’s going to happen (stick to the main rooms, make polite conversation). At an art opening, I ended up in conversation with a young artist, from her accent I’d have guessed she was from southern California, but when I asked it turned out she was from Norway. She was mostly into exploring the boundary between painting and sculpture, she explained. That’s amazing, I replied, but if I might be so bold as to ask, do you know anything about your countries’ black metal scene? Of course she did- the country only has a couple dozen people in it, so it turned out she knew all those people personally, came from the same small town as Gorgoroth, and was even a regular at the same bar as their singer (“it’s the only gay bar in town,” she explained). “He’s more goth than black metal in his attitude,” the young Norwegian had observed. “He hangs out in the corner, brooding with his red wine, that kind of thing.” Yes, yes, very interesting, I said, playing my conversational ace, but does a guy like that have artist health insurance? She smiled, and said, of course, and began explaining the Norwegian health care system to me, which includes cradle to grave medical care for all citizens, and then outlined the general civilization, including its lavish grants and stipends given out to artists of any sort. She segued from there back into her own work, and the blurry line distinguishing mediums that was her area of exploration, leaving me open-mouthed, stunned by the realization that Gorgoroth probably do pay their taxes.
