decoder ring or mnemonic spelunking

My brain is still a little addled and turning somersaults over some of the techniques and demonstrable, learnable talent of the imagination and memory described in Moonwalking with Einstein. One of the more intuitive and prêt-a-porter tricks, hacks invoked the Phonetic Major System, developed by Basque sixteenth century polymath and educator Pierre Hérgony, for making strings of numbers more memorable.

Most minds, irrespective of attention span, can only be induced to hold only about seven digits in the short-term memory--because recall of words, direction and other impressions take precedence, but using the Major System (as a guide: it all may seem a little silly to turn numbers into personalities and colourful metaphors when Handys and sticky notes do a fairly good job, but this or one's own associations do become snared in the mind), one can transform an often referenced but never remembered number, like the stubborn IP address of a network printer that is forever needing to be re-mapped, into a more remarkable phrase and image.

Using the technique prescribed (or whatever system and scheme makes sense) of turning consonants into numbers, leaving vowels, w, y, and h as interstitials, one turns an eleven digit number into a "MeSH VoTeR MaPpinG a BuN." Having a subject, a verb and an object (SVO oder Subjekt-Objekt-Verb auf die deutsche Sprache) makes the image even more catchy, though not necessarily graceful or poetic. The Major System, requiring no additional training or meditation, seems to work but I wonder if it is the number, the image or the system itself one remembers--or is it all three?

inked or plastisol billboards

Unfortunately, with the golden autumn days dwindling in Germany, it is no longer t-shirt weather, but I know that elsewhere, in areas less prone to seasonal superlatives, there is still ample chance to don one’s favourite funny, subtle and artistic wearable statements. Some of my favourite creative factories are Last Exit to Nowhere with corporate logos that only exist in cinema classics and Threadless, whose collection of artists produce consistently fun designs that are voted into print by customers.

Those and many other produce designs that are instantly recognizable, though with each, one would probably be the only kid on the block sporting it.

jolly roger or goonies r good enough

For another spooky Halloween tale (and perhaps less theologically challenged than the last, or perhaps not) is the curious story of Hanseatic privateer turned pirate, Klaus Störtebeker, is circulating the internet (first appearing to me via the fantastic and phantasmagorical Atlas Obscura), and having never heard of this episode before, I did some research and discovered that it is not just a scary, friend-of-a-friend urban legend ghost story, the beheaded pirate most remembered for the not unremarkable feet of lurching some twelve paces through the gallows after he had been decapitated, but a fascinating history and a tale of a man elevated to folk-hero.

Störtebeker, almost certainly not his real name but probably a pirate nom de guerre since it means something like to drink down the cup in one gulp, originally helped keep supplies flowing safely between ports of the Hanseatic League during conflicts with Sweden and Denmark, but once his services were no longer needed, and attributably out of a sense of justice to distribute the wealth among his band of conspirators and the common land-lubbers who suffered under the monopoly of the guilds, he turned pirate himself. After some years of conquests, Störtebeker and his crew were eventually captured and condemned to death around the year 1400, after failing to commute their sentences with fantastic offers of plunder, by the senate in Hamburg. Störtebeker’s ghoulish theatrics in the gallows, walking without his head, was more than just sheer resistance (I had never heard of this story and it reminded me of that often repeated episode of a maiden, after being accused of witchcraft and about to be burned at the stake, eating as much gun-power as she could stomach to take the whole audience and inquisition with her) but he plead for a deal with the jury: first to be executed, Störtebeker pledged that he would walk away afterwards and that all the members of his crew that he passed ought to be spared. He passed a line-up of eleven or twelve of the men and might have gone on to save them all, if he had not been tripped, as some say. When this amazing feat came to pass, the judges decided not to uphold their end of the bargain and had all seventy or so of his men executed anyway. I imagine that that cursed Hamburg for all time, eventually leading to the League’s dissolution. Incidentally, the judge asked the executioner afterwards if he wasn’t tired from all that work. The executioner boasted that he was not worn out at all and could still take on the entire senate, if need be, and for that, the executioner was put to death too.

artistic license or don’t mess with the jesus

I took an afternoon walk to the neighbouring village and explored the old churchyard to find a creepy and unsettling sculpture just in time for Halloween. This large bronze figure dominated the entrance to the cemetery and featured a detailed skeletal figure that was inverted, like it had fallen from the cross and was hanging, upside down. Click on the images to see the features, which are a little washed out from the darker exposure in miniature.

The tablet to the side reads "Death has no more power." A lot of variations on a theme are out there, displaying craftsmanship and commissions for public art in good faith but there is something a bit disconcerting in such a departure from the traditional, whose symbolism is inscrutable and yet no parody and only piety and memento mori is intended. The image and the wonder haunted me the whole way home.

retronautics institute

I stumbled across this fantastic web-site called Retronaut that features a lively and active almagest through the past decades with collections of vintage photography, advertising ephemera, and artwork (although I later realized that their work as curators has been embedded in a lot of other sites I visit).

The web-site has amazing exhibits of early colour photography of New York, London and Moscow, 1960s fashion-shows, future-perfect visions of the colonization of outer space, Hong Kong public housing, and celebrities posing with their record collection. Check out the extensive and daisy-chained catalogue for yourselves.

priorität or listening-tax

I suppose that in the midst of everything else that is happening the business of legislation and upholding the rule of law must go on, but I found this item being entertained by a few members of America’s Congress to be backwardly-visionary: law-makers want to make it a felony to perform and share (primarily via the largest video repository of the internet) cover-songs. Violators could face prison-time for lip-syncing, sampling, karaoke, or otherwise playing copywritten music, regardless of the venue or platform’s policies or whether the rendition is talented or not. A group has rallied to stop this proposal, championing the alternative-history cause of one young vocal artist, who happened to be discovered singing cover ballads in just the manner they propose to outlaw, and portray the young performer as unjustly incarcerated in this bizzaro, future dystopia. It is easy to guess the instigators behind this bill (and its natural extensions) but at the same time hard to reconcile the cognitive dissonance behind an industry that would want to stifle creative experimentation and fame-making in its future associates.

viennese waltz or ballroom blitz

 

The negative attention plied and mounting on the European Union and imminent crisis talks, replete with rumour and grandstanding and loggerheads, is striking me as a very sort of Zen/Non-Zen exercise. There is an imponderable quality to the debate, that the raining down of economic doom, has levied undue focus on these otherwise normal and healthy proceedings. The European clubhouse, founded primarily on hope, understanding and cooperation but also maybe cynically on the guilt of Germany and the opportunism of others (and the constituent parts were never, it seems, painted with so much contrast when there were borders), is holding deliberations among its treasurer, secretary and president. If this was happening with a less scrutinous watch, would there be so much noise? Of course what happens matters, especially when it could affect the timbre of politics, social support, peace and self-determination, yoked or not to an indenturing debt, but other major economies have also collapsed under the weight of their own greed and surfaced (not recovered) none the wiser, unlike Europe who has already made regulations more transparent and more robust in order to reemerge again, stronger and more secure.

There is no easy or obvious answer to these challenges, but nor is there a wrong decision that cannot be overcome. The most-watched designations are overgenerous and meaningless, and Triple A-Alpha-Ailm-Aleph-Double-Plus-Super-Thanks, I'm sure will settle to a new baseline.  There is something horrible and vicious about an academic exercise, a zero-sum-game--something that claws its way back to equilibrium--that seems very Non-Zen but also a little bit reassuring that affairs will adjust and right themselves, and that the core of a place, buildings, streets and communities can be much older and essentially more durable than their latest ascribing armour--city, nation, state.