(5 illustrations for the project ARTJAM which i’ve been asked to art direct …)¶

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© 2009, all rights reserved
¶

(written for FLUX magazine’s ‘Ideas that could change the World’ issue …)

Like a salt-crystal or a colony of ants every framework has its structure. The structure of our human journey has been the societal network of Rank and Status. We spend our lives mainly chasing illusory promises and dreams within this structure, ultimately moulding ourselves into the Persona our parental, cultural and sociological programmes compel us to. These mechanisms are what game theory utilises. A loophole of human consciousness. We’re predictable. We’re not free at all. The Paradigm of Outside-answers, Outside-blame, runs through most of our human endeavours. We can do ‘whatever we want’ (capitalist piss-take freedom) as long as we’re not looking Inside, discover ’something’ (Truth) Inside of ourselves, lest the ultimate punishment of social segregation is awaiting.
That there is an actual human dilemma becomes clear only when we experience the sadness that all we see and all we want are only the social advantages that come from affiliation with Rank and Status. Nobody can truly see each other (and even if we can, we’re not really supposed to). We might as well exist only virtually, through Google, Facebook and e-mailed CV’s. We might as well entirely wrap ourselves in stickers of systemic ‘achievements’, rub shoulders and what not with anything rich and apparently sexy (Rolex, Nikeswoosh, Bankers, Celebrities). But at no time explore the actual Reality that lies within the Mysteries of our own Selves and other Human Beings. Except sometimes scratching the surface with our favourite pastime game Relationships (i.e. emotional scripts ’saving us’ from the lurking prospects of loneliness and boredom).
So why can we not truly be free? Is it fear? That our vital systemic environment might deteriorate into anarchy and chaos? That we might in the end face the fact that we’re not as free as we’d like to believe – never will be? That we don’t actually know how to interact with each other except through those game-playing routines we consider ‘normal’ exchanges of thoughts and emotions? Or are we just being kept as sheep and actually ‘innocent’ victims of much higher agendas? Are we perhaps just born into a prison and the perfected illusion of freedom is what we now call the Civilised World?

Psychologically speaking, we can see other Selves only inasmuch as we can see our own Selves. Only understanding our inner workings and our true place within the Universal Wholeness enable us to approach and interact with others authentically and confidently. We’re ultimately chained through our Beliefs. They form the basis of what we like to contemplate as our human capacity of Free Will.
Replacing the current paradigm of self-prohibition and emotional disenfranchise, a more organic structure, based on individual core-truths and insights, might as well bring about a more beautiful human framework in the future. In there, we’ll be able to embrace every other genuine Self from the bottom of our hearts, with all their differences, mysteries, frailties and treasures – and there will surely be a societal place we afford to each other, though rather qualifiedly than quantifiably. Whilst at no point will we be looking back to the fake-comfort of our conditioned responses to ranks, roles and power-agendas as they’re played-out – and hyped – today.

reinhard schleining
london, may 2009

© 2009, all rights reserved

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addendum – also part of this issue:

‘30 words that could change the world
communication. introspection. mobility. kindness. integrity. interaction. modesty. virtue. openmindedness. beauty. interest. insight. reenfranchising. reconcilement. renegotiation. reconstitution. anger-management. time-management. transparency. truth. reempowerment. agenda-loss. belief-reflection. reinvestigation. healing. perseverance. forgiveness. solitude. merging. headspace-reclamation. ‘

a BOOK! well – this eventually came together during the past couple of weeks and i suppose it makes a lot of sense. five years of fictional work packaged into a nicely polished and concise product. as most people who know me know, i’m innately detesting any form of ‘hype’ and will therefore market this carefully and slowly (if one can even call that marketing :) – with people i meet, shops i run into, the almost primal systemic workings of ‘word-of-mouth’ – as well as any other opportunities for public exposure i naturally stumble upon …

as a further illustration reference (but also because i think this is one of the maddest images i’ve done to this day) – i’ve decided to put the actual artwork online whose purpose was to combine all seven different angles of the book into one key visual …

for more info go to the book’s official site —> LOVE ETC

a short story

I. THE LAUNCH

The man and the woman in silver space-suits kiss goodbye to their families in front of live-television cameras. Adam attends to his wife and his lovely two daughters while Lilith consoles her husband with whom she hasn’t got any children. They’re brother and sister, space-bound cosmo-biologists, and it’s been put on their shoulders, on behalf of mankind, to head for this truly bold mission. Tears are being shed in close-up around the steel-clad visitor’s cubicle although everyone’s had plenty of time during the past couple of months to prepare for this precocious moment in time. For Adam and Lilith, due to their arduous psychological training, the whole process has now become only a mere formality. Sternly they glance towards what to cameras would seem like the horizon, with professionally limpid faces, at the right moment, at the right angle. Lilith kisses her husband’s cheeks tenderly. Then an embrace. Adam has slung his arm around one daughter’s waist whilst on his knee keeps sobbing the other. Occasionally he peeks up between them, with a futile sense of compassion, to pay tribute to his photogenically grieving wife crouching in front of him.
Then the customary signal sallies forth. The time has come for take-off. Leaving perhaps everything forever behind Adam and Lilith slide across a network of vacuous steel corridors, every now and again trespassing fibre-glass slots where more cameras and crew have lined-up to watch. The longer they journey the smoother their movements progress. Until they stand face-to-face with the very last bridge – arching across nervously fuming propulsion engines and the vain, tremblingly lurking launch-pad abyss. Up in the sky, fluffy clouds hover across a pristinely ultra-violet sky, maybe they’re a bit too swift, too cheerful or daunting. Adam and Lilith inhale a last mouthful of ozone-rich air before crawling into the dimly lit core of their vessel. The push of a button closes the gate. They chain themselves to their seats, screw tight their helmets – and for a good while their gloved hands gracefully dance among numerous fluorescent sensors neatly laid-out across them. They’ve done all of this several thousand times. The countdown is now only an alpha-wave peaking during their mental ability to relax and stay sharp at the very same time.
The take-off is smooth. By the time they’re being sprawled into their seats from the rocketing gravitational forces they already know – it’s a guts feeling – that everything went well during the most crucial part of the sequence. They’re on their way now. They’re rising. And the sudden hormonal surges of bliss draw a sly grin on their wantonly contorting faces as for the first time today they’ve got a proper chance to look at each other.

II. OUTER SPACE

“Hahaha”. Lilith stepped on one of the sensors around the main lab entrance of Outer Space Eden Project and found the extremely responsive auto-attunements of the climate generators really amusing. Adam could see her point but was also aware that by now, as they were beginning to get into their day-to-day routines on the station, new gates inside their heads had cracked open, inviting what could only be described as Euphoria. They felt both extraordinarily cheerful and started to better get to know each other. Much better than they had ever had a chance during their years of growing up together. Somehow up here, with mighty Saturn and Jupiter imposing themselves through the giant glass dome of the lab, their relationship seemed to transpire a magic they had both never felt before. Every now and again, for brief and still moments, they looked at each other and smiled.
Continuous low-frequency buzz from omnipresent machinery permeated the station twenty-four hours. Yet there was also a strange, ghastly silence around – much more than they would’ve expected during their countless simulation sessions. They had been given the option to air some of their music but for now they had decided to not to. In the lab itself the whirring of climate generators joined the general base-line of unobtrusively humming background noises. At the other end of the huge hall, from the animal section, faint sounds of erratic squeaking and squirming could also be heard. Each cage, monkeys, rats, even termites and squid, as well as the area itself, had actually been sealed with sound-proof isolation equipment. But particularly the rhesuses turned-out to be keenly excited space cadets and expressed this with all-sorts-of shrieks and rumbles which somehow managed to penetrate through.
Lilith, still fooling around, shovelled more leaves on the sensors to cheat them.
“So you think it’s time to start improvising a bit, huh?”, Adam asked her casually, watching her incredibly sweet movements. She was prancing around the scene-of-crime on her long, silver-clad legs.
“Yeah, I think it’s time. I think the plants will love it if we give them a bit more tropical flavour tonight. Doesn’t matter scientifially, it’s just random change patterns and it’s anyway all recorded in the log-file. One way or the other, we’ll always find out more data, haha “, Lilith said, glancing at him over her shoulder.
“Sure. Fine with me Lilith, haha.” He leaned on the damp trunk of a rubber tree and jotted some infos into the pod they did pretty much everything with. It was so strange. He had never felt more light-hearted and safe before. Yes, they loved their job and yes, they were both considering themselves to be really good at it. But there was more to it. The roots of the pounding excitement laid actually deeper, he found. Somehow being here, working as a scientific team up in space, rendered everything else in the world uncannily unreal. They were nothing. And yet they were everything also. Every single moment up here was unquestioningly lovely and sweet.

III. NIGHT TIME

For the nights they were supposed to share a sleeping cabin, supposedly for them to not feel too alone during their supposedly loneliest times of their journey. Or perhaps it was meant as a peculiar security precaution. Either way, it suited them. They did feel less alone and experiencing the other person awaking and falling asleep on the other side was indeed very comforting. Although it was not a particularly large cabin it was all-the-more cosy and neat. Minimalist and yet broadmindedly engineered. Every other day Lilith would cut some fresh flowers from the lab, different ones each time, to put them into the stainless-steel vases firmly stuck on their bedside tables. Their beds were about five metres away from each other, invisibly mounted to each opposite wall of the room. Down to their feet were a couple of wheeled wall-panels for them to get changed and-so-on in relative privacy should they decide to not do all of this in the bathroom already.
Adam was already lying in bed when Lilith stepped out from behind one of the panels. His head was turned against the wall so she could only see his hair sprouting from underneath the crumpled tinfoil-style bed-cover. Her brother. What a beautiful guy. They also used to share the same bedroom when they were little but now she could hardly remember. By the time she was five everyone had had their own and one could safely say that they had lost touch with each other ever since. Funny life. She slid underneath the crackling blanket, easing herself into her favourite position – on the side, with her knees bent and her hands comfortingly clenched between her warm thighs – to surrender herself to the vacuous world of a good night’s sleep.

IV. MONKEYS

Adam was observing the mating process of two rhesuses while Lilith logged new data by the Ylang-Ylangs. All their research tasks were pretty straightforward procedures as their pods recorded footage, comments and environmental parameters to convert them into academically accurate digits stored on the central server. After a while Lilith joined Adam. Two of the monkeys were in the gist of copulating in the most discomforting frenzy. Adam looked at her vainly. Somehow the instinctual responses the monkeys displayed in their mating were not as they usually were on Earth. They seemed to be magnified, imbued with an eerily elevated intensity. Adam and Lilith stared at the monkeys with uneasy bafflement. The lewd sensation of shame kept crawling up between them, so strong that their knees bent, trembling.
For Adam, the extremely fascinating phenomenon of space-altered copulatory behaviour had meanwhile established itself to be the core-topic of his zoological observations. Although normally he had the professional verve to stare at two mammals’ humping with the same detachedness as watching two particles colliding – with Lilith next to him, a completely different scene – or ‘reality’ even – presented itself in front of him. Everything he had thus far perceived was miraculously wiped-off a slate. He had to try hard, in fact, to keep reality altogether from fading.
“Interesting stuff you’re working on there”, Lilith finally said, long after the monkeys had finished their thing, intoning it with a well-nurtured but nonetheless honest and sweet laughter. She looked far away, to her flowers, in order to eloquently avoid any eye-contact with her brother.
“Haha, thanks, I know. Something very strange is happening here. Can’t tell you any more yet. It’s not just the outer space it’s probably also got to do with the whole environment, the garden, the ship, me and you, everything …”.
“Hm, would make sense I guess.” She paused. “Listen, I’m going to grab some food – wanna join?”
“You go ahead. I still need to finish this. Perhaps you’re still there …”
Not necessarily wanting to look into her eyes for probably the rest of the week he took his time in note-taking. And only after he felt pretty sure that she wouldn’t be there anymore did he go for a brake himself.

V. DINNER

Later at dinner, they turned-on the news-feed. Footage of piling-up tensions between Jewish and Muslim factions on Earth flickered across the kitchen-wall. As they always did they turned down the sound to better cherish their shared pleasure of eating. Today Adam went for something vegetarian which he level-headedly selected from what increasingly seemed their ‘god-sent’ food-dispenser. Whilst Lilith treated herself to a lean, juicy steak. They had been given only a few of them and they were therefore very precious. Fried in her own, funky style there was still blood spurting out, basically soaking the baby-potatoes whenever she stuck her fork in. She was in a very cheerful mood.
As Lilith, chewing, kept taking-in images of awfully concerned officials and panicky gesticulating crowds she suddenly spat-out the mad cough of uncontrollable laughter. Adam did not look anywhere except on the bean-sprouts in front of him, but despite every effort he couldn’t help himself in the end but to join. Her outburst was clearly addictive and the full gist of it soon swept them away. It was a hysterical, unarticulated symphony – punctuated by gruellingly incubating patches of silence – which they spastically conducted between them and which they shamelessly elaborated into countless musical variations.
It finally presented the much-needed cathartic relief that they had both longed for all day – freeing them from all unspoken-of, pent-up tensions and awkwardness. It was essentially Nature at work and its power of utter unburdening clearly beyond words.

VI. DREAMS

That night, in their shared cabin, both at various times had fiercely intense dreams about each other. They were quite clearly what was commonly referred to as of erotic nature.
When Lilith woke up, she found herself silently touching herself, her skin, her breasts, her belly, her thighs. In the darkness, the person who slept over on the other side did not necessarily seem to be her brother. It could have been anybody in fact. A warm, male, beautiful body asleep. Her insurgent feelings out-spaced the confines of this cell, of the spaceship, of the entire universe perhaps – to the point that it frightened her at the same time as it made her passionately shiver.
On the other side Adam woke up just as Lilith fell again soundly asleep. With his eyes wide open, staring into the looming infinity of darkness above him, he remembered the staggering beauty of his bare-naked sister as she walked towards him, with her usual confident smile, in his dream, on a beach, waves ticklingly licking-away on their soft, sand-powdered feet. She began to touch him, with eager tenderness. He sat up and looked on the other side. Another person was sleeping over there, the colleague he worked with on the ship. As much as he tried, while leaving the room, he couldn’t help but furtively glimpse at the immaculate chisel of cheekbones, carved out through traces of distant sunlight, peacefully resting on a white, box-shaped pillow. This person looked like his sister.
He was brimming inside as he fluctuated between various corridors on the station. Somehow he felt compelled to go into the garden, sit down somewhere, maybe on a stone, and think.

VII. THE SNAKE

The climate was synced to their chosen daily routine so it was kind-of-dark in the lab when he approached it. Something strange was going on, he had an almost crystal-clear sense. Also the animals in the back behaved pretty agitated. There was enough light coming through the dome from the far-away sun to roughly discern most of the contours. The Asteroid Belt scattered its pieces in a sharp angle to the ship’s horizon.
Adam stepped awkwardly into the forest following the main path they had strewn out of pebbles right at the beginning. For a brief, frightening moment the animals had turned completely silent. It was then that he heard the rustling noise. A snake. It sullenly slithered across his way, from right to the left, only to disappear in the bushes again, leaving behind the devastating afterglow of ominous emptiness. But this quickly dissolved, as though his pupils were hooked onto something, into the vivid imagery of surface refraction, sparkling through leaves and bushes, as the snake-skin skittered further away from him.
There was no snake on the ship.
A hand touched his shoulder and the new hit of adrenaline made him cough bullets of air. He cringed.
It was Lilith and she looked like a mask.
She had also seen it.
Refocusing his mind to properly face his sister he could pick-up a smile trembling in the corners of her mouth. This right on the spot brought him back to himself. Back to ‘reality’. The animals had also gone silent.
Lilith stepped forth to give him a hug. Then stepped back and looked at him straight from her heart. Let’s just forget about it, Adam. It didn’t matter. They began walking towards the animals where turmoil had yet picked-up again.
There they stood again, Lilith facing her brother and smiling. She put a hand on his shoulder and looked at him. Yes, there seemed to be a snake on board and no, it didn’t matter. Just ignore it. Have no fear. No afterthought. No agenda. Stay true to yourself and your mission – their mission. And yes, I’m Lilith, your sister, but I’m also a woman and I love you. Ooops, here it is. But it’s true. No big deal. These things can happen. Take earthly matters lightly, my dear, adorable brother.
He wavered there, frailly. But gathered. And at the same time as his mind chose irrevocable obliviousness regarding to what he might had seen just a few moments ago, the animals miraculously calmed down as well. As if connected. Funny, he thought and drowsily let himself drop into his warm sister’s embrace like a relaxed but tired little boy after a long, long day out.

VIII. BREAKFAST

He decided to prepare something really nice for their breakfast, definitely something special. The ventilators had to work extra in order to dispel the smells his frying eggs, sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms were causing.
“Oh wow, that’s so amazing”, said Lilith from behind, sitting at the table with a plate in front of her. She clasped her hands in awe while she serenely watched him fiddling and stirring. She had draped a few cute braids in her hair and also with her more poignant gestures and fairy demeanour completely looked like a girl.
“I love the smell of the tomatoes”, he casually threw back. A bit too serious, he thought, while the words had already come out. He also wouldn’t mind going into some sort-of child-mode. By losing the need to ostensibly agree on their anyway obvious excitement he could relax instead and just carry-on cooking. There was no need of being self-conscious and therefore no place for any form of embarrassment.
Whilst they were eating and rejoicingly stroking each other’s souls with bountiful exchanges of tenderness the muted backdrop of news-feeds indicated the situation on Earth to have worsened. The footage of warheads this time captured them flying high-up in the sky, sometimes crashing into what looked like densely populated criss-crossings of infrastructure. It then cut to mutilated bodies, crying, bloodstained children and women – some with, some without veil – covering their from shame and pain forever displaced faces.
Both Adam and Lilith have increasingly lost touch with much of what was happening back at home. The world they had up here was entirely different to the world they and everyone else had down on Earth. Of course, they did their job for people back home and their loved ones, at some point, might as well be in danger. But after many, many weeks, their whole mission – both the work itself as well as this incredible atmosphere between them – had steadily up-lifted them into a maybe-a-bit-scary but nonetheless noble Elatedness. One could say, and Lilith would’ve been the first one to do so, that their experience was ultimately Spritual. An Awakening.
And so it was only after Adam had long left for his monkeys, and only after finally having successfully disintegrated the merciless screen with her all-in-one pod, that she felt the sudden, subterranean urge for a cheese-cake which the nearby titanium dispenser at the push of a button cheerfully provided.

IX. A KISS

They bumped into each other again at the bamboo-site. The fragrances of humidity, roots and orchids hung like a dangerously intoxicating cloud around them. Lilith kneeled next to one of the ponds, one hand logging infos into her pod, the other investigating a tiny fern-weed sticking its fragile feathers out of the water. Her fingers combed through the plant ever-so-softly.
“That’s so amazing, Adam”, she almost whispered, bending her head up to him. He felt pulled to kneel-down next to her.
“You remember we took those spores from GH 355? That’s the plant”, she said. “Isn’t it amazing? It’s alive again. A species from another world …” Lilith was shaking from the thrills of impellent reality.
“They’re so absolutely beautiful. So intricate and yet confident. And with colours refracting an invisible rainbow”, Adam said. He had also to touch it. And as they both crouched, their hands caressing the plant, waves of shiver radiated all-the-way through them, forever binding them into this sacred experience together.
“I think I’ll call it Feathery Star. What do you think?”.
“Sounds deserving”, Adam hoarsely whispered.
As they both kept touching the Feathery Star they noticed that at least some of these mad waves of bliss seemed to be coming from the plant, actually. It was like touching an immeasurably frail miracle, contrived of countless invisible veins. As if their hands were bathing in an electrocuting foam, brandishing ripples of delight in their fizzying, unashamedly welcoming nervous systems. Every now and again, they looked up at each other with the helpless expression of excruciating ecstasy. They shared this. They laughed. They laughed out loud and incessantly and their bodies bumped loosely together. And then Lilith moved-in on him, kissed him, just a bit at first, but then with more determination. Both her hands were firmly clutching onto his neck.
Adam gave in without resistance, letting his body eagerly slide into a passionate embrace at the same pace as their lips were boldly entwining. In fact, he could see now, whatever had happened so far on their journey, for him carried the perfectly clear tenure of fate and inevitability. As the arm which still carried the itching aftermath of the Feathery Star drew the woman in his arms closer towards him – her heat innocently bursting into his body – he had nothing to fear and nowhere to go. He was already where he was supposed to be.
The actual kiss must’ve been only a moment (two or three seconds?) – and as sudden as the embrace came about they had already split again. They knelt beside each other, their heads bent, both quietly smiling. And then they were touching the plant again. Play some more. Reality at work.
Later, Adam stood-up and whistlingly strolled back to his monkeys.
Lilith stayed a bit more, carried away in a world of no worries and pain. A world of complete perfection.

X. TOUCHING DOWN

Adam was almost asleep, but not quite, when Lilith entered the chamber. His head was still spinning while Lilith crawled under her rustling bed-sheets, moving quietly like a mouse. A lurid sexual tension with the stench of lurking embarrassment stretched-out between them, all-encumbering, immutable. Lilith tried to turn away from it, face the wall, only to find herself excessively biting her knuckles. She decided to let it happen as it helped her to keep a lid on new waves of inarticulate and totally inappropriate laughter. Although some giggles burst through, she managed to more-or-less constrain them into what could have been distant whispers of machinery, fairies or ants, perhaps.
Adam, despite having heard her, pretended to be asleep. He did this although he knew that she knew that he was not and that she even knew that he knew all of this also. He maintained this stance throughout what seemed like ages, for among all the options it just seemed to him the most reasonable, really. He also honestly didn’t mind too much feeling a bit awkward. And it worked, as he eventually faded into his sleep, departing into the mysteries of Darkness.

Only to be awakened by Lilith’s warm body as she was unobtrusively harking onto him. It was then that he understood that the time has come to become real to the fullest extent. Was this Manhood?
“Hey”, she smiled, touching his cheek, her fingers garlanding through his hair gently. He smiled back. Only awe could describe what they saw in each other’s eyes. So they better closed them. Drawn-in by the same force, they allowed themselves to glide into where they would have anyway naturally fallen. Everything else was gone now, only this moment in time existed. The sudden cessation of sadness and solitude. The compulsive merging of two into one.
Adam and Lilith disappeared into the nurturing hole that the other benevolently provided and their heated bodies were anointed with tears as the most resourceful expression of their love that night.

reinhard schleining
london, march 2009

© 2009, all rights reserved

or
The Tragic Impotence of Money

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I. CONDITIONS

We’re born naked. We die naked. As not only religion but also logic suggest, no matter how much funds we raise throughout our worldly journey, in the face of Ultimate Reality, even the most beautiful diamonds and castles merely amount to worthless lumps of mud. There is of course the argument of safeguarding relatives and loved ones, putting our kids on golden thrones and what not – but, honestly, can we really ease their various, vastly unpredictable hardships – emotional havoc, insights into political corruption, painful encounters with our tragic human condition – with monetary ailments? Besides, are we doing such an apparently altruistic act really unconditionally, with only their best interests in mind, or do we actually expect a return-of-investment where we need them to do certain things in exchange, behave in certain ways, before our hard earned juices change bank accounts at the end of the day? As most of us haven’t been loved by our parents unconditionally, there is usually a wicked agenda involved in how we interact with others. Most exchanges are burdened with crooked meanings beyond the actual surface transactions. Like the sticky fingerprints we leave as soon as we touch it money involved in human transaction inherently corrupts any relationship through its conscious and unconscious strings attached – its conditions.

Looking at this dilemma from the diametrical opposite side we can say that for the most important things in life, the things that make us innately human – virtue, integrity, loyalty, love, warmth, grace, comfort, in short everything coming straight from the heart – cannot possibly be paid for with any amount of money. How could they? They wouldn’t be what they are – unconditional, uncorrupted, honest and pure energy radiating from deep inside us. Primal, unspoilt, adamant Truth.

The monetary system currently in place, bolstered via banks and their ever tightening grip through outright quack game theory (pioneer John Nash later refuted its applicability to people) has led to an ever widening gap between us, castrating our exchange of something genuine and honest. We are increasingly entangled in a world of lies and abuse, which at its very end leads to a complete breakdown of any real, intimate bonds. We are essentially artificially rendered into monkeys in a giant chess game in which the only way to solve our ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ is to always lie, no matter what. Under the pretext of a shamelessly capitalist biased Darwinism we have been theorised into mere rats stumbling in a maze with trap doors continuously threatening to sack us, compelled to fight for the limited resources of cheese with our equally trapped game playing peers. If we manage to achieve the game master’s ever increasing targets we might as well be rewarded with the bonus of proceeding to the next level, an even tighter but also more ‘rewarding’ maze. So much as to survival of the fittest.

Basically living our lives in the present framework means that any virtue we have, any internal values dear to us, we better keep hidden from everyone else. Not only would we dangerously embarrass ourselves with vulnerability and openness. In the instigated rat race the more of those values we might display, the more jealousy and patronising we attract from our co-players. Competition is tough and we better swallow the generously prescribed Prozacs to keep the spirit of internal alienation alive. In a way through the absence of any higher beliefs ‘career’ and ‘money’ have gained a ludicrously spiritual dimension. We’re conditioned to be thoroughly empty inside and instead stick external values on our ageing hulls like glittering medals distracting from the suffering zombie underneath.

¶
II. REALITY

Waking up to this reality we frankly ask ourselves:

Why should we really care about targets and bonuses and other dehumanising agendas? Why should we care about yet another reality tv show or other mind numbing crap we’re supposed to watch on our giant plasma screens? Why should we care about any supposedly bigger picture of the world the media blasts into our increasingly washed out brains? Ultimately why should we care about this or that or any other political rhetoric conjured up to ensure ’social stability’ and ‘economic growth’ for that matter?

Since the only reality relevant to us is how we feel about ourselves and as a result how we interact with people around us. Who are we affiliating with and how genuine are those bonds? Are we not because of (programmed!) insecurities trying to escape any real, intimate contacts with other people? Are we compensating our lack of self esteem and inner values with an inexhaustible hunger for status and money in order to be ‘loved’? Are we caught up in a seemingly inescapable cycle of conditional interactions and therefore unable to ever relax with people, open up and trust?

Is there a way out? If there is then it is definitely not an easy task as money has become the binding agent firmly cementing the prison walls between us. Perhaps re-evaluating our internal, intrinsically human assets is a start. But this requires purifying our selves in the midst of daily survival and it can’t be achieved without our full attention and commitment. Myriads of old, deeply ingrained patterns need to be changed. Only then can we regain control over matters of time, headspace, virtue, health or integrity. In other words, if there really is any (Darwinian?) struggle in life then it is the one inside of our selves. But then again, the abandoning of external values also means that we’re up against everyone else still fiercely subscribing to them. Nobody really wants us to succeed with breaking free as it would make the trap they’re stuck in all the more more painfully obvious.

¶

III. FREEDOM

How could we then survive the revolutionary act of breaking free from it all? Also how is it going to work out for those who make it? How about those who stay? What new, all-improved framework can ensure bread and preferably butter as well as a roof atop our although now clearer unfortunately also more vulnerable heads? Will those in power, the game masters / bullies, ever step down and let us just get on with our lives? Well, if the ‘victims’ stop being victims they’ll bloody well have to. Those patronising others into their values and beliefs are ‘happy’ only on the surface they’ve established for themselves. Because of their internal emotional reality – distrust, anxiety and the lack of ever being genuinely loved by someone, without ifs and buts, unconditionally, they have to compulsively resort to all sorts of forced entries into other people’s bodies and minds. ‘Body counters’ therefore have also got a hard time to escape their own prisons – even though they might look like shining palaces from the outside. Every bully has to doggedly monitor their tight grip on others and it’ll be exactly when they feel weakened by too much entanglements / ‘reponsibilities’ when their victims will suddenly turn the tables by letting go. Complete abandonment and the realisation that everything they seem to possess has been built on a lie is definitely not an easy thing to take on board. Whereas those who manage to simply walk off will instead regain nothing less than their virtue and integrity. True, unconditional freedom – a higher although perhaps initially harsher since unknown reality – is awaiting.

True, some of us might not survive the free fall into existential freedom. But more likely than not we will, having gone through life-long training in rat race prison, as our hitherto trapped confidence and authenticity will attract other like-minded people who’ve only been waiting, like ourselves, for the time to come where they can be real again, meet and mingle with their new-found purity, innocence and vitality.

As to how exactly this will work there is no definite answer. It won’t be an easy journey that’s for sure. True freedom per definition means that everyone has to find an answer for themselves really. All we have to do is reach the other shore, the shore of becoming human again, where we can be giving and receiving unconditionally. It’ll be an utopian, paradisiacal island where we as truth seeking, blossoming children are free to tackle our individual slices of reality. Maybe we will die on the way there, drowned in the vast sea of the unknown. But also maybe life and death are ultimately more serious than we have thus far come to believe and reaching the promised land inside of ourselves is our only chance and goal.

¶

reinhard schleining
london, october 2008

© 2008, all rights reserved

this is a new triptych, picking up on my earlier MUSIC one. not much to say really as i guess it is pretty self explanatory. hope you enjoy :)

© 2008, all rights reserved

inspired by foolishpeople’s new production ‘terra: extremitas’ whose promotional material i’ve been asked to design again this rather mad image emerged. a few things i’ve come across during the past couple of months (conspiracy, alien seeding, blabla) are put together in a humorous way …

(i’ve recently come across this movie after watching ‘caligula’ after a very long time again. its impact was so strong that i just had to write down some thoughts about it …

an edited version highlighting its socio / cultural polemics has been published august 2008 by FLUX magazine …)

=====================

SALON KITTY – a movie review

A freak of a movie. Five stars!

This is a serious movie. Very serious. Quite sad in a way that it somehow seems to have ended up in a ‘porn’ pigeonhole, or even in the so funnily called ‘exploitation’ niche. Hm, this could be because the nerve it hits reverberates really quite deep in our collective psyche, with its dark, shocking cocktail of power and sexuality, that people could quite easily feel intimidated, even ashamed of themselves, for possibly opening up to it – perhaps even liking it – and they therefore have to resort to scapegoating it instead (at least in public). Another reason for its strange ‘underratedness’ could be its stark political impact, its shrill post-68 outcry of anger against a continuously repressive social environment, which might have been simply ‘too much’ for many political corners and therefore reason enough to suppress it.

In any case, for those who haven’t seen it, briefly the plot: In 1936 Berlin, the Nazis have the splendid idea to set up a high-class brothel in order to spy on its clients and gather all sorts of embarrassing behind-the-scenes information about them. The idea involves to use not professional hookers and train them in ‘intelligence’ but instead scout for girls throughout the whole country who display an unshakeable faith in national socialist ideology – and then train them in both, servicing sex and sucking off vital political clues. So far all of this actually happened. Brass then wrote a story of ‘true love’ in between where one of the girls falls for a German pilot and he also really falls for her too but he’s subsequently being destroyed by the Nazis after he openly tells his lover (room bugged, she doesn’t even know herself, although supposed to be an ‘agent’) about his decision to surrender to truth instead of killing another bunch of people for a mere political lie. This is all centred around the strangely elevated power freak Wallenberg who’s in charge of setting up the whole ploy. Within his underlying, secret belief not in ideology at all but purely in power he also feels he can find love through blackmail and sexual enslavement. In the end, as it is usually the case with power, the sword has always got two sides and it is only a matter of time until it eventually turns against him.

CRAFT:

The screenplay is consistent and extremely original. There are so many ideas which allow for watching the film over and over again. The seamless interweaving of cabaret songs, seedy boudoirs, Nazi stuff, true love and ‘fucked-up’, explicit sex scenes is absolutely priceless. As a director, Brass’ psychological insights and attention to emotional details are quite staggering and I feel not many in cinema can claim to see equally far (or deep for that matter. Perhaps someone like Todd Solondz with Happiness for instance or Julia Davis with her powerful British comedy series Human Remains and Nighty Night I & II). With Salon Kitty Tinto Brass unfolds an eerie tale of messed-up and messing-up people, stuck in their manmade human tragedies, as they play along ‘games’ related to power in a world of belief, hatred and fear. The naked human, whether physical or psychological, is the canvas upon which the wickedness and perversion of the political agenda unfolds.

Brass gathered astounding talent for this project. For the costumes he hired the hugely talented swiss designer Jost Jakob fresh from college and Ken Adam (of Stanley Kubrick and James Bond fame, in fact a native German who got away from his country before the war started) created some outstanding, fairly personal work here. Lavish Berlin war time interiors and frighteningly slick Nazi architecture, somewhat reminiscent of many of a present day multinational’s corporate identity (only with a red, black and white swastika as the well lit, stylish logo on the bottom right hand corner). Ingrid Thulin (Ingmar Bergman, Luchino Visconti) plays a prime-leaugue-acting Madame Kitty as the charming and charismatic quasi-show-host-thread through the whole film. Helmut Berger (Again Visconti) in the role of the Untersturmbandfuehrer Helmut Wallenberg delivers a brilliant performance too. Cast for his ‘ambiguity’ according to Brass, his cold, detached beauty hiding the monster inside is so convincing, the movie wouldn’t be what it is without him. Kind of American Psycho, but Nazi style. Also the total out-of-it-ness and therefore the perfect requirement for high ranking officials of any whatsoever perverted system is being equally well portrayed by John Steiner as Wallenberg’s boss Biondo. Like in his somehow similar role of Longinus in Caligula he unleashes the whole reality of why fucked-up systems are humanly possible in the first place. Through emotional detachment in the face of however outrageous atrocities and through complete obedience to the rules and rulers of the game, preferably with the right sense of dry, cynical humour. Both his creations, intrinsically linked to Steiner’s distinct features and facial expressions, stay imprinted in the audience’s mind for a very long time. But last and not least, with Teresa Ann Savoy as Margherita, the shared female lead, one extremely rare thing happens on screen. Primal sexual charisma which doesn’t need to rely on ‘pretty pretty’, silicone, or other whimsical, silly seduction routines to elicit female eroticism (like for instance many American directors would almost force their characters into displaying). With all her natural sensuality, a mere human being of the female kind so to speak, with not quite straight teeth and a delicate, innocent quirkiness, only Maria Schneider’s acting of Jeanne in Last Tango in Paris (a movie which was also ‘too much’ for its time but luckily lacks any outright political messages mixed into the whole sex thing and could therefore be resurrected from a similar ‘rubbish’, ‘freak sex’ corner) can somewhat match such a performance. No matter how much Margherita is being abused or reduced to a mere object, whether in fancy clothes or stark naked, she always retains her dignity, sovereignty and beauty intact. I find this absolutely remarkable and – yeah, sexy too.

CONTENT:

For me personally, the most interesting aspect of Salon Kitty is its description of how sex can be ‘institutionalised’ so bloody easily in order to meet any whatsoever surreal political ends. If it hasn’t already been before, in a movie like this it becomes perfectly clear again that romantic / sexual love is the ultimate system-subversive trait of us humans and has therefore to be carefully kept in check. Sex / love can be ‘allowed’ or ’sanctioned’ only within a particular framework for fucking which repressive political (slash religious) systems hand down to its people. Of course, love in itself is such a deep instinct that it always has to be promised as the incentive to carry on with our lives somewhere down the line. Like winning the lottery it is the dream come true for those who’re really ‘lucky’ in life, whilst in reality it hasn’t got much to do with luck at all, but mainly emotional health, confidence and maturity. But even health and maturity, in a screwed up, viciously grinding away system, does not guarantee fulfilment of such an actually modest emotional need. You could easily end up instead on a meat hook, like Margherita’s lover did, because your jealous comrades scapegoat you for their own political and therefore personal failure. Or literally as a hooker, if you erratically attempt to escape the world of your brainwashed parents like Margherita ‘instictively’ tried to. Since whether you do what they tell you or just the mere opposite doesn’t really matter in terms of the psycho-mechanic laws of destiny.

The scene where the women are being lined up in the huge Nazi gym, saluting naked with Heil Hitlers, before the equally naked SS guys are marched in to test their feasibility for providing uninhibited sexual favours, while the ‘authorities’ play some demented propaganda tunes on the grand Steinway, is easily one of the most startling I’ve ever seen. It is being closely followed by another one (censored for most of the movie’s history) where some of the girls undergo further testing in sterile, kafkaesque prison cells, having to please all sorts of ‘real’ freaks in order to show their blind determination to the political cause. Considering the difficulty to get such rather ambitious scenes across, it has to be said there is a certain sense of subtle but very effective humour in Brass’s style, paired up with his frankly astonishing emotional sensitivity. Another interesting directorial feature is that the more ’sexually explicit’ scenes become, the more politically they are being insinuated at the same time. This is a very fascinating formal idea and skilfully done indeed. Or the use of mirrors throughout the whole film. Apparently following a personal obsession, Brass acquired the necessary tricks from Ken Adam to never have any camera visible throughout any whatsoever complicated shot, making him a “maestro of mirrors”, as he describes it himself in his self-ironic voice. As a narrative element, in Salon Kitty this serves extremely well to scatter each character into various aspects and angles. It also alleges that given the right amount of oppression and terror, every single one of us could find themselves reflected in those mirrors like any one of the characters who are trapped in the storyline of this utterly political movie. Sometimes, having been born into a ‘liberate’ climate the impact of blatant political force is quite easy to forget. And yet, even today, in a way we still ARE trapped in a world of sexual / emotional abuse – and that is exactly the deep nerve this movie is hitting. Only that today, instead of ‘concentration camps’, ‘national socialism / communism / dictatorship’ and ‘brainwashing / propaganda’, the abuse is being masqueraded as ‘broken homes’, ‘capitalism / consumerism’ (if I want to be really provocative) or one of the many other contemporary ways of ‘abuse / prostitution’ (for economic, corporate, personal, political, intellectual – or even religious ’causes’).

But of course, the most underlying angle of Salon Kitty (as it is also the case with Caligula according to Brass) is how power in the end always corrupts people, why power is so attractive to already corrupted people in the first place and above all, why it is so incredibly sad for power freaks having to resort to killing, breaking and raping in order to create the illusion that they are being loved by someone (or even by many, haha) – although they deep down bloody well know that this is not at all the case. Obviously there is a strong element of power involved in any form of sexual attraction – taken, being taken et cetera – but the separation between sex and love, in other words the assertion of power to achieve intimacy with another person, is psychologically an irresolvable dilemma. Perversion, or better, more Freudian, ‘deterioration from core humanity’ (for when it comes to sex itself, according to Brass, there is no such thing as perversion) is without a doubt the ugliest manifestation of our tragic human condition. Its mechanics compel that anything healthy and innocent must be defiled and destroyed in order to keep the dream / madness alive, feed it with ever more blood and despair.

Perhaps therefore the movie for its time ‘did go too far’ and this is the reason, why after all his hassle with trying to make Caligula work, Brass left any political message completely aside in his later work, almost overnight, in order to put his attention entirely on sex itself with the production of real, honest ‘erotica’ in which he purposefully avoids “using sex as a metaphor for something else”. For such a talented person as Brass this must have been quite a radical step to take. But in another way also probably quite a reasonable one. Sexuality has just been repressed for too long throughout our history and keeping this repression alive is what provides some of the strongest hooks for any system built mainly on ‘power’. What is therefore needed more than anything else before ‘real’ political awareness can happen is plain simply sexual / emotional healing. And this is exactly what Tinto Brass’ later work offers. The permission to explore sexual / emotional self-expression for those of us who’re stuck in kind of boring or otherwise ‘institutionalised’ love lives. Once we are free to open up fully to the right person, without getting hurt or abused or otherwise ‘fucked’, we can still dig out another movie milestone from some dusty archive, Michelangelo Antonioni’s incredible Zabriskie Point (which is, interestingly enough for such an important movie, very difficult to get hold of at the time of writing) and proceed with matters of personal political responsibility from there.

Reinhard Schleining
London, 23rd March 2008

© 2008, all rights reserved

(invited pitch for atlantic records to promote the new album by LUPE FIASCO as a graphic novel / game ’sitelette’).

=================

CONCEPT:

From amongst all the characters, features and scenes within the world of THE COOL, there is one detail, one element of the story, which I felt has an extraordinarily powerful potential, conceptually and emotionally. I thought it could serve as the red thread, ‘the key’ if you will, on which we can build the whole purpose and incentive of our game:

It is THE LETTER, written by MICHAEL YOUNG HISTORY’s eight-year-old sister.

By arranging three different episodes, on two pages of graphic novel narrative each, we have THE LETTER prominently featured as the pivotal mystery of the underlying story. Both LUPE FIASCO and THE STREETS are continuously trying to get hold of it (although for obviously completely different reasons). Its content, the innocent writings of merely a little girl, wield a power none of the evil forces will ever be able to content with. It is brimming of genuine, unconditional LOVE.

Each of the three scenes ends on a question related to THE LETTER and the successful answers results in various payoffs (perhaps also the access code to be able to continue the story). For the last one, whose correct answer is “LOVE”, the audience gets to download a secret track in which the lyrics of the letter are featured to create an emotionally moving piece of music (perhaps with a little girl featured as a voice?). It is a ballad of love and loss, hope and despair, brotherly and sisterly love. Innocence and its tragic loss forever.

=================

SCRIPT:

EPISODE I: THE GRAVE

1 – EXT. AN INNER-CITY GRAVEYARD – NIGHT

LUPE FIASCO is standing in front of MICHAEL YOUNG HISTORY’S grave. He is wearing a black leather coat and completely withdrawn in his thoughts.

LUPE FIASCO

(to himself)

so stupid. so motherfucking stupid …

from behind bushes, THE STREETS is sneaking up towards him. he doesn’t seem to hear her.

LUPE FIASCO

you could still be here, MICHAEL. (pause). we could still be friends …

THE STREETS is now directly behind him, he still hasn’t noticed. she puts her hand on his shoulder. he turns his head to vaguely acknowledge her presence, not more. there is a hint of contempt in his eyes.

THE STREETS

poor boy, huh? his brain just dropped into his pants as soon as he saw me, hahahahaha.

she tries to touch some of LUPE’s sensitive parts but he grabs her wrist and pushes her hand away. his hyper-cool composure hasn’t changed at all. she flings her arm out of his tight grip and soothingly rubs the wrist while she stares at him fiercely.

THE STREETS

don’t you dare touching me, LUPEY. and don’t pretend to be sorry about your mate’s death. you just feel sorry for yourself, you pathetic piece of shit.

LUPE FIASCO is turning his attention back to the grave, basically ignoring her. THE STREETS is furious.

THE STREETS

have you read his little sister’s letter? its soooo heartbreaking, apparently, ahahahaha.

she laughs hysterically. this time she has caught his attention. he turns round to face her.

LUPE FIASCO

(angrily)

where is it? where is the fucking letter, you goddamned bitch?

THE STREETS

hahaha. did i finally get your honorary attention, LUPEY? i don’t have it. trust me. you can search me if you want.

she spins around in front of him, her arms lasciviously raised above her head. LUPE doesn’t move. he looks away, disgusted.

THE STREETS

what you’re waiting for, big man. haven’t you got the balls to touch me, hahahahaha?

END OF EPISODE I

OVERLAY:

“WHO HAS GOT THE LETTER?”

(correct answer: “THE COOL has it”)

—————————————————————-

EPISODE II: THE COOL

2 – EXT. DARK FUCKED UP STREETS IN THE CITY – NIGHT

THE COOL is roaming the streets. it’s raining. he’s just been hit by one of his attacks of excruciating pain, stemming from three bullets forever stuck in his undead brain, heart and throat. they turn up quite often, these attacks, and cause him to go down on his knees, clenching his head and howling like a sick animal. the sounds seamlessly blend into the countless police sirens we can hear in the background. he tumbles into an remote alleyway and crashes between the rubbish.

THE COOL

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

just as the pain seizes, THE STREET stands in front of him, arms on her hips, her legs spread apart. she’s wearing a devilishly short mini-skirt and stares down on him with a cynical, vicious smile. she kicks his head with one of her long legs.

THE STREETS

give me the letter, COOLIE boy, baby.

THE GAME suddenly turns up from behind her, sporting his golden teeth with a broad grin. grabbing her upper arms he sticks his giant head next to hers, resting it on her bare shoulder. he hisses down to the green-bleeding THE COOL with a hoarse, almost inaudible voice.

THE GAME

you better do what the lady says, boy. looks like you’ve had enough shit to put up with for today. (pause). can also probably get someone to fix some of your problems, you see.

THE COOL’s skeletal hand stretches out as if to shy them away. for every ‘normal’ person this would have worked, for THE STREETS and THE GAME this gesture seems utterly pathetic.

THE COOL

i don’t know what you’re talking about.

THE STREETS

shut up, COOLIE, baby.

she kicks him in the head again, a nasty strike with her left leg this time. more green blood pours down his rotten face. she turns round to THE GAME, putting her arms around his neck. they kiss passionately. THE GAME grabs her buttocks and reveals them bare naked by shoving his hands up her skirt. witnessing this, another attack hits THE COOL and he throws himself down to the asphalt again, screaming.

THE COOL

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. stop it, please, i beg you. you’ve won, you bastards. here is what you want …

THE STREETS and THE GAME are entwined, carried away by their dark lust.

END OF EPISODE II

OVERLAY

“WHERE IS HE HIDING THE LETTER?”

(correct answer: “strapped on his chest like a gun”)

—————————————————————-

EPISODE III:

3 – INT. A HUGE INDUSTRIAL LOFT SHELL – NIGHT

THE GAME is standing against the window wall of his lair, looking out into the busy, rough street of the city. there are bars between him and the window, a surreal element of imprisonment in the midst of his spacious empire. he is thinking about his lost son.

THE GAME

(thinking)

HEROINE, are you out there? somewhere? i know you’re still alive …

somewhat melancholic he walks over to his huge desk. a mountain of white powder sits on top. his dimmed, faint blood vessels shiver as he sticks his head into it. as he looks up again, the veins on his neck are pumping in ecstasy. THE STREETS comes in, swayingly, wearing yet another one of her sick, sexy outfits. he looks up at her, his face is a mask of artificial hysteria.

THE GAME

have you read it?

she sticks her finger into the pile of coke and vacantly rubs it into her teeth.

THE STREETS

no. not yet. (pause). it scares me.

LUPE FIASCO comes into the room suddenly. his leather coat waves in his wake as he walks towards the two. THE STREETS just smiles eerily. THE GAME is hyped-up and unimpressed.

THE GAME

i do admire your balls, LUPE.

LUPE FIASCO

i’d rather you cut them off your mind, GAME.

THE STREETS laughs hysterically. a horde of goons storm in. they have pig’s heads and are wearing kinky, black latex uniforms. they nervously wave their neon-pink dildo machine guns at LUPE but he doesn’t care. THE STREETS laughs out loud again and he uses this as a clue to just grab her. a brief moment of panic is flooding the whole room. the pigs don’t dare to move. LUPE swiftly extracts THE LETTER from THE STREET’s wide open cleavage and holds it up in the air. nobody moves. there is complete silence. THE STREETS has buried her face in her hands and looks through her fingers in fear.

END OF EPISODE III

OVERLAY:

“WHAT IS EVERYBODY AFRAID OF?”

(correct answer: “LOVE”)

—————————————

reinhard schleining

first draft
london, 29th november 2007
© 2007, all rights reserved

this is an art show i’m doing with two friends of mine (the first of its kind) and i thought i’ll just post the press pack / mini-catalogue as jpegs to be remembered for ‘eternity’ …

oh well, i’m putting this online because i feel this is somehow a key piece in my illustration work. the coincidence is quite mad, as i’ve just the other day joked with a friend about staging my own death (whilst having my website miraculously updating itself, hahaha). and two weeks later i’m getting this commission from australia asking me to come up with an editorial piece for an aticle exactly looking into both the ridiculousness as well sincerity of doing something as crazy as this. anyway. i’ve aged quite a bit in the image, but who knows, in a couple of years time? hope you enjoy …

I

THE ENCOUNTER

I certainly didn’t expect this to happen, but that’s always how it goes, isn’t it? In the midst of another insanely crowded Shoreditch steel-wood-and-glass bar. This awesome girl. She kind of wades forward, smiling, through a vast ocean of faceless, chatty, after-work binge-drinkers. Venus rising from a foam shell. But draped in a scarlet-red, laser-cut cocktail dress. The most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. At first I think I’m dreaming this, it can’t be me she’s moving towards, smiling at. But she adamantly floats precisely to the place where I’m standing. On invisible angel wings or something. And a couple of seconds later, now only a few steps away from me, she still hasn’t stopped smiling. My knees feel like butter and the situation hits me with utmost sincerity. Hair stiffening on the back of my neck. Fucking hell, I must be dreaming this. Jesus, how unbelievably beautiful this girl is. I’ve never ever seen anyone like her. Black hair, white skin, green eyes. I almost drop my drink. almost shit in my pants, really really really.
“You look very sweet, babee. Wanna buy me a drink?” she says, still smiling. Every-word-is-on-the-beat – wow!
“Sure. What you fancy?”
“Bloody Mary?”
“Sure, of course. Don’t move.”
Pause. “I won’t.”

The first thing I notice once we start talking is that she doesn’t seem to care about what I’m doing, nor where I’m coming from. Well-off background, I suppose. I’m still not sure whether I’m not dreaming-up all of this. Her name is Amanda, she says, and somehow hearing her say the name feels strangely comforting. Her voice reverberates all-the-way through my body. Singer? Actress? In any case, it has probably the same effect as pinching myself, I suppose. I’m most definitely wide awake, not dreaming.
“How’s the drink?”, I ask in an attempt to stir-up some more stimulated conversation. She’s still smiling at me, never stopped really. The most beautiful girl in the world’s just standing right in front of me, Bloody Mary in her hand, and she can’t stop smiling at me. Madness.
“Great, thanks. I just luuuv anything red.”
“Hahaha, having been bathed in blood as a newborn or something?”
“Hahaha, yeah, something like that.”
It quite stuns me that she didn’t actually think my joke was too dark or otherwise tasteless but I briskly whisk away the creepy feeling. “I really like your dress by the way”, I say instead.
“Thanks. you’re really very sweet, babee. What’s your name?”
“Tom”, I say, shaking the ice cubes in my quadruple Jack Daniel’s.
“Nice name.”
She keeps smiling at me. Her lips, her mouth, her eyes, her face, her legs, her breasts. Her posture, her confidence, her elevatedness. It is all so incomprehensibly beautiful that I still have to put-in a lot of effort to not just shit in my pants, right here, right now.

Keep calm, man. Take it easy. Easy. Jesus, I’ve met many interesting girls in my life – that’s, well, just the way how it goes when you’re successful as a DJ-Producer. Quite a few of them were above-the-line confident and sexy. But Amanda’s something else completely and I can’t quite put it down really. It’s everything about her. Everything’s like out of a dream or something. From another planet. I’m done, I’m afraid. I’ve fallen for her the first split-second I saw her, gliding all the way through the sea of binge-drinking mortals at the other end of the room. Should I be worrying about ‘why me’? Well I say, go with the flow, man. Ride the waves of the moment. I don’t think it’s vanity. And I’m definitely a cool enough guy to not think she’s an outrageously astute hooker either.
“You’re very nice too”, I say. “Unbelievably awesome, actually.”
She doesn’t answer. Just smiles. And then gently moves in to my lips for a long, soft, wet kiss.

On the streets back to mine we also don’t speak very much. We’re both quite a bit turned-on by now. I’m in fact a bloody boiling steam tank, to be honest. Walking with her on my side through the Friday night crowd is actually pretty awkward. Every head we pass turns. They check us out. Something doesn’t seem right. They perhaps don’t like the idea of seeing someone so stunningly beautiful next to a just ‘decent looking guy’ or something. It bothers them or something. And although Amanda’s kisses earlier on have given me all the confidence I’d ever need in this world I still feel strangely insecure from their hostility and in a way almost undeserving. What if they’re right? What if I shouldn’t be going to my place with someone like her? Perhaps even have sex – blimey? She slings both her arms around my neck, just in time before I’m getting too self-deprecating. She hisses a “you make me so hot” in my ear, giggling from all the Bloody Marys she’s had. Her voice slithers into my brain like pungent lava. My ear is almost falling off. But it’s definitely done the trick and I’m straight back into the vibes. I grab her waist and pull her towards me. What a wonderful drug. There’s nothing else to be said. Other people cease to exist. She’s licking my ear now and since I’ve always found it quite tricky to walk straight with a hard-on we have to slow down now, take it easy, chill.

II

THE ACT

Straight upon entering my flat we need to split, though. Breathe, Tom, breathe, I panicky keep telling myself. This is all too freaking intense. I lean against the wall, apologising and smiling. I beg her to sit down on the comfy leather lounge. Then I walk over to the kitchen-bit where I consult my flash mini-bar next to the fridge.
“What about Campari with blood-orange juice. Would make sense, wouldn’t it?”, I ask as formally as I can muster.
“Mmmmmhhh”, comes her reply. She’s again smiling at me but obliviously someplace else. The bottom of her dress has come-up to reveal her deliciously juicy alabaster thighs. I force myself to look away but can’t quite manage. My head seems to be stuck to her as if to an all-powerful magnet. I bring her the cocktail and jog-dial a really cool playlist from my pod.
“That is nice”, she says when some of my own stuff comes up.
“Thanks”, I mutter. I’m definitely not sure whether I should not join her on the sofa. It’s all just so intense – Jesus Fucking Christ. My armpits are soaking. I bloody well know that I’ll be straight away gone if I go anywhere near her. Therefore I casually place myself leaning against the wall facing her whilst gathering my strength to not look at her. I pretend to be staring out of the window. A few drunks pass-by on the street, pissing and shouting aimlessly.
“How did you spot me, back then in the bar?”, I finally ask her, trying to keep acting casual, one hand in my pocket, the other one grabbing my drink. But even before I finish my question I already regret having asked it since I must come across like a completely insecure twat.
“I told you. You looked so sweet”, she says and there’s a comforting undertone in her voice as if she were to say that I might be insecure. But not a twat.
Silence again. I sip away on my drink and keep gazing out of the window. Luckily I’m quite hammered by now.
She gets up from the sofa and comes over to me. She sticks her hand under my shirt and caresses my back softly. An electric shock runs all the way through me. My knees bend. Next thing I know are our mouths stuck on each other’s. Tongues rampaging. Hands fondling. We’re lying entwined on the floor. Nothing really matters anymore. My dear, precious playlist has morphed into merely the echoing, squirming stutter from a far far away galaxy.

Multiple orgasmic waves shoot through my pent-up nervous system. We’re glowing. We’re splashed-out on the floor like salty and sticky seaweed. I don’t know what I’m doing at all, everything just happens on its own. Our tongues snake in and out of whatever orifice they can possibly find. Legs part. Nipples contort. Cheeks shiver. We’re melting together. We’re forming a unit. We’re lost in each other and my flat has become a waiting-lounge for all sorts of heavenly noise transmissions. We groan, utter, hiss, sigh. Everything is blurred. Everything is spinning. Our skins have become so incredibly sensitive that we squeak and convulse with even the gentlest of touches. Another series of orgasmic waves shoot through my body, leaving a sugary afterglow which crystallises like sparkling confetti in our mutual aura. I feel that I want to totally give-up myself, hand over my life to this person I’ve only just met. Unconditionally. Wholeheartedly. Irrevocably.

And just before I can completely immerse myself into this feeling, sullenly, lusciously slide into it, I spot through my dreary, faint eyes how Amanda – one hand rapturously grabbing my gurkin – suddenly reveals long, pearl-white fangs with her smile. They’re very long. I haven’t noticed them before. And as she sinks those fangs into the soft skin of my steeled shaft, with delirious lust in her glazed, spaced-out eyes – I don’t think at all that I’m hallucinating this. I’m also not scared or shocked or repulsed in any way whatsoever. Instead I simply can’t stop shivering with delight. There’s a brief, tangy sting from her bite radiating down all the way to the lower end of my spine. And then hot waves of pleasure keep flooding my whole body from there. Several orgasmic explosions, different this time, spark-up my brain again. My face is gleaming. I’m burning.
She’s still grabbing my shaft, thin rivulets of blood pour down her hand. Her mouth comes up towards mine. Our tongues meet. She bites into my lips, without the sting, without the blood and we just suck on each other. ‘Eat me, you beautiful demon’, I’m thinking and at the same time burst out laughing in ecstasy. I can hear my playlist again, but I’ve never heard it that way before. I’m transformed. I’ve become a new person.
Another wave of orgasms and laughter. And then I fall back into the floor – deep, dark, dreary. I spread out my arms and legs as wide as I can. Whatever you want from me, whatever you need. Take it all, baby. I’m yours. Truly and wholly yours. I suppose, till death us part or something. Hahahahaha …

III

THE AFTERMATH

When I wake up she’s gone. The withdrawal symptoms hit me with sheer phenomenal power. I’m cringing, cuddling- up myself. I’m shaking, shivering. Cold sweat. My heart is beating erratically. My nerves are itching with featureless cravings. Somehow I manage to get out of my bed. I try to shake off the nagging feelings of loss. The amount of sadness and despair almost makes me go down to the floor and die. I swallow a couple of downers and take a long hit off the bong which I keep to my rescue for generally unsettling conditions. I drag myself to the kitchen and whack-up some scrambled eggs. Then I wash it all down with a few shots of vodka before I force myself to eventually hit the street.
I’m walking on snakes and diving through aliens but somehow make my way down to the studio. Mike is there and it’s good to see him although I have to rush to the toilet and vomit before I can even say hello. He stays silent when he sees the state I’m in.
We load up a track entitled ‘Prime Harvest’ which we’ve been chopping away on for the past couple of days. He’s done bits and pieces since yesterday and plays it to me and I pretend to be listening – but Amanda’s smiles sharply keep cutting into my brain. Her smell. Her skin. Her passion.
The track has ended and I haven’t even realised. I sincerely apologise to Mike who looks at me with his huge, red-rimmed child’s eyes. As usual his pupils are already at this time of the day stretched-out across the entire iris. Black eyes worriedly staring at me.
“I’m really, really sorry, man. I’m completely fucking
wasted. Most intense experience I’ve ever had”, I mumble.
“Just carry on, sounds all cool to me”. Feebly I totter my way out of the studio.
He doesn’t answer.
“See you tomorrow.”

On the street again. It’s about lunchtime. People are heading for food stalls, hungry stomachs wanting to be filled. I drift into the next available bar and order a quadruple Jack Daniel’s. Oozing into it. Drowning myself in self-pity. I check my phone. Yes, I do have her number. It wasn’t all just a dream. Everything’s cool, Tom. You just need to keep it nicely together up here. Keep it tight. I wave for another couple of rounds.

Back in front of my door I have trouble putting the key through the hole. It’s become quite late – midnight? I plunge into the flat as the door finally opens. Kick-shut it. Then crawl all the way to the mini-bar. Glug glug glug. I fill a whole cognac ball with vodka and down you go. Zoning out. Waking up semi-naked on the floor. The withdrawal symtoms are still there, haven’t ceased a bit really. Nagging. Itching. Craving. Perhaps even more so than ever before. Also a headache has mingled-in in the meantime. For fuck’s sake. I’m dragging myself to the bathroom to fetch some more downers. In the mirror I’m shocked about how awful I look. Both my eyes are black holes. Blood vessels stain the white bits like ravaging cobwebs. I’m falling apart. I faint. Clinging to the sink I slide down to the tiles. It’s pretty obvious that I can’t live on like this. I’m done. Finished. She’s completely got me. Enraptured, hahaha. I lie there for I’ve no idea how long.

But it’s fine. I’ve found my master. I’m ‘in love’ for the first time. Lying here naked, on the freezing floor of my bathroom, I’m drooling and drunk and fighting-off the most unbearable withdrawal symptoms I’ve ever had in my life. But whenever I think of her, Amanda, the most stunningly beautiful girl-slash-vampire – I’m rising. I’m suddenly awake. And all those ideas turn up in my head. Tracks, already perfectly written. It doesn’t matter who I am anymore. All I want is to surrender, be with her again. And as feelings turn into ideas, ideas form into decisions. I’m slowly becoming myself again. I’m even starting to smile. The withdrawal symptoms are miraculously fading. Even the headache is almost gone, leaving behind only a distant memory of how miserable my whole life has actually been.

A few hours later I’m leaving the elevator and step onto the corridor leading up to her door. My legs shake as I knock. She’s naked underneath her scarlet-red silk robe and peels-off my clothes like the skin of an overripe apricot. And then I’m inside her and she groans and I’m zoning out again in bliss. The familiar electric waves of pleasure. Everything is sticky and wet. Blood, sweat, saliva, cunt-juice, cum – I don’t know, I can’t care. This is going to be my life from now on. I’m completely, utterly hooked. And as we look at each other, giggling and smiling and shivering with bliss, I know that she’s going to take my life away from me, bit by bit devour it. And I tell you what – it doesn’t matter. Not now and not anytime in the future. It’s all cool, baby, love of my life. I’ve arrived where I belong to. I’m here with you.
I’m the happiest man in the world.

reinhard schleining
london, august 2007 – march 2009

© 2007 – 2009, all rights reserved

a male monologue in 3 Acts

CAST:

GUY: a distinctive male character whose appearance and acting change quite significantly for each of the three Acts – although a certain core-personality remains consistent throughout. He represents a male archetype progressing through three different stages of human endeavour.

¶

Act 1 – CAVE

SETTING:

Prehistoric times. We look into the interior of a cave. Through the entrance in the background we can see volcanoes, reptilian birds and other out-worldly, strange animals. It is dawn. The sky has an eerie orange-violet tint. GUY is sitting in the centre of the cave, holding a raw stone-chalice in his hand. His feet are resting high on a table-like rock in front of him. He’s filthy, grumpy and hairy and wears only a shabby fur loincloth. Quite clearly he’s one of our early human ancestors.

AT RISE:

GUY sips on his drink which we can spot has a deep purply colour and a caustic consistency. It might as well be blood he’s drinking, we are thinking. Between each sip he blankly stares into the air in front of him. Throughout the whole Act his parts are mainly mumbled four-letter words which only after a while we recognise as actually being english.

GUY

Mmmhh. (He makes swallowing and gurgling noises.)
Nice, Nice. (Pause. He’s scratching his balls.)
Good – Drink – (Gulp, gulp) – Aahhhh.
Mmmhh – Good – Strong – Juice. Aaaahh.

(He takes another big gulp but this time spills his drink. As the red liquid pours all over his face and body we are certain that it is blood he’s been drinking.)

GUY

(Screaming.) Aaaaaaahhhh!!!! Shit – Fuck – Fuck – Cunt. Prick – Shit – Blood – Cunt. Blood – Fuck – Hell. (Totally upset he whirls around as if to perform a
weird dance.)

(OUTSIDE the sky has blackened and rolling thunder approaches. The beginnings of a big lightning flashes into the cave. GUY all of a sudden seems frightened and he sinks down on his knees. His face is ecstatic, blood smeared all over. Erratic flashes light-up its chiselled and hairy features.)

GUY

God. (He whimpers, followed by a long pause. Thunder is rumbling through the cave.)
God. (Another pause.)
Death. Pain. (His voice trembles. another series of lightning and almost immediately roaring thunders. Their base comes out so low through the speakers that it reverberates through the intestines of the audience.)
Death – … – . Death – Hell – Pain. (He moans into moments of silence.)

(GUY nervously crawls on his knees while the thunder and lightning continue. After a while he stumbles across something crumpled away in a corner. His attention and mood shift swiftly as he’s inspecting the strange find. It is an INFLATABLE SEX DOLL.)

GUY

Hrrrnnnpff. (Becoming excited and agitated.)
Hump – Pussy – Fuck – Cunt.

(He tears the doll out of its corner and further inspects it. Straight after he finds its mouthpiece he enthusiastically starts to blow. Every now and then, as he pauses for breath, he breaks out in uncontrollable laughter and mumbles some of his four-letter words.)

GUY

Hohohoho – Nice – Pussy – Nice – … – Mmmhh. Hump, Hump – Ooohhh – Aaaahh – Oooohhh.
(The more the doll takes-on its fully inflated state the more he gets carried away by it all.)
Nice – Pussy – Nice. Hohohoho – …

(While he continues to blow he fumbles his penis underneath the loincloth so that as soon as the doll is fully erect it is also ready for action. He mounts the doll and starts thrusting away.)

GUY

Ooooaahh – Niiice – Pussy – Pussy – Aaaahh – Niiiice.

(He rides ‘her’ passionately, immersed in the act of copulation. The fear and misery from earlier on is completely gone now. OUTSIDE the night has turned into peaceful, moonlit darkness with background noises from various busy night animals. Some odd ones are roaring away to accompany the gasping, sticky sounds from the cave. Somewhere in perhaps another chamber of the cave we hear water dropping down into what sounds like a puddle, echoing hollowly.)

GUY

Hrrmmppf.
(Squeezing and fingering the doll while his thrusts intensify.)
Hump, Hump, Pussy, Pussy – Hrrnnnf, Hrrnnnf. Ohhhh – Aaahhh – Ooooaaahhhhh. (Brief pause, though his thrusts continue.)
Looove. (He finally stumbles.)
Looove – Hrrnnnppf – Oooaaaaahh.
(With climaxing passion earlier words are slipping back into his vocabulary.)
God – Life – Pussy.
Love – God – Life. Pussy – Love – Lust. (Pause.)
Fuck – Drink – Hunger.
Thirst. Lust. God. Hunger. Love.

(The doll makes strangely moist noises as his penis slides in and out of the artificial vagina. It shakes awkwardly under his thrusts as if there was indeed life in it and his fingers produce disturbing screeching sounds as they rub over the sticky plastic. He’s just about to kiss the hole-shaped mouthpiece, as the doll all of a sudden – without any warning – explodes with a loud PANG! He is instantly, utterly devastated, left in a state of complete shock.)

GUY

NOOOOOO! God – Death – Pain – Love.
Pussy, Pussy – Noooooooo! (He holds the doll in his arms like a dead bride gunned down on their wedding day.)
God – God – Hell – Pain.
Hate.
Death – Fuck – Fear – Life.
Love – … – Life.
Aaaaaaarghh!
(He breaks down, sobbing helplessly.)

(GUY raises his fists against the ceiling, blaming forces beyond his control for what has just happened. Flashes of lightning and thunder turn up again, as if to respond to his curses. The sky opens its floodgates to release dark, heavy rain. Above the almost mute sobbing of GUY the stormy weather is the only thing we hear for a while.)

GUY

Aaaaaaahhhh! – … – Aaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhh!
(He raises his fists against the sky, then breaks down again, breathing slowly and heavily.)

(Absentmindedly, his fingers wander across the limp doll until they discover a label sticking out from its side. He gathers his full attention to read what it says.)

GUY

(Not quite capable of reading, but trying hard.)
God … In – cor – … – po – … – ra – ted.
(Silence, only heavy rain and remote thunder OUTSIDE.)
Rea – li – ty – … – You – can – … – Trust.
(Silence again. He looks into nothingness. The implications of what he just read are slowly dawning on him.)
God. In – corpo – … – rated.

(He unconsciously squeezes the dead doll between his fists, stands up and keeps looking into the black space in front of him. He is getting very angry and really about to lose it.)

GUY

Fuck. Ass. (Pause. Then he’s throwing the limp doll in a remote corner of the cave.)
Death – Joke – Life – Love – Ass – Fuck – Loss.
(Rain is coming down heavily, patches of lightning pop-up with increasing intensity. He screams the last words well over the top of the noise of the weather.)
Fuck – Ass – … – Grief.
Life. Hate. God. Joke. Death. Loss. (Pause.)
Asshole!

Curtain – end of Act 1

¶

Act 2 – CITY

SETTING:

A very busy inner-city junction. Shops in the background, street noises. GUY is standing there, well groomed, wearing an immaculate business suit with suitcase and tie, attempting to cross the street in front of him. But a never-ending stream of cars does not allow him to. A traffic light seems to be consistently showing red. There are no other people on the street except him. Despite the heavy noise he’s completely alone.

AT RISE:

GUY tries to step on the street again but fails. It is simply impossible. He seems exhausted, yet composed. He puts down his suitcase and sighs.

GUY

I’m stuck. Here and now, as I’m facing yet another ludicrous obstacle to my miserable life. I finally realise that I don’t want to go home anymore. (Pause, a little pacing up and down.) What is my home anyway? I’m lost. I’m trapped in a dark, hideous prison.
I’ve turned into a complete slave.

(He laughs dryly, picks up his suitcase only to slam it against the traffic light post.)

GUY

Goddamnit. There must be a way out. There must be a way to escape this bullet-proof shit-hole of Reality …

(More cars pass, also bigger ones – vans, lorries. We can clearly hear their Doppler effects whooshing through the theatre as they approach, pass, and fade away in the distance. GUY puts down his suitcase again, this time a lot angrier. He starts to undo his tie and collar.)

GUY

Is anybody there? Hello … can anybody hear me? See me? Do something? (He turns round to look into all directions. No-one there. Utter loneliness in the midst of a buzzing city.)
Am I really THAT alone?

(He kicks his suitcase. Stacks of paper with numbers and pie charts fall out, flutter into the audience over the noise of traffic.)

GUY

What can possibly be the point of all this?
The exponential accumulation of pointless papers?
How could I ever fall into this trap? Why am I born into such hypocrite fallacy?

(He pauses, pacing around in circles while the cars keep zipping past. The traffic light is still showing red. A romantic violin tune slowly forms, clearly a piss-take to cheesy hollywood love-themes. He bends down to sit on the pavement, with one hand carefully supporting himself like an old man. As the overall volume of the soundtrack fades, his voice becomes calmer too.)

GUY

Loss. (Pause.) Losing your straight-laced, neat and sweet girlfriend one day – or wife even– after she always keeps telling you with utmost sincerity how much she loves you, to another guy turning her overnight into a cocksucking, more-screaming whore. (Pause.) Losing your best friend one day – or even brother – as he turns round with utmost sincerity to say “sorry”, before letting you down in exchange for the millions he’s just made through some outrageously daft business transaction. All gone forever. Love does not exist. You only played boyfriend and girlfriend, you only acted loving and caring – purely upon programmes installed by your Mommy and Daddy or whoever else was put in charge to mentally, emotionally and sexually abuse you. In the end, what’s left of you is only the bald and sad football buddy, starting to piss himself as he gets older, silently fading away.

(He picks up some of the strewn papers which contain sensitive company data and customer profiles – ‘Soap & Cream Media’ it says in a cute logo at the bottom right-hand corner on each leave. He crumbles them into paper balls and idly throws them into the audience. The music changes into something much darker while the car noises almost completely fade.)

GUY

I still fail to grasp that everything I’ve ever believed in was purely based on institutionalised, brainwashed lies. Like everyone else I’ve been ruthlessly moulded into a thoroughly empty zombie. An ugly and cynical asshole. A killer monkey, trying to get out of his shit-hole at the expense of everyone else around him – whilst at the same time sucking-up to the monkeys above. It’s not even that the monkeys above have any real power. They’re just successful at claiming it. The key to the world. The answers. The ridiculous concepts of status and money.
Ahahahahah. (He laughs drily.)

(Longer pause. He stops throwing paper balls and becomes more withdrawn instead. The music changes into something between funk and minimal.)

GUY

And then the whole ‘God’ thing. Yeah – religion. The spineless sell-out of consciousness and responsibility. Even philosophy. All those little ideas about how reality is supposedly fabricated. What’s the fucking point to subscribe to such bullshit if you can’t even see the reality right in front of you? Look yourself in the mirror?
Face YOUR SELF.

(Pause. He addresses the audience on a different note.)

We eradicate each other, eat each other, devour the code of the scapegoated, so-called ‘enemy’. All we do, day-in and day-out, is just add some more fuel to our constantly growing portfolio of mayhem. (Pause.)
And who knows, perhaps that’s really what we’re here for, live for, die for? Conquer or surrender. Whether we surrender to love or to power – most ridiculously – doesn’t seem to matter at all. Deep down we all probably want to be eaten. We’re like black widows, striving to hand-over our self-indulgent genetic cargo to the
all-powerful female (or male?) through the ritual of a fuck and a subsequent kill …

(GUY stands up and paces around nervously. He’s completely withdrawn in his own world now. The level of car noises increases again. He takes off his shirt and unbuttons his trousers as if to go for a swim. His voice regains the momentum from the beginning of the Act, to rise above the level of
street noises.)

GUY

Whatever – I’m ready. I know where to go now.
I now know where my home is. (Completely naked he spreads his arms as if to fly. He closes his eyes.)
Whoever or whatever there is – take me to you.
(He steps off the pavement into the streams of passing cars. His eyes are still closed.)
I’m all Yours. Forever and Ever. Amen.

(He dives into his death. The spotlight which has illuminated him throughout the whole act goes off and the sound changes into cars crashing. Horns toot, tires screech. Finally he’s getting noticed. The crash sounds go on for a while. There seem to be quite a few cars involved. Subtly the ticking beeps of a heart machine fade-in, until they are clearly audible on top of everything else. As the heart beeps turn into the static bleep of death, the curtains fall and the theatre fades into silence and darkness.)

Curtain – end of Act 2

¶

Act 3 – HEAVEN

SETTING:

The giant waiting lounge of an airport. We hear the sounds of planes landing and taking-off all the time. It says HEAVEN above one of the departure gates leading away from where GUY sits, alone. He appears to be extremely relaxed, wearing a white toga and sandals. Like an angel, slouching comfortably, his arms spread across a long row of waiting-lounge seats. He looks sweet, sharp and gorgeous. The whole Act ambivalently fluctuates between existential drama and stand-up comedy.

AT RISE:

GUY changes his position into something even more comfortable and expresses his peace-of-mindedness with accompanying long sighs. Each sigh and word is followed by puffy clouds coming out of his mouth. Though his loose outfit and open body language would not suggest, it seems to be freezing cold in the hall.

GUY

Aaaaah – finally free. So unbelievably beautiful. (Pause, steam comes out of his mouth with each breath.) My ‘Paradise’ – shall I call the place where I’m going? (Two, three breaths again. Pause.) Or better where the essence of my cranium, the ghost in the shell, the teeny-weeny particles of my yellow-grey brain pulp are going. The spirit, the energy. Me. My ‘soul’. Hahahaha. (He emphasises the exclamation marks of the word ‘soul’ with a tongue-in-cheek smile.)

(Another series of airplanes is starting and landing and flying by. It seems to be a really busy airport. GUY leans back deeper into his plushy waiting-lounge seat.)

GUY

I can’t tell you how glad I am that it’s all over. So good to be here now, hahaha. The life I’ve lived, the world I’ve seen. A complete disaster. An utterly pointless rat-race. My genetic code wants to survive. My ‘genes’. Whoa. Big deal. And then what? Does sheer genetic survival really make me a happier and better man? (Pause.) If I’m not busy fighting for food or for shelter I’m otherwise trying to pass on these ‘genes’, find someone to fuck – and then what? Feed any resulting offspring with my heinously patronising bullshit? Have them take over family business, swallow my stubborn political, religious and interpersonal beliefs and agendas? And then what? The company will one day collapse. The kids will one day be fucked-up the arse. And in the end, what’s left? Nothing. The annals of recorded history? In a book,
a magazine, on a hard-drive, a server?
Hahahaha. (He cracks off laughing for a while.)

(GUY changes his sitting position into something more closed, arms and feet crossed.)

GUY

There really seems to be no fulfilment in our lives. Consummation takes place only at the time of our death. (Another series of planes.) Death is what we’re ultimately here for – the Sun will eventually die.
(Long pause.) And yet. Perhaps eternal life IS the ultimate and achievable answer to our utterly insane human predicament. Perhaps the fear of death only exists to compel us into such an ultimately required state of being? Would it be possible? By what means? At what cost? In which way? Together with whom? For what ultimate purpose? Or reason?

(He changes his sitting position, opening up again. There is now almost complete silence at the airport.)

GUY

In a way it would make sense, though. Molecules finding each other, forming something stable and yet flexible– PLOP! – and thus Life, DNA, is born. Well done, DNA. A double-helixed staircase to Heaven.

(Pause.)

But if it can assemble something so intricate and yet enourmous, the Universe itself is actually already ‘life’ – in a way? So when I die, all my particles, micro and macro, the ones not corroding or burning, will have to pop-back to where they originally came from, continue their flow in the Eternal Stream. Which means that even though I’m ‘dead’, I’m still, actually, ‘alive’ – in a way.
I do certainly look different and my double-helixed spine has sadly expired. But it is still ‘me’ in the end, all part of what I originally was – before I was even born in
my mother’s womb.
Is there also a Soul then? Maybe. But if there was,
would it really make Death more comforting?

(Pause.)

It would still mean complete and utter surrender to whatever’s in charge of our day-to-day, tangible existence. Surrender to what we can not ever remotely hope to grasp from where we look at in any way whatsoever. No one who’s ever been there, to the unfathomable mysteries of the thereafter, has ever come back, have they?
Except Jesus apparently, hahahaha.

(Pause.)

On the other hand, is such a belief in eternal life not just another trick our mind plays on us – cheeky bugger –
to ease the most horrendously painful prospect of complete annihilation? Like the hallucinations of torture victims as they can not possibly cope with any further defilement of their infinitesimally frail nervous systems?

(Pause.)

But let’s also consider this:
Maybe all that remains from whatever we’ve attained in our lives are only the Imprints we’ve left in the Minds and Hearts of other People? And that’s it, end of the Story. There’s no such thing at all like an Afterlife – or any other Meaning. (Pause.)
On the other hand, what if there IS Retribution – not only in Heaven but even spread-out across many Lives?
What about that?

(He gets up and starts to address the audience as if he was already in Heaven and they still trapped on Earth.)

GUY

Lots of questions. Lots of answers. What to believe? What not to believe? I haven’t left any children and I haven’t left any other historical imprints either. I’m a complete nobody, having achieved nothing. And yet I’ve made the decision to come here, in the most purified, dignified way. I’ve worked it through, my dear brothers and sisters, dug my way out of the shit-hole. (Pause.)
I feel beautiful. I’m a solemn and indigenous
Human Being.

(He paces up and down, all-the-while excitedly smiling.)

GUY

All the suffering, all the pain. They do finally make sense. I’ve really done it. I can accept myself, love myself –
BE myself. I’ve become One and Unified.
I’m completely Content.
(Pause.)
I’ve actually become Immortal.

(He turns to the exit gate which says HEAVEN.)

GUY

So then I leave you all to it, dear brothers and sisters.
To bravely tackle your futile struggle. I know in my heart you can also achieve it one day – this ultimate, final surrender. And when you’re there, laid bare, vulnerably and wonderfully, my eternal essence – or whatever remains once my body is gone – will be blissfully
swirling and swooshing around you.
HEALING – my dear brothers and sisters.
From the deepest depths of my soul I promise:
I’ll do whatever I can that by the time you die
you’ll be ready and beautiful too.

(Before he enters the gate he turns around with a smile of elevated bliss. He looks completely at ease. Humble, strong and beautiful.)

GUY

Byeeee. (He waves his hand and enters the gate.)

(After he disappears we hear another airplane rise into the sky. It disappears with a deep SHOOOM! sound above the steady noise of the airport which reverberates in the theatre for quite a while until everything slowly fades with the curtain.)

Curtain – end of Act 3

THE END

(Thanks go to Hans Küng’s ‘Eternal Life?’ and Li Hongzhi’s ‘Turning the Law Wheel’
to instil in me some of the spiritual insights for HEAVEN)

second draft

reinhard schleining
london, july 2007 – april 2009

© 2007 – 2009, all rights reserved

finally the long awaited CITYSCAPES series. these five pictures are a definite milestone for me as they officially introduce another STYLE to my portfolio. i’ve found that i quite like the raw, spontaneous feel of the original pencil drawings and therefore decided to cut the ink and get them straight into photoshop. i’ve started to work like this much earlier already (with my POLITICAL CARTOONS from 2003) but for some reason only now, about four years later, it all of a sudden makes sense for my actual illustration work as well. the new style allows me to loosen up the sometimes too perfect, almost ‘anal’ ligne claire artwork (a lot of people repeatedly ask me whether it’s been done on a computer) and it subtly moves me away from the semi-annoying graphic novel connotations i’m often getting.

anyway, i feel very excited about these. hope you guys like them as well :)

© 2007, all rights reserved

this is the first sample of ASTROLOGY writing which i’m putting online hereby. it is an excerpt from the preface of THE LANGUAGE OF GROWTH, a book i’m currently working on. the text has been used as the intellectual backbone for a ‘micro lesson’ i held at city & islington college in london, yesterday morning.

“we astrologers feel that there is a ‘meaningful logic’ behind the movement of the PLANETS in our solar system which deeply affects us as human beings. by somehow ‘relating’ to our endocrine and nervous systems, the planetary CYCLES thereby establish a framework which we have come to refer to as FATE. behind FATE, we feel, lies a certain programme, and the goal of this programme – the game plan, or MEANING of it, if you will – is to reach a genuine state of HAPPINESS – brought upon through a healthy and mature dedication to the individual and collective GROWTH of HUMAN POTENTIAL.

on one hand we are asked to grow INSIDE ourselves [MOON] where we find out who we really are as a person. by digging down deep into the core genetic TRUTH [PLUTO], we carefully learn to accept the fact that we are evolutionarily trapped into a state of ANIMAL NATURE. as soon as we have come to terms with being this lonely, vulnerable creature who desires to merge with other such vulnerable creatures we can eventually become CONTENT as human individuals. we can then emotionally and spiritually open up to other content people without fear of being rejected or otherwise hurt.

but at the same time we all continuously grow OUTSIDE as well [SUN]. we expand our reach into the world around us and with an ever increasing lightness and confidence express our true inner SELVES like worry-free, innocent CHILDREN. we want to unleash our dormant potential, so that we can all be STARS in the end, in our own individual drama called LIFE. the SKILLS to achieve this, as western, PSYCHOLOGICAL ASTROLOGY sees it, are represented by the PLANETS in our CHARTS.

and all the way through this spectacular concept of LIVING we humans also experience another somewhat sad and strange concept: TIME PASSING slash AGEING [SATURN]. we feel we are caught up in a REALITY we have to submit to, a PRISON, ruled by JEALOUSY and DECAY, which we cannot seem to escape. we astrologers believe that only through the existence of PAIN are we humans compelled to get ‘our act’ together and eventually PLAY a more confident, active and fun part in our own individual SLICE OF REALITY.”

reinhard schleining
london, 17th april 2007

© 2007, all rights reserved

to find out more go to –> www.systemicastrology.com

five self initiated images to simultaneously strengthen and ‘tone down’ my portfolio, making it ‘more commercial’.

© 2007, all rights reserved

the second commission by THE NEW YORKER magazine. still not printed but at least this time finished and loved. wohoo :)

Hi there :)

Thanks a lot for your decision to buy through my website.

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In the meantime payments are accepted via paypal —> HERE <— where you’ll also find credit and debit card options.

Many thanks again and hope to see you back here sometime soon …

this text has been created to accompany the publication of my MUSIC triptych in issue #4 of CREATURE magazine:

with the chord a boy strikes on his PIANO women are lifted off the ground and join in to a journey of collective human surrender to the random magic of LIFE. happily transiting through the skies above the cities we’ve created and whose structures beautifully mirror the FRACTAL of our own genetic diversity we ultimately enter a state of consciousness seen under the shamanic microscope of SALVIA divinorum.

the UNIVERSE generates, has generated and will continue to do so, the CODE that we are – we, the naked apes who simply just strive to be happy in this on surface value pointless existence. MUSIC and LOVE (and a somewhat deep rooted view about UNITY) might give us a chance to eventually get there whilst LIFE itself will in the meantime forever go on and present its continuous challenge until we’re all gone.

let’s therefore rockNroll.

reinhard schleining
london, 5th december 2006

a short story

She caught his eye right away, there was no doubt. He really liked the way how she looked, the way how she moved and her colours, the whole aura around her, was just absolutely lovely. It all made perfectly sense and although first signs of ageing on her face got a bit more uncompromising the closer she came to where he casually slouched he could still see the unbroken girl-spirit underneath, the power, the determination to make it as a woman in this world – something most other females around forty had lost a long time ago. As she was further approaching, with all those silly pigeons flapping and purring around his bench, in the park, he dived-off far far away, to a secret, recluse island with linen-clad angels hovering above. And then, coming back, he suddenly lashed out to shy the birds away, just in time for her to be close enough to look up at him – perplexed, perhaps even frightened – but he just smiled and she chilled, finally noticing his handsomely inviting face.
He said, “they’re so stupid, these pigeons”.
She smiled back and he waved for her to come over, which she did. She sat down right next to him.
“Hi, my name is Frank”, he said and that’s how they met.

Claire tried the potatoes which by now were almost ready. She then bent down to inspect the meat-loaf sizzling away in the oven. It was looking good. She was actually quite nervous. The last time she’s had a date, that must’ve been – what, almost ten years ago? The thought really frightened the shit out of her. She took a gulp of her wine and then emptied the glass in one go. She had to destract her thoughts. One hand leaned on the rim of the kitchen-sink while the fingers of the other nervously tapped on the stem of her glass. She saw stars in the middle of the blackness as she glanced towards the window. New moon? She poured herself another drink and downed it again in one go. Slowly she began to feel reasonably tipsy. Well done. It was time to face her future destiny. She grabbed the plate with starters and scurried outside where Frank was comfortably slouched in her sofa, all alone by himself. Amazing how he managed to be that relaxed all the time. It was certainly one of the reasons why she found him so attractive. Always chilled about everything. But the best thing was that he was simply very good-looking, like a prince from a fairy tale, only a tad older. Whenever she looked at him she straight away had to look away again. His appearance alone turned her on – pretty heavy.
She waved a slice of prosciutto above his mouth and he snapped the prey, grunting satisfiedly. It made her laugh, this guy was also so funny. She popped an olive straight after and then made her way back into the kitchen where she burst out into giggle which she initially tried to suppress but after failing, she simply poured herself another one.
What a crazy girl Claire was, Frank thought, while his eyes roamed across her dvd collection. Most of it was rubbish. ‘Friends’, ‘Sex and the City’, the whole fucking collected series. She wasn’t quite the brightest person, no no, certainly not. But the more he looked at her, the more often he thought about her, the more he realised that he actually really cared about this woman and that also the idea of her fancying him felt tremendously flattering.
He also really liked her looks. Behind a petite and sensual beauty there laid dormant a deeply ingrained sadness which only around her eyes and her mouth subtly surfaced. He would’ve never thought but this sadness, this gloomy self-deprecation, really touched him profoundly.
His whole body shook while he was suddenly shattered to pieces by a wave of black, far-fetching memories. His hands clawed into the sofa. Crouched over, he fell deep. His mother touched him, it was a strange, uncomfortable feeling. He smelled her breath as she bent down on him, a nauseating mixture between self-hatred and negligence. She beat him, her hand whacking fiercely across his face. He didn’t defend himself. He was naked, crawling aimlessly on hands and knees across the humiliatingly freezing, tiled floor. Something was stuck-up his anus, his knees stung like needles and then came the beatings, the brutal thrashings with the stick and he screamed and whimpered but nobody could hear him. Something threw him hard on the floor. The bleakness of the tiles shot-up his spine like an ice-pick. Mortified, he noticed a huge erection on himself. She grabbed the organ and rubbed on it hard, like a machine. He screamed again, moaned, both his hands covered his eyes. He was paralysed. Waves of shudder throbbed through his body in irregular intervals. Then he felt something damp on his penis. She sucked on it, hot and wet and then he came and something in his head exploded.
It was a nuclear bomb.
He dropped back deep inside Claire’s sofa, breathing-out heavily like an inflatable rubber-doll somebody had suddenly pulled the plug on. The whole flat smelled of meat-loaf by now.
He heard something crack and looked around but there was nothing. It cracked again and this time he noticed that it was something inside his head. A few switches were being pulled here and there and he felt like a complete stranger all-of-a-sudden, in this room, in this flat. Who was this woman in the kitchen? In any case he wasn’t the man anymore that he’d been until only a few moments ago.
Kkkch –  another set of wounds cracked themselves open to unleash a blistering swarm of swirling insects. He was being pulled down deep into a gaping abyss.

The meat was ready. She had meanwhile also skinned and mashed the potatoes and was stirring them through with a bit of milk, salt and butter to create a deliciously smooth puree. Fairly inebriated, she couldn’t find her own mouth anymore in order to also taste her creation. When she heard Frank coming into the kitchen, from behind, she briefly flinched, sobering up for a moment. But without turning round she soon slid back into her drunkenness. She decided to pretend to not having heard him. Maybe he was ready in the end and finally showed some emotions. Her whole body warmly tickled in anticipation.

He saw her standing by the oven, drunkenly swaying from side-to-side and stirring the pot with the puree. She’d certainly heard him coming in. Adrenaline shot through his body. He snatched a knife from one of the tables and hid it behind his back before he crept-in on her.

This was it then. She very much enjoyed how wet she was by now. Never before in her life had she more wished to sleep with a guy than at this very moment. His breath was now distinctly there, at the back of her neck, and made her tantalisingly shiver. His smell flooded her nose. It was a sweet mixture of cedar-wood and the red wine they’d been drinking for the whole evening. She felt how he lowered his head towards her neck, one hand grasping her shoulder and again she flinched, stiff and in trembling anticipation. It was finally happening. All the abuses. All the reproaches and lies. All the bad memories, painful disasters, ridiculously destructive relationships. They were all extinguished in one go. She was free now, free like a bird – when she finally felt his mouth on her neck. A kiss, cold and dry but with devotion and her knees
involuntarily bent …

… as the knife slit her throat open. Cinnabar-blood broke out of the wound like from a long-hidden well, instantaneously and in strangely erratic intervals, and it spurted into the mash which Claire still kept stirring – for a brief, on-the-brink-of-madness bordering moment. The bold red of her blood blended streakily into the yellow consistency of their dinner side-dish. Finally she collapsed and he caught her in his arms, making sure that no blood would be spat on him. They both slithered down to the floor, in a surreal-grotesque dancing move, somewhat resembling the final death-scene in a classical ballet.
Her wide-open eyes stared up into his. It was the first time they met. Inside he saw disbelief, pain, fear and – traces of anger? But also something like peace. And when the croaking sounds of her blood-squirting throat slowly faded away, the light in those eyes vanished as well.

The mobile phone was in her handbag and it was a piece of cake to erase any trace of him out of its memory. Also all other fingerprints in the flat. He’d never been here. He’d never entered the world of this woman. Who was she anyway?
Back in the kitchen he could convince himself that this woman with the sliced-open throat was finally dead. The blood had eventually ceased pumping out of her and left an iridescent puddle on the tiled floor in which he could see himself mirrored. He wiped more fingerprints off the knife. Somehow he also managed to turn-off the heater before he could make it back outside, to the entrance.
A quick glimpse through the spy-glass. There was no-one outside. He had never been here.
The sleeves of his jumper pulled over his hand, he engaged the doorknob. Then touched his way down the staircase, in complete darkness, towards the main, final exit.
When he hit the street he was welcomed by a surprisingly chilly late-summer afternoon. He had to put-up his collar and embrace himself crookedly, in order to feel enough comforting warmth to be able to step into the never-ending stream of people – all looking for something.
Money, sometimes.
But most of the time it was love.

reinhard schleining
london, july 2006 – march 2009

© 2006 – 2009, all rights reserved