Lydia’s Blog

Tonight is my last Wednesday night as a resident of Berlin. I’m enjoying that strange, uncanny calm that comes right before such foreseen upheaval. Actually, maybe it’s not calm, but lethargy. Apathy? Who knows.

Wow. Lydia Steier not in Berlin. Lydia Steier, resident of Stuttgart, Bundesland Baden Württenburg. It just sounds too buttfucking strange.

Enough of that, then.

Tonight I saw Rolando Villazón sing live, with Daniel Barenboim conducting. The opera was Carmen.

Now, Carmen is a great piece that can be ever so easily fucked up. I’m relieved to say that this wasn’t the case this evening (despite the chorus staging at the top of Act IV). The problem in Carmen, is that for the second two of the opera’s three hours, the major dialogue between the two protagonists goes something like this:

Don Jose: I love you so much, Carmen.

Carmen: Hmmm, what? Yeah…okay great. Super.

Don Jose: You don’t understand…you’re my life, my one, my everything!

Carmen: You sound like a fucking pussy.

Don Jose: A pussy? Devil woman! Does that mean you don’t appreciate my forebodingly unstable yet fiery Spanish passion anymore?

Carmen: Not really.

Literally. Two hours (Longer in the French cut). Albeit relatively more eloquently stated. In the final duet between Carmen and Don Jose…there’s a really dangerous line that, in the worst of circumstances (which I’ve also been honored to have witnessed), can trigger scornful laughter from the audience. After, I repeat, TWO HOURS of this kind of back and forth, the orchestra goes suddenly quiet, and the tenor, Don Jose–now totally mad from unrequited love and having forsaken all things sacred in his life outside of Carmen (duty, honor, religion, family) whispers: “Carmen….you don’t love me?”

Villazón sold it. Totally. Even I, one of the most cynical, critical assholes you can find concerning this kind of thing, was speechless at his portrayal. I bought everything he was selling, in every color he had in stock.

The man has an interesting, colorful, virtuosic yet regrettably small voice. The Russian shitkicker they hired to do the title role really had to be careful not to bury him at times. Still, the way he combines the potentials of his voice with an uncannily melting dramatic performace….

…well it’s what makes him a star, clearly. I don’t know if I buy the current Villazón/Netrebko-as-latter-day-Gigli/Callas PR masturbathon. Still, that combination of voice, looks and dramatic balls is something quite extraordinary. Here in the German fest-system, it’s too easy to get into the practice of viewing opera-making as a type of factory work. Sometimes it’s just nice to see that the form can transcend itself from time to time, with the right people.

A bit of awe every now and fucking then never hurt anybody, eh?

When I first moved to Germany in August of 2002, things were very different. September 11th had been less than a year before, and people were still talking about where they were, what they’d felt, etc. Germans would shake their heads in disbelief and offer words of sympathy and solidarity. Then the subject would turn to their high school exchange semesters in Nashville or Omaha, and how much they’d enjoyed their time there. We would cluck in disbelief that they’d actually bother sending European teenagers to Nashville and Omaha.

It was actually really sweet to be an American back then. Older Germans fondly remembered the toothy American soldiers passing out chocolate bars and cigarettes after the war, and younger Germans were always completely chuffed to show off their Amero-English slang and comprehensive knowledge of American pop culture. “I am very please to be hearing Justin Timberlake, yes?”

Oh yes. Yes.

I cherish the memory of those few surreal months. Within half-a-year, things had changed radically. For some, it might have seemed a gradual change, but for me it came quite suddenly. In March of 2003, as two American friends and I walked past an “American themed” diner on a crowded street in the middle of Berlin, chattering and laughing as you do, we were confronted my an irate Turkish man, who threw his “American themed” fries at us and shouted that we were fucking pigs.

This man was hardly an exception, emphatic and possibly intoxicated as he was. There was the pair of seemingly innocuous German students screaming at us about the complete illegitimacy of American cultural primacy on the subway. There was also the polite dinner party where the slickly-dressed host declared that I must love guns and Jesus, due to my country of birth.

I asked him if he loved concentration camps and unemployment.

What could we do? We stopped talking loudly in public which, for Americans, can be a useful excercise. We threw out our white socks and khakis. We tore the covers off our English-language magazines. When a fellow American or Brit or Aussie called our cell phones on public transportation or on crowded streets…we let voicemail pick it up.

There were protests, parades, demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, banner waving. There was the unavoidable interrogation slash uninvited moral tirade that came upon admitting where one came from. Like many of my fellow American expats, I took to curtly announcing I was Canadian, and switching the subject.

For those close enough to us to warrant a more candid dialogue, we promised that America’s nauseating misstep was only really a fluke. Americans are good people. We’d know better. We’d know enough to correct a mistake.

We were proved either to be liars or just total nincompoops in November of 2004. It was around then I decided, despite the constant humiliation and discomfort it brings, I wouldn’t say I was Canadian anymore. Like many of my compatriots, I began adding “blue state” to my introduction.

It didn’t help much.

To this day, announcing oneself to be American is kind of like saying “I’m having a really nasty outbreak of genital herpes at the moment”…the reaction is relatively similar, I’d have to believe. Their faces seem to say “Oh Jesus, that’s really awful. Does it itch?”

And yeah, it kind of does. Sometimes. Not back in August of 2002, though.

I really mourn that lost, charmed period. Despite my almost constant disappointment with the place, I fucking love the USA, and it really injured me to know that others not only don’t share my opinion, but actively scorn it. I don’t expect people to completely appreciate the powerful joys of IHOP, Benny Hinn, Big Gulps, the smell of a crisp dollar, Chapstick or customer service as I can, but I certainly also don’t expect them to think of me, my family, and my dear friends as fat, bible-thumping, imperialist swine.

And so we wait for the emergence of a temperate middle ground.

And we’ll keep waiting.

As I mentioned above, despite our current administration’s whipping out of their tiny, misshapen prongs and circle-jerking all over the cookie of international moral ire, one great American symbol has certainly withstood tarnish in Germany.

That’s the kindly American soldier. The good guy with the pinup mag and the pack of Luckys helping to clear rubble and body parts out of the gutted streets of West German cities. The Jims and Bobbys and Steves who invited the Sabines, Kerstins and Brigittes to the jazz bar back at the base for a bit of swing and a bit of Jack.

Today Germans woke to the headline of an American soldier raping a woman in Iraq, then killing her, three members of her family and then burning the bodies.

Last night at a restaurant, a guy I was chatting with ended up quite surprised to find out that I was American. “You’re accent is so good, though…” he said.

Normally, a comment like that would send a charge of pride through my veins. For some reason on this occasion, it only felt bitter.

“Well,” I replied, “it has to be.”

Happy Fourth of July.

So it happened again last night.

Every so often I find myself in the position of meeting a German celebrity at a party or dinner or award event, etc. Not like a classical music celebrity, but a real-live-pictures-in-the-tabloids kind of celebrity. The problem, of course, is that sweet little Lyd with no TV who hates to read magazines in German ends up having no fucking idea who these people are. And make no mistake, they do expect to be recognized.

Like that time I met THE German it-actress at a restaurant last March. My dinner date was friends with her and her manager-husband, and we were sitting at adjacent tables. My friend was mortified to have to explain, in detail, how monumentally famous this woman is.

So Toby dragged me to a party last night, peopled primarily by just the kind of ultra-feminine, petite, lithe, early-twentysomething gigglers that I tend to detest. (Although the party itself was somehow decent fun) At 2:00 or so, in walks the hostess’s boyfriend who was, I found out later, a rather famous MTV host in Germany. He looked sort of like a tall, really uninteresting Jack Black. The other guests were absolutely falling all over him.

It’s odd. Gala is Germany’s answer to Hello! or People. Gala (and also Bunte and hosts of other magazines) features mainly American celebrities. They truly are global. Brangelina, Bennifer 2, Jennivince, TomKat. Justameron, and Paris Hilton plus skeezy Greek playboy one are far more important here that Germany’s homegrown celebs. The most venerated German stars are those who managed to get a taste of the action in the U.S….like Franke Potente, Diane Krüger and Heike Makatsch. Only after several pages of Southern Californian trash does one begin to see glossy photos of German actors and their untalented and yet puzzlingly equal counterparts: TV Moderators.

So yet again, I was at a loss for what to do with this German celebrity. You can really only get all crazy-fan swoony when you are familiar with a person’s output…be it professional or just from juicy magazine dirt. So that was out of the question. When we did end up in the same corner of the party, we spent a couple of minutes batting around some World Cup small talk. Then came the pause. For him, I figure this is generally when the other person present makes a breathless comment like “so I love your show on MTV…”. No dice there. I had to punt.

“So. I hear you’re a celebrity.”

“Yes. Yes, well…I suppose you would have to say that”. He replied, grinning broadly.

“Okay. Did you want another sausage? Cuz I’m getting one….”

I could hear Toby groan from somewhere behind me.

Well. Maybe it’s time for a TV.