Monthly Archives: June 2010

About Tenderness

By another German poet/singer/songwriter I very much adore, Konstantin Wecker. Original title “Über die Zärtlichkeit”. Translated by me.

Something tender I would so much love to
write.
Barely palpable
something
that can only just be perceived.
Like the look of a loved one you
feel on the skin.
Thankfullness
even when it is only thought
even when it is briefly only,
and in passing, thought.
Plainness
(plain people enlarge a room
when stepping through the door).
Children you feel
even the quiet children
with whom you always have the feeling
you have to shut up
because they already know everything.
Warmness
above all, warmness
(I know people
who with a matter of course
take you into their hearts
that you become dizzy).
About all that I would so much love to
write.

Daily Routine in Paradise

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Another poem by the cynical Heinz Rudolf Kunze, from the same book as From That Day. I am a Roman Catholic, but I like how he respectfully makes fun of the idea of an Old Man in Paradise. Heinz Rudolf Kunze, “Alltag im Paradies”. Translation by me. Enjoy.

The dear God makes notes to himself on red, heart-shaped slips of paper.
On the attempt to build up his music stand
the dear God asks himself every time
how he could be creating such a shit mud.
The dear God wears long underpants till May
and learns Portuguese at community college.
The dear God still gets a lot of fan post,
mostly from quite young girls.
They want to know which music he prefers to hear
and when he will come to Germany once again.
The dear God seriously tries
to answer every letter, but repeatedly there is
so much to do and some he has already
displaced, like the one recently from Vatican
with the invitation for dinner.
The dear God thinks every night before falling asleep
concentrated about why he has not yet been
divorced. Then he finds out regularly
that he still likes coming home even if it also
draws him out noticeably more often to where ladies wait for him,
give books of poetry to him and dolls and request
Him to stay. His woman is
an atheist, which is good, because this makes sure
that he never gets off too loudly.
The dear God makes notes to himself on red,
heart-shaped slips of paper and calls off for the duration
of the football world championship
all appointments.

From That Day

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A poem, that meant a lot to me when I was a youth. Just found that old book again. Author is Heinz Rudolf Kunze, a German singer/songwriter. I do like his music, but I value his poems much more. You may judge yourself why. I might publish more of them. The book is called Deutsche Wertarbeit, which translates as “German Workmanship”. It was my most-loved book from 15 to 25, and this is one of the poems a still do like very much.

The original title is “VON JENEM TAG AN”, the author is Heinz Rudolf Kunze. Translated myself. Enjoy.

From that day,
when I forgot as a small boy to lock the loo door,
and my father came in mistakenly and saw,
that I had sat down to do my SMALL BUSINESS,
the lifeline of my hand has turned arm-upwards,
In the direction of the heart.
Now there it has almost arrived,
cramp-thickly, blue-black.
From that day I did not have to beg any more for books,
for records, for piano lessons.
In the evenings when I lay in bed,
the relatives laughed in the sitting room.
They laughed at me.
The footballs and the bikes went to others.
Something in me did not find this all right
and tried at an adolescent night of New Year’s Eve with
one and a half litres of corn schnapps to get rid of me.
Almost it would have succeeded, however, then father stepped
too early out of the front door, the arm full of firecrackers,
and sank with the slippers deeply
in my full-vomited snow.
In the bookshelves grew my talent by the metre.
I have then become deaf from the laughter of the sports teachers
(these Early-Roman hyenas mostly also gave Latin
and read with us exclusively Final Solutions in the original text),
I have then become blind by the futility,
With which I squinted after dance class-ladies,
I have then become dumb from the shame about stubborn praying
to a Greatness in which I did not believe.
Today I sit in a deep temple
chew laurel breathe deafening vapours
and they suck from me with tubes
every image that agitates me
on that day
I was sentenced to death on probation
they said, I would be free to interpret contradictions
otherwise I confiscated would be what to me only
left the possibility to invent me
I chose the music

The Steadfast Tin Soldier as Creative Performance

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The Actor as Hans Christian Andersen

Sleeping Andersen

Last Saturday, immediately after coming back from Trondheim where I attended the XP2010 international conference on Agile Software Development, I went with my family to Potsdam in the afternoon for the Fairy Tale Days. We had a little issue with a broken tyre, and missed most of the day because of that. I didn’t really mind because my mind was still full of impressions from Trondheim and that conference.

Colorful Nightmare

But, to my total astonishment, I watched one of the best theatrical performances I ever, ever had the chance to. It was The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen, put on stage bei the Meininger Puppentheater.

I don’t very much like theatre. Don’t know why, it’s just not my type of art. I love most performing arts, but theatre mostly bores me. I love fringe performances, though, and this is the best, most creative, fantastic I’ve ever seen.

We went into this hall, black, dark, with three rows of chairs and a big street level stage. The stage was a lot bigger than the audience area and covered in something looking like a huge blanket.

Full-blown Blanket

An actor—I think it was Jeff Burell—came out as Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen was a weakling, and couldn’t stand the show and parade for his birthday. Lying down to sleep in his bed, in the middle of this big blanket stage, he starts to dream…

But this dream gets distorted into a nightmare. Light and music went frightening, while the blanket was blown up more and more into a big hemispheric shape. Light went white, music silent, and Andersen came out to tell us what he dreamt of as a boy: “I wanted to take everything with me under my blanket, all my family, my friends, my toys…” And he invited us all in…

Going under the Blanket

Feeling a little funny, we all went into the tent-like thing. Inside there were cushions and a few benches in the back.

In the middle there was a stand with a big book, inside which was a lamp. Out of the book he built figures and setting to play the story and cast shadows on the tent wall. Using a small second lamp, he made those shadows move and dance. All the while this was accompanied by perfectly matching music and lights. It’s difficult to describe the effect, but it was full of fantasy like a good storyteller and you felt more inside the scene than any 3D movie I’ve seen so far. There is this part in the story where the soldier is in the sea and eaten by a fish—a movie of a whale underwater was projected on the canvas of the tent from the outside. When in the end the castle, where the soldier finally joins with his beloved dancer, goes up in flames, the big blanket tent was zipped apart at the top, went down all above and around us and we emerged from the story, the blanket, a dream…

If you have a chance to see this, go and do so. It’s been shown 500 times so far all over Europe, and from what I read on their website, you can book those guys.

The Actor inside the Blanket

The Actor performing

XP2010 Lonely Back Impressions

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I shot quite a few photos at XP2010, some of which were really nice. On the walk back through Trondheim from Studentersamfundet after the Banquet, I made a photo of Mike’s back which I quite liked. After another photo of Deborah impatiently waiting for her lightning talk, I decided to make this into a Lonely Back series. Here it is.

I met a Guy from Scotland

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Or: How Twitter changed the way I interact and share with people

Sidebar: This is a story written for friends that I can't connect to on Twitter, 
which seriously handicaps the way I usually communicate.
I dedicate it to Guy, who may or may not decide to reveal his true identity.

I met Guy from Scotland this week. I kind of knew him before, although we never had the pleasure to be in the same place together before. Didn’t know he was Scottish, though…

I knew Guy from Twitter (this is a true story, and those who know him will recognise him, but let’s just call him Guy). We share a common area of interest, and we both use Twitter as a means of communicating extensively what we do, work-wise. So during the past year we exchanged thoughts, tips, links and we may even have answered each other’s questions, I don’t remember. Twitter is very much like the human brain in the way it forgets details but stores patterns.

So I knew Guy’s areas of expertise, some of his interests and whom he stayed in touch with—in work and privately. Just for comparison: That’s more than I know of most of my colleages at work and even of some of my real-world “friends”.

Sidebar: if Guy so chooses to publicly reveal his identity 
in a comment or on Twitter, I'd be honoured.
All you others who know him, even if longer and better than I do,
please respect it to be his choice alone, if and when to do so.

I actually met Guy in person last Wednesday at a conference. But I learned more of him the night before—I explored a hotel piano bar with some blokes from the UK and US who actually knew him, had worked with him, and filled in more personal details. Guy uses a work title instead of is real name on Twitter (but he shares his real name as an additional information so I could look him up later and actually make the connection). So when these blokes talked about Guy, about the books he writes (which I haven’t read so far) and the input he gives to our community, I didn’t actually relate this to the person I already knew. They were making a little fun of the way he tweets from airports—but as I’m doing the same and hadn’t actually noticed this trait in him before, I didn’t recognize Guy (they were obviously using his real name) as the person I knew from Twitter. I checked his name later in my hotel room, made the connection and now had all these bits and pieces added to my knowledge of Guy: the things we shared on Twitter before, the details from the crowd in the bar plus his “fame”—because I actually had heard and read of Guy before very often. I just hadn’t connected this public Guy with the (equally public, but differently named) Twitter “friend” of mine.

Sidebar: Twitter (like Facebook and other "social media" sites) calls people you're connected to "friends",
which of course they usually aren't. I'll let you make the decision - just compare what I tell you about our
relationship to those between you and your real-world, "real" friends.

There was one (to me) especially special bit of information about Guy: he’s a Scotsman. I’ve been on holiday in Scotland last year, and I simply and whole-heartedly fell in love with the place. The scenery of the highlands, the hospitality of the people, all the typical (in fact all not-of-Scottish-origin, consult the QI General Book of Ignorance for details) things like bag pipes, kilts, whisky and haggis, the rough weather and the tumbler-toy-attitude of the people in the City of Glasgow resonated with me on more levels than I care to tell you in this story. One Scottish thing I actually can enjoy at home is the accent of the people, which I simply adore. I’m a Doctor Who addict, and to my pleasure the most important of the latest three Doctor incarnations was played by a Scottish actor, David Tennant. David has been such a revelation, I’ve become a huge fan of him, so the very first thing that striked me of Guy was his accent, which immediately made me think of David, the Doctor and the TARDIS.

Sidebar: if you don't know Doctor Who (or know it but haven't watched it), you missed the most influencial,
educational, generation-frightening, longest-running SF show of global TV history.
Douglas Adams started his career writing for Doctor Who, and if this is not enough reason for you to watch it,
you've come to the wrong blog.

In fact, this Scottish accent immediately drew me to the right table and to recognize him the next day—I didn’t know what he looked like as Twitter pics tend to be quite small.

I’ll sum up shorter what followed as this is about Twitter and not about my relationship to Guy. Similar things happen to me quite often since I use Twitter, Guy just serves as a perfect example because so many details intertwine.

We are of roughly the same age. We grew up in small towns in rather rural areas of our respective countries. We started programming computers in our mid-teens, and made a living of the passion we had for writing quality code. In fact, this passion of delivering value through the writing of code led both if us into leadership, consulting and coaching, so now we basically tell others how to write better software, increase the produced value and continually improve on these tasks and the fun doing it.

There’s more: Guy’s stance, height and way of leading conversations are so similar to an old friend of mine, that I connected on a much more personal level than I usually do at work-related conferences. Like me, he has a razor tounge which can cut through conversations to get to a point, and it’s like looking in a mirror when I see others (including me) be occasionally intimidated by his presence.

I’ve been physically in Guy’s presence for short bits of time, each a few minutes, over a period of two days. We shared thoughts and a beer, all in all it might sum up to about an hour of our time. One hour of time spent together and now, being this huge David Tennant fan, every time I’ll see David on TV, he’ll remind me of my new friend, Guy.

This is what Twitter does to your brain, your network and to the way you develop and explore personal relationships. This is why I am addicted, and I love it.