Cultures

Mallorca - Majorcan Forest 48 x 34 cm

COMPARISONS

                                                         Berlin, Winter, 2011

A few things I miss about America:

the breadth of its roads. The depth of its oceans. And that

we Americans call aubergines egg plants. Which seems to follow

some surrealist/Da Da dictum on the pairing of technically dissimilar

objects…or something big like that.

Americans today wouldn’t vote for anyone with whom

they couldn’t sit down and drink a beer and share a few

laughs at the expense of, say, whole land masses

and selected cross-sections of society.

                                                     Or a glass of exquisitely rounded

if slightly oak-heavy Napa(68%)-Sonoma(32%)chardonnay

at the Café Mediterenee, Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, Ca. 94716

A German wouldn’t drink a beer with anyone whom he hadn’t known

   for at least three years.

Nor play tennis with his boss. And would outright reject the proposition

that egg and plant could be equal parts of anything. Even nominally.

Except perhaps as an omelette. With cheese. And a touch of garlic.

Exquisite with a glass of Napa-Sonoma chardonnay, etc.

An American would play tennis with his boss, but probably

not sleep with the man’s wife. Unless she asked him to.

A German or Swiss or Austrian might sleep with his boss’s wife

but would never consider having a beer with him.

Europeans would find it culturally impossible to play a

game of one-on-one basketball with president Obama: protocol, etc.

More than a few Europeans however would love to play one-on-one

B-ball with George Clooney. Then expect to sleep with

him afterwards. Or at least eat an exquisite omelette

on a terrace(with view and ample shade)of his Como palazzo.

I don’t know anyone, European or American, who’d want

to sleep with Sylvio Berlusconi. Except for a few thousand

seventeen-year olds with urgent liquidity issues.

Or drink a beer with him.

Americans find almost nothing culturally impossible.

Which is another thing I almost miss.

 

Philip Glass - Opening Glassworks