COOL SPACES

Deciding what your home looks like is not only a matter of style but also of personality. My housemate is messy; I am organised. I am no neat-freak but I adore the beauty of simple living. To me, this means: clean design, light colours and mixing second-hand furniture with new pieces. So, are you the stripped-down-bare type – or the more chaotic type?

A MINIMALIST TAKE ON INTERIOR DESIGN

Here are some yummy things I want for my apartment. It's spring and time for a new look. And really...if I could choose any look for my apartment it would be the minimalistic style. I hate clutter with a passion because mostly, it makes me feel unorganised.

THREE TATTOOS

Ink is permanent, so you better know what it is that you want to carry around with you for the rest of your life.

I LOVE CASPER

Casper is a German rapper who is known to be very middle-class. He's like the rich kid, who went to private school, but his lyrics scream of a life at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Nonetheless, I love his smokey voice that screams of gravel and late-night parties. This beautiful music video featuring "auf und davon" (up and away) is my current favourite.

THE COOLEST POET FROM SOUTH AFRICA

“There are certain environments, particularly these post-industrial cities, which are clotted with words in the same way that certain landscapes are polluted by filth. Words proliferate here like layers in a landfill: all psychic space is overpopulated with them. At the same time they float free of all signification, losing their substances as a result." (Stephen Watson)

This is one of my favourite photos from my trip to Cape Town because when you drive just 1.5 hours outside of this bustling metropolis, you are met with quiet and a word-less world. You are surrounded by nature (as the opposite to Watson's quote).

My brother hand-cut and scanned the film for me and I love how it looks like an old photograph. The process of the development is entwined in the result. I took this snapshot just outside of Cape Town as the sun was setting on my way back from Kleinmond at a petrol station. It was a lucky shot. But it somehow captured my home town for me: it reminds me of how gritty and imperfect life is. We live on this earth that god created and I want to capture and experience every moment of it. Every moment of life. Every moment of freedom. Every moment we feel alive.

COOLEST GIRL IN TOWN: ALICE GLASS

Alice Glass from Chrystal Castles embodies like Kate Moss the heroine chic style. Besides her rumoured drug habit, she has the most amazing smokey eye-make up. Always. And for that she gets 10 points from me.

MY DECEMBER SONG

Marteria is a German rapper whose sound has started to grow on me, like moss on trees. I don't like rap. I rarely find its beat infectious. But I love this song. The text means roughly translated: "I am so radiated by you". Nice!

MISTER COOL OF POLITICS

Meet the coolest politician in Germany: he's 93, mentally sharp and hilarious. His name is Helmut Schmidt. He is as famous for smoking cigarettes anywhere and everywhere - even on live television - as for his wise words.

"Das Schneckentempo ist das normale Tempo jeder Demokratie." (Snails-pace is the normal speed of every democracy.)

"Wollen wir denn auch noch Weltmeister im Jammern werden?" (Do we [Germany] want to become the world champions in complaining?)
 
"Politiker und Journalisten teilen sich das Schicksal, dass sie heute über Dinge reden oder schreiben müssen, die sie erst morgen ganz verstehen." (Politicians and Journalists share the same fate: they write about things they will only understand tomorrow.)

Chain-smoking his entire life, he is nowadays the only man allowed to smoke on public television. His retort: "Willen braucht man. Und Zigaretten." (You need will. And cigarettes.)

DANCE, DANCE, DANCE

Haruki Murakami is my all time favourite author. While the sunlight filters through the silver blinds of my windows, Murakami's words are even more enticing than a rare blue sky in Hamburg. I devour his book and enter another world. 

I like to read his books again and again: on the subway, squashed between commuters, in my lunchbreak or at home on my bed. I devour his words like chocolate cookies. 

The last two novels I bought are "Sleep" (a short story with beautiful silver and blue illustrations) and "Dance Dance Dance" - whose central theme is dreams. Sometimes when I look up from the book I am reading, the world does seem a little softer and little fuzzier at the edges. 

But then the subway doors slam together and I am reminded that dreams and reality cannot exist at the same time - as they do in Murakami's books.

RIOTS IN LONDON

I recently read this essay by Sam Jacob which is awesome: “Everywhere is a target, everywhere is symbolic”.
I would like to now quote John Lydon "anger is an energy" and just end this post.