A great number of people arrive in Berlin for a visit and then just never leave. There is a magnetism about the city that can't be denied. Something I would later liken to what I imagine it would feel like to be sinking in quicksand. I tried to explain this feeling to the psychiatrist at the hospital. In my best German, I tried to explain that I had had this feeling for quite a long time, and that at the moment I finally made the decision to leave Berlin, I felt as if the quicksand had come to life and was trying to pull me under with such great force that I was about to drown. I was diagnosed with adjustment disorder. She said it was temporary, would probably take me 6 months to a year to recover, and that my breakdown was centered around my ambivalence about leaving Berlin. The fleas were just a symptom of that.
But let's focus on the beginning now, how I went there for the first time in the fall of 2006 to visit a long lost cousin, who would in turn visit me in East Harlem, New York, where I was living at the time. I wasn't terribly excited about going beyond seeing my cousin, and I had no idea about the city's preceding reputation as the creative capital of Europe. After all, I had been living the last 3 years at the center of the universe, living out my dream to, well, live in New York. And to be an artist. What could possibly be more exciting than that?
I was painting up a storm in those days in my tiny little apartment at 102 and Lex. I created more work in the 4 years I lived there than I had in my entire life. I had an active social life, great friends and epic experiences, but there was always this lingering feeling that if ever I should die in my apartment, it would be months before anyone would discover my decomposed body. In fact, I might just be a pile of dust that the unsuspecting super would simply vacuum away. There is a certain type of existential loneliness that occurs only in New York, where you are in close quarters with millions of people 24 hours a day, and yet you can still feel totally and abjectly alone. So while I absolutely loved New York and do to this day, it was at times a trying place to live, requiring constant effort to stay in the flow of it all.
My first impression of Berlin left much to be desired as I stepped out of the U-bahn onto Leipziger Strasse, one of the busiest and possibly ugliest streets in all of Berlin. I stood looking out the window of my cousin's hi-rise apartment, peering out over the endless rows of balconies hanging from the endless rows of Plattenbau, a type of prefabricated apartment building devoid of any architectural character. These buildings were considered to be the height of luxury during the DDR times. I really wondered why any tourist would want to come to such a place.
It only took a few days of wandering into Berlin's many neighborhoods for me to uncover its magic. It was like a dream come true. Bicycles EVERYWHERE. Artists and assorted creative folk EVERYWHERE. Graffitti EVERYWHERE. Cafes, bars, electronic music EVERYWHERE. You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an artist, and everyone was unabashedly, unapologetically being themselves. Things were cheap, and spaces were huge. An artist could presumably live there on a very low budget and still afford to have a social life. Everything was slow and easy. No stress. Everybody was totally relaxed, and it didn't seem like anybody had a job. Hmmm, I thought to myself. This is worth further investigation. So I went back to New York, mulling around the idea that I might go back there for a few months the following summer. And so I did, and that's when love struck me.
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