Happy New Year!

Hi everybody... it's been a while since I posted anything here, and many things have changed, which perhaps there will be time to speak of soon, but not now. This is just a quick note to mark the new year, which we celebrated last night in true Berlin style, as these pictures show: standing on the roof at our friends' place in Neukölln, in the deepest heart of fireworks madness. I think in a way it is one of the great fireworks shows on earth, all the more for being a fundamentally chaotic, anarchistic, unorganized 360 degree free-for-all! Because Berlin is so flat and uniform in terms of height, standing on a rooftop in the midst of many thousands of people firing rockets and roman candles, is a kind of surreally immersive experience, which I cannot readily compare to anything I've experienced anywhere else. It is rather different - and to me somehow more thrilling - than an organized show, no matter how superb, can be. And it is definitely best experienced from a rooftop - at street level it quite honestly feels more like a war zone than anything else, and can be quite frightening and uncomfortable.

Things are otherwise moving along here, and we have many plans for the new year, the first of which is a full restructuring of my studio, made necessary by water damage from an accident upstairs, necessitating some painting and carpet replacement. Luckily virtually nothing of ours was damaged, for which I think I must have paid rather a big portion of my allotment of lucky stars. However, I do have to pack this whole room into boxes over the next week, another reason to make a quick post now - who knows when I'll have time to again!

Well, perhaps I will think of more to write a bit later, for now...
more soon!

t