Monday, June 1, 2009
Times Square is now carfree
Signs, miracles and reality: Starting May 26th, five blocks of Times Square now host lawn chairs and tricycles instead of traffic which is part of The New York City Department of Transportation's "Green Light for Midtown" scheme. I am looking forward to my next visit. Please find more about it (plus a number of beautiful images) on
http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/05/26/the-crossroads-of-the-world-goes-car-free/
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Zeitgeist in Times Square
Watch Zeitgeist Addendum - released Oct 02 2008 - and slow down. Watch out for where and how the movie begins and ends.
(For the preceding film - Zeitgeist - The Movie, remastered edition, 2007 - plase visit http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com)
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Night Watch on Sunday, July 13 2008
At 10.00 pm the crowd is as dense as on a Saturday afternoon. The island really seems to be the only space where you could even think of putting your feet on the ground. The smell is the first thing that finds its way into my awareness: burning, sweet and sticky pancakes. It stays with me all night. Right next to me an ice cream vehicle and some Russians trying to climbing up the lantern post right in front of me compete for my attention. Then the Russians melt back into the crowd. People, people and people. Every now and then somebody or something sticks out. Groups. Cameras. Shots. The yellow cabs swarm by like yellow fish, I remember my friend Mary saying. The moon has disappeared behind the ex-New York Times tower and the screens take over the night sky. People sit down next to me, rest, talk, discuss, scream, fight, laugh, take more shots, get up and leave - perpetual waves.
At around 11.00 pm a first decrease in numbers becomes noticeable, plus more areas of the pavement and the litter that it is covered with become visible to the eye.
A couple sits down to my left. He walks away for a minute to get food, and she asks me if I have been a writer for a long time. They come to Times Square every time they visit New York, she says. They love watching people. She just watched the police chasing away some street mongers and urging people to move on because they were slowing down the crowd. She laughs because isn’t Times Square all about standing still, watching, taking pictures and slowing down the crowd? She points out all the little details that I usually hardly notice: some interesting red pants, a beautiful face, a special kind of camera, some visitor looking Japanese, and so on. Another thing she remarks upon is that every time she comes here there are more screens. You wouldn’t expect it because all available space seems already covered, but this is as it is. I remember the newspaper article a friend of mine sent me recently about plans to mount an even larger screen, in fact The Largest Screen to the façade of the very building we are just looking at.
I close my eyes and try to find the inner silence. The world does not turn black, though; the screens just continue flashing their messages through the curtain of my eyelids into my awareness, which somehow feels like stroboscopic lightning. This is something you only notice at night and with closed eyes, when the contrast between their brightness and the darkness of the night sky is the strongest. After a while I become very quiet and feel the nausea of my very first meeting with this place coming back. The flashes on the other side of my eyelids, ringing rickshaw bells, and honking trucks and cabs mingle with the images emerging in my inner space.
Somebody touches my knee and I am back. A friend of mine has found me despite the complications. He sits down next to me. A little later he tells me he usually experiences two occasions of nightly rush hours. Between 10:00 and 11:00 pm the theaters are out and at 4:00 am the bars close which makes for some movement in Times Square.
Then he helps me chalk-drawing the Times Square Mystery X-man on the pavement. It’s fun, however it apparently causes the police to turn their attention to what we are doing. Smiling and satisfied by my explanation and reassurance about the limited lifespan of the chalk drawing they leave us alone for the time being.
I spend the final hour of the night watch alone. Times Square has become nearly deserted by now. The session comes to a sudden and early closure when another police man approaches and quite obviously annoyed by my presence and the drawing on the pavement asks me to leave within two minutes. Otherwise he would have me follow him to the department. Suddenly I see my meditation put in the vicinity of criminal activity and my short-living chalk drawing called graffiti. Well, everything seems a matter of how you look at it. I picture myself chalking on some Berlin pavement which wouldn’t anyone cause to even shot a glance. But this is not Berlin the police officer points out. Imagine everybody would do it, he says. I do and I think to myself it would certainly slow down the crowd, and possibly not really for the worse.
I leave the now completely empty Times Square a quarter of an hour prior to the intended end of the session.
However, I take the stroboscopic lightning flashes with me into my dreams and beyond, and they stay with me in a not too remote corner of my consciousness right through the entire next day. The slight nausea ceases sometime during the night, though. I wonder what might be the effects of their perpetual impact.
The Times Square night watch certainly has been an experience of its own kind.
Friday, April 18, 2008
April in New York - Epilogue
Doing no-thing in Central Park: On Tuesday, April 15, I was asked to do nothing one more time. I fell asleep in Central Park, leaning between the boulders which were warm and cozy with sunlight. I was going to write but could not resist the mellow spring atmosphere. Those minutes when you wake up, not sleeping not yet awake, are a space with open gates. You are aware of what comes through but the censor does not operate yet. An inspiration fell through: night watch. The next thing to do is a night watch. In July. On fully awakening, my first thought was, oh no, not this; the second, why not, it's a summer night. The third one was a yes.
Meanwhile I am back in Berlin. On my arrival I found a message in my e-mailbox. Tim Tompkins informs me that Mike Stengel, Chairman of the Times Square Alliance Board, says, the alliance was “not able to pursue your interesting idea for an event at this time.” However, some of my ideas might be encapsulated into future events and programs... We would stay in touch.
Meanwhile I am back in Berlin. On my arrival I found a message in my e-mailbox. Tim Tompkins informs me that Mike Stengel, Chairman of the Times Square Alliance Board, says, the alliance was “not able to pursue your interesting idea for an event at this time.” However, some of my ideas might be encapsulated into future events and programs... We would stay in touch.
Visionary Friends
On Sunday, April 13, quite a few people in Europe, America and Australia were out there in their own spots of noise and quietude, and with us in Times Square. One of them, my friend Ulrike from Switzerland wrote the following: I was with you in Times Square and I saw little pink clouds emerging from you and wholly cover you. And it was as if Times Square would burst into laughter when it saw you like that. But then there came a huge thick and strong violet fog up from the depth Below, very powerful, and it filled Times Square completely. It felt like the place would remember what it used to be like, and it became quiet. A breathless, frightened kind of quiet. The fog dissolved and there emerged a white and yellow light from you which seemed to push the high-rises apart and make space, make the square wider and open it up, free it and let it breathe for the first time in a long time. In the beginning it was still coughing, as if there were blocks and dust to get rid of, and this was funny.
Earlier this year, two other friends, one in the western part of Germany, one from the New York area, wrote me about their visions. On January 03, the American friend “got wind of the warm glow in New York recently...in my mind's eye. Glowing white, and as if rising.” On February 05, my friend Ludger in Gemany watched a report of Times Square Day of the Arts in the News on his internal dream screen: a report on a very calm Times Square populated by people in pairs and small groups. He saw it as in many single shots, in cut out images. He could not figure when it happened or would happen but, it sure was going to happen.
Earlier this year, two other friends, one in the western part of Germany, one from the New York area, wrote me about their visions. On January 03, the American friend “got wind of the warm glow in New York recently...in my mind's eye. Glowing white, and as if rising.” On February 05, my friend Ludger in Gemany watched a report of Times Square Day of the Arts in the News on his internal dream screen: a report on a very calm Times Square populated by people in pairs and small groups. He saw it as in many single shots, in cut out images. He could not figure when it happened or would happen but, it sure was going to happen.
Doing Nothing in Times Square - Artists' Times Square Reverence, April 13, 6:00 - 10:00 am
Sunday April 13: The alarm goes off at four and slowly as always I get up and ready. At 6.00 am I enter a Times Square that reminds of scenery for a vampire movie: the wind carries yesterday’s newspapers and empty bags across the blank tarmac in the twilight. The fast changing images on the giant sized screens have something soulless, zombie like to them. The fact that they run without tone strikes me as odd only now as the square is as close to silence as it can get under normal circumstances. In any other moment of the day there is prevalent noise, endless motion of people, the pulse of cars flooding the avenues from North to South, and their snake like wriggling through the streets. I tell the officer who sits in his car next to the army registration office what I am about to do. He seems a little uneasy but relaxes when I tell him that his colleagues in 35th Street know about it.
The hardest part for me has always been to actually sit down on the concrete, to turn from an invisible pedestrian into somebody Other, because nobody ever sits in Times Square (but soon they will, in Duffy Square). The inner turbulences cease the moment I sit, on a cushion in the center of the island. I am right and this is the place where I need to be right now. I am wearing several layers of coat and jackets; it is cold. For the first hour and a half I am alone, relatively speaking. There is still a little nervousness in me, I cannot entirely relax. The officer wants to move his car, right across the spot where I am sitting. There is huge space all around us and I wonder. Nevertheless I move out of his way and back afterwards. Two young men walk by and, apparently worried about my rights, ask me, if the officer is bothering me. The officer continues moving his car around but leaves me alone and never talks to me a second time. A little later there is a time period when on both avenues surrounding my island a number of police cars appear and stay. I don’t know if this has anything to do with me but they vanish when I take the sketchbook from my bag and begin drawing.
I look at all the surfaces. I look at the lifeless flashing images. Suddenly I think, why don’t we just switch them off? What is the problem? What bad things should happen? We make it very complicated: usually I am ready to believe that it takes permissions, money, power, talks, convincing people, getting past other people’s opinions, and I believe in many more complications. It could be easy. Just switch them off for a day. Nobody is going to die.
I become quiet, so quiet that I almost dive down to Below. Outside, on the other side of my closed eyelids, the breaking waves of yellow cabs flood by; the noise of the subway wells up from the underground and makes the pavement slightly vibrate. There are footsteps next to me, and a constant background whisper, the city, is my companion on the way to the depth.
Somebody touches my shoulder. It is Mary and Tom, friends, artists from Detroit. On their trip home they have stopped in New York and now they are here. Mary and I get out paint and brushes, Tom pen and notepad. We start looking, we share our impressions. I learn a little about New York’s function as a trade center. Today, the things you can touch do not travel here from Europe but from Asia to the East coast. Whatever commodities are being traded in New York are of more virtual nature. You just have to look at the advertisements and you can see that, Mary points out. Tom takes photographs. Mary does a color sketch, the colors of Times Square. The colors, she says, is the first thing that captures her attention, so many and so bright.
Meanwhile it is daylight. From 8:00 am onwards the first visitors slowly trickle in. The guys from the Army Office come over and have a look at what we are doing. Staff from the Times Square Alliance stops by for a chat. One of them tells us his daughter was an artist and she might like to know what we do here. He gives me her email address. He says that right where we are between the lantern posts in front of the Army office, the most amazing things tend to happen, and there even was a book about it.
Every now and then somebody stops moving, we exchange a few words, I give them a leaflet or not. A break in the hurry.
Arabella and Ken have arrived. Coaches and healers. Arabella lives three hours north, Ken represents New York in our circle – he has lived here for a couple of years. I am caught in a sudden surge of thinking I would now need to do something, had to tell everybody what to do, be there for them, give instructions on how to do nothing and so on. The feeling grows when Mary and Tome take off – they have a long ride ahead of them. Arabella and Ken save me. They just radiate the calm, and I take it in, speak out the worries and let them go, a grey ragged veil of thoughts. We spend the last hour in silence and contemplation, a very short hour, as it turns out.
Later, sitting in a cafè, Arabella tells me she had seen the beast. The serpent has something of an old woman to it, was sleeping and actually did not want to be disturbed. It has great power but no aggressiveness.
Ken says he looked at what is there with his wide open eyes, something he usually does not do. He felt the images drawing him in, consuming him; he saw things he doesn’t usually consciously see.
This is a powerful place, there is no doubt in any of us. There are energies, and there are blocks, weird things and good things. Something has changed today - for this place and for us. And all we had to do was Nothing, and paying full attention. I find this not as easy sometimes, because I am so used to doing, but it gets easier the more often I just AM.
Sometime during our session there is a moment when we all sit together and I put out the question that had come up for me earlier in the morning: what would it be like if we switched off the billboards, the images, the advertisements? Can you imagine? What would it be like? Mary says, to her it feels like it needs mending, as if something was broken. Ken says, without the images Times Square is just an ordinary town square, nothing special. As I imagine the billboards switched off I get an immediate feeling that this does not work on its own. Something else has to change as well to make it right for me, and I take out motorized traffic, put a pavement onto the avenues; I put in benches, flowerbeds, a fountain, street theatre, pigeons and people. Three people, three images. Ken says, what if many more people did this and came up with their imagination.
So why don’t we switch off the billboards and see what wants to emerge?
These apparently so vivid images are but endless chatter. To me they symbolize the endless chatter of thoughts that is going on in my mind about the things and all the stuff that I tend to believe are so important but often turn out to be without substance. The images also serve as my villain: there is somebody out there who shoots these images at me. It’s their fault. But it is me who looks at them and is afraid to look past and beyond and see what is there.( And if they are not there I can still my produce my own movie and project it on everything out there.)
What happens if I switch off the chatter?
Later in the day I hear Ann Lamott saying, do one thing less every day. Take one thing off your list of things you believe you have to get done. I think what a good thing to get started with switching off your internal advertisement screen. To get started into Being.
The hardest part for me has always been to actually sit down on the concrete, to turn from an invisible pedestrian into somebody Other, because nobody ever sits in Times Square (but soon they will, in Duffy Square). The inner turbulences cease the moment I sit, on a cushion in the center of the island. I am right and this is the place where I need to be right now. I am wearing several layers of coat and jackets; it is cold. For the first hour and a half I am alone, relatively speaking. There is still a little nervousness in me, I cannot entirely relax. The officer wants to move his car, right across the spot where I am sitting. There is huge space all around us and I wonder. Nevertheless I move out of his way and back afterwards. Two young men walk by and, apparently worried about my rights, ask me, if the officer is bothering me. The officer continues moving his car around but leaves me alone and never talks to me a second time. A little later there is a time period when on both avenues surrounding my island a number of police cars appear and stay. I don’t know if this has anything to do with me but they vanish when I take the sketchbook from my bag and begin drawing.
I look at all the surfaces. I look at the lifeless flashing images. Suddenly I think, why don’t we just switch them off? What is the problem? What bad things should happen? We make it very complicated: usually I am ready to believe that it takes permissions, money, power, talks, convincing people, getting past other people’s opinions, and I believe in many more complications. It could be easy. Just switch them off for a day. Nobody is going to die.
I become quiet, so quiet that I almost dive down to Below. Outside, on the other side of my closed eyelids, the breaking waves of yellow cabs flood by; the noise of the subway wells up from the underground and makes the pavement slightly vibrate. There are footsteps next to me, and a constant background whisper, the city, is my companion on the way to the depth.
Somebody touches my shoulder. It is Mary and Tom, friends, artists from Detroit. On their trip home they have stopped in New York and now they are here. Mary and I get out paint and brushes, Tom pen and notepad. We start looking, we share our impressions. I learn a little about New York’s function as a trade center. Today, the things you can touch do not travel here from Europe but from Asia to the East coast. Whatever commodities are being traded in New York are of more virtual nature. You just have to look at the advertisements and you can see that, Mary points out. Tom takes photographs. Mary does a color sketch, the colors of Times Square. The colors, she says, is the first thing that captures her attention, so many and so bright.
Meanwhile it is daylight. From 8:00 am onwards the first visitors slowly trickle in. The guys from the Army Office come over and have a look at what we are doing. Staff from the Times Square Alliance stops by for a chat. One of them tells us his daughter was an artist and she might like to know what we do here. He gives me her email address. He says that right where we are between the lantern posts in front of the Army office, the most amazing things tend to happen, and there even was a book about it.
Every now and then somebody stops moving, we exchange a few words, I give them a leaflet or not. A break in the hurry.
Arabella and Ken have arrived. Coaches and healers. Arabella lives three hours north, Ken represents New York in our circle – he has lived here for a couple of years. I am caught in a sudden surge of thinking I would now need to do something, had to tell everybody what to do, be there for them, give instructions on how to do nothing and so on. The feeling grows when Mary and Tome take off – they have a long ride ahead of them. Arabella and Ken save me. They just radiate the calm, and I take it in, speak out the worries and let them go, a grey ragged veil of thoughts. We spend the last hour in silence and contemplation, a very short hour, as it turns out.
Later, sitting in a cafè, Arabella tells me she had seen the beast. The serpent has something of an old woman to it, was sleeping and actually did not want to be disturbed. It has great power but no aggressiveness.
Ken says he looked at what is there with his wide open eyes, something he usually does not do. He felt the images drawing him in, consuming him; he saw things he doesn’t usually consciously see.
This is a powerful place, there is no doubt in any of us. There are energies, and there are blocks, weird things and good things. Something has changed today - for this place and for us. And all we had to do was Nothing, and paying full attention. I find this not as easy sometimes, because I am so used to doing, but it gets easier the more often I just AM.
Sometime during our session there is a moment when we all sit together and I put out the question that had come up for me earlier in the morning: what would it be like if we switched off the billboards, the images, the advertisements? Can you imagine? What would it be like? Mary says, to her it feels like it needs mending, as if something was broken. Ken says, without the images Times Square is just an ordinary town square, nothing special. As I imagine the billboards switched off I get an immediate feeling that this does not work on its own. Something else has to change as well to make it right for me, and I take out motorized traffic, put a pavement onto the avenues; I put in benches, flowerbeds, a fountain, street theatre, pigeons and people. Three people, three images. Ken says, what if many more people did this and came up with their imagination.
So why don’t we switch off the billboards and see what wants to emerge?
These apparently so vivid images are but endless chatter. To me they symbolize the endless chatter of thoughts that is going on in my mind about the things and all the stuff that I tend to believe are so important but often turn out to be without substance. The images also serve as my villain: there is somebody out there who shoots these images at me. It’s their fault. But it is me who looks at them and is afraid to look past and beyond and see what is there.( And if they are not there I can still my produce my own movie and project it on everything out there.)
What happens if I switch off the chatter?
Later in the day I hear Ann Lamott saying, do one thing less every day. Take one thing off your list of things you believe you have to get done. I think what a good thing to get started with switching off your internal advertisement screen. To get started into Being.
Thursday, April 10 - Meeting Tim Tompkins
The phone rings at 10:15 am and Tim Tompkins is on the line. He says I should come down within the next hour, after that he was tied up for the rest of the time. It felt a little like in a movie, when I finished drying my hair, throwing things into my bag and leaving house within minutes. The subway can take a while, and I decided to get a cab. I told the driver that I was in a little bit of a hurry. He gave his best and amplified my movie feeling with his adventurous turns and changing lanes, and he took me to 49th Street in twenty minutes. In the end Mr. Tompkins and I had thirty minutes for a conversation.
Mr. Tompkins does not look like somebody very important. He wears ordinary jeans and jacket and looks into the world with wide open eyes. The office reminds me of offices in administration in Berlin and probably all over the world, there are no polished marble and no blinding halogen spots. Tim Tompkins is president of the Times Square Alliance and, as it turns out, he also is a yoga teacher. He tells me about the Mind Over Madness Yoga event that has been held in Times Square around summer solstice with increasing numbers of participants (http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/events_solstice.html). Starting with a small group of people a couple of years ago, last year it was attended by around 600. The island in front of the Army Registration Office - apparently the preferred spot for any kind of events – is then packed with mats and people; buses drive past, tourists take photographs.
New York is very open to the arts, and the Alliance, especially Tim Tompkins are about to initiate public art in city squares which has not existed in the city. Public art is still considered as something that you can do in parks, not in the street. However this is what he wants, and my vision seems to fit in. It might be possible to bring something on its way, together, step by step, he says. There is always the issue of getting permissions, the variety of which is unimaginable. 24 hours serenity and arts were great, and a Times Square that is more quiet in the long run sounds like something desirable. However one needs to be realistic, one should not spoil everything by asking too much at a time, people need to get used to things, one needs to be strategic. A Day of the Arts, under this name or another, could happen maybe next year of the year after, maybe certain features of it could be included in what is already in place. In the meantime: slow steps.
Tim Tompkins also speaks a sentence which very much resonates with my own thoughts: it is easy to find your inner silence sitting alone on the top of the mountain; the challenge is to do the same in the middle of the turmoil, in the center of this place, Times Square.
Mr. Tompkins does not look like somebody very important. He wears ordinary jeans and jacket and looks into the world with wide open eyes. The office reminds me of offices in administration in Berlin and probably all over the world, there are no polished marble and no blinding halogen spots. Tim Tompkins is president of the Times Square Alliance and, as it turns out, he also is a yoga teacher. He tells me about the Mind Over Madness Yoga event that has been held in Times Square around summer solstice with increasing numbers of participants (http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/events_solstice.html). Starting with a small group of people a couple of years ago, last year it was attended by around 600. The island in front of the Army Registration Office - apparently the preferred spot for any kind of events – is then packed with mats and people; buses drive past, tourists take photographs.
New York is very open to the arts, and the Alliance, especially Tim Tompkins are about to initiate public art in city squares which has not existed in the city. Public art is still considered as something that you can do in parks, not in the street. However this is what he wants, and my vision seems to fit in. It might be possible to bring something on its way, together, step by step, he says. There is always the issue of getting permissions, the variety of which is unimaginable. 24 hours serenity and arts were great, and a Times Square that is more quiet in the long run sounds like something desirable. However one needs to be realistic, one should not spoil everything by asking too much at a time, people need to get used to things, one needs to be strategic. A Day of the Arts, under this name or another, could happen maybe next year of the year after, maybe certain features of it could be included in what is already in place. In the meantime: slow steps.
Tim Tompkins also speaks a sentence which very much resonates with my own thoughts: it is easy to find your inner silence sitting alone on the top of the mountain; the challenge is to do the same in the middle of the turmoil, in the center of this place, Times Square.
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