2022. 12. 16 Fr

Potsdam Ausflug. Discovered Remedios Varo at the Barberini surrealism show. Now a poster of her Papilla Estelar hangs in front of the reading desk. In the small text next to the painting were quaint words like heavenly porridge and sickly moon which amplifies the beauty of the picture. Varo’s father was a hydraulic engineer from whom she seems to have inherited the fascination with the mechanical quality of drawing. In these precise machines poetry is their delicacy and exactitude.

Landscapes by Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, the colourful and comprehensive depiction of the Merovingian king by Leonora Carrington, etc etc.

Dinner at Waage. Small house that looks like a Christmas postcard, emanating warm light in the middle of an empty and dark square. The kind of windows into which a Scrooge would look to find his nephews celebrating. Soon after 6 the place was packed with people, a lot of talking, laughing and the clinking of glasses. The housemade panna cotta was very good.

Vienna boys’ choir at St. Nicholas’. Weaker acoustics but for that much greater ambience (than concert houses). The sound not of the boys but the resonating architecture and the height of the dome (designed by Schinkel) made everything feel holier. The soprano solo who sang Shubert’s Ave Maria surprised us as he was a 14-year-old Korean.