Die Fensch-Maschine

I've written on here before about the pivotal news article I read many years ago that literally changed my outlook on life. Briefly, it concerned a Buddhist conference in London, that started with the creation of a huge, ornate sand picture and finished with it being swept up as a physical metaphor of the belief that everything is transient, all things must pass.

And one of the reasons I found that so useful was that it taught me to focus on the here and now, to enjoy the moment, rather than worrying about the future. An aspect of that is also knowing the last time I might do something and enjoying the experience all the more for it.

For example, six years ago, my friend Jon and I carried out a one-off adventure, '7x25'. For that, we each needed to get 25 7" singles to give away. It was probably twenty years since I'd bought any vinyl and charity shops had long since consigned all such donations to their store rooms. (This, of course, was prior to vinyl becoming fashionable.) 

I asked my local Oxfam shop to fetch out the boxes of 7" singles they had tucked away and I spent a happy half-hour flicking through them with a dexterity acquired over the course of many, many hours during my youth spent in record shops and at record fairs. And part of the joy of the experience was the fact that I never thought that I would do it again and knowing that this was the very last time. 

And so to this evening and the Kraftwerk gig at the Royal Albert Hall. In the absence of any new material for fourteen years and having enjoyed the shows at Tate Modern in 2013 and more recently in Liverpool, I decided that tonight would be my last Kraftwerk concert. To be honest, I think Ralf Hütter has largely completed his curation of 'Der Katalog' and I want to enjoy it one more time and not enter into a cycle of diminishing returns.

Here I am in my hotel room beforehand, a self-portrait of my gig outfit based loosely on the blacks, greys, and reds of 'Die Mensch-Maschine'. (I assure you the bow-tie is more red than depicted by the sunlight.) 

The gig itself was excellent and enhanced by the company of Ash and Colin. Unlike Liverpool where we were just three rows from the front, this time I saw the gig from up in the Gods, which meant I wasn't close enough to double-check that Ralf really was making car noises at the end of 'Autobahn' but I did get to appreciate the scale of the 3-D show.

It's hard to pick out any highpoints, really. I suppose if pushed, I'd pick 'Trans Europe Express' - I found the visuals for that particularly effective - and the triptych of 'Boing Boom Tschak', 'Techno Pop', and 'Music Non Stop'. 

Actually, I have just thought of a circumstance under which I would go and see Kraftwerk again, and that would be to see them perform in Germany and, ideally, in their native Düsseldorf, just to hear 'Computer Love' performed in its more melancholy incarnation as 'Computer Liebe'.

****
-6.7kgs
No words