Lost Without their Insoluble Nihilism

Members of the ‘sad but real’ German-cliché community should be passively resigned. Herrmann is thus observed:

Actress Tilda Swinton will be biking along the same ex-Berlin Wall route she and filmmaker Cynthia Beatt took ten years ago when they filmed the wall that wasn’t there then, either. This Gesamtkunstwerk (total art form) will then be put together in a piece to be called “Cycling the Invisible Frame.”

Whatever. But if I were her I would take it easier on myself and travel along what used to be the Berlin Wall on what used to be a bike – and take a car instead.

Got that? They’re so set in their ways and ideas that they’re reenacting an old schtick. Why is that?

“The title refers to the fact that most of the wall has been torn down, though many Germans still speak of an invisible wall in the minds dividing east and west Germany.“

Blah, blah, blah. Another complaint about the intangible for the sake of art. Unanswerable questions, demand that you prove a negative. Whatever. You’re, like, so deep, that you can’t seem to walk off of the plantation yourself.

In other words, hanging onto an old world view, and an old agony as if you’re ability to wallow in self-loathing depended on it.

Go ahead, connect the dots. After all, it’s not like they can! They MISS it. It gave them the ulcer that made their lives dramatic, let them think that that alone imbued some meaning in it, and gave them a pass on dealing with themselves.

What’s sad about the stunt, is that it mocks the people I knew who preferred their mental health to this high-school-angst and actually DID tear down that Berlin Wall in their heads, and it didn’t require attention-seeking behavior or revival shows of something they did 10 years ago.