It was a Saturday in late October of the gracious year of 1984 when, after centuries of being away, Germany’s intellectual guardian angel, Johan Wolfgang Goethe, woke in the bed of Neil Black.
‘Mein Gott this bed is of the worst quality, and it is freezing here! Where does Neil Black hold his fireplace?’ Johan shivered and looked around in the dark room. Slowly, first his bodily senses became active, but then also his eyes adjusted, and finally his ears. ‘What is that hideous noise outside? What on earth is going on?’
Johan got out of Neil Black’s bed and walked to one of the small windows of the space. His breath slowed down. Before him was a painting, a scenery, something, which was as overpowering as dismantling. Johan had woken up in the wrong time. Earnest and smart as Johan is, he immediately knew, as if in a dream, that at this point he should not resist. Therefore, he surrendered to this new world. New York, 1984.
Searching for signs – where was he? what time was it? – he saw a small white paper lying on Neil Black’s desk. He was thankful for Neil Black – his house was small and rich in information. He could immediately sense that Neil Black was enormously disorganized. Poor Neil Black, Johan thought, where would that lost soul now be? Would he wake up in his house in Weimar? How shocked Catherine will be. Imagine the chaos in town! Not only would they be immensely shocked by Neil’s appearance – shabby and middle-aged that would be beyond the Romantics’ comprehension - but also by Johan’s sudden disappearance. All his duties unfulfilled! Friedrich would think that – but Johan realized that also, this worrying, would take away the reality of this wonder, the reason…
The small paper on the desk, as Johan picked it up, contained little information:
Film Forum
24th of October
Serpico, 13.30
Serpico? Where did he hear this word before? ‘Film Forum’. Johan closed his eyes. Of course, that could easily be connected to the German meaning of film, meaning ‘thin skin’. It could be a doctor’s appointment. Then ‘forum’, in Latin, ‘a public place outdoors’. Considering the concept of the paper, the specific time, and then the ‘name’ of the event, the whole sounded more like a play. Maybe a kind of get-together. A twinkle in Johan’s eyes appeared, a get-together in a new time, didn’t that sound like fun?
Film Forum is where I should be, thought Johan, this sounds rather exciting. Serpico! It sounded like an ancient magic spell. Whilst scanning Neil Black’s room for the best way to continue this quest, he saw a mirror hanging next to the bed. Johan stepped in front of it. Seeing the reflection of his Saturday outfit within this small, stinking room made Johan giggle. Where in heaven was he? He turned and faced Neil Black’s closet to get dressed for the right occasion and time. The ticket shimmered in the corner of his eye. He loved surprising invitations, as always he was unterrified of the hidden future before him.
It was early in the morning when Johan stepped outside the building. The city blew up in Johan’s face. Everywhere, words shaped in blood red and apple green lights. Signs that said Diner or Coffee. Enormous affiches high up on boards, with unreal faces as big as trees. Not to mention the buildings: magic-laden wonders of glass. The street smelled funny. Sweet fragrances imposed themselves in Johan’s nostrils. Languages flooded his ears, accompanied by symphonies of machines. He was almost certain that the people here spoke English. But he also heard, in passing, some tones of Spanish, faraway foreign languages. Well-observed, it seemed that far away didn’t account for here. Everything, everyone, felt incredibly close.
One step at a time, Johan walked the streets of New York. A small, chubby man, dressed in the clothing of skinny chain-smoking Neil Black. A white blouse, black pantaloons, a blue scarf, and white trainers. He had picked a little mix of things he knew and objects that looked comfortable (and that had a decent smell).
Leaving Neil Black’s street he turned left and then right following sidewalks that formed themselves like a maze, rectangle after rectangle. Taking up the dance of death as he followed the mass on crosswalks and intersections.
As he wandered further down the long road, something inside him said that there was no need to find the key to Neil Black’s room. Did he really have to go back in there? Having thought that, Johan felt in the back pocket of his trousers, and something remarkably close to the touch of a key in his hand. Johan stood still on the sidewalk and got the object out of his narrow back pocket.
It was not a key. In his hand, he held an object with a small turning wheel and a little switch on the upper left corner. On it was the picture of a Lion, which he recognized from drawings he had only seen in nature books. Johan was intrigued by this mechanical thing. And the connection it would make to a lion. He put the object back into his pocket and continued his stroll. Abruptly, his attention was taken by a man standing smoking with his back to a sort of restaurant, with the same small object in his hand.
‘Hallo!’ proclaimed Johan, as he walked up to the man.
‘Yeah?’ grumbled the man, who wore a bright yellow sweater and a hat with a rather long sort of parasol, so to say in Johan’s notion, at the front. So much that it covered most of his eyes. From inside the restaurant came sounds Johan could not understand, almost like a drumming sound.
‘My English is not very good – I want to excuse myself’, said Johan as he flew his hands in the air with poetic dramatics.
‘Man, nobody’s English here is any good. What do you want?’
‘Interesting. I want to ask you something.’ Johan got the lion out of his pocket. ‘What is this object that both you and I hold in our hands?’
The man took some time to answer his question. He then declared between his puffing, ‘That’s a Lion.’
‘Yes, I know it’s a Lion. But what are the switches for?’
After a moment, the man looked at Johan and said, ‘Are you fucking with me?’
‘Fucking?’ said Johan.
‘Yes, fucking, man.’
‘Fucking. Is that what the thing is for?’
‘No, this is no fucking. It’s a lighter. It’s fire.’ The man held the lighter up to Johan’s nose and flicked the switch a couple of times. Fire flashes before Johan’s eyes.
‘Oh, fire! Fire! Good, good. How very interesting.’ Johan giggled and put the warm thing back in Neil Black’s pocket. ‘Thank you!’
The man stared after Johan as he continued to make his way down the street. For Johan, it was now very clear: Neil Young lived in the future – or well, he had lived in the future. In the endless stream of people – he had lived in cities, had been to Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, but seeing so many faces in a stream like this, made him think of his youth, the fishes he saw in the river by his parents’ house, ye were but written in a stream, if a city is as fleeting like this, let me be part of this, he thought, as he saw his sorrows and passions flow away already in the mass – then, a beautiful woman passed by with a sweet child. Johan got the piece of paper from his pocket.
‘Beautiful Mother, sweet child, I need your help. I am looking for an institution called Film Forum. Would you know what that is?’ He said and held the piece of paper in front of the woman. In a split second, the woman turned away after looking at him briefly in disgust. The child did not even lay eyes on him. Was that a look of fear on the woman’s face? Would they think Johan was a madman? It is certainly not kind, Johan thought.
A left, a right, Johan turned rectangles, finding the glare of a nice person who could help him find his way. No one looked at him. Nobody seemed to look at anyone.
A world without romance in the streets: nightmarish! If it were dark and the moon were his companion, Johan would allow feelings of despair, only now it was too early in the day for that! Desperation vanished. Wander, he thought, wander as you would walk up a mountain, wander as if there is light. There must be romance saved. It must be protected in some way, somewhere. I need a place of rest, he urged himself, just for a quick moment, I want to… And he could not even finish his thoughts as smoke blew in his face from all around him. He could not bear the smell and coughed. Nobody helped him. He was transported back in time. When he was a poor student. In the end, we are alone. That’s what he thought as he stumbled out of the smoke. That’s what I once thought, he corrected himself, but life has always proved otherwise. And there it proved itself again, as he ran out of the machine’s smoke and collided against a window of a café. To escape the gasses of the street, he opened the café’s door and stepped inside. It was a monastery compared to the noisy street. Inside stood a beautiful lady wearing a blue dress behind a long bar. She moved as if in water, slow and elegant. There was soft piano music playing all around him: where was the musician? He could only see groups of people spread throughout the café. Surrounding the space where windows look over the streets.
As if he awoke from this misty dream, he heard a voice coming from behind the bar, as the woman in a blue dress said, ‘Fancy sitting at the bar, sir, or are you waiting for someone special?’
Johan gave a small bow to the woman for being such a nice new part of his adventure and sighed. ‘If it may?’
The woman’s eyes shimmered in surprise, ‘What an amazing accent you have, sir,’ she pointed to a very high round chair at the bar, ‘you sit nicely here. Where are you from, if I may ask?’
Johan made his way up high on the chair and said, ‘Weimar, sweet woman.’
Alice flushed a little by the charming delicacy in which Johan spoke his words, ‘And what is your name sir, if I might ask?’
‘My name is,’ and he found it hard to pronounce, as if he had forgotten all syllables once related to his self, ‘Johan Goethe.’
‘John Good? Well, welcome, John from Why Mar. It is very nice to meet you. My name is Alice, from Dallas, Texas.’ She held out her hand, and Johan softly laid his fingers under hers and kissed her fingertips. Alice looked around and giggled, ‘You sure do have polite manners in Why Mar! Is there anything I can help you with, something to drink or eat? Let me grab you a menu.’
The kindness and beauty of Alice made Johan both tender and vulnerable, as he only smiled to her, at a loss of words for the world he found himself in.
Alice laid a menu before him and said, upon seeing his forlorn eyes, ‘Are you alright, sir?’
‘No, I see no romance.’ He said.
‘Oh, poor you! Heartbreak?’
As in a dream, the words made Johan remember Catherine back home. The endless letters with rows, useless words, misunderstandings. The letter that he had written the day before, in which he finally told her he had to let her go, was one of the hardest things he had ever done.
‘Oh, Help! Yesterday!’, he screamed and fell on his hands.
‘Yesterday, what happened yesterday?’
All his troubles now seemed far away, here in this unknown time. He looked at Alice and managed to speak over his trilling lips, ‘I said something wrong. O, how I long for yesterday, if I could only turn back time, Alice, if only I could keep my words for myself this one time.’
Alice looked at him, ‘John, what you need is a damn good cup of coffee,’ she whispered, ‘don’t tell anyone, but I give one free coffee a day to someone I believe deserves it. Today, that person is you.’
‘Thank you, you are very sweet Alice, very sweet! I excuse myself for this sad, sad, presentation! I’m not half the man I used to be. The shadow of the past is hanging over me!’
Was this why he was here? Was he in this place to hide away? Johan thought. Around him, he felt the emptiness of everything that once had been, somewhere else.
Alice placed an enormous bucket with brown liquid in front of him. Her smile and gesture relaxed him. He sank to rest and inhaled as he sipped the cup.
The coffee tasted and smelled like cold miner’s piss.
‘Mein Gott’, said Johan, after not being able to keep it in his mouth. He spat it out back into the cup. With disgust, he looked at the enormous white cup he held in his hand. The brown color of the drink looked alright, but the taste was nothing like coffee at all.
Alice looked at him with surprise from behind the long bar and said, ‘No good, John?’
‘Just not like anything I have tasted before!’ said good-mannered John, ‘less ripe than I’m used to, I presume.’
Alice walked up to him. ‘We are famous here for our good coffee, John. It’s a special recipe,’ she winked at him,’ I sometimes put sugar in the pot to give it a little extra.’
‘It’s not the flavour; I just didn’t expect it this cold and…’
Before good-mannered John could find the capabilities to compare coffees from two centuries apart (which is not really necessary, because good coffee is good coffee, right?), two men walked into the diner dressed in white shirts and formal black pants.
‘Alice, babe, you well?’, said one of them.
‘Hey Donald, yes definitely, I’m doing great! Working today?’
‘Just down Madison,’ he said. They sat down next to John at the bar. ‘Hello, sir.’
Alice pointed to Johan, ‘This is Mr. John Good. He’s from Germany.’
‘Aha, Gutten Tag!’, Donald said, smiling ear to ear, ‘Mr. Good, we were having a conversation about hidden talents! What would be yours? Is there anything surprising you can show us?’
Both men got enormous white cups in which Alice served coffee.
Surprised by the question, Johan righted his back and thought for a second and declared with confidence, ‘I can speak Italian and have a rich understanding of colour. I can name most any colour.’
‘Well’, said Donald, ‘we are Italian, so that wouldn’t really be so exciting, but the colors John, I like the color-thing. Tell me, what would you call the color of Alice’s dress?’
But before Johan could dive into that and tell him what he was the proudest of in all his life, his rich and deep understanding of color, another man walked into the diner. Not a moment had passed, or the men stood up and started walking up to the handsome man, congratulating him.
This reminded Johan on his initial reason for being here, seeking the get-together.
‘Alice!’ he said, and she walked up to him, placing her to elbows in front of him on the bar.
‘Yes, John? What can I do for you?’
Johan got the piece of paper out of Neil Black’s back pocket and laid it flat on the table.
‘Do you know where I can find this place? Do you know Serpico?’, he said.
Alice looked at the paper and then up to Johan, smiling, ‘Mr. Good,’ she said with a slight thrill in her voice, ‘that’s Serpico, right there!’ She laughed and pointed at the man who had walked through the door just a moment ago. ‘You have an excellent feeling for timing, John!’
Johan was at a loss. That man was Serpico? Without any hesitation, he jumped from the high chair and walked up to the men. Johan stood in front of Serpico and showed the piece of paper. ‘Gentleman, I am on a quest for this get-together, or what I think is a get-together. Now Alice tells me that you are the name on this piece of paper.’ He looked the handsome dark man in the eye. ‘Are you that is which is Serpico?’
The men glared at the piece of paper. Serpico only smiled. It was the other man with the white shirt who gave Johan the clarity of this confusing situation, ‘Mr. Good, I thought you spoke Italian? Serpico means snake.’ Standing closer to Johan, he softly breathed in his ear, adding,’ Besides that, John, this is Al Pacino. Have you been living under a stone?’
Happy to be in the refreshing air again, Johan wandered outside after having received the directions for finding Film Forum. Alice had said to walk straight on a street called 7 and turn left at West Houston. This was all easy to follow. It delighted Johan that they all knew the place. Connecting the dots from the diner to Neil Black made him feel that there was another meaning to all this than hiding away from yesterday.
He walked downtown. The buildings grew less tall. And the surroundings became browner. Even greenery appeared. Flowers seem to grow here, and parks lie hidden between the housing. An orange kind of sunlight that could only exist in the Fall shone on Johan’s face. I hope Film Forum is a garden, he thought. Oh ye leaves. What pulled my heart to hear, so far away from my chamber and my home? What sort of longing told me to roam?
But no, it was not a garden. As he walked left on West Houston, he saw the words written in a blue – Alice’s blue, to be exact – on the wall of the building. It was not a garden. It resembled more a theatre, Johan’s initial thoughts.
His eyes flew over the titles on the white boards hanging above the entrance. As his eyes cast down, he saw a smiling man walking up to him. The autumn sun fell onto the men and for a minute, Johan thought it was an angel. The small man wore bright clothes, fitting him rather wide, as a boy who had put on his Father’s clothing. He had two hands in his pocket.
‘Good afternoon, sir. I have been standing there watching you for some time.’ He pointed to one of the windows in one of the high buildings. ‘I recognize you.’
‘You know who I am?’
‘I know who you are, and I even know why you are here. To be more specific: I know why I am here.’ He crossed his arms and chuckled. ‘It’s a good day to go to the cinema. You chose the perfect time to visit New York, Johan. My name is Spikey.’
Many new words prickled Johan’s mind. He was in America. That came as no surprise. But that other word, ci-ne-ma. It pleased his poetic senses. It made him think of movement. Spikey sounded more like an adverb than a name.
‘Neil Black set me on an adventure. I am exhausted, but happy to be here’, said Johan.
‘Johan, this adventure you are talking about. It starts here.’
‘Here at Film Forum?’
‘No, here,’ Spikey tapped on his head. ‘In the imagination. This,’ he faced Film Forum, ‘Is where we enter imagination.’
‘What could there be more as a portal to the imagination than poetry, stories, music, and the theatre?’ Johan said, speaking his thoughts out loud.
Spikey grimed, ‘Johan, it might be a lot to comprehend, but we are in a space where all these things come together.’
Johan jumped around on the sidewalk. ‘Bring me there, Spikey. Now!’
The two men gracefully followed each other through the doors of the cinema and walked up to the ticket desk. Johan picked, as he had done so many times that day, the ticket out of his pocket. ‘These are the words that brought me here.’ He gave it to the young girl sitting behind the desk.
‘That’s an old ticket. Serpico showed twice last week. It was good. Yeah, it’s a good film.’ Said the girl.
Spikey responded to her by raising his shoulders. ‘Thought the dogs were cute, sure. Johan, we’re not here today to see that movie. You go and order two drinks already at the bar, I’ll be coming your way.’
In awe of the forms of communication and the mention of the dogs, Johan walked through the space towards the bar in the back, while Spikey discussed the tickets with the girl behind the counter. On the bar lay displayed cakes and other sweets. And while others ordered in front of him in line, he got distracted by the many posters hanging on the wall. Faces, endless faces, words, images gazed at him. Every affiche was a mixture of a life-like painting, sometimes figurative drawings, with words scrambled on top; names, destinations. It was not yet his turn to order, and Spikey was already standing next to him.
‘Busy day,’ he said. ‘It’s a good year for film, Johan. Maybe the prime year since 1962.’
Johan smiled in disbelief.
Spikey went on, ‘I always said that film was dead after Fellini’s 8 1/2. I even made a promise that I would see no film made after 1962. But then, actually, I saw you standing there, and that gave me hope. Yeah, I might give it a chance,’ he chuckled, ‘who am I to give up my dreams anyway, right Johan?’
‘No right, Spikey, you have no right to do that! Now, what is it that we will see here?’ said Johan.
‘Well, first we’re going to order something to drink. I am going to order you the drink of the century, and then we will spend two hours in an unknown world. How does that sound?’
People at the bar watched the two men and laughed about the big words the small man was proclaiming. Johan had the feeling he arrived in the get-together after all.
‘Would this be something we do with all of us?’, Johan said.
‘Yes, sir. Follow me to the galaxy!’ Spikey grabbed the drinks from the counter and Johan by his scarf and pulled him in the direction of cinema 4. ‘I wonder what they are showing here today,’ he said, ‘I always buy random tickets to a show and then walk into the wrong theatre, so that I can be transported to the unknown.’
‘Genialer Impulse.’
‘I thought so.’
They entered a dark space with rows of chairs, just like in the theatres Johan knew.
‘No matter what we are going to see here, Johan, just remember that it is all just resembling life.’
‘Like a metaphor?’
‘Good question. No, rather a mirror than a metaphor. Imagine Johan, the most beautiful mountain in the world, or the most beautiful flower! The most magnificent tree, or river. And placing a mirror in front of it. And then you stand in front of the mirror.’ Johan could now only see himself standing in front of Neil Black’s mirror, as Spikey went on, whispering as the lights went down, ‘Also good to remember, nothing about what you are going to see is real. But we will talk about that later. Enjoy.’
The lights went down. Vivid images unimaginable to Johan’s comprehension showed themselves on the wall. After a while, three words were written: Beverly Hills Cops. We can only imagine what etymology Johan would derive from that. O, as ye now leave this unbelievable tale, we can at best sink back, enjoy, and imagine. Can’t we?