I have been enthusiastically reading Heidegger for years and for years my prayer has been strongly influenced by the ideas of Rabbi Nahman of Breslav. One was a Jewish mystic from the late 18th and early 19th century. The other was a collaborator with the Nazis. One an intellectual, a philosopher. The other someone for whom the philosopher, the idea of philosophy itself, at least in his later years, was the most fundamental enemy. And yet I love them both in the same way. They both tell me the same thing. 

What they tell me takes place at the crossroads between the legible and the illegible, between that which can be understood and that which can only be felt, between that which has words and that which words can only harm. 

Each has their own way of dealing with the tension between the experience that words cannot reach and the will to communicate this experience. Nachman tries to bring a select few, a spiritual elite, into his experience. Heidegger tries to bend, break and yoke the German language in order to make at least part of the experience accessible.

However, both inevitably fall far short of their goals.

In trying to write a "proper" artist statement about this project, I kept coming up against the same limit. I had painted in order not to have to write. And now I was supposed to write about what I had painted. The painting itself is actually more concerned with the "forecourt of the palace", as the mystics of the Merkavah would put it. Any attempt at an Artist Statement seemed to banish me down 10 more Hechaloth. 

And so instead I wrote this text which is at least an attempt to express what it is all about. Forgive me.

The mind awakening in the tired body, at first still groping around blindly, aimlessly exploring what it encounters of its own accord, then perhaps somewhat more determined, but still lingering almost without stirring in those corners of itself in which it senses meaning, that blind man is the only one who these days has hope for the chance to come across an almost accidental truth or even just a little bit of truth in me. 

And so, once again, the harsh and explicit, the verifiable and the scientifically precise, which has grown weary of itself, is asked to give way to the vague, blurred and fragile, to the patiently waiting for the noise to die down, the noise after which silence might possibly spread, in which one could hear the softly resonating melody of the spheres.

But the explicit, as always, vehemently refuses to vacate the stage for a few moments. After all, it was there first! And it always saved us from the worst! When we were hungry, it showed us the way to a slightly dirty apple on the ground under a stall in the Jerusalem market. When we didn't know how to find work and a place to live in a new city whose language and culture we didn't speak, it was the explicit that guided us. It gave us power over ourselves and our lives. And the other? It doesn't even have a name! What is it supposed to be able to do for us?

And really, all the Other offers us is a vague longing for itself and the nonsensical clarity that it has no intention of disappearing. And has it not brought us great love? And doesn't it often latch onto the explicit and push it, almost imperceptibly, a little to the left or a little to the right?

No! the explicit waves its arms wildly, but can no longer quite convince itself and slowly and somewhat reluctantly allows the other, who has placed a hand on its shoulder, somewhat timidly and shyly, but with a friendly smile, to accompany it a few centimetres backwards, out of the spotlight. And as the eye, which now has nothing to look at in the glaring spotlight, gradually gets used to the darkness of the theater, we are amazed at how much larger the stage is than the clearly defined circle of light in which the explicit had just stood. 

And how strange! There are things hanging there that are not even in the script! A scaffold, barely recognizable in the dark. A somewhat oversized coat, or is it a cloak? Maybe it's left over from another play? Or does it belong to the director? And rows of empty chairs, where audience members, whose astonished murmurs echo almost inaudibly, may have been sitting just a short moment ago. We can't make out the back wall. It stands, or does not stand, in complete darkness.

See? the explicit tries to push itself back into the spotlight, there's nothing here! It's all a fake! And aren't you hungry? And afraid? And what time is it already?

So we close our eyes and let words shine through us unheeded. We know that only words can allow us to take something home with us when the performance is over. And at the same time, it is words, sentences, contexts that block our view. We allow their condensation, which once gave rise to the world, to reverse itself until the intense, constantly besieging, oppressive, haptic fades and loses form, leaving us in a fragile void that blows through us like a soft breeze on a warm autumn night that is so exactly the temperature of our own skin that we have to concentrate to even perceive it, let alone determine from which direction it is blowing. We can't even pinpoint where on our skin we really feel it, because every time we think it's blowing around a particular finger or making a particular strand of our hair move, we end up being mistaken and have to make do with the fading clarity that there is a breeze. Every attempt to find our bearings in the clearing where we are resting attentively on that autumn night only leads inevitably to the forest around us shrinking back like a shy deer and retreating into itself. Any thought that is too hasty opens the door to an onslaught of words that immediately stand triumphantly and broad-legged before us, distracting us from the quiet rustle of the wind in the treetops above us. Here, only passive waiting endures. So we wait, without expectation and directionality, until, with a little luck, various beings enter our clearing, disinterested in our silent contemplation, but always ready to vanish as soon as we blink too loudly. It may linger for a moment, like a squirrel looking for food, or like a woodpecker that is easy to hear but sometimes hard to spot. And it leaves our clearing when it pleases, leaving us with the possibility of another visit or the soft rustle of the afternoon breeze surrounding us. We remain seated on our bench until it has imperceptibly dissolved into weightlessness and disintegrated into its elements, leaving the stage free for the conceptless, the floating, in which even the existing no longer finds a foothold. Even quiet contemplation is impossible here, as the gaze is reflected and short-circuited within itself. Nothing here is still or moving, far or near, clear or blurred. Here, even being seems to find space only with difficulty. Time has coagulated into a hard resin that sticks to our eyes, nose, mouth and ears and makes self-perception impossible. In absolute disorientation, like a dead astronaut in space, there is no experience. And yet shadows of memories escape this dimension, shreds of forms that leave an imprint more on the fabric than on consciousness. 

And so the world breathes a few lifeless breaths through us before the rope on which we are balancing suddenly shakes and we feel the sneering explicit behind us as we stumble and fall into the depths, where its hard and loveless arms catch us, placing us unceremoniously on our still shaky legs in the cold auditorium and turning its spotlight a little more glaringly.

Berlin, November 2021