16. THE BEAT GOES ON - notes from Liverpool

A reading of texts by Juergen Kisters
Sometime I am but then went to Liverpool. Sure, it might have happened years earlier, but it did not happen. I could also say that I've been waiting for the right time. Just as it has been. I waited not aware, but in hindsight it was me to be so. I was 37 years old when I first came to Liverpool. In fact, I'm wearing the city since my childhood in the heart. Ever since I was five years old, to be precise. At that time I heard the Beatles for the first time conscious. But honestly I'm not sure whether I had had also heard the name Liverpool. Later Liverpool and the Beatles had become inseparable, even if I said no every time I heard one of their songs, deliberately made. With many things I have forgotten when I heard it the first time or saw. Like me in many activities not know when I made them the first time. When I first touched a light switch. Or a book opened. Or put on a sock. Or independently washed my hands with a bar of soap. As far as my conscious memories back. Or are these things just were not impressive enough. Part of the mental development is that we will forget and some experience for granted. The ordinariness does not remember you. Liverpool, however, that's for sure, is anything but an ordinary city for me.
I remember when I was about five years old, and songs of the Beatles on the radio heard an old tube radio and a portable radio, both Blaupunkt by the company, and I found the melody, the rhythm and the kind of song so fantastic I was singing along. I had no idea of the English language, but I imitated the sounds to easy. Children can do that, you make quite naturally, if they are not prevented. They do not ask themselves how their singing sounds in the ears of others. I was not discouraged, to sing the songs of the Beatles. "Can not buy me love", and "I wanna hold your hand." And then "Come give me your hand", the version sung by the Beatles in German. Only some time later, I was told that I was tone deaf and could not sing, but there was my passion for the singing of Beatles songs fortunate to have developed indestructible. Very soon, I knew that the Beatles came from Liverpool. I can not remember, by whose voice I heard the name of the city for the first time. Possibly through the voice of a radio announcer or a television presenter. But perhaps by my father or my mother. Liverpool. I asked a lot of questions as a kid, and I was told by a lot. Maybe I asked, "And where come from the Beatles'" From Liverpool "came the reply. A city from which people came, sang the songs had such a fantastic, its a fantastic place, I thought. Children think so.
And then there was the matter with this mistaken football match between 1.FC Cologne and Liverpool. Like many young boys as early as age four or five years of my hometown football club was my favorite football club. Apart from TUS height house, the suburban club of the district in which I lived. I lived in Cologne, and 1.FC Cologne was in my early childhood as the best football club in Germany, for a few years at least. The crew of the 1.FC Cologne had become in the season 1963/1964 German champions, and for this reason she played in the following season in the competition of the European Champions' Cup. In the quarterfinals, she met the English champions, Liverpool. This was not just any meeting, but the three games and also a canceled game were one of these soccer events, which people already guessed that it would become a legend when it was still in progress. The first game in Cologne was unspectacular and ended zero to zero. The second game in Liverpool was canceled because of snow, after the Cologne players were in their white jerseys already accumulated on the snowy turf at Anfield. The Liverpool players have remained the same in the cabin, although they would have looked wonderful with their red jerseys on the white board. As the game then some time later took place, made the Cologne goalkeeper Anton, Toni Schumacher called the game of his life and prevented with its breathtaking parades the Liverpool victory. Again, it was zero to zero. A football match in an English stadium to survive without conceding was basically as an incredible success. The third, which was then all-important game in Rotterdam. The Liverpool team was after the first half, already with two-goal lead. Although no one put a damn about the Cologne team, it was a draw after ninety minutes Two to two. The extension of thirty minutes produced no winner. So the winner was decided for the first time in the history of football with a lot. The referee threw up a chip. But instead of falling to the red or the white side, the chip was dropped and vertically stuck in the muddy grass. Again, no decision. The referee threw the chip again, and this time he fell to the red side and the Liverpool Football Club had won. To this drama was added as another dramatic episode, was that the Cologne player Wolfgang Weber played eighty minutes long with a broken leg and calf moves only limped across the lawn. I had the decision-making game, which was broadcast on television in the evening, then not seen them live. The six year old had at least eight clock to bed. But my father had told me the story. And he did this so exciting and so dramatic that I have the game between 1.FC Cologne and Liverpool for the most fantastic football event held, of which I had heard before. A team that played so well that the Cologne team they could not defeat had to be phenomenal. Anyway, I thought she was phenomenal, and I held the Liverpool Football Club for phenomenal, and I kept the city from which he came, for phenomenal. I do not know why and how to implement such ideas themselves. Anyway, I played since the day on which I had heard of this game of football with the Münzwurfentscheidung, the match between 1.FC Cologne and Liverpool after incessantly, depending on weather conditions on the grass in our garden or on the carpet in the living room. I knew the names of all players, the Cologne and Liverpool, and in my game I commented as a radio reporter, I said it again and again. I know them today. Since then Liverpool is next to the 1.FC Köln my favorite football club. If I just look at it, my feeling for Liverpool is even stronger than for the 1.FC Köln. And this is not because of Liverpool in the decades played a furious football, English giants and was four times won the European Champions Cup. But maybe it has to do with it also.

A city from which the football player of Liverpool FC came and in the stadium at Anfield for every game a legendary atmosphere prevailed, from the Beatles came, and where the wonderful sound was a life lived in the air, had something special , I thought. Since I had developed this idea as a child, I wore Liverpool in the heart, wherever I went. I had never even been to Liverpool, did not matter. Even when I was old enough and made their own trips, I went strangely never to Liverpool. I thought a few times that when I at a young age made several trips to Ireland, and braving the ferry translated from a distant place called Liverpool not far from Holyhead to Dublin. I thought about it, but I did not. For whatever reason. It was not a conscious decision weighed. But it was probably just the right intuitively, to my beautiful, my mythical image of Liverpool not to compromise. Not infrequently is broken on contact with the lived reality a substantive Idenbild relentlessly. In those 1980s Liverpool was in a rather difficult situation. Violence and destruction, tough political battles and a savage life hardness influenced the appearance of the city. No sign of the ease and confidence that resonates in the music of the Beatles. Intuitively, I had avoided the trip to Liverpool, and then for many years no longer thought, as I went about other fixed ideas, artistic and political, and was involved in all sorts of personal projects and political struggles. It was only by chance I came in the mid-1990s to Liverpool. Of course, I do not think it was a coincidence. Eventually I had to come to this city, and in the mid-1990s was the perfect time. The old Liverpool was still recognizable, but the city had recovered from its worst period already a little. The great violence and destruction had ceased, that people are tired from the effort of rebellion and wanted to rest. After years of a diffuse Rebellierens and a dull feeling of hopelessness, the city had come to rest. A modest confidence and a new sense of the future arose. I felt at that time very clearly.

So I came to this city, which had been familiar to me since childhood. During the flight, and the train trip I had feared, with my history in my bag I could only be disappointed. But in reality I was excited from the first moment. It was summer and sunny when I out of the station through the side door stepped into the street. I felt really familiar. It was like coming home. I felt an amazing connection with the city, and above all, its people. Of course, I immediately saw and felt the difference in cultural tradition. England and Germany, which have different cultural worlds. Liverpool will be added in the Irish influence, for I feel since I was young also a lot of sympathy. I curious everything I saw and heard in Liverpool, soaked up in me, so of course my simple everyday appeared in the streets. If I just look at it, my strong sense of everydayness and my curious attention are inextricably intertwined since childhood. I sat and listened attentively looks, and on my return wrote a long poem, which I called "The Beat Goes On". Since then I have been many times in Liverpool. And as is my nature, I have always taken notes on my observations, thoughts and feelings. With each trip, I took notes, and a lot has come together. I wrote about my encounters with people, holding events, into which I fell accidentally wrote about my arrival overviews of many phenomena in the city and to the changes which have taken place over the years. I wrote about memories, about sudden fancies and fantasies about the repetition. Some events have been writing about stories, others remained fragments. All these texts fill many notebooks and stacks of paper with leaves loosely described. I read it after writing any more. The idea of reading a few of these texts other people is a good opportunity to look at all the writing again. To remember. And to investigate the stories and aphorisms in their evolved over the years to sequence possible relationships and lines of development. The writing to me is an everyday process, like breathing and eating. For me it is an assurance of my existence. Many issues I care. Not to say, almost everything is productive in order to be able to discover something. Liverpool is one of many topics, and also a special for me. This difference is what matters, I'm sure. There are always subtle differences that matter.

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4th October 2012, 8pm clock