Went to outdoor karaoke in Mauerpark

Never Done: Spent the afternoon with probably two thousand people listening to outdoor karaoke

Kathleen loves karaoke. She had, in fact, hoped to be the person to introduce me to karaoke so that I would love it the first time I did it. After that didn't happen, she hoped that we would do karaoke together somewhere else, and that doing it with her would make me love it. I am very open to that possibility, but I am also open to the possibility that it's just not my thing. She also expressed some interest in doing karaoke together when we would be here in Berlin, and again, I felt completely open to that idea. Then she heard that there's a guy who sets up karaoke on Sundays in the Mauer Park flea market, and so we put it on our list of things to do when not doing things more directly linked to our mission in Berlin.

First of all, the flea market felt like a huge flea market anywhere. Vintage eyeglass frames and old tools interspersed with beautiful bamboo silk screened tee shirts. Old boots and jackets interspersed with handmade jewelry. Old and new photographs interspersed with -- what was that that? -- a gun? And what was that? -- a gas mask? OK, so maybe it's not like flea markets everywhere. We left the gas masks behind and entered a beer garden (my first! never done!) with grilled fish and sausages and split pea soup with more sausage. From there we wandered over to the outdoor karaoke, where an Irish guy KJ'd (karaoke jockeyed) for hours, the only compensation we saw being the coffee can he passed through the crowd, which people happily contributed to. I thought to myself, this is what my life used to be like, and this is what I used to want it to stay like, and there is still a part of me that yearns for this life.

Not that I was going to be a karaoke jockey, but that I was part of outdoor alternative economies throughout the 80s and a little bit in the 90s. Mostly I busked (played music on the streets) but I did other things too. I spent quite a bit of time with people who set up booths outside and sold things -- first in England, with the Green Roadshow, at Peace and Music festivals, and then in the United States, at the New England and Michigan Womyn's Music Festivals, the Common Ground Fair, and the Oregon Country Fair. In England, I ran an alternative tea house with some friends, and our motto was "we don't serve proper tea, 'cause proper tea is theft." A the Oregon Country Fair, I worked in the booth of someone who made handmade knives, and I also juggled, made and sold pies, and played music in exchange for food. I did the same things at the music festivals, and I also did work exchange -- bartered for my time at the festival with my work in the kitchen and a job I didn't enjoy, parking cars.

If I look honestly at that part of me that still yearns for this life, I see that it's not so much about being stuck in the past as about being unhappy with the present. How to put this? For all the years that I lived in Maine, I lived in rented apartments in old houses, and eventually in a yurt that I built together with my partner at the time, which we put on a beautiful 5 acres that we rented for $25/month. My mother used to say that I didn't live in Maine, that I lived in "alternative Maine." I always had jobs -- Family Planning counselor, Rape Crisis Assistance co-director, movie projectionist and all around do everything person, and also waitress and cook at a cafe that I eventually co-ran with a friend, pulling 17-hour days and bottom lining a business. So, how alternative was that? But it was, somehow, more in the mode I yearn for than the mode I live in now, and I think the difference is New York City. Even though I am more politically active now than I was then, and have a far better analysis of racism and other forms of systemic oppression, and have become a much more effective agent of change, I feel cooped up and ineffective. Cooped up by a city apartment, cooped up by exorbitant rent, cooped up by the confines of the city itself. Maybe part of it is that I am older, and weighed down with more possessions than I used to be, including many more that plug in. I don't think I owned anything that plugged in until I was in my very late 20s. Now I would be hard pressed to part with my computer and cell phone, and would have to think hard before giving up my Cuisinart and my compound angle miter saw.

So I was thinking about all this, while we were outside in Berlin on a sunny day, listening to people sing American pop songs on a karaoke machine. It was just the second time I'd been around karaoke (I wrote about the first -- it was in a room with people who all knew each other, rather than in a public space) and so much more fun. There was a spirit of relaxation and encouragement that didn't seem to depend on whether or not the person was a very good singer. It turns out that's not really the point. A couple people had good voices, but most people were singing off key, or didn't really know the words to the songs they picked -- and yet they wanted to get up and sing in front of a couple thousand strangers. The ones that gave most pleasure to the crowd either picked songs that were fun to sing along with, or had fantastic stage presence. Kathleen wanted to sing, and I asked when we got there if she could, and the KJ told us they would open up the list in about an hour. So in about an hour, I went up and asked again, and I was able to put her name on the list, but by then they had actually accepted a bunch more people. After another hour or so, she went up to check, and she found out that her name was last on the list, and that they would be stopping at 7PM, and that she might not get a chance to sing. I was hoping it would happen. I loved the idea, given what she is here for, of this huge crowd of Germans clapping and whooping for her. Also, I just wanted to hear her sing karaoke, because it's something that brings her so much joy. But time ran out before her name got called, and finally the Irish KJ took the mic and belted out a great Brechtian version of Minnie the Moocher, and the big, drinking, smoking German audience sang along in response: Hidey hidey hidey ho!