to begin at the beginning,

in October nineteen hundred and seventy-nine, my saxophone flies with me to New York.“Message in a bottle“ by the Police is on the radio, the Gramercy and Chelsea are fully booked. The first days a wooden floor, near Columbia University, is night’s lodging.  The weather is warm. Californian avocados are offered on street corners, big as honeydew melons and tasteless. Ended up with Erinna König, Beuys Meisterschüler at the artist Arleen Schloss in Downtown in a treasure, a bed. Conveniently, a stage with a bed. Arleen spontaneously invited Beate Bartel, the Mania D bass player and me to perform. Just the two of us, bass and sax? SAMO©, who showed COLOR XEROX that evening, supported us with his band test pattern, he on the WASP synthesizer, all improvised.

 

 

 

The next day SAMO© and I start inventing music in Arleen`s bathroom with Michael Holman`s WASP synthesizer, the rhythm machine, the Selmer Sax, so we did not disturb our hostess. After the opening of the Beuys Retrospective in the Guggenheim, Erinna left, Jean and I shared the chamber. Portrait fall 1979 by  ©Gerard Pas, London, Canada.

 

 

 

 my diary, „You are my slumber. Wait for Jean“ he recorded our invented music, disappeared to play it to his friends, came back quickly, sometimes hours later.

Leaving NYC with Fredy Laker`s Skytrain, a DC-10, they crashed more often back then, he wrote in my coffer so that he would always be with me. Had to swear to come back soon. I didn’t succeed. For decades, the suitcase had disappeared, rediscovered, I realized that SAMO©, the homeless, who looked like a tenth grader, was Jean Michel Basquiat who painted two years later the SAMO© ESTA EN ALGO diptyc with a heart and a cross, catholic symbols for love and pain.

 

 

 

Why Spanish? An answer offers

                                Dr. Kellie Jones. „Lost in Translation“ Catalogue Brooklyn Museum 2005, p. 171