Monologue spoken by the german voice of Al Pacino for the installation „Doch es kam alles anders“, summer 2003:
I always wanted to be the man who gives the bar to people on the ski lift. Along with Clint Eastwood, that was the most manly thing I could imagine as a child. Tanned, wheather beaten faces, always a cigarette dangling from the corner of their mouths, and as silent as the mountains. Hemingway was a chatty tourist in comparison. In addition, the ones at the mountain stations also had these narrow little wooden huts, where it was warm inside and they probably read porno magazines, while a snow storm raged around the cross at the top of the mountain. If it was sunny, they lounged around in a wooden chair rammed into the snow in front of the hut. A transistor radio at their side, fashionably crooning away with pop music. They wore reflecting sunglasses. If I were a girl, I would have thrown myself at the feet of these lifeguards of the mountains as soon as I let go of the bar. They were my idols. While other children dreamed of becoming astronauts, rock-stars or secret agents, I wanted to be the man giving the bar to the people on the ski lift my whole life long. As it soon became apparent, this goal of life only elicited laughter or the shake of a head, but I didn’t care. Right after finishing school, I would have entered the profession and borne all scorn like a martyr and dedicated my life to coolness. Ski lift bar attendants are the lone watchmen of the temple of cockiness. Not even the snappy ski instructors could hold up to them. While these tourist floozies went prettily down the slope in little arches along with dentists’ wives or teenie groups on ski course, the ski lift bar attendant waited for his hour to come. He had time. When the day was over, and the colorful overalls had disappeared from the slopes, and the Alpine birds were left to themselves again, his last Muratti went out hissing in the snow. He was now the originator of every noise. Aside from him, there was silence. The night was no longer far away. A last glance at the skilift that was now a lifeless part of the twilight. The bars twitched like skeletons hung up in the electrically charged air. Then he buckled on his skis and cut through the snow that the cold had made hard and harsh again. He disappeared into the mist slowly rising up from the valley. Or into a mountain cabin, where there was dry-cured beef to eat and schnapps to drink. Later there was sex there, too, with the female ski instructors with muscular thighs. In beds that were soft and warm. Have I already said that I always went skiing alone as a child and had a lot of time for dreaming? I was prepared for an honest, simple life. Yet it all turned out differently. First the self-service lifts were introduced, then the snowboarders appeared. And I learned how it feels, when nothing will ever be the same again as it used to be.
© Markus Rottmann Josefstrasse 47, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland |
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