Broken Artists Collective

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Over the course of two years, we talked about creating some kind of space for our little circle of creative individuals that would help us to reach more people. Turns out it's gotta be a digital space as no one can afford to rent a store or gallery (yet). So here it is: www.broken-artists.com

Starting with a tight range of photography & graphic illustration prints, custom made silver Jewellery, a local Hatmaker, and Ayurvedic Products supported by online classes, the Broken Artists Collective features the work from Momo Frei, Raphael Gurtner, Milu Hatmaker, Laura Burns and myself. Looking to be joined for other Artists in the near future we think we have something exciting going on.

Check it our here!

A Little Poem Of Love

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A blessing or a fraud,
that’s what runs the questions of my heart.

Are we long gone?
Or just beginning, where should we start?

A yellow rose or black abyss.
All confidence, a close miss.

The lips so red, the soul so tight.
It hurts the dark into starry night.

Let me sink into that abyss.
All I long for, is one last kiss.

 

Writing Journey Update

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A different current in improving writing:

The wind blows gently on my neck through the open window space behind me.

With a little bad conscience shadowing my self I had to admit I have failed regarding the goal to write everyday for 365 days. It’s a goal I’ve set for myself and myself only. Which doesn’t make it any easier to let it go.

How come? So first and foremost I love to spend some day not touching a Computer, Laptop or sometimes even take a day off my phone. It gives me a certain calm of mind and mostly a push of creativity through resting and recovering. Does that mean I don’t write anything? Mostly not. As much as the idea of putting something out there everyday appeals to me, it simply doesn’t resonate in reality. At least not in this phase of my being. I felt a certain burden over me at some days.

When I’m interested in something I wanna start to engage in it. Being interested in different kinds of Art, Photography being my first and foremost passion, I learned to reach out to people who are way more experienced and ask them for advice. Which, in terms of writing, is an opportunity I already got granted with talking to my friend and Author Daniel Allison.

Daniel is an incredible Storyteller and Writer. He was kind and offered me his support on this journey. When we sat down, having Coffee, we spoke about the process of writing. He helped me question my writing style and more importantly how to actually find my style in writing.

One of his suggestions was to think about what I want to say, to give my poems and stories some kind of place to go. Which I find is something quite hard for me to do. It is easy to start somewhere. There is always an idea popping up somewhere in the mists of my monkey mind. As thoughts flow it feels easy to write them down, arrange the words in a sense that it sounds appealing, but very hard to drive them to a certain destination.

Another recommendation of his was that I might wanna try to write longer pieces.

As with recommendations, you always have the option to adopt or repudiate. Coming at it with an open mind and, of course, appreciative of any help, I didn’t do neither but rather kept on writing while contemplating this thoughts on either I should adopt or dismiss. Don’t get me wrong, the thought of dismissal is in no way a disdain of Daniel’s advices. It simple stirred the thought that maybe, I wasn’t going for longer stories. I love to write short poems. Random words assembled by whatever comes to my through some higher consciousness. And who knows, maybe they don’t have to have a certain destination in means of an ending in each of them. I do see them more as a puzzle forming a bigger picture that will end up eventually as something whole. But the thing is, you can’t force them. They will come up when they feel like.

Neither the less, what I really found interesting in writing every day is that, to my surprise, something always popped up. Which is fascinating. I’m by no means a religious person. Only maybe if you count all kinds of Spiritualism as religious endeavor. But as I went through my morning routine, waking up, making Coffee, reading whatever Book I’m reading at the moment, always after meditating words just seemed to trickle down from the “heavens” for the lack of a better word.

So why did I fail after 32 days of swimming in heavens creative swamp? Because I wanna take Daniel’s advice and build some longer pieces through, gathered through some days before I post them on this lovely Website (referring to Substack). So I won’t stop writing everyday, if something is still revealing itself everyday, but rather learn how to form and structure then post a piece once a Week. Probably on Sunday, but don’t nail my word on that.

Writing this, I already get excited to share this next progression with you all.

Follow me on Substack to read more.

Morning Strolls

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Morning Walk through a Koh Phangan Neighborhood.

Day Twenty Eight

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Maybe we’ll meet in heaven, where God and the Buddha reside and everyone speaks the same language.

Maybe we’ll meet in heaven, were we’ll bask in liberation.

A few words from heaven had rendered all the words on earth inconsequental.*

I’m taking a draw from my cigarette and watch the smoke yild towards the sky, when all or a sudden it all comes to me.

All of what we percieve of as heaven is right here. Don’t you see?

Earth is already the place where God & the Buddha speak the same language.

It’s witnessed in life and translated in books.

We just have to open the door when we hear the knock.

*quote: Mitch Albom - Phone Call From Heaven

Week One

Why is it, that when we are sad depressed or mad we often turn away from the ones that are close?

But I feel also vulnerable sharing this with you as there is no disguise in poetry this time. Even tough some of us we never even met.

Thoughts of I tried so hard and got so far but in the end… - you heard this one, right? - are occupying my mind that is on a racetrack today. World speed record and the breaks went off.

But writing has this thing. Like talking I suppose, which I’m not very good at. A power that is liberating. A force of it’s own.

But why am I doing this? Of course, the writing thing basically and foremost to improve myself in the craft and to keep the creative juices flowing. It’s interesting also observing what ever pops up in this monkey mind of mine.

How do we get influenced by the thing we eat. Literally and Metaphorically. There’s a thin line between being influenced by things we won’t ever need only because it gets lingered in our mind, by advertising and the people behind that see the big green, and being creatively inspired by, let’s say reading a poem of watching a good movie.

As I’m only one week in this experiment of mine, I found myself provoked by a lot of essential questions I was never really faced with before on a deeper level. For one: Why publish that thing on this particular Website? Why not only keep it in my journal? Especially me, the ranting boy that’s always suspicious of everything coming out of Social Media. Don’t worry, I’m certainly not going into the discussion of Social Media. This one everybody has to figure out themselves on how to find a “healthy” way consuming it, if there even is one. But still here I am. Writing this little essay and probably will put it out on a Social Media link with the hope in the back of my head of evoking a conversation or even inspire someone at the best.

Then also why worry about it so much? If you don’t like it you don’t have to read it. With sending a link out to my Instagram Story I’m not forcing anyone to being interested in the things I do or write. Or am I?

But back to that beginning question of why most of us are more comfortable in spilling their guts to an anonymous audience than sharing our deepest thoughts with the ones we love. Well it seems pretty easy to answer after a little meditation on it. To me at least. While some people obviously can’t open themselves to an audience of strangers it seems like I’m quite more comfortable in throwing something at an audience which I will not have to explain myself afterwards because most likely, I’ll never see them again or didn’t even meet in the first place. Strange right? Realizing this is making me wanting to work on that.

And while I’ll be enhancing this aspect of my being, I will probably still be writing stuff and putting it out into the void that is the internet. Maybe one or two being will fly by on their flying Saucers and stop for a brief Coffee to read and reflect on those questions asked but only halfway answered.

This is the part of my writing experience which I feel like it’s all crap that I’m writing so I better press that “save & publish” button before I delete it all. At the end of the day the deal is just to write everyday, whatever comes to mind. Right?

Happy Sunday.

365 Days.

So this is it, the new year.

I made myself clear, I set my goal;

To write everyday from all of my heart and my soul.

Sunday Thoughts.

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I took a two cups of fairly strong coffee to get my system going. 

Not to make my mind race at all but it has this calming feeling of sparkling the creativity which helps me write down my inner most feelings.

A Sunday morning, my lover’s gone.

All quiet around me while the clouds overcast the sun so that hot summer day feels like beginning of the  autumn harvest season.

Fall always brings out reflection, then closure and yielding.

I feel young, sometimes childish. Yet I know my youth lays behind me.

Somedays the body aches and the soul is torn.

But, like in buddhism, if I try to look at the world with childish eyes, non judgmental and endless curiosity there’s proof that age don’t matter.

Besides, what’s more rewarding; being a careless child or a rebellious teen with not a care in the world doing unconscious decisions or having that awareness we ought to gain with age?

Both have its pros and cons in a philosophical way. What matters is the perception of it and how to not get drowned in the everyday mental chatters of our surroundings and within our brains. 

So I write myself a little postcard, a remainder that the child, the punkish’ teen and the buddha all live in me. 

They belong together. It’s what forms our personalities. 

I give them a hug and open my eyes. The kid want’s to play now.

Random Thought on The Human Condition

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What is the heart of the human condition?

I mean, what is it that drives us out of bed each morning.

That source energy that pushes us through the day. Through life.

But also the one that keeps us from going for our dreams. Or even out of the house on a mundane Sunday.

It’s complex, I think. Not sure. So that makes it that.

Can we operate it with certain behaviors, or let’s say, non-behaviors?

By nourishing our bodies and our spirits?

By keeping our minds clean. Out blood cells flowed?

Is to move ourselves the magic trick to keep everything else in flow as well?

Old Coffee & Leftover Cake

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There is certainly something about old Coffee and leftover Cake. A Nostalgia if you want so. In the recent memories storage of the brain I guess it awakes in us feelings of yesterday. A nice Sunday when Pots of Coffee where brewed while the scent of your girlfriends freshly baked pie covers the air. A cozy feeling of love and harmony. 

Or maybe it digs even deeper. To childhood. When Mom baked a Pie for a special occasion. May it be a family reunion, a birthday, or simply because she felt like making a regular day special while she reheats her cup of Coffee over and over again in the microwave.

Then the happy surprise when, the next day, you realize nobody there’s still a piece of pie left! What a way to start the day with pie for breakfast isn’t it!

As I reheat the leftover cup of Coffee and turn on the oven to warm the last piece of pie a warm feeling fills my body. A feeling of joy and good memories. It’s fantastic what food can do to us besides nurturing us obviously. 

So let’s be more like Coffee and Pie. Let’s live a life of love and harmony.

Peace, and enjoy that pie.

To those who might concern:

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Today I got to read a Substack article written by the great Brandon Boyd concerning his thoughts on thinking. The article revolved around the human brain, asking the question of how much of our thoughts we really own when we really go into ourselves and shut off the noise of everyday life. The question then was raised “What do yo think?”.

So while your asking you shall get an insight:


We are all products of our environment. Mostly despised, or at least not obviously relevant to the greater good of mass humanity. But every once in a while an individual is emerging. He, too, a product of his collected memories, thoughts and influences impacted by his life experience and chosen environment, none the less manages to impact a “new” so to speak generation. It seems he bundled his collected projections and is able to convert them into a new creative force. Then sending, spitting and blasting it out into the greater collective forming a new offspring for them to soak in as part of their existence. I think, what touches, influences us the most is what we absorb and review as “new”. Something we never saw, heard or tasted in a same way that this new delivers. Merely a compromised quantum of pre-existing creative tentacles, summarized so simple for us to digest easily enough that this new creative force is able to create new form and evolution in this abstraction of time and space.


So what do YOU think?

Café Hommage: Ma Chambre Noire (Lukas Bühlmann)

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The craft of creating a Photograph, from choosing the right Film, getting your setting right, finding the light, waiting for a moment to unfold itself, developing the negativ, ends with the precise work in the darkroom. The work in the darkroom itself is a mastery. One of those masters is Lukas Bühlmann.

Balancing his job as a Teacher for children with special needs and being a Dad of (soon to be) two Kids, it’s not always easy to pursue a time consuming hobby as Photography.

Lukas is a humbling guy with a lot of patience. You can tell he’s passionate about what he’s doing.

His body of work “On & Above”, which captures a sense of loneliness in rather depressed moments of last years lockdown, can be seen at the La Buvette until the end of January. Of course every one of his pictures is printed in his own darkoom. For the final artistic approach he used 50 year old printing paper to give it that moody look on print.

Go see his “On & Above” work HERE until the end of January 2023.

And make sure you check out more of his work in his Instagram page here.

If only I could write.

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If I could write,

I would write a story.

If I could write,

I would write a story of a world being safe.

If I could write,

I would write the story of a white man being black.

If I could write,

I would write a story of a woman being a man.

If I could write,

I would write a story where ethnics or race or gender don’t matter.

If I could write,

I would write a story where we’re all in synchronicity with nature.

If I could write,

I would write a story where we all let us being guided by the power of choice the universe has to offer.

If I could write,

I would write my story.

If I could write,

I would write your story too.

If I could write, If only I could write.