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Berlin

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Berlin

Article

Berlin is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between July 08, 2024 and January 08, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “People are talking about Berlin and I’m tempted to say that this bar reminds me of Berlin”; “I’ve only been to raves sober, only in Berlin, only with my sister”; “when I was 21 and an intern in Berlin who kept getting scammed out of apartments”. It most often appears alongside New York, KGB, Annabel Boardman.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 6
  • Issue count: 6
  • First seen: July 08, 2024
  • Last seen: January 08, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

COLLECTED AGENDA #5
July 08, 2024 · Original source
After, I’m walking to The River (closed, private event) and then I’m walking to Time Again for the afterparty for SARA’S and also for two other galleries, although I’m not sure which ones. Time Again is packed and it’s illuminated red inside and I can see sardines on baguette being piled high on the counter, but when I order the sardines and a paloma I am told the kitchen is closed. That’s ok. I’ve never been here before and I like it. I’m sitting outside on a stool that it clearly made to hold drinks and not people. Someone brings me a chair, and so then I’m sitting in the chair. People are talking about Berlin and I’m tempted to say that this bar reminds me of Berlin but I don’t because it’s annoying, and also because I don’t know if that’s really true. I never really miss Berlin, but I do sometimes miss being alone in a city that is sprawling.
Inline links: The River, Time Again
Indulging in the Eschaton
October 28, 2024 · Original source
There’s a lucidity in both films that I appreciate. Raving is lucid in many senses, more so than the realms of nightlife I typically frequent. More explicit in its transgression but less explicit in its hedonism, maybe? I’ve only been to raves sober, only in Berlin, only with my sister or more often alone, and I remember those nights very clearly. Buildings like mazes and whimsical gardens and a recollection of those evenings as all very wholesome, even though the contents of the parties were explicitly, not. Regardless, that was Berlin, and when I ask Michelle Lhooq if she sees a nihilism in raving she says that yes, a bit, in places like Berlin and New York, but not really in Asia - where rebellion and novelty and stories of tradition and folklore and myth in the art of it all, gives life to something profoundly optimistic.
Playing With Glass
November 05, 2024 · Original source
From 7pm at Reena Spaulings — Calla Henkel celebrates the New York launch of her new novel Scrap, with a reading and conversation with Whitney Malllett. When I was 21 and an intern in Berlin who kept getting scammed out of apartments, a nice lady took me in and gave me a copy of Henkel’s last book Other People’s Clothes. This ended up being a slightly ominous gift given the plot of the novel, but my Berlin host was genuinely lovely, and I adored this book and read it many times. Very excited for Scrap!
Inline links: Reena Spaulings, Calla Henkel, Scrap, Whitney Malllett, Other People’s Clothes.
January continues
January 19, 2025 · Original source
David and I go to Estela for dinner. It’s our anniversary. He tells me not to say anything online about it. Private life should stay private, he says, but I’m writing it anyway. Estela is nice. It’s the sister restaurant of Altro Paradiso. My friend, Madelyn works there. Estela is smaller, cozier, you have to buzz to get into the building and then it’s up some steps, it feels like you’re in an apartment, it feels like you’re in Berlin. I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but I imagine it feels a bit like Copenhagen, too. “I like more old timey restaurants,” David says. “Me too,” I say. “But sometimes isn’t it nice to be in a restaurant that feels like Copenhagen? David agrees. He’s never been to Copenhagen either. Altro Paradiso is brightly lit, whereas Estela is dim. Stella - Latin for Star. Etc. The distinction feels a little obvious, but then, I’m being a little particular. Estela is small plates. Romantic. You can tell because you have to buzz the door to get in, and because the lighting is really dark. They put us in a little alcove by the shelves and shelves of wine. We order iberico ham, bread and butter, endive salad, crab with celery root (the best dish), squid ink fried rice with little bits of squid, steak with elderberry sauce. I order a Tito's martini, but I’m told they don’t serve Titos here. I’m told they have one martini with vodka that “tastes like smirnoff” ($22) and another with vodka that’s way better and far preferable (paraphrased) ($30). Our waitress is peppy. “We’ll take the Smirnoff,” David says. “She’s nice,” I say, later. “Domineering,” David says. Later, the waitress rolls her eyes a little when she asks me how my martini is. She smiles when I say good. I believe she is sincere in her hope that I’m happy as I guzzle up the fruits of my lowbrow taste. It really is a lovely meal. I don’t mean to be cynical. I tell David he should tell them it’s our anniversary so we can have something free, and he tells them “it’s our anniversary, can we have dessert on the house.” Then, I’m embarrassed, but they bring us dessert (with a price) and champagne (on the house). Tuesday, January 14 I’ve been working on maintaining constant motion. “An object in motion will stay in motion,” I’ve been telling anyone that will listen. I walk in place all day, and then I walk through Washington Square Park at night, freezing. I make sure to do an extra lap to circle under the arch, all sparkling and illuminated and icy. I’m thirty minutes late to the Post-Doomerism talk at Gonzo’s, and this feels like an important one to me because I used to base my entire framework of thought around mitigating dread through a surrender to the inevitability of fates worse than death. It’s a terrible way to view the world - juvenile if nothing else, but also aesthetically and morally barren, limiting, a nihilistic obsession with the present does lead to destruction (yourself and others), no matter how many delusions you harbor about enlightenment, and about time and therefore preservation as false constructs. You can’t be nihilistic if you believe in good and evil, and I do believe in good and evil, so it was never going to hold up. Post Doomerism The lecture is just starting when I exit the elevator. The talk is between Chris Small (founder of Amazon Labor Union), PradaHorseShoe (founder of Russian Cosmism Circle NYC), Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll Podcast), and Geo Yankey (Comedian) “Russian Cosmists think that Marx doesn't take it far enough,” Amana explains. “Marxism wants to abolish capitalism, religion, the family…. but what about abolishing the OG bummer - death.” The point of the talk seems to be to present a sort of leftist vision of tech accelerationism. Capitalist Realism, the parts of the industrial revolution deemed actually good, nuclear fusion (clean and limitless energy which imitates the sun) instead of nuclear fission, fossil fuels , etc etc etc. The audience, on the other hand, is mostly composed of people I recognize from other downtown events - this one taking on an uncharacteristic and somewhat academic sincerity. “Hypothetically, heat death could occur before we run out of fuel,” a girl sitting next to me murmurs at one point, evidently at least somewhat convinced by technology’s capacity for limitless good. I try to conjure a sense of what she’s imagining in my mind's eye - create enough clean energy, and you could be driving your car one day when the whole universe just implodes. This isn’t aspirational to me. Longevity even, has never been particularly aspirational to me, although increasingly moreso, I’m increasingly less cynical. I appreciate the sincerity of the lecture. I appreciate some of the ideas they put forward, too. It’s an irony-pilled audience and they're sitting in a deeply earnest room. I slip out during the Q&A - overwhelmed, honestly, and I’m late to another function. I’m handed a gin and tonic in the Lower East Side. I’m talking about the Russian Cosmism lecture. “Lenin tried that and 20 million people died,” I am told. “I don’t really know enough,” I say. I’m sent a documentary about The Tyranny of Scientism. I order some things like the books by Nick Zurnig and Mark Fisher. It’s good to be objective. The night slips onward. It’s rude to talk about accelerationism at a party. Wednesday, January 16 It's slightly warmer in New York today. It's still cold, but it's less frigid, I'm walking through Soho typing, I'm walking to Equinox, I'll finish writing this on the treadmill, I had such a fun night last night although I do feel terribly guilty about squandering my health and my beauty and my soul every time I get drunk. I was such a good drunk, though. I adore my friends so deeply. I adore my new friends. I think they are my best friends. I’m trying not to quantify everything. There are names of people I love spinning through my mind, now. Why order things. Some people exhaust me, and then there are other people who don’t. I’ve found new friends who live artfully while occupying a natural state that is absorbed with the physical world, recently. How lucky for me. I don’t want to use my volatility as a bludgeon with which to bend people to my whims. Good thing I don’t feel particularly volatile this week. It’s best to consider these while outside of them. Objective introspection: am I doing a good job? WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Gofundme + LA Fire Resources here. Sunday, January 19 From 6pm - midnight at EARTH — Jordan Castro and Cluny present SILENCE. An evening of silence. No speaking, no phones.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XxFb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F59a8c887-c1bc-4090-9568-92185cc4e0c1_1412x1420.png, Amazon Labor Union, PradaHorseShoe, Russian Cosmism Circle NYC, Doomscroll Podcast, Geo Yankey, Capitalist Realism, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kDE6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7220533-39ee-4944-a185-b7983b1500e9_1600x1066.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!abSY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb12cd88-f058-4032-ba7f-a91514034d33_1600x1066.jpeg, here, EARTH, Jordan Castro, Cluny
Summer Break
July 15, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, July 7 On the upper west side there are big french windows. green branches outside and you can’t see the street. There is a gray townhouse across the way, marble framing, air conditioning in the attic. I have crashed here before. I have been to the central park zoo. I have whispered on the whisper bench. I took cigarettes from the apartment before I left. I moved to Berlin once. I came back and I came here. I got a job at a gallery. I was given a life the next winter. There was a life before. I am not vindictive at all. I am waiting for a collapse that has not come. 12.23.24 - Today; a crisp clear morning of ice and snow and dreamy clarity at home. I haven't felt this at peace in the country in so long, I haven't felt able to access this place in forever. Now, something shifts. 12.28.24 - The idea being of course, that once you realize the shortness of the time you have, you become paralyzed of wasting it. 1.17.25 - After I floated through the kitchen for a while I remarked, oh this is a lazy morning. You consider jumping around with your soulmate all day lazy?, I was asked. 1.21.25 - I screamed my lifemylifemylifemylife too and then I put a towel in my mouth in the bathroom and I bit down hard. 1.26.25 - we talk about values — which we mostly share I went to Fanelli Cafe The Roxy Hotel and The Party and then who knows. I took a North Face backpack all about town. I took a Prada purse. I took a call. I took a meeting. I took beet juice at lunch. I took water with dinner. I forgot how to write. Artificial Intelligence remembered how to tell me about psychosis. Artificial Intelligence remembered how to affirm. I remembered my humility. I remembered how to recite advice. It is not that things are good. Where is my spiral? I have been checking my notes. If all adds up, then there should have been some spiral. It’s spiraling all around me. I wrote a letter. I didn’t tell everyone. There is nothing really left to write. The end was not so much the artistic sort of thing. I am still still still. I have heard the news. I have heard the latest. Split screen. Split personality. I used to write it like performance art. It is insane, at a certain point, to insist it is performance art. Queen of the Fairies, the signs say in Bushwick. They're talking on the phone on the street and so they seem schizophrenic, my dad says in Bushwick. Schizophrenic is not always as it seems, I am smirking in Bushwick. No one is laughing. Everyone is graceful. I keep on ruining the vibe. I was told once that I thought that I was something like Mother Theresa. You write like this and so you ruin what is sacred. Some things are sacred. Artificial Intelligence cut me off. Artificial Intelligence caught a whiff of my vibe. Tuesday, July 8 There is a fire by the ocean and gray gray gray dusk and I had wine against my own best interest. I thought I would say, here is what I recall. I recall nothing. There is so much I could distinguish from the wreck of it all. I'm ok but you are not so in this world today, Iris is saying on the beach. I recall we went to The Folly. I closed the door in the bathroom up the stairs. I ate Chicken and Rice, Joe's Pizza, Springbone Kitchen, Two Martinis. Throw the butter from the fridge in the trash because it really smells like rot. I was not always convinced that everything was about to rot, but I was always pretty sure about the butter. It all becomes a bit trite in writing. Not in recollection. I wish I could recall so much of anything at all. What are your favorite furniture items in memory, my dad asks Iris after the beach. Iris says a yellow ottoman. My dad lights a fire. My dad is on StreetEasy. I'm on that artificial intelligence wave in a big way. You can tell I've developed the habit because I sound abruptly so much stupider. You can tell I have little ground to stand on because, absence, no memory, relinquish nostalgia and I have nothing to say. I liked the little wooden chairs by the fire in Massachusetts. I like my map of Buzzards Bay. I liked the wooden table at a house surrounded by all that green. I did first like the Bacchus mask in New York, though I am learning to be cautious with symbolism and the thing of what you may conjure. My dad liked the bed he built into his cabin. There are people who build cabins. There are people whose whims don't dictate their attacks. There are people who are just one person all at once. The dog chased the coyote up the beach and I chased the crab apple path up towards the house and there is a paisley blanket and an oil painting of a woman in a long pleat white dress and a black hat with a black bow and a small child with his hand clutched in hers. Wednesday, July 9 Lying on the speckled blue sheets under a canopy of white veil thinking about how I’m going to get the fuck back to the city. Thinking about where I am going to live. I am going to need to pull a lot of favors. I will not be listless. Wander around my all new neighborhood in a daze of self abandon. Abandon limbo. It will be interesting to see what happens when I abandon limbo. I suspect that it'll be nothing good. Were you so addicted to the chaos? Iris asks me. Will you need to manufacture new situations to respond to? It’s just that, reckless abandon doesn't really bother me, I say. It’s not so much that this is necessarily what I crave. There is a music box and I am noticing my initials on the inside. There are mussels in coconut milk and bluefish on the porch and I was quiet quiet quiet today, though I get the sense that suddenly all around me, it is beginning to happen fast fast fast. Thursday, July 10 I stopped with all the quiet and then I regretted it in an instant. There are gray walls like paper maché and a white wooden canopy bed frame and a toy boat all tan and teal green propped up on the bookshelf. You have been lying in every bed in the house, Iris said. Rotate them like musical chairs. I was not so sure where I should land. I was lying on a yellow bedspread, then. Dusk, then. The curtains were drawn but they were light and sheer and easy to imagine what was just on the other side. Friday, July 11 New York is pulsing pulsing pulsing summer and I am glad to be back even just, to do little with it. Dinner at Lure Fishbar which is lovely and a clarity summit on the terrace which is less rotten in its final days, smog over the railing and the lights are blinking on and off in dusk haze across the river and then, everyone leaves. I leave too. Bring drinks in plastic bottles to the bar. Starting my days earlier and ending them later. There will be other things. I could handwrite it next time. I could use lugger.com or the nice neighbor from May or the generosity from others that I worry I do not return or deserve to move the couch. So, nothing ever happens. Stay up until seven in the morning and then it's taking down the fir wreaths because those are becoming a fire hazard too. Taking down the buoy and the copper pot because those are coming with me. The terrace has become all clogged with cigarettes and I notice it only now, plastic tarnished wood and the cracks are all stuffed with tar and rainwater and dead branches. So, I could do yard work I suppose. Or, I could just leave. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, July 15 From 8pm - 12pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — a one night only reading of an AI generated play trained on all Matthew Gasda’s plays. Error 404: Play Not Found. Tickets are free but donations are encouraged. - “This will be done with ample drinking and unseriousness--but the experiment may also be interesting on a philosophical level.”
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-s02!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa0eebadf-a2d7-4370-aa2c-ff5b1e6112ba_756x424.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5VsE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa28d040d-b3a0-4770-82bd-6e231622df77_632x410.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UYwU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F46ea23c2-0020-4017-9cf8-fb844593afb0_1536x2048.jpeg, The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, Error 404: Play Not Found
Lost Week
January 08, 2026 · Original source
WHAT I DID Monday, December 22 Where do your turtles go in the winter, Zoe asked me, a few nights ago. The pond is made of running water, I said. It doesn’t freeze over, and the turtles just stay put. Zoe leaned forward, then, and told me, in a low voice, not to be affected by the temper tantrums of others. I nodded. I said something about the wind. There’s just been something manic in the wind is all, I said. Zoe nodded. Bright winter light reflecting off the turtle pond like a beam this morning. No natural light in the apartment, and no one really left in the city at this point in the winter, but the courtyard is shimmering shimmering shimmering. Longest night of the year. Early morning. Packing up my bags and then I’ll leave for a while, or at least for one week. The other girls at dinner a few nights ago were talking about the things that necessitate passivity, and the things that necessitate action. I’m thinking of moving to LA and getting super into my career, one of the girls was saying. What sort of career? Creative director. I’ve been getting super into my career right here, one of the other girls chirped. A career is a really important thing for a woman to have, her friend deadpanned. The first girl looked surprised. That was so backhanded. She said. You know I don’t actually want one of those. That was so mean. I think that was the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me. After dinner, I went back to my apartment and I stayed there for a while. For a few days actually, which I have never done before and never will again but the stories were flowing like water and I was drifting in and out of dreams where everyone was yelling around me. The apartment was empty and pale and I could see small objects fluttering slightly from the wind through the open windows every time I opened my eyes. The time passed quickly, like nothing at all, and now it is dusk and a full Winter Solstice cycle later. It’s not that I’ve ever been truly manic, or really even bored. It’s just that I found it easy to stay put, for once. There’s no snow on the walk to Caffe Reggio, but the streets are still white with cold. The order here is veggie soup with grilled chicken chopped up and placed at the bottom of a thick white ceramic cup, a neopolitan pastry, coffee with milk. The cafe is warm and full of cheer even though we are at the top of the Lost Week Of The Year. The goal now is to practice being quiet more. The goal is to distinguish between miracles and curses. There are no curses on the Amtrak to Boston this year, though the light is kind of melancholy and the station is less full than I remember it. I get on the wrong train first, and then it’s eerie and first class all the way down. On the right train, pulling out of New York, there are flames like eternal torches burning outside the factories. and underneath the bridges. Listening to Morrissey and George Martin to remind myself of things that are beautiful. The ride is quick and quiet. No strange women throwing themselves at the side of the carriage. No thieves in New Haven, though I’m pretty sure train heists don’t happen anymore and haven’t for a while. Nobody yells or seems particularly cognizant of their surroundings, least of all of me. Last Christmas, it was chaos all the way to Massachusetts. In the dining car, a man is talking about Snow Days. He can’t help but like snow days, because he likes the way they make his daughter’s face light up. Train snacks come in little packages like secrets. Tinfoil and cardboard and many layers to unwrap. It’s just a hebrew-all-beef hotdog and a white claw inside, but the ordeal of it is nice all the same. “Winter” by Johann Wofgang von Goethe is playing off the radio when I arrive. The drive from the train is dark and silent, except for Davey-the-dog jumping at the window. The old magicians were poets,” the radio is saying. “Their art was not to turn one thing into another, but to seek the hidden form of a thing and put it into words. The essence of the thought is that true creative power lies in revealing the inherent, often unseen, nature of the world through art and language,” a woman is reciting on the radio. Her voice is soft and she speaks in a thick British accent. It’s still dark outside, and pine bows are strung over the wooden rafters, along with baby lights that flicker slowly, on and off. The fields are gray and hazy and soft and sheathed in a light fog so you can still see through the window, but not very clearly. “Everyone who saw her looked away quickly,” the reader is saying, on the radio. “as if what she had could be caught by being close. For her it was only winter. Inside and out. She would carry it with her, wherever she went.” Welcome to Night Tracks, the radio says. Where the land is covered in a blanket of snow. Tuesday, December 23 It did snow overnight. Three glass mason jars of water on the kitchen table, along with orange juice, cups of black coffee, and a lemon tart from the Concord Cheese Shop. The whole set up is glimmering in diamond and crystalline light. Everyone else is gone, for the day, and I know because I could hear them talking on their way out. Something about elevators and broken door knobs and all the horrible ways one can get trapped and then die. Someone my sister knew in a small apartment in Berlin sent the bathroom door knob tumbling out into the living room and thus sealed herself inside. Some friend of a friend got stuck in a careening elevator for hours on end, dropping up and down and lurching faster and faster between the twentieth floor and ground. She was about to make contact with the earth and splinter herself. Really, she was. It was about to happen when the elevator stopped. A fireman emerged with a master key. The friend was fine. One is aware, I could hear everyone saying as they all bundled up in winter coats, that when one dies of claustrophobia, the causation of one’s demise is directly correlated to one’s solitude. The doors slammed and in a rush of cold and morbid conversation and bright morning, everyone was gone. I’m in the woods again, after all that energy. It’s just one week all at once. It’s just ten am and there are still small snow flurries blowing off the evergreen forest. Wednesday, December 24 Christmas Eve - accounting for beautiful hours I went to the salon in the car park by the laundromat, where I used to make snow angels in the dead grass, while I waited as a child.

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