Sunday, March 18, 2012

Right... what was I thinking?

My latest video, the next in my increasingly popular “Surviving Germany” series, is about talking on the phone; and it may surprise you to know that there was three minutes’ worth of material in that idea. It certainly surprised me.

It’s the end credit sequence that I don’t understand, and I wrote the screenplay. In case you’re one of those who always bail as soon as the credits roll (and then comment to ask where I got the music), after the actual credits my “Surviving Germany” videos have a silent cameo scene. This is in fact because if I were to let the credits roll throughout the whole of the music, they’d roll hypnotically slowly.

This one, as I said, mystifies even me. I could think of nothing better than to have myself standing in the middle of nowhere with a mobile phone. The “middle of nowhere” is represented by signposts pointing to “Grossgüllen” and “Kleingüllen” and giving impossible distances. If I may be pretentious for just a moment, this is a reference to Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit (in German, Der Besuch der alten Dame), set in the fictional town of Güllen. The name Güllen, in turn, is derived from the German word for liquid manure.

But that’s about it, really. That is honestly as far as I got with the thinking for that little scene, and I simply don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. See for yourself.

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