The Past is dead

(Also, April is basically summer, and I am in a bad mood already.)

Yesterday, Alex (label) and myself went to visit the main cemetery (aka "Hauptfriedhof") in Frankfurt.
 

Our initial plan was to

find the

old graves from the original SOPOR photo-sessions

from 30+ years ago, and then … well, do "something" to help "promote" the two upcoming vinyl re-releases.

Since I don't particularly like taking product shots of things (mainly because it is a mind-numbingly tedious task, but also because I feel that I have absolutely no talent for it), one of the ideas was to position the records somewhere on the graves, to hopefully get a few useable, semi-interesting photos this way.
 
But then I came to my senses, and remembered that I would only end up dropping or otherwise damaging the beautiful vinyls in the attempt to take pictures (because I am clumsy that way), so instead I suggested I would merely take a couple of short videos with my old phone of just the graves on their own, and then later think of something to do with that material.

I wasn't really in the mood to go (even though the whole thing had been my idea in the first place), because, aside from not feeling well, I knew that it would be

depressing

in one way or another and for a multitude of reasons (one being that the past is dead).
 
I even called Alex an hour before he was going to leave the house to pick me up, and cancelled our appointment. But then I was feeling guilty, because we had been talking about this for three weeks, so no ten minutes later I called him again and said:

"Urrrgh, okay … let's go after all."

We found a parking space on Rat-Beil-Straße (see ugly map below), near the entrance to the old Jewish cemetery, which I remembered to be kind of pretty (there is a youtube-video

, if you are interested). However, it was closed for some reason, and so we walked straight to the

Gruftenweg

side-entrance of the Hauptfriedhof.
 

I took out my dying phone and began filming the

arcade of vaults

...

I didn't like the cemetery. Not anymore. In fact, I kind of hated it. I mean, as a park it was nice and all, because some of the old trees were quite beautiful (plus there were birds, and squirrels, and pretty flowers, and enough shade), but the new graves were all just

HIDEOUS

. Especially the ones of the

gypsies

, which are generally just vulgar displays of bad taste.

And then there were the

joggers

!!!

 
Those sweaty idiots in their ugly leggings (or even worse: short shorts), running for their stupid lives. I cannot even stand the sight of them on good days, but having to watch these disgusting creatures on a graveyard - which is

supposed

to be a

melancholy garden of Death

- I find just plain insulting.

... but was instantly bored and said:

"This is stupid. I am not going to walk around with my phone in front of my face the whole time. Besides, everything probably looks like shit now anyway."

 
So, we (and by "we" I mean

my wonderful self

) abandoned the idea altogether and simply took a leisurely stroll like grumpy, old people instead...

All in all, I think we meandered around for maybe an hour or so, and (though more by sheer coincidence rather than any actual sense of direction) we did manage to find all the graves where the original photos had been taken. Well, all but the ONE we were

actively

looking for, which was the

three white crosses with the angel statue in the background

site from the

"ES REITEN DIE TOTEN SO SCHNELL...

" picture disc.

At first we asked two landscape-gardener-ladies about it, who were busy having a lunch-break in their dirty pick-up truck, by showing them a photo of the record. (And when I say "we", I mean I sent

Alex

to talk to them, obviously).
 
They had no clue, though, other than that it had to be somewhere in the old part of the cemetery (where we had started our stroll), but that much we knew anyway. I did hear them laughing loudly at some point, and Alex later explained that they thought the skeleton in the picture was an actual part of the grave itself.

Geeeeez

.

After that I had enough and only wanted to leave.
Once back home, I re-watched "

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD

" (1985).

When we had finished our round and were back to the historic area of the cemetery and about ready to leave, Alex, in a final attempt, went to one of the younger, all inked-up gardeners (who was working all by himself watering bushes) and asked

him

about the grave. Much to my disbelief, he pointed in the direction we had initially come from and replied:

"It's right over there!"

, and … indeed … there it was. We had walked directly past it an hour earlier and didn't even noticed it.

 
Well, no surprise, because it looked

ugly

.

 
Even Alex said that the sight was kind of depressing,

especially

when standing right in front of it. Not that the grave was neglected in any way. Quite on the contrary, someone was clearly taking care of it. It was just … well … see for yourselves: