Everything is getting worse and worse, it's worse than ever before, such bad times, it's almost unbearable. That or something similar can be heard from every nook and cranny. And times are bad, no doubt about it, but have they ever really been better? Isn't it rather the case that the whole mess repeats itself over and over again? In faster circles perhaps, but basically always the same? And do we perhaps simply lack the broad perspective to recognise these constantly whirling circles of chaos as such and then perhaps finally change their trajectory or even interrupt their gyrations?
Literature can often help here, and even more often music. In our particular case, Kurt Tucholsky's thoughts on the course of time and melodies that Robert Stadlober has captured from the chaos of circles and superimposed on Tucholsky's reflections, which are already over a hundred years old. It is about the impossibilities of human interaction. In matters of love as well as in matters of hate, about the senselessness of violence and the hopelessness of politics that seeks to communicate itself through violence. It is about the longing for a kind of real life and the perpetual struggle of the many for a small piece of the whole.
And Robert Stadlober sings, speaks and reminds us that so much has not changed since Kurt Tucholsky said: If we are not cruel, then we think we are good. Our times are certainly not really worse, but they are certainly not better either.
