I Met You Because

I met you because I was a dreamer and I needed somebody to take on the entire world with me. True, back then our world didn’t stretch further than the woods behind your parents’ house, but soon after the training wheels would come off and there were new horizons for us to conquer. As the world got bigger, so did our dreams, but we never forgot to share them with each other. It’s so comforting to know that whenever the time comes for me to go out and kick the world in the nuts, you are always right there beside me, rooting for me and cheering me on.

I met you because I was a rebel. I needed somebody to listen to me when I was talking about how I’m getting my belly button pierced and how I hate my parents with Mallboro light smoke rolling out of my adolescent mouth. I needed a partner in crime for sneaking out to go dancing on Saturday nights and I needed somebody to hold me when I was drinking cheap vodka out of a bottle, hanging out of a car speeding through the night and screaming from the top of my lungs. Pushing our bodies to the limit became our thing until we got a little older and  then bored with beginning every night with lying to mom and finishing it with one of us hugging the toilet. There was homework to be done and university to get in to. But hey, I’ll be the first one to say that it was fun being an irresponsible teenage monster with you!

I met you because I was ready to love somebody. I was perfectly happy going to class, jogging in the morning and keeping up with my five a day, when you poped up in my life out of the blue and was all like: “Love me now!” After initial suspicion and an unsuccessful attempt to push you away, I took your hand, closed my eyes and said “OK. Let’s do this.” I allowed myself to love you and it was the best thing ever.

I met you because I was a corpse in a green dress and didn’t even realize it. Feeling nothing became a normal state for me until you kissed me on an evening when kissing somebody was the last thing on my mind. That kiss was all I needed to see I had been missing out on the best years of my life by being in constant state of zombification. I don’t think you even realize just how much you did for me every time you were around, but it dosen’t matter. Your kiss, your touch, the way you looked at me and the way I was crazy about you brought me back to life and I was never the same.

I met you because I lost control. Maybe this sounds horribly selfish, but I needed you to be more self-destructive and more far gone, so I could see just exactly how messed up I was. You held up the best kind of mirror for me and showed me I’ve walked far, too far in fact, down a one way street. I just wish you could see the direction we were running would eventually lead us to crash head first in a brick wall and collapse without life in our fragile bodies, before it was too late for us, and also before it was too late for you.

I met you because I had to learn that even though it’s probably the hardest thing anybody ever has to do, it is as possible as it is necessary to decide one day that you are done with being sad all the time, pick up what is left of you and and start moving again.  The world doesn’t stop rocking for anybody, so you mind as well dance along to the beat or you might end up sitting through the entire party.

I met you because I had to learn that everything, even best friends for ever and I love you and I miss you, is in a constant state of flux. I had to learn that letting go is a natural part of life and changes are imminent. Sometimes goodbye really is the only way.

I met you because I had to learn that even though everything changes, some people stick around even after things are suddenly completely unfamiliar and are there with you on a long distance 2AM Skype call to talk about all the things that  shook your world to the core. Those are the people who you can hope will always be there to take your call. They are the ones you can hold on to in a world that is constantly in limbo. They are your rock. You are my rock.

How to Visit Berlin

Arrive in Berlin after you’d been on the road for the entire day, durring which you and your friends drove across the better part of continental Europe. You are done with eating Christmas food with family, you are in Berlin to party and play with friends from the German capitol.

Start with the party portion of the program as soon as you are done finding a parking spot for your car and distributing suitcases between friends’ apartments, so that you and your guests are divided equally between them and everybody has a bed to sleep in. Get drunk with your old friends. Realize you didn’t distribute the suitcases correctly just before you want to go to bed and lug your own suitcase for 15 minutes across town to the apartment you just left a half an hour ago. Don’t mind this.

Wake up the next day, a little tired from all the driving and a lot hungover from all the drinking. Decide to skip out on sightseeing your visiting friends are planing on doing, during which exciting things await them, among others, the Brandenburg Gate. Instead, have breakfast at 2PM, then sit around the living room with one of your friends and chill out like you used to when you both still lived in the same city. Start feeling like you’re on holiday.

Don’t really leave the flat for a few days. It’s cold and rainy and you only have two pairs of shoes with you: one suede and the other one leather, none of which will do when it’s raining. For New Years Eve, stay in with all your friends, hanging around the apartment, listening to music and drinking. A lot. Go out at 4AM and dance to a bad DJ set. At 6AM decide you want a proper Berlin party experience and take a cab to Berghain.

Stand in the que for about an hour and feel a little worried that you might not get in. The bouncers have a system you can’t decode, there dosen’t seem to be a direct connection with people who get a nod and a “ja” and those who are dismissed with an abrupt “nein.” Receive a nod and a “ja.” Feel relieved and ready to party.

Slowly have all your friends dissolve and leave you. Meet a designer named Timo and hang out with him. When he tells you he wants to move to London, tell him he’s crazy and he should just stay put. Also tell him he’s beautiful a few times.

Get in a taxi in the wee afternoon hours. Show the taxi driver the address in your iPhone Notepad and melt into the leather backseats of a beige Mercedes. You will be home in 15 minutes. The taxifare will be 10 euros plus a two euro tip, because the taxi driver was nice and quiet the entire time, but left the radio on a pleasantly humming volume, that was gently putting you to sleep. This will go down as the ultimate taxi experience of your entire life. Swag.

The following day, vegetate with your friend, watch Britain’s next top model B2B, hydrate, and try your darndest to stay alive.

Go for a walk around the city with your non-Berlin friends for the first time the next day. Notice how the streets are wide and how you can always see the sky, because the space above your head isn’t cluttered with buildings. Think about how breathing suddenly comes much easier. Think about all the times you couldn’t breathe in the past year, because the city felt claustrophobic.

Spend the following days drinking wine and beer and eating way too much all around town, before your friends leave Berlin for their homes. You don’t have to go yet, so you plan on hanging around for a little while longer. Move to your cousin, so you don’t overstay your welcome at your friends and also because you want to hang out with her too.

Go to the turkish supermarket the next day and buy fresh vegetables and fruit for 5 euros. Go to a nearby caffe and have mouled wine, before returning home, where you will cook dinner for your new and old Berlin friends. Start feeling incredibly sane and relaxed.

Take your time getting to know the city, because you can. Take two hour walks every day, and discover Berlin, one small piece after another. Notice how calm everybody is, and how all the sounds seem almost as if they were muffled. When an ambulance rushes by you one night as you’ll be walking home, remind yourself you haven’t heard one for days at an end.

Finally see the goddamn Brandenburg Gate.

Spend the next week working remotely from Berlin, cooking dinners and drinking wine with your Berlin friends. Bake a pie twice and feel oddly satisfied by the notion that you are enjoying things, which don’t include binge drinking.

Start walking slower, start thinking clearer. Smile at a boy in a coffee shop. Notice how your entire being feels lighter.

Go to a lot of underground clubs that play awesome techno music. You geniually love electro and you feel like you’ve found somebody who adores it just as much as you do. That someone is the city of Berlin. Dance until you can’t dance anymore, than take a disco nap on one of the couches and go dance some more. End up dancing at an after party in a field somewhere in the middle of Berlin. End up being the last on the dance floor of some Jewish techno club. End up having mimosas for brunch on a Sunday and going to Berghain again. Have the time of your life. Feel young, feel crazy, feel free. This is a story you will tell friends for many years to come; the story about the time you went to Berlin for NYE and ended up staying a month.

At some point, reluctantly get in your car on a Monday morning and drive home. Watch the city getting smaller in your rearview mirror and feel the bitter taste of all things ending in your mouth. Tell yourself you will be back soon and hope you really will be.

Wishes & Wishes

So the year is coming to an end and I have nothing to say about it. To my great disappointment that unfortunately does not mean I don’t FEEL like I SHOULD say something about it. I don’t know what it is with me, but I always need some sort of closure with everything I do. A final drink, a final hug, or in this case, a final blog post, which will say absolutely nothing of importance but it’s the nostalgic in me that needs to write the words bidding goodbye to the year that was as if I couldn’t hop into the next one without them, and it’s the narcissist in me that feels there needs to be something on my little piece of internet real-estate, which will at least ackwnoledge the fact that another one has come to an end.

If I had only one word to describe the year 2011, I think “interesting” is the word I would choose.  If I would need to pick one thing that defined it, I would choose all the people I met, worked with, loved, rolled eyes at and what-have-you else. The year 2011 was all about people.

I’ve grown a lot this year. I don’t know if it has any value if I say that about myself, as opposed to somebody else saying it, but that’s how I feel right now. Different. Changed. Lucy 2.0. I accepted some truths about people and life in general that now make things far less complicated, which I think, comes with age. I grew tired of the drama queens and decided my time and energy are too precious for those think they can bully me into doing what they want with nagging, emotional blackmail and manipulation. Again, it seems I got too old for that crap. I learned that people who push, rarely expect you to push back. I learned that people, even the ones who you think won’t, WILL change, because we’re all human, and that’s what humans  do. I learned that if you feel you’re the only one fighting for a relationship, you probably are. I’ve learned that not only I can’t count on anybody, I mean, not really, not entirely be sure they will be there for me when I’ll think it’s their duty to act a friend, but with that I’ve also learned that I don’t need anybody to be there for me as long as I will always show up for myself. I learned that despite of all what I just said, people sometimes still do surprise you and you should be careful not to be too cynical about the world around you. It really is quite beautiful, if you think about it. I feel as if I’m a bit closer to really understanding that very little in life actually matters, when you put some time between it and yourself. Good memories become just that and bad memories become experience, but no feeling is final and usually it doesn’t take more than three days to put things into some semblance of a perspective. Most things in life can be fixed, and if they can’t be, walking away and starting anew is always an option. Although I’m not sure I’ll remember all of this the next time I’ll be stressing about a phone call that will never come. I guess that’s what 2012 is for.

Last year, I had many wishes. I also had a lot of lists and people I felt I should say thank you to. This year, I have neither, because this year, I’m different. I do have hopes for the new year, I think it could be a really special one. I hope to become braver, to be less afraid of taking what I want and letting special people inside my heart. I hope to become less afraid of braking my own heart. Whether that means sticking it out, or walking away, is also a thing I don’t know yet. That’s what 2012 is for.

So this is my obligatory end of years blog post. After this point, there is only party until January the 10th, when it’s back to business. Thank you all for still being here with me on my journey to wherever the hell it is I’m going. I hope you’re having a nice time over this holiday season and I hope 2012 is kind to each and every one of you.

Happy New Year.

Love,

Lucy

xxx

Indie is Done

Music is a big part of my life, it always was. I love music  probably more than anything; I love its simple complexity, its ability to touch lives and tap on emotions but most of all I love its diversity, how a single art form enables the coexistence of a track that will make a fantastic comfort partner in cold lonely winters and one that will bring me to all sorts of ecstasy while dancing in front of the big speaker at 5 AM under the same roof. Music is great and I love music. This can mind as well go on my tombstone.

As a true blue muso (that’s the Australian word for a person who likes and knows music, one I’m not too sure how I feel about just yet), I don’t discriminate music according to genres: I (can learn to) love it all and I have accumulated enough knowledge over the years to know how to tell a good pop song from a shitty one, even though I might not like said good pop song and even though I would never grant it access to my iTunes hall of fame. My music taste is also a pretty schizophrenic one in its own right, encompassing everything from my 16 year old obsession with Thom Yorke & the Radiohead band, to the deep and dark techno mixes I like to put on when I’m working, and stretches all the way over to my online homages to Britney Spears. And if you ever try to tell me that Beyonce is anything but amazing, I will have  nothing but a skeptically raised left eyebrow and a “Say WHAT?”  ready for you.

There is one genre I’m having a hard time as of late. And I was best mates with this particular one, not so long ago too. I drove and flew over countries and oceans in pursuit of my favorite bands and when I had the chance (and later some sort of a semblance of power) I promoted them in any way I could. The genre is indie, the bands I stalked across the globe were Metric, Broken Social Scene, Death Cab for Cutie and some others. I still think that their music of then is good, don’t get me wrong. I might not listen to it 24/7 anymore, but in my book “Transatlanticism” is still one of the most perfect albums ever written and I don’t thing that will ever be different. But what’s been coming out of these new bands lately, and even out of the bands that I used to love is not transatlanticism-esque but  more like a bunch of bearded people armed with plaid and ukuleles, belching out their best attempt at twee radio-friendly tunes, aimed undoubtedly at the same type of people who read Harry Potter or watch Twilight or maybe even both. So in short, at people who have no concept of what a movie should look like, what a real book should say or what makes a good song.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t everything post Mumford&Sons sound exactly like Mumford&Sons? And feel free to jump in, but wasn’t the Mumford&Sons type music from Mumford&Sons more than enough we all needed (or could take for that matter)?

Reviewing tracks and interviewing bands for money, you wouldn’t believe the amount of crap I have to put my ears through, which eventually even led me to wonder if it’s all that bad or am I just one of those cynical people who love to dump all over other people’s art. You know the whole those who can do, those who can’t become music critics ordeal. When I’m left questioning my very own motives I usually listen to the track that left my mind boggled just by being so utterly bad and then decide it’s not me. It’s SO not me. Everything indie I come across is a mildly twangy bore-fest, that sounds like an attempt to write a song that might get licensed for a Fiat TV commercial. Inane and disposable, soulless and so goddamn sweet I can feel my teeth decomposing in my mouth by the time I give the track a third spin.

Whatever quality there was in indie, when indie became mainstream, which is an oxymoron in itself, the bar became low, and now it seems that just about anything spilling abstract guts over a broken heart or lovers apart or whatever else makes teenagers cry, passes for music when it comes to indie. I almost feel like every next song I listen to is a more vapid example of just how little essence the indie sound carries these days than the previous one.

But hey, I have good news!  Just yesterday a friend shared an album with me which is full of indie tracks with heart and which reminded me why I once loved indie to begin with. It’s a mixtape put together by the boys of MGMT, and it’s just a bunch of tracks they’re into at the moment plus some of their own recordings. It’s called Late Night Tales and it’s seriously packing some awesome tunes, so I would recommend it to anybody who is hungry for  good indie. Actually, I also recommend it to anybody who still thinks indie is not a living fossil, which much like dubstep, should just do us all a favor and die already, so you’ll know what good indie music should sound like.  And after you decide I’m right, I also have some books and movies I can recommend to you. Just holla.

So Dopey

All the Ducks are Swimming in the Water

I made another playlist of tracks I’ve listened to quite some in the week gone by. If you only go by its name, you may be inclined to believe that the name itself is, de facto, the coolest thing about the playlist. Well it’s not. And I can’t even take credit for it anyway.

To hear the playlist, click click on the rub-a-dub-ducky spotting the shades in the pool and thinking it’s the shit.

High Together.

 

The sound of Berlin.

SOON TO BE CONTINUED…

Playlist for 28.11.2011

I made a little mixtape (of the online persuasion) on which you will find some of the tunes I’ve been bobbing my head to quite a bit lately. Click on the chick with the blue headphones to check them out.

The City Of Smiles

A year ago I wrote a short story. On Thursday I was talking about it to a friend, and he asked me if he could read it. On Friday I dug the story up  from a dark corner in a far away chamber on a partition I hardly ever visit. Today I’m posting it here because while I was reading it, it reminded me vividly of a place, a person and a feeling. It also reminded me that a long time ago somebody told me I should always smile when the sun is out. When I asked ‘why,” the simple answer was ‘why not?”. 

Why not indeed.

The City of Smiles

There was a girl who one spring day moved to London from a very small, warm and green country, full of forests and lakes, that nobody in London knew by name. She came to London, because she always wanted to live in a big city, that appeared to be full of endless opportunities and colorful people, and in which vibrancy and excitement and adventure where awaiting on every corner to turn an ordinary Wednesday afternoon into one that would never be forgotten. The girl was hungry for the feeling of anything can happen at any moment, which you can only really feel if you live somewhere where everything is. This the girl was sure of.

 So one day, after she gave her mother a long hug at the airport, the longest hug she ever gave her, or anybody else for that matter, the girl got on a plane. She didn’t understand why her mother was crying, although her leaving was kind of sad in a way, when she though about it. She decided then and there not to think about it too much. The only time she would allow herself to think about home, her leaving and her mother, who was so sad that day her daughter hugged her goodbye at the airport, was at nights she couldn’t sleep, and she was cold, and it all felt so lonely. Only then she would dare to paint pretty pictures of the green country she still called home and her mothers face and the way it was bright that one day they went for a long walk together and just talked and talked about everything but nothing in particular. She would call forth images of these times she was happy and not in London, and allowed herself to be sad for a while about not being home anymore.

 When it was day, she thought about other things, for fear of being sad in daylight, because a long time ago when she was very little, her mother told her that she must always smile whenever the sun is out. Because she felt it was important to listen to her mother’s advice she smiled every day, and everybody she met in London told her she has a very beautiful smile. So she smiled to all the dreary people she passed by everyday wherever in the city she would go. She smiled at them, but nobody smiled back. Most of them didn’t even see her smiling at them, because they were walking with their stares turned to the ground, or they were preoccupied dividing big numbers with little numbers and then worrying about what was left, or were just somewhere far away in another world, and didn’t care about a girl smiling at them. They rushed by her, sometimes even pushing her out of the way if she didn’t jump to safety quick enough, and carried their black clouds and worn out faces with them wherever they went. She looked at these people and was puzzled by the way they seemed hardened by something, so much so, that sometimes it was difficult to tell if there was anything human left in them, or if they were maybe just robots, programed to get from point A to point B, in order to do X in the shortest amount of time.

 The people in London didn’t smile, no matter how bright the sun was shining on any given day. They didn’t even notice the sun, nor the rain, just as they didn’t notice the girl smiling at them.

 The girl, however confused she felt by the cold of the London people, kept on smiling, kept not thinking about her country or her mother whenever the sun was out, and was satisfied with telling herself she was the one bringing a bit of color to the streets painted in different shades of grey. She got a job, because the people that she met told her that’s what you have to do if you want to live in a great city like London. You are supposed to get a job and you have to work really hard, they said, you have to work really hard every day, until you are so tired you fall asleep on the bus ride home and miss your stop. But you must be happy to have this job that makes you so tired, because so many don’t. So she got a job and she worked hard every day and she almost never saw sunshine again, because she was at work all the time. She never fell asleep on the bus and missed her stop, because she looked out the window and smiled at all the pretty buildings and all the weary people. Sometimes, if she had a very good day, a building would smile back at her, but the people never smiled. The girl felt sadness creeping in on her, not only when it was night, but before work, on her morning comute, after work, on Saturdays and Sundays. Nowhere was safe anymore. She missed her green country and she missed her mothers face and she missed the sunshine so bad it made her want to cry sometimes.

 One day, the girl met a boy with a beautiful face. The boy smiled back at her and she forgot how much she wanted to cry. They talked, and held hands under the trees in Hyde park and he seemed so nice. After a while she found out he wasn’t nice at all, because he told her he had a wife and a baby on the way.

The girl cried for a little while and called her mother. Her mother told her not to cry and to come home. The girl said no, she would stay in London and see how it goes. Her mother ended the conversation with “I love you so much.” and hung up the phone.

 The girl went to work the next day and the day after that and again and again. She never saw the boy again and she didn’t want to. She missed the sunshine terribly, but now she never saw it, because it was winter in London, and whenever there’s winter in London, nobody sees the sunshine, because everybody is always at work and the days are too short.

 Sometimes she walked home after work, because the rent went up and she couldn’t afford the bus everyday. She didn’t smile at the people anymore, sometimes she even pushed them out of the way and curse at them if they didn’t jump away fast enough. After a while, she turned her stare to the ground, because the people didn’t smile at her, nor did the buildings, so why bother looking at them, she thought to herself. She started dressing in a black, she cut her hair and she didn’t look at anybody anymore.

 Then one day the winter was over, and she saw the sun after a very long time. On her way home from work, she walked through the park, because she wanted to see what color the tulips were. When she got there, she saw they were red, yellow and purple and she thought they were the prettiest things she saw in such a long time. She sat in the grass next to the tulips, and immersed herself in the simple perfection of the spring-born flowers in front of her. After a while she spotted a boy sitting on the other side of the tulip garden, smiling at her. She thought he looked nice and she smiled back at him. They looked at each other across the garden in which the red, yellow and purple tulips bloomed for the first time that year.

 After a while the boy asked: “Why don’t you smile? I bet you have the most beautiful smile.”

The girl got confused.

But I am smiling!” she said.

The boy laughed, and swayed his head from left to right. “No, you’re not,” he said, still showing his teeth, that were not perfectly aligned, the girl noticed. “But I really wish you would,” the boy added. “It would make my day.” 

After he said that, he stood up, picked up his backpack that way laying in the spring grass next to him and walked away, and all the girl could do was sit there, by the garden where red and yellow and purple tulips grew, and watch him as he was getting smaller, putting more and more distance between them with every step he took.

She slowly reached in her purse for the little mirror she used whenever she wanted to check her make up, never turning her eyes away from the peculiar boy who told her he wanted to see her smile. “It’s been a while since anybody said that to me.” She found the mirror, slowly pulled it out of her purse and lifted it in front of her face, leveling it with her mouth, so she could see them completely on the mirror’s reflecting surface. She held her breath in anticipation. And then smiled at the mirror.

Nothing happened. The corners of the lips remained aligned, her face kept looking stiff and serious. She tried again, and then once more, but then she just gave up, for she felt something had changed inside her for a while, and now she knew what it was.  

 She also began to understand why nobody in London ever smiled back at her. The city took everybody’s smiles and hid them away somewhere in the dark corners under a sidewalk, where the rats live and chew on their own paws. She looked at the boy leaving in the distance. He had his headphones on now and the girl began to wonder if he was listening to a happy song, or a sad one. She felt like listening to a sad song, even though the sun was up. She didn’t even notice the tulips anymore. The boy turned around to wave goodbye and he smiled at her once again. She lifted her hand and waved back and thought:” He is listening to a happy song, I can see it in his face.”

 She then laid in the grass next to the tulip garden, put her bag under her head, let the sunshine kiss her face and thought about how long it was going to take before the city would steal that boy’s beautiful smile too, and if he has a green country and a mother he misses at nights when he’s alone, and if he ever listens to sad songs on his headphones. She hoped she would see him again, but she knew she wasn’t going to. 

The Weather Is Terribly Uninspiring.

But we don’t have to be.

Something special. sexy. wonderful.