be here now, here now | 14.15 km
uff, tiresome day. administrative work in the morning, then four hours of latin homework followed by the first session of my seminar, which was kind of weird. it was quite a large room, and there are ‘only’ 35 participants, but they all sat in the last two rows. the first five were completely empty. do i look as if i had the plague? am i *that* hideous?
when class was over, a package was waiting for me in the office. alice had sent me a ‘care-package’ with a t-shirt, a compilation cd and three boxes of girl scout cookies. actually i had thought that these were some kind of urban myth (like that chicks dig guys who are playing the guitar) or a died-out 60s phenomena. but apparently girl scout cookie vendors are alive and kicking!
and i almost enjoyed the packaging more than the cookies themselves, because the boxes seemed so, hm, absurd. they showed neat little brats (politically correct in all colors a skin can possibly have) with braids and uniforms and photoshop white teeth and they were laughing into the camera as if they were on drugs. i was turning the box around to see where it said: “fabricated and packed by humbert humbert inc.”
when i got home in the evening i turned on the tv and the simpsons were on and i sat by my desk and laid my head on the tabletop for just a second, just for a short second, and i awoke half an hour later from bad tv commercials. went to the gym then and now i’m all wound up. it’s full moon tonight, so i can kiss sleep good-bye as well.
alice’s cd features a wide array of not-quite-underground brilliant bands and musicians : the decemberists, arcade fire, elliot smith, ray lamontagne, tim buckley, thom yorke and patrick wolf. when the first chord of the very first song waved through the room (“here i dreamed i was an architect” by the decemberists) i literally said aloud to my empty apartment : “wow! what a *great* sound!”
and i recall in spring the perfume that the air would bring…
most of the songs are planting restlessness into my heart. pushing me, dragging me, whispering into my ear : go ahead, jump, run, what are you waiting for? you think you’re getting any younger? do it you know what is right you know what feels right you know what is important you know that *we* are important that we are the only thing that matters. how many songs have you have left unfinished? abandoned. you know we won’t be leaving. we will be always here, reminding you of all the things you were not brave enough to do. do it now : gather people around you, be part of it again, the smoke filled hours in lightless, low ceiling cellars with black amplifiers and black guitar cases and friends that throw drum sticks at each other and later drive you home silently, listening to the only thing that matters.
it makes me mad, it gives me headache and heartache and allbodyache and i know that i will sit tomorrow in a stuffy room again, conjugating verbs and declining nouns whose meanings have escaped my mind while the songs pass by outside like the beautiful last summer day of your childhood that you waste inside and that will not return, and you know you will regret this for the rest of your life. i’m so fucking scared i will regret my life for the rest of my life. i’m a bloody coward. but i just don’t have the guts to risk it all.
Don’t let your mind get weary and confused
Your will be still, don’t try
Don’t let your heart get heavy child
Inside you there’s a strength that lies
Don’t let your soul get lonely child
It’s only time, it will go by
Don’t look for love in faces, places
It’s in you, that’s where you’ll find kindness
B e h e r e n o w , h e r e n o w
Don’t lose your faith in me
And I will try not to lose faith in you
Don’t put your trust in walls
‘Cause walls will only crush you when they fall
B e h e r e n o w , h e r e n o w
