sitting at the café as in old times. it’s friday night. i should be in bed. my throat is still sore and aching. especially in the mornings and at night 
as if someone had peeled of patches of skin. but poor jodie is working and she needs some positive vibes because even though it’s after elven the café is full of people and most of them want to eat, too.
listening to beck’s version of “everybody’s gotta learn sometimes” which is soooooo beautiful and laid back. drinking a peppermint tea. that chord change on i need your loving / like the sunshine is pure bliss and stomach cramps.
it doesn’t stop being a weird situation when you’re consciously meet a person for the first time. like today : i had a kind of a blind date. i’d never spoken to that person before, nor did we have much contact besides two short emails. and yes – these minutes in which you’re looking at each other for the first time over your latte machiato, they *are* moments of construction. because you’re just so aware that everything you’re saying, each way your looking or even *what* you’re looking at will constitute the other person’s perception of you. and be the building blocks for that little picture that s/he is making of you. i find it rather stressful, really.
that was really different when i met alice for the first time, because it felt like meeting her again, and not for the first time. anyway, today was a first time date. i showed up ten minutes too early, as usual, and waited, watching the people passing by, wondering who it might be that will slow down and stretch out the hand. and what the look in the eyes would be: surprise, recognition, disappointment?
finally someone stopped. a head shorter than me. blond hair. rather alert eyes. a couple of years younger than me.
“phil?”
“yes. tim?”
“yeah. nice to meet you.”
an awkward pause.
“so, is there any specific café you’d like to go to?”
“no, there’s one just around the corner, they have good coffee…”
he lead the way, just a couple of houses down the street.
“you’re living around here somewhere?”
“yeah, at the barbarossaplatz…”
in the café we order the same, then start talking about what we’re doing right now. i’m telling him that i’m working at the university, he’s telling me that he is just finishing becoming a teacher. sports and maths. ’sports and maths’ i’m thinking. ‘hm’. but most of what he says and how he reacts to what i’m saying is a positive surprise. then i’m telling him what i’m expecting, what i’m looking for :
“you know, i got to be honest. i don’t really want to start anything completely new. i want to take what i’ve already worked on, what i’ve built up, and modify it without really, you know, changing the sound. it’s not that i’m not open to anything new, new directions, new experiences. but this newness has to, you know, fit what’s already there…”
he’s looking at me kind of understandingly. and then he says something that makes my eyes sparkle.
“you know, i really love the sound on laura veirs’ records, the way she uses strings. long notes which you think are disharmonious and then suddenly they blend into the overall sound so beautifully…”
and that was the moment when i thought that this might be worth a shot.
then we exchange our ‘history’ as musicians, i’m telling him a little bit about the nerve bible, he’s telling me what kind of guitars he’s playing and we completely agree that it would be a great thing to get a little live set together : two guitars (plus various other instruments “in my former band” he’s saying “we also had a little toy glockenspiel…”) and play in bars and clubs.
i’m handing him a cd with some lurkers songs, and we exchange phone numbers.
i don’t know. i’ve been at this point a number of times the last years, where i met someone and a musical co-operation seemed feasible and possible, and then it was not to be. we’ll see. but when i walked back home, i was almost enthusiastic. for some reason his laura veirs remark signified a real chance because a) i’ve never before met anybody who could ‘identify’ with her sound and b) it was such a palpable and non-abstract moment in a conversation that necessarily revolved around rather inconcrete things, visions and expectations. and also i’ve been listening to veirs a lot the past weeks and i had said to myself again and again how much i love, admire and aspire that sound. so on the underground back home i listened to “cast a hook” and i wanted to jump right into this new chance and full of bliss i missed my station.
here are some notes i made last week:
on my way back home from the my sister’s wedding : the train is crowded. riding to b. took an hour longer than scheduled because there were playing children on the tracks and so we had to wait at the station until the tracks were cleared. why exactly i did not understand. i personally would have guessed that the children would realize that there’s a train approaching and jump off the tracks. and if not, let natural selection kick in!
anyway, the wedding was beautiful. well, beautiful is the wrong word. as ‘beautiful’ as a family-party can get. the weather was brilliant, though, and after the ceremony we were sitting in the garden in the sun, having coffee. but i felt restless, could hardly sleep at night and my thoughts kept revolving around the seminar and the habilitation. i had brought some books to read on the train but i was too tired at night to even look at them. so i went online (thank god for my parents’ wireless) and alice was on and so we chatted.
and the other minute when i was waiting for my lay-over standing on the platform with my bag and joni mitchell in my ear there was this line from “amelia” and looking down on everything / i crashed into his arms and i got out my cell phone because i felt like texting it to alice for no particular reason, and i looked at the screen and saw that she had texted ten minutes ago. “random <3s”. i was wearing the surrealism t-shirt she had sent me. this world. i tell you.
