So after I returned to Berlin from a beautiful and rest-filled respite back home, a sudden depression hit me. The initial high wore off and I felt incredibly alone. Remembering the mindset I have to have here of being an island, a mysterious island, I touch no-one and no-one touches me type mindset. Perhaps it was the visit back home that evoked all these old feelings and memories I have. Since I have been in Berlin I have shed my old identity and life and become a strong, but isolated person.
I understand I am too much for people sometimes. The way I talk and express myself people find peculiar perhaps. Which, I accept. And as I feel more and more isolated from my social creatures I build a wall around me. I tell myself that I don’t care an iota if no-one understands me or likes me, I am true to myself and am who I want to be. This takes a lot of energy and emotional willpower and maybe it was a little dose of the post-Christmas blues that stung me at the same time, but the first four days of being back here were hard.
I sweated them out though. Just sat in the studio with the thousand yard stare and thought about my life and journey and stuff. I went busking the day after I got back at the quiet side of Eisenacher and then the BVG stopped me and gave me a warning and expulsion and took my details. This was another chunk out of my castle, and so I used the studio rent for December that hadn’t been picked up yet and bought myself a monthly train ticket and a busking permit for a few days.
The weather was still hard. That concrete cloud above had yet to crack and it was grey days every day. But I hit the busking and started to pick myself up. It’s amazing how good a nice busk will make you feel, and equally amazing how bad a bad busk will make you feel. But I soldiered on filling my bag with coins and paper and nice exchanges along the way. This continued for two weeks and I was in a nice momentum. Drinking a lot, but pushing myself. Sometimes when you don’t really feel like singing in-front of hundreds of passing people it takes a little push. A kindl can be the perfect push.
So after a good week of making nearly 300 euroes, paying back the rent, pickin up a smoke I was in a great mindset; feeling good and strong. I went to see my mate Dusty and didn’t get back the studio until like 5 or 6 am. I got the place all nice with the bed made and lights and put the kettle on to fill my hot water bottle – which always shares my bed through each winter. The kettle boils and I start to fill up the bottle when it drops over my foot!
A sudden shock of pain splinters from my foot to my brain and I scream as I remove my sock. The skin on top of the foot and toes and just dissolved like paper and all that is there is this bloody burnt flesh where the top of my foot should be. I hop to the sink in the toilets and cock my leg to run it under water, feeling a pain I have never felt before I scream in agony. I lay there on my bed almost crying and feeling this bad burn radiate and glow with pure pain. I try to sleep but it isn’t easy and so I get up, manage to put a slipper on and make the ten minute walk to the supermarket. I buy some water and candles and limp back to the studio and have to rest.
I make the hour and a half journey home to the house of the family where I stay in Schoneberg and grind my teeth through the pain. I couldn’t put a shoe on, so just wearing this thin slipper I see the filth on the streets and undergrounds that I try to avoid. Spit, vomit, beer, doners. I get to the house and tear the sock off, and with it comes the layer of skin that was reforming on the top. I felt like Rambo when he takes that bullet out as I removed that sock. The next day Anja went to the chemist and got me all bandages, cream, painkillers and all the necessities for getting better. Not only this, but with their love and company and beautiful home cooked food have helped nurse me back to health again.
I have been bed ridden for 13 days now and it has been a stark knock down from the momentum I was in at the start of the year. It has humbled me and slowed me. My ego has took a hit and looking back; I feel my mentality can be quite monstrous when building a wall around myself and feeling like I don’t need anyone. We are all a simple slip of the hand accident away from being completely bed ridden and useless. I love to be in motion, even if it’s just riding the trains somewhere, and being completely unable to walk has been a lesson and journey in itself.
After 2 weeks
I have used the time well though. I always love to draw, but have only ever drew my patterns and mazes which have a nice and unique style. But since being bed-ridden I have practised to draw people and portraits. I have done about a hundred so far and with each one I am getting better. The noses, eyes and ears are all forming the more I’m drawing. Whatever you want to be good at, just practise and practise and if you love it enough you will progress. That’s what I feel with my drawings anyway. I am quite amazed at myself to the level I have got to in these days of injury.
I have also had a good de-tox. No beer. Already my thoughts are clearer, my inner-monologue articulates itself concisely and clearly and I feel good mentally, but physically walking is still a slow and painful experience. But at least being able to walk on my heal is a lot better than the hopping and crawling I was doing for the first 10 days. I have also watched a lot of films and tube. Lots of Coen Brothers films; I found this channel on youtube “The Best Film Archive” Which has some great films from the 30s and 40s. The past is a different country…They do things differently there.
But anyway I’m just taking it easy and slow, and looking forward to getting back busking and band practising. In a few days I should be able to put my shoe on again
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