April Sunshine

I’ll start this one the usual way...

What a month it has been! It started on my Birthday when I received the best gift possible from the Universe: 3 solid weeks of endless, abundant, beautiful sunshine. It never stopped! Every day was 22 degrees give or take a degree or two. After the long dark winter, it was like a deserved holiday.
I would busk and gig to get enough geld and just meander around the city that was coming to life in the sun. I would walk and if a light turned green – I would cross. I would go wherever my feet wanted to take me. I would find an U-bahn and jump off when I felt it. Sitting in the parks and streets with beautiful people having random conversations about all sorts, seeing music on the streets and in the bars, practising my palm reading; I was shining and smiling like the sun. It was bliss.

There are signs and omens everywhere telling you what your instinct already knows. You just have to tune in to them and go with it; trust that gut instinct and put your life in the hands of a greater power. It is like having faith in the random button on your playlist. Sometimes the songs that come on are so perfectly timed and just what you wanted to hear. Press the random button on yourself and see where it takes you! Drift with the flow and the motion.

Anyway, I found these great art books at my local book shop and they have pull out pictures of the artists’ work. I have FILLED the studio walls with the great works of Picasso, Goya, Spitzweg, Impressionism and Surrealism. The studio is taking shape so nicely now, and I am so proud and happy to have my little creative space here in Berlin. Here, I can be a full-time busy artist. Every day I am listening to music, busking, writing, drawing, playing piano, playing guitar, mooching the second hand shops, finding music in the streets and bars and bettering and learning about myself as a person.

It was quite hard to busk in the U-bahns where there is no night or day, just a dusty wind and yellow light. Everyone would pass in their summer clothes carrying crates of beer and I would make a little hatful and get out and join them. I also neglected the studio work, as the last place I wanted to be on a sunny day is the studio with headphones on and curtains closed.

I know I said I would release and finish the album by the 5th of May; which is an importantly symmetrical date to me, but, naaaah. I am going to take another month or another year if I need to. I have the songs, and it is a nice capture of where I am, but I will take some more time and not rush it out for the sake of finishing it. But it will be done within Spring, maybe, as will the documentary. But for now I am just enjoying going with the rhythm of the city and enjoying myself after the Winter.

It’s not that I haven’t worked in the studio. Lots! But mostly playing piano and singing my heart and guts out. I practise vocalising for about an hour each day and it starts to feel like a drug. You get a bit high from the oxygen exhaling in the notes and the piano. I have got a good 40 minute set of songs I am playing nicely on the piano with good dynamics, might even take it busking one day soon. But I just haven’t done much recording work.

But I am back in a good busking rhythm now after that little holiday and saving some geld and getting back to being productive again. But, I almost miss Winter in a way. When it is dark at 5pm and FREEZING outside, it makes it so cosy to be indoors writing and singing and stuff with your red mood lighting. When it is sunny out, I am like a dog staring out the window, itching to get out. And also, In Winter the Ubahns are more inviting than being outside. The other day was a lovely rainy day, so I just stayed in the studio writing.

I am becoming more and more detached from the digi world. I think the internet has a great way of connecting us, but so does the universe and the rhythm of life. I keep a toe in the digi world, but mostly live in real time with real conversations. It takes so much energy to send a text and emails. I also deleted my old facebook and sometimes I see people here who used to be on my facey and they give me that look “Did you delete me, you bastard?”.

I have never owned a smartphone and probably never will. What a suction of your senses them things are. I have enough vices, I don’t need that distraction. Sometimes I watch some vids on the tube and never feel satisfied or feel like I retain the information, but when I read I am transported to another place and my head is filled with wonderful words and stories. I have always loved to read, but being here in Berlin, like in many other aspects, it has excelled massively and I am devouring books like never before. I love the classic novels mostly. Dickens, Golding, D.H Lawrence, H.G Wells, Orwell. I rarely read any modern books.

I read a few Murakami books. The first one I read was The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. Which, I enjoyed; even though there was no resolve in the ending. I just thought “Ok, it’s just a mysterious story with no answer.” Then I read Dance, Dance, Dance and threw it away about three quarters through after he is grooming a 12 year old girl he is in love with. Every other sentence was what he was listening to and what he was drinking. I found it quite pathetic and irksome and tedious; he lost me after that one. I prefer the old stuff, in music, in clothes, in books, in art. I think I am a bit trapped in the past, but I don’t care. I live in my own little bubble.

I love to wear a suit and be a gentleman. Drink a decade old whiskey and smoke a fat cigar. I just love to be in this exhilarating city and feel a part of it. I am so happy because I am so free. Wealth can destroy a soul, just as poverty can. I never let money rule my decisions and I just let it pass through me. I will just keep on keeping on, feeling truly alive and riding this wondrous and mysterious ride we call life.