The Sky Has Cracked

What makes the inability to walk and venture out even more agonizing is the fact that the concrete sky has cracked and we have had such beautiful blue skies and a trickle of warmth in the sun! I feel like a dog, sadly staring out the window.  My only venture out is to the balcony to smoke and I grimace at the thought of not being able to meander through the second-hand shops and drink a coffee and do some busking.

But it is amazing to see how your body heals itself bit by bit, day by day.  I have watched the skin reform on the foot and the scab flake off; the swelling go down and the movement of toes returning.  Sometimes I neglect my body – I am too lost in my thoughts and indulgences to give it proper attention.  But an accident and recovery like this makes you realise how much your body looks after you.

When one is used to always being in motion and living at a very fast and exhilarating pace, being bed-ridden will slow you down somewhat and make you reflect on things.  I am trying to think of what the lessons are to this injury and the good sides, of which there are many.

I should concentrate more on any task I am performing.

I should not feel so proud and think that I don’t need any help.

I should look after my body a bit more.

I know what bad physical pain feels like for only the second time in my life. (I broke my leg twenty years ago.)

I shouldn’t drink so much.

I can draw people and portraits fucking good.

We are all one slip away from our day or life taking a massive turn for the worse – or better.

There are a lot more lessons as well, but they will surface the more I digest and recover from this experience.  I am planning a venture out today, though.  If I go the studio and pick up the guitar I could try a busk tomorrow. Yesterday I made it to the Spaty to buy some tobacco, which was do-able, but still hurt a bit.  But today is the last day on my train ticket so I at least want to get the last journey out of it.

After years of bunking the train here and always getting away with a fine I feel so happy to buy a ticket. It costs 60 a month and for the amount of time I spend on the trains - it is a worthy investment.  Otherwise, the journeys become fearful with paranoia trying to guess if there is a ticket inspector in plain clothes just got on, and then your stomach fluttering when the doors close and you hear them dreaded words “Farhkarten Bitte”.  I couldn’t read or focus on a book in peace, so the 60 a month is worth it for the peace of mind and ability to concentrate on what I’m reading.

My usual victuals in Berlin are – A coffee or three in the morning, followed by some Yorkshire tea - A sandwhich of cheese and bread at the stroke of afternoonish – more tea and maybe a coffee - a doner kebab or plate between a mixture of pilseners for the evenings injestion.  I found this amazing Lebanese place by Box Hagenerplatz.  It’s called Ali Baba and for 5.50 you get a huge plate full of salad, hummous, fried and roasted and seasoned schwarma and lots of other goodness.  It is the best meal in Berlin and I was eating it 5 or six times a week.

One Sunday I was going there and then discovered that they have a lovely Flea Market at Boxhangener every Sunday.  I was mooching about and saw this lovely set of old DDR speakers. I asked him how much and he tells me forty.  I wince and say “Ahhh, I only have 15 euroes on me” He goes “Ok give me 30”.  I say “I only have 15 on me”  “Ok, give me 20” I say.  “I only have 15 on me”.  “Ok give me 15”.  So after a lovely Lebanese plate I return to the studio carrying a lovely old set of speakers.  I hooked them up and they sounded delightfully DDR.

I have taken such pride and love in getting everything for the studio. Everything I have as either been found, foraged or given and bought with love.  After a good week of busking with Louis I would return with pockets full of geld and feel excited to go the markets and shops to buy lots of stuff for the place.  But the strangest thing is – when I have really needed or wanted certain things for the place, I step outside and someone has left it in the hallway.  This happened for a big display unit and a SONY amp and also a big speaker, which made a perfect decoration and nearly completed the place.  It is still a work in progress but whenever I find something, it just seems to fit in place like a perfect puzzle.  I have a great feng shui in there and a REAL coziness.

My Beauutiful studio

The best thing is – I can do whatever I want to do.  Whether it is drawing, playing piano, singing, recording or writing – I just do whatever I am in the mood for.  Not feel like I should be doing something in particular, just doing what I feel.  That is a nice feeling.   A lot of the time I just sit and truly listen to music.  Absorb it and feel it and hear it an environment where I am not bothering anyone to turn it up to eleven.  It is just as important to listen as well as to play.

My playlists have mostly been consisting of – Tom Waits, Beck, Devandra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Fleet Foxes, Bowie, Odetta, Nina Simone, Dylan, Conor Oberst, Mark Lanegan, Bon Iver, Iron and Wine, Paul Simon, Ray Lamontagne, Sigor Ros, The Lumineers and many more in between.

I am playing the piano a lot, and am building a full set of songs that I can play and sing nicely on it.  I am really enjoying the morning coffee and smoke and then just spending hours pounding the piano.  I express myself quite freely on the keys, and enjoy playing with dynamics and melancholy to craziness and darkness.  I did the hard work of teaching myself when I was twenty, so now I am just enjoying it and expanding on that hard work I did all them years ago.

Ok, well its time for a cuppa ana smoke now.  I am enjoying the speed at which I can express my inner monologue on here, the notebook, though neat and beautiful is a little slower in its capturing the flow of your thoughts. 

It's a funny old world....

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

I'm Back!

After trying a few other blogging platforms and being extremely disappointed - especially with Tumblr!  What an atrocious platform that is.  Utterly irritating.  I feel it best to continue my old blog and see it through.  It still gets so many hits and many buskers I meet here always say "Ahh, I read your blog".  So I suppose it silly to give up on it altogether.  But, at least I tried a few different sites.  But honestly, that Tumblr was awful.  Wordpress was OK, but I think I will just stick with The Dead Sea Captain.

I will post the blogs I wrote on tumblr and stuff on here just to keep a chronology.

Just like starting over.

I feel I am in the foetal stages of my re-invention and feeling great about things.  I have sacrificed my old life completely, given myself to music in search of creativity and inspiration for creation.  I feel I don´t really have the heart for this old blog anymore, so I am thinking of starting a brand new one.  I have been starting again in so many ways, I think this could be another way to rejuvinate my thoughts and rambles in to a fresh new page of a new notebook.

I feel the Dead Sea Captain and the last 5 years I have been keeping this blog has been an incredible chapter, but it is time to start a new one.  Put it behind me now, and immerse myself even more into the artist and music and stories I create.  I´m already excited by the thought, so I´m off to do that now.  Find me by googling Wintson Freeman Berlin blog.  Adios (To God)

The Darkness of Berlin

The other day was quite a peculiar one and it started when I found a set of clippers.  "I will just give my beard a little trim." Thought I.  The trimming was going well, until I tried to style the sides and ended up cutting off more than I planned.  I then tried to shorten the sides to match the mistake but they soon disapeared.  I was left with a bottom beard and as that shortened into a goatie it felt like my hands were moving themselves until I was left with a mustache.  This lasted about 30 seconds until that hair on my face that I had grown so attached to over the last years had gone...

Looking at myself I didn't know who I was.  My beard had changed the shape of my face.  I looked about 12 and I was shocked.  Although I feel a bit exposed without my beard, I felt it needed to come off.  I needed to look at myself and see who I was if that makes sense - I needed to start again and go through this process I am going through.  But it felt like I had lost a body part, chopped my nose or ears off or something, I just wasnt used to seeing me like this.  The last time I shaved was 3 years ago in the Desert.

Anyway, I put on my sunglasses and my suit to see if the new look worked, and it did.  I was looking sharp and knew I needed to go busking.  I had about a euro to my name and no tobacco.  I get a bit crazy when I don't have tobacco, so set out to the old faithful spot of EisenacherStr.  There was a guy playing in the quiet end, where I had first wanted to go, as the cafe was still open at the other side.  I bought myself a beer and got some tobacco off a guy walking past.  It was still quite windy so I decided to just go back and listen to the guy who was playing.

He had a big cube and was playing his set when these 2 guys walk up to him screaming in German.  I got the jist they were saying it was too loud, but they were aggressive arse holes drinking from a bottle of Whiskey.  After screaming at him they went down to the platform and he carried on playing.  The next minute, they come back and give his case a big hard kick!  All his stuff goes everywhere as people start to get involved.  After a few minutes they go back down and I say "Don't let them win, lad.  Keep playing and show your not scared of him."  He wasn't really feeling to play and I had already set up at this point, so I start to play.

After 2 songs they come back up and start walking over to me.  I put my guitar down and meet them head on.  I say "Get out of my space here, you are no-one to tell me not to play".  He backs off and walks away and the other one starts telling me that they own this place, we have knives and if you don't stop playing we take it all.  He was a little weasal eyed rat and I just looked at him in distgust and said get out of my sight and don't be the darkness of Berlin.  Just as I said that, the guy who had backed off threw a full cup of Whiskey and Cola over me!

So, in my best suit, looking so sharp, to being soaked by Whiskey and cheap Cola.  I was shocked and looked at the pathetic creature who had thrown it.  "Too scared to come near me, hey, you piece of shit!"  The weasel eyed one was getting frantic with excitement over the throw and started to make more threats.  I looked him dead in his rat eyes and said "You creatures are the darkness of Berlin.  You are the decay and the disease of this city.  Don't be the darkness, be the light."  This got the weasel worked up and as he got closer, I just pushed him away and said "Get the fuck out of my face you fungus".

A big part of me wanted to go home, wash myself and stay in.  But I refused to let the darkness win.  I buttoned up my suit, the shirt had taken the brunt of the damage, and washed myself.  My face and hands were so sticky from cheap Cola, it was horrible.  I dried off all my stuff with the busking scarf and bought a beer with the euro I had made in that time and kept playing.  I wasn't going to let them scare me or make me stop.  That is only the 2nd time in 6 years that something like that has happened, and I think it was because I was too quick and still in the other guys energy.  But I just wanted to show them that they can't put out the light of the street music of Berlin.

Busking In Berlin Part 2

Play the markets!  Google what markets are happening and go and ask the Market Meister if you can spiel.  I usually say "Halloooo, kanne ich spiel hier fur ein uhr bitte?"  There are lovely markets in Berlin especially in Schoneberg, Neukoln, Kreuzberg and virtually everywhere.  Even if you play just outside the market there is a lovely atmosphere.

Ubahns.  This is great if you are an acoustic player, but you can get away with using your amp aswell as long as it's low.  You don't have to have a permit to play in some places and the BVG hardly ever go to Blissestrasse, Budesplatz, Gleisdreik, Westphalweg, Platz de Luftbrucke, Tier Park.  But if they do, just greet them with smiles and the best German you can and alles will be klaar.  See the previous guide to get a permit.

There is a big pedestrian area in Wilmersdorfer Strasse and is great for busking.  Also there is a big walk way with lots of tourists just outside of Zoologische Garten.  If you fancy a little trip just outside of Berlin then take the S1 to Potsdam and it is a lovely place to play.  I wouldn't bother with Warschauer Strasse anymore, it is such a dark atmosphere there now.  Schleisches the same.  There are lots of nice spots in and around Prenzlauer Berg and usually just outside Eberswalder Str can be a good place, especially on Sunday.

If you are playing Mauer without a great big PA system like the other buskers seem to use, then go to the back of the park.  It is much quieter and still lots of people.  All the buskers think they have to play as close to the front as possible, but that is not the case.  It is much better to play at the back, at least then you can hear yourself without 4 drum kits playing over you.  You can also try inside the market.

If you enjoy playing in the trains then the S1 line seems to be the most popular.  Get on, play a few songs and jump to the next carriage.  I never felt the desire to busk this way, but lots of people do and make a good hat from it.  A guy who does it told me he averages 40 an hour with  his friend.  I prefer to find an Ubahn and play for a few hours myself.  Nice sounds in the Ubahns.

Hackesher Market in and around is much better than the cold Alexanderplatz.  Go out of the market towards the lake and there is a great busking spot.  Also on the bridge is a great spot, but usually there are 2 or 3 accordions within spitting rage holding that bridge for hours.  But lots of places around here are good as its mostly commercial area and museums so there are no neighbours to annoy.

What a ride

It's been 5 years  and fifteen days on this adventure so far and I have gone through so many ups and downs, highs and lows, to's and fro's that it is time for a pause and a re-think.  “What am I doing with my life?” is a question I am asking myself a lot lately.  Perhaps its age and those young dreams that are fading further as the years pass.  I was 35 over a month ago and feel like I have entered the next stage of my life.  I feel I am not a young kid anymore with all that energy and determination I used to have.  I think back to how I was sure I would change the world and leave my mark.  I wanted to tour the world playing music, make a beautiful studio in the Swiss mountains, but most importantly; never have to worry about money.

Well, I travel the world and play to thousands of people a week.  Albeit on the Megabus and U bahns and not the tour bus and stadiums I dreamed.  I don’t really worry about money in a way.  I drink the best beers and whiskeys in Berlin, eat out almost every day, smoke the best tobacco, and don’t want for much ‘cept a little rest now and then.  Berlin is starting to take it out of me though, I feel it.   I need to have control over the lifestyle here.  In the past 2 months, there have been 2 days where I haven’t drunk a beer.  It’s so easy to drink here, there are 3 fridges full of beers from all over Deutschland to suit your mood and time of day, it really creeps into your habits.

I am smoking way more that I used to at any point.  Must be about 20-30 a day.  I tried to count in my journal every time I would smoke a ciggie/joint and drink a beer, but it didn’t look good so it was better to stop...logging it.  I feel great most of the time, don’t get me wrong.  But you just can’t help it when a bad day creeps up on you.  There is no guard against it, it is coming for you.  I accept it as part of the ride and just know there are better days around the corner; Days when you feel on top of the world and a great singer and musician.  But there are always dark days lurking; days when you question your life, when you look in the mirror and hate what you see, days when you feel you are a shit singer and a lousy musician.

I look back at the last 5 years and it has always been that way.  In many aspects you go from high to low and back again.  I remember when I was stuck on the motorway hitching from Amsterdam to Berlin and as darkness descended I would scream in despair, then a few minutes later be filled with bright and sure positivity and strength to get through.    The last 2 months without Niz here has been just the same.  Some days I am lonely and downhearted and some days I am so happy to be starting again and doing what I do. 

I just wish I didn’t HAVE to make money in this life.  I wish I could just do what I love to do without the burden of wandering how I’m going to eat that night.  I would love my own studio where I could just record music day and night with many different people.  I would love to play music and do it purely for myself. Not for an audience who wants to me play sing-along songs.  I wish I could do things just for the love of doing them and not for money at the end.  Sometimes I go busking but I don’t put my hat out.  I just play for the love.  But people still come and give me money.  Which feels good, but it feels better to not be asking for it.