Lucky Numbers

My birthday started with pancakes at midnight at a friends house, and continued this morning with a selection of blueberry and strawberry tortes my boss surprised me with this morning. At lunch we ordered in dim sum from Good Friends, a excellent Chinese restaurant in Kreuzberg. Tonight there will be drinks at Que Pasa at Gorlitzer. This weekend will be a party at my flat.

This is the year I turn the age of my birthday. Doubles have always been my good luck. Two two’s are a sign things will go well for me.

And what do I have to show for myself?
My mother sent me this jumper, and I am happy:

Music of the day:
Cry For Help – Flying Lotus

Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr – Andre Bukhonsky

Collapsing at Your Doorstep – Air France

Sabali – Amadou & Mariam

It is a good day in Oliviaville.

They Will Never Learn

Harry Patch (In Memory Of) – Radiohead, free download

Another song, and hopefully more later.

i am the only one that got through
the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i’ve seen devils coming up from the ground

In other news, last night I had a dream three girls at Reed tried to welcome me back from a winter in Berlin, and I pushed the fattest one out the window.  When she hit the cement, she burst into a million coins, after she yelled out that my dog is infinitely worse than her dog.  The other girls went running towards my fridge to steal some apricot beer and rip my drawings from the kitchen hallway walls.  The girl with bad hair went and stole all my Radiohead CDs, and the whitest girl tried to console me while stretching one hand out the window to pick up the coins from the cement (it was a very long, rubbery hand).

i’ve seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn

Words Don’t Count

New story underway.  I’m still negotiating how much I can steal from real life, and what I want characters to reveal about themselves.  Maybe describing a story isn’t as helpful as sharing the music that goes into it.  Life now is like a shallow tide swept away all my castles.  My past four years were supposed to be mine forever, but now they’re stoney markers of life long past, headstones of other people’s decisions, but not my own.  The people I love aren’t people, the lessons I learned impractical, the friends I made mostly a scattering of lonely socialites looking for ladders to climb and someone to tell their unfortunate secrets to.

I don’t have many secrets because I don’t have much of a sense of privacy.  I have statements that I abide by, or mantras, and they change.  Here are some.  You can’t hide from the truth, because the truth is all there is.  Words don’t count.  People do.  And the people are gone.  My life is starting over in land-locked Berlin.  When I’m lucky, and ready, I’ll turn around and send the right words to the right people.  I don’t have friends, I only have very good readers.  Dignity can’t be held hostage for the price of a plane ticket.  Berlin doesn’t extrodite most American criminals.  You don’t have to erase everything and everyone that hurt you, but you have little control over anyone else’s lives with the exception of your presence in those lives.  If you withhold your life from others they’ll often resent you.  Disappearing isn’t as complicated as you expect, and it’s often easier than dealing with transitions, or watching people forget and replace you.  However, once you’re gone it’s really hard to reappear, and you will regret it when your past is an empty path with very few people left to account for it.  The benefits of having a relatively empty past are the ability to focus relentlessly on the present.  That’s how writing can really help you, to record the past that otherwise might not exist.  And the few people that do remain, after you pulled a pretty swift disappearing act, those are people who you could switch lives with.  Those are your people.  They know your past.

1. Unexpected Delight feat. Laura Darlington – Flying Lotus
2. The Truth feat Roisin of Moloko and J-Live – Handsome Boy Modeling School
3. Oh Happy Day – Edwin Hawkins Singers
4. The Recipe – Locust Toybox
5. She Came Along – Sharam feat. Kid Cudi
6. Travelin’ Light – Billie Holiday
7. Testament (ft. Gonja Sufi) – Flying Lotus
8. You’re Everything – Bun B feat. Rick Ross, David Banner, and 8-Ball & MJG
9. Caravan – Blur
10. Das Erste Mal – Stereo Total
11. The Black Ghosts/Full Moon – DJ Trife
12. In This World – Moby

Hope the music does something for you.

Everything You Ever Wanted

Download my thesis, Everything That Never Happened To Me (pdf).

Download the soundtrack, a mix CD I compiled (zip).

Individual tracks:

1. “High School Lover,” Air
2. “1992,” Blur
3. “Fog,” Radiohead
4. “Etched Headplate,” Burial
5. “Day N Nite,” Kid Cudi
6. “I’m Afraid of Japan,” Final Fantasy
7. “Orion,” Rodrigo y Gabriela
8. “Nobody Lost, Nobody Found,” Cut Copy
9. “U Hurt Me,” Burial
10. “Figure 8,” Elliott Smith
11. “Knives Out (feat. Monica Blaire),” Waajeed
12. “Lose Control,” Missy Elliott, feat. Ciara and Fat Man Scoop
13. “Man On The Moon,” Kid Cudi
14. “(Reverse),” Final Fantasy
15. “Waltz in C# Minor, Op. 64. No. 2,” Chopin
16. “Passing Feeling,” Elliott Smith
17. “High & Dry (feat. Bilal),” Pete Kuzma
18. “Sex Born Poison,” Air
19. “Kesson Daslef,” Aphex Twin
20. “You Never Wash Up After Yourself,” Radiohead

Song of the Day

German Love, by Starfucker.

For Johannes, who spends today at a music technology convention in Alexanderplätz.

Meanwhile, I wander around and continue to draw everything.

Here are some drawings I’ve made so far.

view from Erik's flat

Frou Weihnachten

First of all, some gifts for you.  These are a few songs I’ve been listening to a lot and that are in some ways representative of my current state of mind.  Download this directly off my heart.

“The Warning” – Hot Chip

“Shadows” – Midnight Juggernauts

“Milk Man” – Aphex Twin

“Erdbeermund” – Ellen Allien

“Distant Lights” – Burial

“Die Krise” – Stereo Total

“Sonnendeck” – Meinrad Jungblut

“Eisbär” – Grauzone

“Avril 14th” – Aphex Twin

While you download, I’ll tell you about my holiday.  I spent Christmas Eve at my brother’s flat with his mom Erika, her husband Gusbert,  Nadja, and my brother himself.  We ate goose with beet-slaw and potato dumplings, and we drank a lot of wine.  I gave Christian a salt and pepper shaker that are shaped like two people walking.  I gave Gusbert a salt and pepper shaker that are shaped like two sparrows. I gave Nadia a stripey sweater from the Buffalo Exchange.  Erika got a necklace with a branch and sparrow on it.  I got German Mozart chocolate, a body-wash/lotion set, a Berlin travel guide, a compilation CD of the contemporary Berlin rock scene, and a ticket to the Ellen Allien show (forthcoming).

So after that, we wandered over to his friend’s flat to celebrate said friend’s birthday.  After a few drinks and a lot of other people showing up, we all drove to a club — Blah Blah.  At Blah Blah, we danced and drank until 9.00, as the sun was rising, at which point we wandered over to the separate Blah Blah after-bar, where Christian, Erik, and Nadja had their last drinks.  I made postcards here and was much more sober than anyone else there.  Men around me looked very lonely and I had to keep relocating because they would accost me and try to get me to follow them home.  I explained I was 16 and from Argentina.  This wasn’t especiall helpful, as it prompted most men to attempt drunken Spanish.

Finally Erik decided we might go home, so we walked to a main street to look for a taxi.  Erik isn’t a big fan of the Ubahn.  We got home and I heated up a frozen pizza in the oven for breakfast.  I went to bed around 10.45.  I woke up a few hours ago, that is 12.30– I slept nearly 14 hours.  It’s now 4.40 on the 26th of December, everything is closed, and the sun has yet to rise.

I caught Erik just as he was getting to leave, and he offered me some vanilla pudding with vodka in it. It is supremely tasty, though maybe not the best breakfast food.  Erik is out at Blah Blah again for the night, and tomorrow night (or I guess technically later today tonight) my brother and his friends are taking me to a German karaoke bar.  Apparently Americnan’s are extremely popular at karaoke bars here.

While I surfed the internet and caught up with the folks left side of the Atlantic, I washed my laundry and hung it up to dry over various heaters and hooks.  I really do need a camera to make these updates more interesting. Until then, you’ll have to live with photobooth.

om nom nom.

More updates to come, boys and girls!

Modern Love is Rubbish

How do you count your days?  What’s your point of reference? What’s the good thing that keeps you going in your shitty life?  The highlight of your week? Month? Year?

For Oblina, it’s the possibility of being contacted by her former English teacher, Casper Steinkey. For me it’s the possibility of seeing my own modern love.  I think it’s a counting thing, but everyone I know has a look-forward point.  This goes totally against the living-in-the-moment ideal, but people do it anyway.  On a daily basis I look forward to lunch or dinner, when I eat with my friends.  On a weekly basis I look forward to my thesis meetings.  On a semester basis I look forward to my breaks.  Generally I look forward to writing my characters like this, as time-sensitive creatures who humiliate themselves and wait for opportunities to redeem themselves.  They make mistakes, make other characters uncomfortable, lose sight of their normal coping mechanisms, fake indifference, fry eggs, smoke cigarettes, cry themselves to sleep, sober up, laugh at themselves, and so on.  Ultimately people resort to their look-forward point, when things will be better, when So-and-So will forgive them, when they’ll leave their old life behind and rise above their terrible current status.

The album by Blur, Modern Life is Rubbish, is taken from graffiti on a parkbench in England.  My story, Modern Love is Rubbish, is more of a product of the Blur album, 13.  Behind Modern Love is Rubbish are the concepts of looking forward, a perpetual waiting, and a threat to the promise that hope springs eternal.  A warning, a reminder, that perfection is the enemy of good.  The better thing doesn’t always come, and the looking-forward point begins to fail you as you build up your interest in it.  I’m not advocating satisfaction with mediocrity, but I am encouraging people to appreciate the things they have, the moments they’re in, the good-enough people who love them.  Oblina becomes the good-enough character, the not-quite-perfect girl, and is abandoned by Steinkey after she accidentally stains his coat.  In order to win him back over, she retreats to her aggressive sister’s basement, where she draws Steinkey a new coat, and apologizes for having pursued him so forwardly.

Steinkey looks forward to something, and I think it might be Oblina’s visits, but I haven’t articulated all his desires yet, or his feelings towards his younger, louder, and sometimes more obtrusive counterpart.  This will affect how the story ends, and what Steinkey does or doesn’t do to avoid Oblina or recover her.

You want to know where miserable men hide from their pasts? The same place where teenage girls hide from their futures.

I’d love your input, on your specific look-forward points, and I will be finishing a new draft of Modern Love is Rubbish sometime within the next week and a half.

This song, off of 13, is responsible for the half-past sober, sleepy tone of the story, and the video itself inspired me to use so many sleeping rituals and scenes in the story.  Sleep has become one of the most important moments in my characters’, and my own, lives.

Alright, this video might not be working – but here’s the link.  And you can download the song here.

I’ll be putting more music on here as it becomes more related.

Moto Perpetuo

My temporary disappearance was due to a few things, but most importantly the acquiring of my American passport. In case you don’t already know, I became an American citizen this past March after having lived in the United States for (most) of the past thirteen years. This document will allow me to leave the country in December in search of my brother and to look at British graduate programmes. Inside it has a picture of me with freshly coloured blue hair. I am listed as a Canadian by birth and an American by naturalization. This passport expires on August 3rd 2018. I will be 30 years old. I am currently a triple citizen (Canada, El Salvador, United States). I hopefully will have retained these titles if not gained others by the time this passport expires.

I’m in the process of writing a new story, about a hitchhiker with a dog stranded in a New England suburb. Locations are important to my writing, and so is music. Music informs the language I use and the overall tone of the story. So here’s some songs I’ve been listening to, for your downloading pleasure. See if you can tell where this story is going before I do.

Midnight Runner – Cut Copy

Go Slowly – Radiohead

| Against | – Jedi Mind Tricks

Run – Air

End of the World – Shocking Pink

Martha Avenue Love Song – Innocence Mission

Distant Lights – Burial