The Soundtrack of my Youth

„Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind“ - Marlene Dietrich 

This is the ultimate song to my childhood. Played and sung by my Dad as a lullaby when he sat by my bed. I remember being cozy, feeling loved, safe and warm under the blanket but with a sense of melancholy and sadness of a time that wasn't mine and struggles that I would never meet. For a long time I was too little to understand the meaning behind the song, I only felt that it wasn't a happy one. I often pretended to be asleep and when my Dad left, trying to be very quiet, I felt a rush of being lost and living in a secret world inside me, noone would ever know like me.

In the end, the song's about death and how to go on.

“Zu spät” - Die Ärzte

The first lyrics I knew by heart. Liking this German band was a family thing. My dad loved the music when he was younger and brought me and my brothers to it. Around the time I started to take guitar class (in third grade), it was also one of the first songs I could play on my own – more or less fluent and harmonic. The song talks about a disappointed love and a person who was dumped. He sings about the glorious future that he'll have as a rockstar and how the girl who dumped him is going to regret this very very badly. But with a sassy “too late” he rejects her like she had did earlier. Lyrics always play a role for me when listening to music, this was maybe one of the songs that started my enthusiasm about it.

“Sk8ter Boi” - Avril Lavigne

Avril Lavigne was kind of my heroine when I was younger. She was all I wanted to be.

And I think of Punk-Avril, 17, with ties and baggy pants and not her later version with pink skirts, skulls and strands of hair. She was cocky, sometimes rude, she made punk music – she was everything but a girly girl. “Sk8ter Boi” was the first song I was able to translate to German, when I was, let's say 11 or 12 years old. It was my Sims 2-phase and I loved the fan-made video of the song, too – It truly inspired me. I was digging it!

And let's be real, I still sing along today.

“Cornerstone” - Arctic Monkeys

A story I never told my ex-boyfriend, but still was my best moment on a music festival ever: That moment, when a guy behind me in the crowd agreed to lift me up on his shoulders and I could sit there, enjoying a much better view on the Arctic Monkeys playing on stage at Southside 2013. When Cornerstone came up and everyone was singing along, I had goosebumps. I felt magic. All along, I petted the hair of this guy I didn't even know the name of. I only remember someone had spider pig (from the Simpsons movie) drawn on his arm with sharpy marker and he was hella proud of it. As a thank you he received a kiss on the cheek. I never ever saw him again.

“Stolen Dance” - Milky Chance

One true friend who I've been so lucky to meet in Paris last year, introduced me to the song. I was kind of late liking it (a year earlier, it had been all over the radio but it kinda slipped through my field of... listening?). The song was one of those you listen to a thousand times until one day you get tired of them. When I catched a bike at République and cruised down the Boulevards, it was the soundtrack I would listen to, over and over. For me, it symbolizes all this year meant to me: Freedom, being young, living life like a party. For sure, I never danced like this before! (We don't talk about it)

"She Moves in Her Own Way" - The Kooks

First of all, I thought it would have been a shame if my favourite band was not represented on this list, so they had to be here. Secondly, this was the first song ever I knew by The Kooks so it was the song that introduced me to them. Thirdly, I still can blast this tune even though I listened to it a million times and lastly, maybe I like to think of myself als the girl "that moves in her own way". The girl that leaves a mark, that dances to her own melody, that is herself and herself only. I wish to be that girl.

“Today” - Joshua Radin

The ultimate Goodbye tune. This song was obviously only written to make people cry. The impermanene of life, of love of frriendships – The uncertainty of looking forward, of parting from people who have grown so close to you that you don't want to lose them ever. You don't want to get them out of your sight in the fear of never having them back in there.

"Kiss" - Prince

More recent, but still my youth (I just turned 20, okay?!), I got to be addicted to this song. My "new" (*coughes* SIX months already!) boyfriend showed it to me. He is kinda into old films and music - one of the many things that I like about him. And he loves to make his own playlists for occasions when he hasn't got a vynil record of that artist. The song kind of represents our relationship to me. It's fun, it's nice, it's exciting. I remember that one time when I visited him in Cologne where he lives with his Dad when he's home. When this tune came on on his stereo we both jumped out of the bed and started acting crazy. 
Dancing like we were in an embarrassing 80s music video. 

One thing for sure: If not one of the others, this song will get stuck in your head!

I hope you've enjoyed this soundtrack. Of course there are many more songs that I love and that were and are important to me, but I just selected these few spontaneously. Check out my friend Philipp's approach to the soundtrack of his youth. And have a really nice day! :)

In Between Times

On: a film project, turning points, the search for focus and "how to live"

While everyone is back home enjoying their holidays, I'm still here.

I'm working on a film project, first a 2-week (post-/production) course and later our own little 5-min-or-so-movie for university. It's fun and exhausting at the same time. 

I've never really realized how much work you have to put into just one tiny scene of a movie, containing 3-8 different shots (e.g. detail, panorama, close-up). Everytime you move the camera around (which can be quite tricky with its tripod, the mirophone, the lights...), you have to change or adjust all your settings again: The white balance (depends on indoor/outdoor shooting), the shutter dissolve to make sure you have decent lighting but no overexposure, the tone (which microphone type do you use? Are the background noises too strong? All voices audible?) and last but not least the focus.

If you're trying to film a person, always zoom in on the eyes and focus there (automatic peaking helps so much).

I learned what the golden ratio is and that you need a 3-point-light-system to make a person look sympathetic and well in your takes. Superficially, I learned how to cut scenes, cross-cut soundtracks and so on. The fun times we had when we shot our little Katy Perry parody (me and my bestie) in 2010, really helped me out with this. Because although we use Adobe Premiere now and used some shitty trial program back then, if you did cutting once, it's easy to get back into it later. It's no sorcery. 

All in all, I've put more effort in this course than in any other of the first and now past semester. Everyday 9 to 5 is not my usual uni schedule ;) . When I look around and see some of my fellow students and some friends that are studying, too, I get the feeling that I am quite okay with the balance of the work I do, with my stress level (all time low) and my free time, and especially "me-time". I used to set up too many appointments, join too many clubs and things; now I am trying to do a lot, but not too much. This semester, I finally retook karate as a long-missed hobby of mine. I still play the guitar (mostly at home though; here I only have my ukulele - But that's fine at least I'm working on it). I am in the "Fachschaft" which is a student council but in our little field of studies rather a coffee-drinking bunch of nice girls and one guy. Not so much about university politics, rather about planning a MKW blog (guess who's in for it?) and the christmas party. 

Recently, I noticed a relatively blank paper note in front of the cafeteria, saying "actors/actresses for student theater group wanted".

So I've joined a theater group. It's led by a philosophy Master student, Felix. Or better: Not led, but managed, because leading would sound too much like a hierarchy which we are clearly not (in his words). 

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. We're playing scenes from the play we want to get on stage, "Eleutheria" by Beckett, we're doing a bunch of funny impro theater games and practises or we discuss the great mysteries of our society like the gender trouble by a beer, a red wine, a whiskey coke and an apple juice (literally in this order at our table). They're all interesting, fun and creative new people. 

While collecting and brainstorming ideas for our own movie in the film project, I couldn't let go of that one vision of a film based on the butterfly effect. One little thing changed can be a great turning point in your life and can literally change everything. As an example we want to use a lovestory, okay, that was kind of obvious, two people meeting and falling in love, caused by one tiny decision by the girl. She chose M&Ms, not Snickers leading to her finding the man she will marry. We will put in some drama and the idea that going back and changing that candy decision could be possible. And that's it ;). 

These film ideas, not yet realized and haunting my mind, brought me the back a thought I had a while ago. About my own life, my own decisions and especially the one going abroad to Paris and how that changed everything and influenced everything. And how the choice of going to Freiburg for my studies influenced who I met and who I will going to meet here, how it excluded all the alternative routes my life could have taken. I could be in Düsseldorf, studying social sciences, in Cologne doing the same major but a different minor, in Stuttgart doing rather design than theoretical studies on media. 

I would have never met my current boyfriend. Or the new friends that I found here. Probably, no, certainly I would have found others. That would have changed me differently, affected me in another way than the people here are doing it now. I once said, and I still say it, that I don't want to go back. (#noregrets)

I believe that every decision we make out of feelings and reflection (Trust your guts!) is right at the moment and for our lives, even if it turns out to be shitty later on. The good thing is: Noone is punished for taking a turn, for following a new track or breaking off something you don't like doing. Life holds opportunities for anyone at any time. A gap in your CV might have been the best thing you have ever done. I know it's hard sometimes to keep it all in mind: The past, the future, the now. Keeping your shit together. Because in our studies, our work and our daily life we're often too concerned about what's going to happen: Tomorrow, next week, in 10 years. "When will we schedule the meeting? When will the exams take place? What will I do after I finished school? What do I want to do for a living? I have to save for my holiday plans..."

All this stuff is important, it's necessary in some ways. Keeps us going. And nobody is less attractive and convincing than someone who doesn't know what they want and in which direction they're headed. 

But on which field should we lay our focus on? There's also our past, producing and deleting memories every minute that goes by. We narrate it, it defines us, it makes us what we are today. And there's the NOW. Often celebrated, often over- and sometimes underestimated. You can't just live in the moment, because the moment passes too quickly. There will be always your memories, your stories connecting with the things you're doing now and the emotions you feel. Like the music my boyfriend put on this afternoon on his (vynil) record player (he's kind of a freak when it comes to music). It was Milky Chance, two german guys who make music you can dance or just dream to and who I discovered almost exactly a year ago in Paris. And saw them there, live.

Paris, La Défense, Festival Chorus, March 2014

Like you noticed, I immediately connected their voices, the soft tone of their chords and bass to the good times I had, riding my bicycle in Paris listening to their songs or the concert there at La Défense. I couldn't help myself, they made me smile, they took me back to moments long gone; I can't live without my past. Neither without my future, sneaking around in the back of my head where all the travel plans lie, the career goals. The house with the garden and the kids, in a golden fluffy dust of maybes. 

I can't live without your breath by my past, Babe                                                          I can't breathe without your life by my future                                                           I can't see clear without your teardrops in my eyes - Mando Diao

You can never live in any of those three states, those three times. You're not able to focus on one thing, like the camera does. You always mix up the three, they are like ropes, each pulling you towards another hole. Don't get caught up by one or you'll fall. You get lost. Maybe in dreams of how it could be, or in nostalgic memories, or in the moment, by doing drugs or loving someone you know there will be no future with. Fuck, it's harder to live than I thought it was.

What I wanted to say in the first place, was, that I think that I'm relatively good at managing the ropes and not letting me be pulled into a hole. Although I have a week of holidays in Paris planned and I am sooo up for falling in that hole, at least for a week ;). 

And we were bound to the citylife. Flashlights when we're falling into the night. Focused on what you feel; just when you were calling her love that day - Milky Chance

Everyhing is going well with my boyfriend, at least I'd say so. He's a big part of my present (and my near past, as you may recall). 

And maybe of my future... *dramatically romantic stare into infinity* 

Naaah, you guys know me. A little bit of hopeless romantic behaviour never killed nobody. 

I really like him. He's a good one. :) In contrast to former relationships or relations to guys I am sure that he likes me back, that he is honest and would never cheat on me - Umm, according to this list, he's almost perfect. I'm still making plans on travelling with my friend in summer, I have tickets for a festival, I dream of the next time being abroad longer, of doing language courses, of visiting people. Okay now enough with the shameless self-promotion by linking you to older posts. What I wanted to say is:

I'm holding the ropes, I'm keeping my balance.

Ok, done with this rope metaphor- I'm living my life.

In between different times and states of minds. But overall, I'm fine.