June 23, 2023

Life // Watching You Without Me

In the last two years it seems that I might have lost a few friends here and there. Not their physical being though. I'm unsure it this would make the situation better or worse. It's very odd knowing someone that you used to be closer with is still out there somewhere, just not by your side anymore. It's complicated to find yourself thinking about them and wondering if you still cross their mind every once in a while. I suppose at the end of the day it is natural to grow apart from people. Occasionally I think it is even possible to simply not notice that you are slowly drifting apart.

Maybe I would have taken things like that better when I was a teenager. I was much more cynical in a dramatic way than I would consider myself these days. I would have thought that growing older would make my skin thicker for situations like this but it appears growing older has only made me more emotional. Being a teenager is so overwhelming, everything seems like the end of the world but you dry your tears pretty fast as well. Being an adult almost has a deeper edge of sadness. Sometimes it's not that easy to make new friends, they don't come along as fast as they used too. When you lose someone it cuts much deeper. You figure out that life can be very sad.

The worst thing is that most of the time there isn't really a way to mend a broken friendship. You can't turn back time on some things that were said and done. You end up being suspended in some sort of endless plain in between the period where you were friends and the period where you don't know each other anymore. I find it to be very complicated to move on.

Sometimes it's also devastating that you don't get a response, or a clear cut plot. Unfortunately, or maybe for the better, life isn't like a movie. You end up with a lot of unresolved plot points. It's a little like talking to a closed door. You know there might be someone on the other side but you don't really hear anything.

For me some of the hardest parts are those questions you have left like "But I am the one who was hurt by what you did. Why are you choosing to cut me out?" or "If you knew you were leaving, why didn't you come to say bye to me? Did the friendship mean more to me than to you?". Sadly at the end of this story it seems best to just forget about it all. You will never receive the answer tied together neatly with a ribbon. Sometimes people just vanish into the fog a bit without a reason, this almost hurts less.

The best medicine for now seems to be to talk about my feelings with my true friends, the ones closest to me. They know me, and they understand the way my personality works. They might know the people involved as well. It's the most liberating feeling to keep those people close to me. For some people, I believe I know they will never stray from me. Even if they might move back to their home country, I know they will stay with me. And I will stay with them.

January 20, 2023

Music // Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush

Today it is officially 45 year ago since Kate Bush released her first single; Wuthering Heights. Personally I believe it is the best debut single of all time, and it is also a very strong contender for my favorite song of all time. There is not a single part of me that remembers a time where I did not know this song, it's awfully important to me. Every single time I listen to it I am transported somewhere else. And even know it's difficult to believe that this was the first piece of art that she publicly presented to the world. She was only twenty years old when this was released as well!
 

There were two official music videos released for the song and while both of them are perfect my favorite one has to be the original with the white dress. There is something magical about the music video. It's so haunting, it's perfect. It's complicated to really say what it does with me when I see it but I am still amazed every time that I see it.

The video clings perfectly to the haunting sound of the song. Her expressive face, the unruly brown hair, the beautiful white dress, the fluid movements, the actual choreography and the video effects really make it a spectacular video that I cannot tire from. It had such a profound and lasting effect on the way I do everything in life, the aesthetics that I love, the way I want to dress, the way I'd like to move and just so many more things.

In those early first two years she performed the song a few times on television and she also performed it as the final encore of her wildly successful Tour of Life. However my favorite performance is the following one;


Her dramatic performance in the Haunted Castle (Het Spookslot) in the Efteling amusement park can really only be described as one of the best ideas in music promotion history. The haunted castle had opened that year and as her debut was a great success they wanted to have her perform for promotional reasons. The full special is really something to behold, I would strongly recommend to view it. She performs a variety of other songs as well like Movnig, Them Heavy People, The Man With The Child in His Eyes, Strange Phenomena and The Kick Inside. 

However that performance of Wuthering Heights is the true pinnacle. In my opinion it is ready to go into a museum dedicated to music history.

Obviously as you can understand my feelings on the song are very casual. Kate Bush obviously does not need any promotion at this point (Or really at any point, her music speaks for her) but I hope that sharing some of my enthusiasm can have an effect on other people as well! Her full discography is astounding, full of little jewels and a lifetime of new sounds just waiting to be discovered. But for me it all begins and ends with this song.

Happy Birthday to Wuthering Heights!

January 1, 2023

Life // New Years Resolutions 2023

I'd like to clear up some space in my head by writing down my resolutions for the new year. It would be pleasant to note it down so that I can remove it from my head as I keep adding more and more things that I'd like to pursue this year and well, I will simply do none of it if it's not organized. This past year, more than ever, I learned that I love to organize information so that it's clear for me. Making lists in google sheets is one of my favorite hobbies because of that. It's really terribly mundane but it works for me. 
 
So let's note down some things that I'd like to do this year; 

  • Be more active physically, long walks in the city are my favorite.
  • Attempt to eat healthier, perhaps more emotionally fulfilling salads and surely less cheese (I love cheese, but sadly it's not a reciprocated love) 
  • Sort out which albums I'd like to own on vinyl and make attempts to procure them. Preferably for a lovely price. 
  • Make an effort to go to more museums. 
  • Try to read some of the slightly more challenging books on my to read list. 
  • Perhaps attempt to finish reading Infinite Jest (It's such a behemoth of a book, it deserves its own bullet point really) 
  • Pursue some creative hobbies, like painting or making simple jewelry. 
  • Collect more interesting vintage items. In general, try to shop more second hand. 
  • Try my hand at dancing, likely in the living room with the curtains closed. 
  • Be a little more social with a larger variety of people. 
  • Write more song lyrics and/or short stories. 

It would probably be easy to conjure up a few more ideas but I feel like this is a very decent list for the year. Most of the points are vague enough that I feel no amount of pressure to reach a specific end goal. Overall I am quite pleased with my ideas and I'd like to see where future me will end up. If anyone is still reading this, I'd love to know what type of things you would like to do this year? 

September 3, 2021

Life // No Self Control

It's been a while but I'll try to refrain from making excuses. A lot has happened since the last update, after all it's been more than a year. I had tried to update earlier but for some reason it didn't really work out very well so I never finished that draft. It's still sitting there though but right now I don't want to look at it. It's weird but I feel it was written by someone that's no longer with me.

I always feel very distanced from what I have written very quickly, maybe a little too quick. After all, how much can I have possibly changed in a little more than a month? But somehow I start nitpicking at random sentences, thinking they are weirdly worded or too difficult. The problem is that my mind runs much faster than my mouth or hands can keep up.

Sometimes I will start on a story (Or in real life, when I am talking) and I feel the need to add unnecessary details because to me, it feels like they are important. But the more I talk the more I lose the plot of my story and it just doesn't make sense anymore. So I try to keep things short, but then they no longer feel like they were mine. Someone once told me that part of my charm is that you don't know what I am going to say next but the reality is that I often don't really know either.

I don't remember this well but somehow an image was shared with me somewhere, and it said something along the lines of 'Sometimes after a social interaction I think; well that wasn't my best work'. It's a bit sad but I think it describes me perfectly. Sometimes I think I could have done better but I can't expect to deliver a perfect score every single time. 

Anyhow, recently I've been watching some French New Wave movies and although they are very pretty I find them a bit difficult to watch. Some are very detached from life in the sense that genuine people probably wouldn't act that way at all. However some are a too realistic, and due to that they become so deeply depressing. They can really be devastating. The soundtrack is usually very charming though.

Last year (Or maybe also this year, I don't remember time well these days) I also watched a lot of cheap action flicks from the eighties. They're a lot of fun and they amuse me very much. It seems my childhood was somehow lacking because I never watched a lot of the classics so I have some catching up to do. Who should we blame for this? It doesn't matter, I am working on fixing the damage that has been done.

I think it would be cute to buy a projector so that I can watch these movies projected on a blank wall like you are in some kind of hole in the wall art house cinema. It would be very casually elegant but Sylvester Stallone would also be involved (Who, as I recently found out, is apparently deeply into painting?)

My next challenge at the moment is to watch a movie that a friend recommended to me. As it was a suggestion I do want to watch it. I think suggestions from people close to me are very important to entertain but financial plots in movies are very dull to me and this movie is sadly based fully on the financial market. I think after watching this movie I will experience a sense of accomplishment that simply cannot be rivalled (Or at least, until I finish reading Infinite Jest which has a thorn on the other side of my body)

At the moment I am feeling a bit tired, so I will lounge around in bed and I will contemplate my life for a little bit. Tomorrow is another working day and I am very much looking forward to my weekend which will start on Monday.

July 27, 2020

Life // Blank Slate

Lately I've been struggling to 'put pen to paper' and actually write something on this miniature platform that I have created here. It's a bit tedious to try and follow my train of thought to see where it will lead me this time. It's not like I have particular issues putting my thoughts into words but it just seems like when I actually do start typing the sentences just go nowhere in particular. It's been this way for as long as I can remember so I suppose it's now an integral part of my personality.

When I was a little bit younger I tried my hand at writing little stories about series or video games that I liked at the time. The internet was a new big unexplored world and I didn't have anybody to talk to at the time so I kind of lost myself in reading story upon story that forayed into subjects that the original material didn't even think about touching upon (Likely for many good reasons). Looking back at that, I wish I could read like I did back then.

In any case, I wanted to join their circles and also write my own stories. But I just couldn't get on the right track to do so. I'd think of an engaging title and wrote away at one or two chapters with extreme enthusiasm. It never went beyond that though as I quickly realized that I had no plot to speak of whatsoever. Lining out plot guidelines and seeing where the story would actually go wasn't my forte apparently but it would actually be considered something unavoidable. I'm still unable to do so though.

So I just abandoned that part of my life and didn't look back. At some later point I'd thought a blog might be more my style but I always deleted all my entries after some time. I became embarrassed of who I was at that point in time and the thought of people viewing it was absolutely horrid. At this point in my life I'd like to think I am approximately the person I will be for the rest of my life so I would like to try again.

Personally I think a blog would suit me the best since it's small stories or anecdotes contained in one singular post. Of-course I could write short stories but that would still involve some type of literary planning on my side which is as mentioned earlier, simply not one of my strengths. Usually I would tell myself I'm not intelligent enough to fabricate something fantastical that people want to read. That is however very rude of myself. I'm certainly not as clever as other people I know but I am also not the emptiest person.

It would basically be the best to find the platform that is suited to yourself the most. At some point in time I also attempted to use Twitter to make sure my thoughts could go somewhere but that wasn't a grand success either. The amount of characters are too low to properly express yourself and I found it difficult to decide how to divide up a narrative to fit these separated spaces. At some point the thread became very long and just excessively convoluted.

There have been people who said that part of my charm is the fact that my brain seems to be a complete and utter mess. Skipping from one subject straight to the other without any obvious connection until I explain to them why I thought of it. In the past I've also been chided for it. People tell me 'Why are you always changing the subject?' but I just find it difficult to stick to one topic. It's not like I am doing it on purpose either so I become a bit dejected when people go on and on about it. I can understand it as well though.

For example, I know another person who always turns a subject into something negative which can be a bit disheartening. If I would ask them if they want to travel to Cambodia they would advise against air travel since it has negative effects for the environment. If I tell them I'd love to go to Venice they would speak about the fact that I would have to do so soon since it will be the new Atlantis in the future! Lost civilizations are a great passion of mine by the way but I'll try to keep that as a subject for a future entry because I don't want to stray into another subject. I told you it wouldn't be easy for me to keep my thoughts in one spot right?

Essentially it appears that making entries here suits my style the most. Even if nobody reads it, it is not what matters to me. It is useful to have a space to store your thoughts. I'll make an exceptional effort to try and keep it up.