AND THEN A HERO COMES ALONG

Suddenly he is there. The hero you were searching this long for. It may happen in an unexpected moment some time more or less bothering and he will make your life even only for instant that better. Who are our heroes today? The coffee shop guy smiling at you morning by morning giving you a positive start to your weekday, your best friend helping you out with some cash at the end of the month or a person coming to your life in a moment you didn’t want him to. Someone taking your fears, carrying on, simply surviving – like the very first summer wind coming up before the big thunderstorm guiding tears to rain. I am sure that there are lights to direct you home and those lights are your heroes. Could it be worse? Even if that light is missing it may be there just digging for the greater good, just because a hero is the one who he is.

So what is it about whether winning or losing, actually a key question for every hero to solve. Is it worth playing by knowing to lose or is it just about being brave 10 minutes longer? Is it a solution never to play? For my own understanding a hero can never be right as the one who gets protected is the one to decide about black or white. But don’t we all have to deal with our cursed stories to make it real at the end? Can we really be broken and do we really need someone with the literal helping hand? A quote I came across last week challenged even this question: Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm. So why not follow the signs right back to yourself? At the end it may not only be all about one and we must get the point that sometimes a hero can be inevitable, maybe simply because our hand isn’t that strong enough and we are lost along the way not longer able to read those signs. That might be the moment we will need somebody who is looking out for us but what if we are standing at the crossroads with even no strength to run and we can do nothing but stretch our arm and beg to hitchhike? Is there hurry anymore and who’s to blame for our poor situation? Oneself being a hopeless dreamer or our hero not even bothering to show up? Sometimes we just have to wait for the moment our road leads us down the way showing us that the only solution is to be the hero by oneself giving up the idea of remaining the one who needs to be cared for.

These are hard times for dreamers and nevertheless we must remember: anything is possible.

Cheers

Lorax

BLAME IT ON THE YOUTH

Today I came across the old Jazz Standard Blame It On My Youth. Written in the early 1930s and interpreted by a variety of crooner greats from Sinatra over King Cole to outstanding Jamie Cullum, this song keeps inspiring generations. Until we are young all our positive and negative experience might be safe out of our certain immunity called juvenileness, but what happens the day we can’t excuse ourselves that easy anymore? Is it possible to grow up at the end or is adultness a grey and old imagination of pure perfection built by moral, rules and conventions – so called noble moments? Doesn’t everybody stay this small, sensitive but jealous and angry kid somewhere in the corners of one’s mind and isn’t it even this special kind of humanity keeping us away from the remarkable façade of adult integrity? Can we ever leave the idea from adored to bored and be the one taking rational decisions? I think it stays hard to finish blaming somebody or –thing for our decisions as it may be another significance of childhood, trying to push harmful sorrows from oneself. What is an adult? Nothing but a grown up kid – if we are pleased to believe old Walt Disney.

And like the yearly procedure of buying Christmas presents we feel like kids again. Staring into those gorgeous vitrines showing us ever again our unfulfilled dreams we may realize that it might be this concrete issue keeping us aware from adultness – dreams that until now didn’t come true, because we absolutely need in our childish hearts a something we can long for. In some special periods of the year we try to keep our hearts light with troubles far away, just like the days we had someone who felt supposed to do up our shoelaces properly. But can we believe this magic of our sighs?
Where do all those great Peter Pan moments vanish during the rest of the year while we are waiting being young at heart again? No matter how we try to be mature. We will always be a kid when we get hurt – and we will cry, far away from our actual expectations. So where to search when we forget to believe in those moments waiting for us – that place between sleep and awake where dreaming is still remembered? Second star to the right and then straight on till morning.

Cheers

Lorax

I'VE GROWN ACCUSTOMED

The last days of October are usually the most beautiful and charming days of the year. The sun tries one last time more than rather hard to win the simply lost battle against the winter storms, showing us the little power it emphasizes. With the change of seasons and the detested backshift of time it is safe: Darkness does have us back and the first smell of snow blowing down from the glaciers of the Alps overruns the city’s heart. Every year this special sensation catches us again fully unprepared as we’ve grown accustomed this easily to our beloved days in July, but what are those customs we are hope- or hatefully addicted to? And why are we therefore in a state of mind we want the break button to be held? Those situations in between we maybe forgot to appreciate this outstanding moment but were still able to think and even rethink every thing out of the box besides the moment we actually should.

I wonder why we regret such movements as it is in our hands to decide. Are regrets lessons we have to learn in order to realize what we had to do, to become a better or let us say more grown-up person? Maybe it is regrets leading us to let a chance pass by out of our habitude to customs. George Bernhard Shaw reworked the great Greek Myth about Pygmalion at the beginning of the 20^th century caricaturing London’s society. One of the world’s most famous musicals was the final product of Shaw’s oeuvre – My Fair Lady, making impeccable Audrey Hepburn the one and only Eliza Doolittle. It is the very final scene of this piece of art bringing us back to the custom issue. Higgins, the grumpy phonetic-teacher, known as woman hater and treating Eliza the whole piece as a subject of science and of own success sings the following phrase after she left him for maybe ever:

I was serenely independent and content before we met

Surely I could always be that way again but yet

I’ve grown accustomed to her look, her voice, her face

Impalpable things – like the light coming down from a distant star is – do make us regret, often too late to maybe change things in a way round we might not be left without even having known what we had to lose. It is easy criticizing the world around us but it may not be that easy seeing criticism in our regrets, as they are and stay the things we had to walk through in order to even give us the possibility to be sorry for. We may make these errors but should always know never to carry them forward, seeing the future but feeling the past. The only thing we may overpower our customs is the moment we have to tell someone the way we feel for her. I am afraid that this will be the only serious regret we might announce looking back on our lives one day – that too often when we loved, we kept silent.

Cheers

Lorax

A STREETLIFE NAMED DESIRE

From time to time I have the fear, that the moment we stop suffering about our longings will be the one we might be already dead. Are our desires our final stop or will we end in forgetting that reality is made for those who cant stand their dreams? Maybe it is that longings are made for.

Watching the first leaves falling down the colored trees on a cloudy Sunday morning it is the question about our longings and desires, which concerns me. Do we need somebody to wake up with, at least on a sad day like this one to suppress our sorrows, or should we go partying again throwing oneself into the fray – on a restless search what we can find behind our desires? For now I was thinking for a rather long time, why we need to know what a feeling like longing probably do call up inside of us. Is it really about already knowing that we never will be with the one person we might have fallen in love a long time ago without even knowing her that well, is it the feeling of something forbidden or is it simply our entity we need to realize once in a while wonderland is far far away? It is funny that we do connect a metric system like miles with a distance never realizing that it is time, which is the longest distance between two places. Will our desires be forgotten before we are or do we simply relocate them towards one of our different levels of reality letting it tell a new version of our story? Perhaps it is that for we were branded with the ability to cry. Not because we are weak but because we had to stay strong that long.

Longings do affect us in rather many situations of our daily street life. We have everything we desire but nothing we need – even if it is to figure out what our need really is. Maybe we are attracted too often being panicked out of a flying time, immobile, blind and numb with no more action beyond us like an endless search, waiting for the one moment to come we want to detain for ever since now and suddenly, time stands still. This is the moment when someone walks into your life and makes you realize why it never worked with somebody else. We must carry this moment forever with us, like a picture we took with our heart just to make sure we wont lose this very special seconds somewhere on our path.

Longings make us stay alive by making us believe in encounters.

Cheers

Lorax

THE NIGHT OF DESIRES

Roundabout 1700 years ago Saint Lorenzo was martyred to death by the reigning roman emperor and till today the tears he cried to save the poor are seen as fiery shooting stars on the sky in the middle of august, so the Italian fairytale. Nevertheless people around the world and especially in Italy still see these special nights round the 10^th of august as great opportunity to make a wish with every single shooting star they luckily catch the sight of. My mum taught me this very special tradition and until today, it doesn’t matter where I am located I take the time and wait for the star rain. I never got the particularity of this night, as some might see it as every other one, but although it fills myself with a feeling of sentimentality. You may ask how can we even demand for a wish in a world we might own everything we could imagine, but in this special case it isn’t about materiality. It is about the emotion we get by confronting ourselves with the question of what we really want and maybe need. A certain kind of keeping things elementary.

The most special attribute of this night are the reactions of my friends I get back by remembering them to watch the sky. It is exactly therefore we make those wishes – to get some kind words and thoughts back to oneself, like the flying stars finding their route back home. We might say we have everything we desire, but I don’t like restricting the thought of a unique night to the basic needs. Sometimes I get the impression that we forget among all our sorrows on highest level, what it means to appreciate and be appreciated – I don’t see the necessity of suffering, because there isn’t any.

Tonight I would like to thank all those inspiring girls and boys around me, who maybe never get to know that they are and will be my very personal muses making every single of my nights to a memorable one. All those wishes flying down to earth tonight are yours – just catch them and maybe make a wish for me as well.

Thank You

Lorax

THAT'S ALL

For a friend who is afraid to be forgotten

Summer will always remain a thing people can't get at all. Totally overwhelmed by some hot feeling lying next to a lake at a place in the middle of nowhere, the hottest day of the year leaves the question of was that all? Was that our summer experience 2013 and how can the refreshing summer wind simply be the first forerunner of autumn leaves? Is our summer wind friend the one holding our hand when autumn clusters us back to our warm apartments remembering those gorgeous nights out in the heated city? Somehow the summer wind is a symbol of forgetting, passing through and in its own way of lost experience. I wonder why we forget things that easily. We feel our life on our skin like this gentle breeze but keep the feelings rather scarce – the question left remains why?

In most cases forgetting may help us to survive. If we would remember every horrible day we had to get through we probably would kick the bucket faster as we could shop the best sale item, before getting knocked down by our fashion rivals. Nevertheless we may even forget who we are and where we come from by forgetting all those great stories, people and places we were connected with somewhere in our history. Some call it life, letting things go their own way and still I would claim, that forgetting isn’t the way to get through with ourselves as we always fix things rather intense in our memories the more we want to forget it. Are we really happy by forgetting ourselves or is it more a kind of fighting for displacement? A basic instinct? Somewhere in the corner of our minds we surely aren’t that blind and may store all those attitudes, which helped us to become what we are even if we somehow don’t want to have them with us – but they are our records and one out of a range of reasons building our personality. I actually can’t decide if we should forget or better memorize, as life always teaches us no matter how somebody may have harmed us. So maybe things will only leave and let us be if we don’t forget them. It’s like an assurance they demand from by telling us, that if they thought we would forget them they will never cut down. That’s all.

One thing is certain. Next year our moody friend the summer wind will come back remembering us with poor compassion all those things we might have forgotten over the year and that will make us laugh again – and as we all know laughing helps to forget, at least for a few seconds.

Cheers

Lorax

YOU LOOK GREAT - BERLIN

A city defining itself about caring less? Berlin. Sitting on the rooftop terrace of my hotel I reviewed this past weekend in the city – which apparently accepts everyone – and came to even this conclusion. Berlin symbolizes the full range from Chanel to Kebab. Especially during Fashion Week this city gains a special sort of glamour it misses the rest of the year, nevertheless the desired laisser-faire seems forced. People need absolutely to fit the lifestyle the city imposes without reconsidering their perspectives. Everyone looks great in their special understanding of fashion anyhow I gained the feeling the city gets exploited from the rest of the nation. Two times a year the media-film-important-en-vogue-crowd overruns the hottest locations in town, celebrating an art-short-movie or the newest collection of an average talented designer before leaving behind the sleeping beauty, sucked by dry.

Back to Munich I attended one of the last performances of this years opera season. Watching Violetta Valéry die I began to understand the story of Berlin – La Traviata, the one who lost her way. Loved by the right, sabotaged by the wrong while never forgetting to party hard, in the end perishing of tuberculosis – a rather disillusioning goodbye.

So what is it about this nonchalance in life we all may appreciate about the atmosphere a city like Berlin is able to give? A whatever place to feel free? Actually I have to admit that is quite easy passing the days never thinking what may happen tomorrow. We may believe it doesn’t matter in any case – carpe diem in a modern understanding? But is it really a form of making the best of the day living the moment or do we simply appreciate the freedom of thoughtlessness? Somehow a reaction on the overload we are confronted with every single day. It might seem easier letting everything behind but was Violetta right singing the famous words of being free forever? Is a friendship with a moment at least more than a love-story with our life, while forgetting in our immense compulsion to be free that maybe the evanescent delight shouldn’t be a regular on our daily party? Maybe our bright entity permits only this certain kind of friendship because love somehow hinders a free spirit by regulating the own structures of being. What is it about my troubled soul, that nothing ever was able to set you in flame? What joy should it be to love and be loved and why do I reject it? For this life of pointless enjoyment? So Violetta’s words at the end of the first act.

At last we all should thank Berlin for being the free city we all escape to, if the rules of life restrict us that much. Being the way it is without thinking what others may hold us from. Sempre libera – free and aimless turning to the new delights, that make the spirits soar. La Traviata in a very unconventional understanding. Maybe we all should stay Berlin for a night – living the spirit just for a moment simply looking great.

Cheers

Lorax