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

CLASSY GOODBYE

A tribute

Lexi Featherston was one of the most thrilling characters of Sex And The City’s season 6. Memorable how she fell out of the window of one of New York’s exclusive penthouses seating her last hope to live in a brown silk curtain. Party girls are one of those really special types of a person. Always in search for the next hype or rush they seem to dismiss the world they live in. A 25 year old might be all right with living the party as she is still a girl and it effectively doesn’t matter how drunk or filled with coke she might be because her juvenility still helps her to hold the balance on her Manolos. But what happens 15 years later? Will she die like Lexi with the words You all bore me to death! on her lips? Nevertheless one out of a whole range of possibilities isn’t it? Otherwise she will make Betty Ford a lot richer by passing through her 5^th deprivation always persuaded she is wealthy enough to afford it.

Party girls are the shining stars of every Saturday night. Loved and hated they fill it doesn’t matter which hot spot with this certain kind of atmosphere, as everybody wants to get or stay in touch. Of course haters are going to hate, at least for the complete inappropriate outfit, but for my very own understanding this is whence this kind of woman takes her elixir of life out. They normally aren’t that attractive. They shout out to others trying to get their own lives in an ordered way always being behind making something out of them – somehow a kind of beauty. Nevertheless the time flies. While we had the time of our lives yesterday and sometimes try to continue starting into being a grown up these women seem to be bound to their glory days settled in the past, forgetting the present.

Having my last drink on Saturday night I sat down and watched the party people freaking out. I asked myself why the party girl never gets bored of an overfilled and overheated space like the most nightclubs are and what she hopes to find in a shabby location? What if she joins all those memorable stars in the 27 Club? Partying at least her last goodbye in a classy way and leaving the event for the very first time in her entire existence early? Will she even ever have been able to examine if the time was enough or will she somehow regret by saying there would have been enough time for a change? I wonder if she actually will achieve all she ever dreamed for from partying? I mean all talents she might have got, wasted drunk on a dirty floor running after a poshed up lifestyle, surrounding herself with more or less famous people – is it worth the while? Maybe yes. It helps not looking back. Life isn’t the party we were looking for, that’s what every Party girl somehow has to learn. However what our nocturnal excessive partiers have ahead of us is the ability to dance it doesn’t matter what they get, always prepared to every change of rhythm.

Cheers

Lorax

IT'S UP TO YOU - NEW YORK

The island of Manhattan is a strange place. Totally crowded with millions of people it conveys the feeling of being welcome and home even if you haven’t been there for years. It may be the phenomenon of skyscrapers limiting the space – though you are in between the diversity of the human race a glance up to the sky suffices to feel total loneliness and nevertheless a kind of safety. Yes, it is definitely the skyscrapers, but what do we actually define as our homes and how can we express what it means to ourselves? Is a home where your family is, are your friends you might can find everywhere in the world the better family and are homes as a consequence therefore replaceable? Somebody one day said home is where your heart is – seems easy, effectively quite hard. Maybe this quote should be taken more literal than emotional. As our hearts are inside ourselves – not in all but at least in most cases – we carry our homes along every day it doesn’t matter in which place on our planet we are located for a while by furnishing it with memories we caught up since our ability to remember killed our childhood innocence. So why can a city like New York impact our feeling of home? It’s like coming back to your small hometown, having the impression nothing will ever change while the time stands still. Of course you can discover new adventures at any time but basically the structures last. People – fashion – the subway. You are used to it, that’s why it’s common and might be replaceable much more easily than you could ever have imagined. At the end we are able to replace everything from a broken plate to a friend if we actually just want to, so why are we often afraid of doing the same way with our homes? Human’s nature of convenience? I believe things would go like they did with Rupert Everett and his VIP dressing room he was so proud about getting after his first big success at one of London’s West End theaters. We are flying high. Five minutes. After that it makes us sick.

Every time I breathe the wasted air of New York City it is the bespoke feeling that comes over. What is a home? Can we accept a certain place as the one giving us the safety we need no matter what happens or is it our actual living style we need to get into somewhat deeper in order to establish nearness around us? I am afraid we often avoid the idea of loving the things we actually got in order not to run the risk that someday that something might be gone. In some points Frank Sinatra might end up to be right by singing It’s up to you! Doubtful if he meant the city or his very self. No matter where we will make it or want our vagabond shoes to stray – sometimes home is just a feeling.

Cheers

Lorax

MAKE A WISH

For a true friend

When the magic wears off, reality will still be here and you have to deal with it. Epic moments in life seem to be rare, but why are they? The most situations we have to deal with should get the label epic as we still talk about our daily entity. When we give up the magic in ourselves nothing we ever worked for seems to have any right of existence anymore, but what is it about letting magic enter our lives? I am talking about those moments we suddenly brake out of a daily cluster and let the cold wind lead us to some speechless adventures we might never have experienced out of our natural phlegm.

I am observing a couple at my favorite bar for some weeks now. I am not sure if they are still dating or simply passing their evenings together in a more fashionable location than their proper residence might be, but what I know is, that their reunions seem to take place on a very intimate and quite magic level as they seem to descend in their very own world, with all this pulsing life of a Friday night around them vanishing to the dark. It is the way they look and talk to each other, what makes this weird kind of scene magical. I ask myself if reality will overtake them the moment they cross the doors back again to this cold spring. Anyhow I have the impression from time to time, that the magic I am talking about is still a kind of hideaway we curtain ourselves behind by establishing some fictional world for some hours. Is magic a sort of lie pretending to be the truth?

Magic encounters us more often we actually would believe, but what we never really want to face is what would happen when the magic is gone.

Later that week someone decided to stop the never-ending rain, giving the sun the chance for a comeback. While enjoying the very first summer evening on the steps of the opera house the magic of a whole city overwhelmed me in a rather unusual way. On the one side the moment of a town falling asleep in the dawn, on the other side the thought, that nothing lasts forever. Summer returns every year no matter how bad and sad we might have lived through the days before its final breakthrough. It is sort a outlandish that there is and will always be this deep wish inside of ourselves, getting things the way we certified them, even if they aren’t meant to be alike. Is this even a wish we should and could make? Are wishes meant to last or do they reflect a small sequence of our thoughts and emotional condition? Where stays the magic of a profound wish if it isn’t planned to stay with us? Maybe we all must learn and accept to be broken up with something just to get a better state of mind for our surrounding world and us. How can we even care for our wishes if we cant care? Is it allowed to make wishes in a dishonest way? Somehow we should again face reality and remind that a breakup also in a wishes context, isn’t always that bad. It may hurt but maybe it is the only way. In the end Oscar Wilde was right by telling us that divorces are made in heaven, so maybe we should start to step beside our daydreams and let reality be real.

But even if reality will only start to care when we are gone, why should we adjust our dreams and wishes? Divorces may be a celestial phenomenon but if our dreams wont scare us out of a reason of sense, they aren’t big enough.

The sky might be the limit – not for our dreams.

Cheers

Lorax

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SUN, SEA & SUNGLASSES

There seem to be a few fixed dates during the year in which the whole world wants to board the next flight to the very same destination. The highly fashionable island Sylt in the middle of the German northern sea is the hotspot of more or less every socialite during the Pentecost holidays, turning to a certain kind of Disney World for adults for a weekend only. The funny thing about this scattershot get together is that nearly everything takes places on an area of roundabout 5 km², compared to the most central areas of it doesn’t matter which city the groundwork for coincidences. Coincidences – are they real or again a consequence of decisions we take? It is weekends like the bespoke, which let me muse about how it is even possible to hit exactly the folks we would or even not would like to see more than once within 48 hours. Is it really that difficult to avoid the one who broke your heart or your archenemy among beach parties, dinner invitations and clubbing? Obviously it is, so maybe this might be the reason why everybody on the island wears sunglasses in the dark.

I guess coincidences are those strange things between science and fate we have to accept for ourselves as those, we can’t control anymore, like the rough sea, we actually cant swim in. I mean what would sometimes have happened, if we chose in an instant to go the complete opposite direction. Would we have met someone special earlier and what are coincidences meant to be for our road of life? Are they actually comparable to destiny or might this be a something too spiritual view for deciding a path to be gone or not? Maybe it is even the point in which we have to stop worrying about the what-ifs and the should-haves in order to stay clear in mind. Nevertheless it confuses me, how it might be possible to meet someone perfectly unknown in front of a night club, the next day at the same restaurant for breakfast, afterwards at the same house party and to top it all on the same plane back home. I mean, OK. Space is limited – but suchlike? Where do coincidence and destiny meet and are those simple constructs siblings in mind or distant relatives?

While I was resting a bit at the beach from a running and rather excessive party the whole collective looked forward to on Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t resist of thinking about coincidences over and again. Basically they seem to be nothing but a consequence of choices and choices are and will stay the frame of showing, which person we really are far more than our abilities ever will. Do we have a choice? I often had those moments in life asking myself what would have happened if I chose in a situation differently before? Surely I wouldn’t be settled in life where I find myself now but maybe I would have done the one or the other more exotic and freaky thing. Moving to Berlin for my studies was one of them for example. Obviously it is better doing something than doing nothing. Being stuck is even worse than getting the wrong direction, even if I maintain the point of view that a wrong could not be possible in life-choices. Everything might be for some reason and even if we cannot realize it for the very moment, I can’t leave the feeling that sometimes I could have done better for my very own. I am and will still reach for something greater, better, more fashionable, and waiting maybe for a further moving by accident enabling it.

Maybe it is again an issue of sunglasses – by taking them off we might find the coincidences we were meant for somehow easier by clearing our visibility, but why should we take them off, when we could find our sunshine somewhere else?

Cheers

Lorax