Songs From Another World
When I finally got my driver’s license in my early 20s and raced my mother’s bright red Seat Ibiza through the streets of my hometown, crisscrossing back and forth, there was no hip hop, no techno, and no Britney Spears blaring from my speakers. No. It was the then-new single by a Japanese pop musician. Kumi Koda was her name. Butterfly was the song. My girlfriend at the time, sitting huddled in the passenger seat, was ashamed of me as we drove past the local ice cream parlor, the school, and the outdoor pool. With Butterfly at full volume. Of course, it makes absolutely no sense that I listen to Japanese music. I’m, surprise, surprise, not Japanese after all. Wow.
With songs like First Love, Secret Base, and Rewrite, I can rhyme together own stories in my head. Imagine my own personal closing credits. Fantasize my life on the other side of the world. J-pop exudes the same kind of magic you had as a kid, listening to foreign songs on the radio and not yet having to understand what bullshit was being sung about in them. Japanese music is melodic, emotional, and has an intangible power that can otherwise only be experienced by accidentally standing between sweaty weebs armed with two to seven Canon SLR cameras and a sixteen-year-old girl dressed as Rem from Re:Zero at some random anime convention.
Japanese people like Swedish indie bands, American rappers, and British DJs. But these songs are the anthems of my own little screwed up world. The Japanese music industry doesn’t care if I listen to their songs. Adore the stars. Watch the music videos. I don’t exist for them. J-pop is a huge personal playlist. Just for me. I can dance to it. Laugh. Cry. I’m fully aware that with the revelation that I love J-pop, I have lost any chance of future sexual intercourse with another human being. Forever. So I sit here, close my eyes, and listen to Perfume, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and Babymetal. As they confidently sing about sekai, dokidoki, and hanabi. And I’m truly happy.
The Transience of Written Words
This blog has changed again and again over the past years. From the small diary of a German media designer to the story collection of creative minds spread all over Germany. From the bible of Berlin nightlife to the tabloid newspaper for hipsters. From a digital news site to a never-sleeping ticker of viral happenings. Until at some point, I was faced with a sheer monstrosity of false expectations and hopeless prospects. This website wanted to be everything but simply collapsed from not being able to do anything right. For a variety of reasons. I had forgotten what this blog was really about and wanted to stay relevant at all costs in this fast-paced media universe.
With my eyes forward, there was only one choice: Keeping up. Keeping up with the news. Keeping up with the trends. Keeping up with the loud, shiny, and flashing. At some point, I was just blindly churning out news, lookbooks, gossip, YouTube videos, shitstorms, and boobs in a completely irrelevant mix. The blog had filled to bursting point with nonsense and bullshit. By the end, all I wanted was for it to be over. One last night, soaked in cheap wine from the convenience store, I rummaged through the old texts. The ones I had published when blogs were just getting big. When life was still a game. When all seemed right with the world. They were great.
I realized that there was only one way to save my blog. And that was to do the opposite of what I did in the past years. My blog should once again become a peaceful garden amid a jungle full of nonsense. Where everyone has fun, no matter if they want to indulge in the profoundly formulated transience of being or just marvel at a few pretty images about even prettier adventures. Everybody is welcome to look around and take the thoughts and opinions with them that they think are important, right, or amusing. I would be happy if I could continue to accompany you as a reader a little bit on your turbulent life, entertain, and even inspire - doing it my way.