When the Lights Fell

I got invited to a record store music event in Berlin for some network’s big behind-the-scenes thing. The kind of invitation designed to make you feel like you’re part of something, with a logo printed on it that probably meant something to someone. All I remember is the free currywurst and the cameras.

Groove, in Kreuzberg, had been retrofitted for filming. Lights everywhere, cables underfoot, equipment that had no business being in a record store, piled up like someone had moved a TV studio in and not bothered to arrange it properly. Markus Kavka was hosting, doing the easy charm thing, when one of the technicians made a choice that should have cost him his job immediately. He was standing on something inadequate, installing or adjusting a lamp, when the whole rig came down. Not slowly. Just collapse. Kavka was standing maybe six feet away. For a second the universe genuinely seemed to be deciding whether to kill him in front of the cameras. Then it didn’t. The equipment missed. Off to the side. Close enough to be funny, not close enough to be tragic.

Die Happy’s singer came through, performing unplugged, singing with a slight accent that nobody cared about past the moment it happened. Then Karpatenhund. Their frontwoman was the one who’d done time in a certain magazine with certain photos that everyone silently knew about but wouldn’t say aloud, which meant she was defined by that fact as much as by her voice or the songs, whether she wanted to be or not.

By the end they had everyone singing a Christmas song for the broadcast. Some promo thing that nobody was quite confident actually mattered. Kavka got to pick a record as consolation, which was probably the least they could offer to someone who’d nearly been crushed. I would have sued for enough to retire. He just laughed and left with something under his arm. The broadcast aired on a channel I can’t receive anyway. Which felt right. A perfect moment that mostly belonged to the people actually there.