September Reprieve

Summer in Berlin that year was barely a summer—wind and rain kept killing the festivals. I stopped planning and just checked the weather like it was stock data. By September I just needed something else to happen. The East Side Music Days came up over the 2nd and 3rd, free shows scattered across Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, London MCs and newer names and the usual circuit. Nothing that was going to rewire me, but that wasn’t really the point.

The point was still having something to walk toward. The Warschauer Straße, the East Side Gallery, time before the real cold moved in. I’d figured out by then that Berlin festivals were just about showing up and seeing what held together. The weather, the crowds, maybe one good set—it all blended into one long season, one continuous salvage operation that would be the only summer I’d remember.