My Heart Is a Ghost Town

Although I’ve always considered myself a global cosmopolitan who has long since cut ties with German pop culture, Paula Hartmann’s Kleine Feuer has been my most-listened-to album over the past few months. There were days when nothing else played in my AirPods all day but these 15 songs, from beginning to end, over and over again, morning, noon, and night. Others see ghosts, I only see you, Paula whispers to herself without any empathy. So long shadows with so little light. You send a smiley face, trap doors open. My heart is a ghost town and you are the ghost. The wine at two makes me cry again at three, then I fall asleep.

Paula’s apathetic voice and the bleakly pulsating beats are the anthem of my default emotional state, which I can only escape when I’m with other people, and which I fall back into as soon as I’m alone. The Berlin singer comments on the world I’m trapped in on solitary evenings. Wish we could talk to each other, wish us one last summer. Hear my friends say: ’Everything will be fine one day.’ As long as you swim through the rain and thunder. Where’s our happy home? I’ve forgotten where I live. Listen to our last notes, otherwise silence on my phone. Share no more songs, share no more smoke. Share the stars and the moon.

I like tracks that I can listen to in the background, but also immerse myself in. Paula’s music covers me like a blanket and reminds me that other people feel the same way as I do. The cord of my hoodie tastes like fall and the first birds are screaming in pain. The colorful ravens put on their black coats. A grandma behind every windowsill. The first bus wipes me up and then breathes me out. A brake light beacon in the exhaust, rusty leaves on cobblestones. A quick thought about you and suddenly gravity has me again. Kicks my legs, fall down and break. Your roof turns gray walls into a house. In it, we exchange disappointments for a lifetime.