Marcel Winatschek

If I Can’t Be a Part of Your World

If I Can’t Be a Part of Your World

I can’t always have what I want. That would be far too easy. My own happiness sometimes collides with the dreams and wishes of others. And it’s not my place to harm them just because I have the questionable opinion that I must be the main character in every story told. Every once in a while, I have to admit to myself that I’m only a supporting role in a play and that the spotlight is on someone else. No matter how difficult that may be for my own ego. Sometimes I’m neither Romeo nor Juliet but just some fruit seller suffering in the background.

When the black-clad, slim, and impudently grinning girl, with the white sneakers marked by life, whom I like, with whom I want to spend time, with whom I want to experience adventures, forge memories and together resist the perils of the world, already has just such a person by their side, the correct path is the one that leads away. Away from this charming girl, away from her supposedly radiant happiness, away from the creeping pain to which I have become accustomed in the past out of pure ignorance towards myself and a bit of masochism.

The main goal is to get away from the inner urge to maybe still, by some miracle that comes along and completely contradicts the logic of this universe, get the knowledge to become a part of this slowly dissolving hope. Before I cause irreparable damage. To myself and to the girl I actually wanted to win for myself. Because all I can achieve through this desperate plan is hatred, anger, and an almost unimaginable loneliness. And I certainly don’t want that. Unless I’m already lost. But then it’s all too late anyway. For me and everyone else around me.

I could spare myself these mental scars by following the advice of others. That I should distract myself. That I should talk to the nice but uninteresting faces. That I might find someone who can burn herself into my own emotional world just as much as the girl whose attention I’m trying to draw to myself with every conceivable means. But I don’t want that. Because all the others are just empty shells. And although I know damn well that this isn’t true, it’s far easier to regard this lie as a set truth and thereby melt away undisturbed in my own self-pity.

Heartbreak is much more fun when you renounce all hope. Because this way of dealing with grief is much easier than having to face the uncomfortable reality that I may not be infatuated with the girl per se, but with the false expectations I pumped into her from the very beginning. After all, what do I know about this girl except the isolated stories she has so graciously shared with me and the connections I have been allowed to spin together for myself? Nothing. And realizing this fact is the first step out of my own broken head and into the real world.

Art Makes Me Angry

Art Makes Me Angry

I’m standing in front of a wall. It’s big, bright, and largely empty. Two framed pictures are hanging on it. I’m trying to look at them as concentrated as possible, but that doesn’t change the fact that just a few stick figures were drawn on the white canvases. They are staring back at me. A sun in the corner, some grass on the ground. Everything’s black and white. The gallery owner is sitting on a wooden chair, quite bored, typing apathetic on her iPad. Connoisseurs, patrons, and buyers are buzzing around me. I want to scream. Art makes me angry.

People are lingering in front of the installations. They are talking about what they see there. Discuss, praise, and criticize. What the artist was thinking with choosing this color. With this material, with this angle. While some nude guy is jerking off on a flickering television screen behind me, I’m staring at a picture with stick figures. It costs around 2,000 dollars. Would it be worth it to me if I ripped it off the wall right now and beat up the gallery owner with it until someone can give me an answer to the only question I have right now: What?

Then I feel like a New York Post reading Fox News viewer who votes for something with xenophobia on Tuesdays and would prefer to rip the balls off child molesters, but at night, when his wrinkled wife is asleep, masturbates to photos of his underage niece. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate art turns into a junk food eating, lettuce discarding redneck with a Windows PC at home. It’s all artificial. They’d rather watch soccer than go to a museum, prefer sugar to vegetables, beer to wine, cunts to muses. Too stupid for art, too conventional for beauty.

I love the art world. I really do. The large-format magazines, the old books, the breathy red wine, the intellectual chatter, the absurd prices, and the girls armed with burlap bags roaming galleries alone on Sundays, positively brimming with impetuous introversion and buzzing sexuality of a cute student living somewhere in an old apartment in the middle of Kreuzberg who you can fuck only after talking to her for hours while sipping on whiskey on a Saturday night. It’s just the art itself I don’t get. But that’s the main point of being here, isn’t it?

The inhabitants living in this parallel universe are better dressed than most Fashion Week attendees. The big and bright buildings that were once train stations, workshops, or factories and now serve as a parallel universe to a world torn apart by war, hate, and poverty, are simply beautiful. Even if 99 out of 100 things I see make me angry, they still flood my thoughts, energize me, bring back memories, joy, and a whole lot of hate. Why, I ask myself then. How, I ask. Where, I ask. And particularly: What on earth are you trying to tell me?

When We Became the Past

When We Became the Past

No matter how far away we may find ourselves, in the crowded streets of New York, on the hot coasts of Australia, or under the high ceilings of Berlin’s old apartments, we return home sooner or later. To our city. To a world in which time seems to stand still. And we feel superior. Because no one there dared even come close to what we have achieved. The streets of the small community are still the same ones we rode down as kids. We know them inside and out. We still dream of the time when these alleys were the veins of our childish existence.

As I walk down the main street, my thoughts go wandering. They float up, over the city. And memories pop up everywhere. When we broke into that trailer and used helium stolen from the fair to turn our voices into Mickey Mouse. When we threw up and called the ambulance because Maria had crashed into the fence of the open-air swimming pool while sledding and blood was streaming down her face. When we sat on the slide of the nearby playground and Paula pulled up her white shirt, waving her middle fingers around, to shock the neighbors.

When I come to my senses again, I stand on a small bridge a little outside the city. We ruled this place, made it shake, and made it tremble. We passed through its gates at night, we kissed, ate, beat, cried, came, shouted, laughed, and drank. Loudly. Energetic. Courageous. So that we may perpetuate ourselves. So that our deeds would still cause murmurs a hundred years from now. So that we could not die, even though we had long since passed away. But our graffiti faded. Our legends were silenced. Our markings were erased. Time turned us into victims.

The generation that wreaks havoc in these streets today has no idea of what took place here. What we risked. Who we touched. How many enemies we made and how many friends accompanied us. It doesn’t matter to them. They don’t care about our names. Our places. Our sorrows. Our songs. And then we realize that we don’t have a single reason to feel superior. Because we have accomplished nothing. Our memories only haunt the city as vague shadows. They have no effect, no desire. But they serve as proof that we have been replaced.

By people who consider us irrelevant and write their own legends in the places that served as a backdrop for our memories. But this generation will also return to this place. And they will become aware of the fact that none of their actions, no matter how rad and passionate and dramatic, will result in eternity. That their life is a copy of a copy of a copy. And that everything falls apart once they turn around. All that remains as consolation is the dream of doing something that no one before us has ever done. Because there’s nothing else we can do.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Walking

What I Talk About When I Talk About Walking

I love walking. Set me down anywhere on earth, give me a direction and I’ll start walking. And when I talk about walking, I don’t mean jogging, running or sprinting, but the most relaxed form of human locomotion: Strolling. Over the past few years, I have gradually increased the amount of walking I do. Some time ago, my daily step count was still in the one to two-digit range, but I was able to keep increasing my limit. Three digits soon became four. At some point, four became five. And five might even become six. If that is even humanly possible.

I can now easily manage the scientifically completely irrelevant figure of ten thousand steps a day recommended by a Japanese company for advertising purposes. I’m currently averaging around twenty thousand steps - like a top athlete. My success, which should inspire every single person in this world, is based on three pillars of success: boredom, routine, and distraction. After all, I have nothing better to do. I only do things when I’m used to doing them. And I only persevere with something if my thoughts are occupied with something else.

Whereas with real sporting activities, such as jogging, I spend every single second of the agonizing and seemingly never-ending progress hoping that some confused hunter will mistake me for a graceful deer or at least a half-submerged wild boar and shoot me in the forest so that I’m finally over with it, when I walk I am often surprised that I have been doing it for two, three, sometimes four hours without actively noticing. Then I fly through towns, across fields, along the lake. Past cars, people and nice-smelling cafés, boutiques and kebab stands.

I walk to a café, treat myself to a beverage and a bit of laptop time and then take a walk through the textile district, the park and the old town before heading home again. And I do the same thing, every day, over and over again, like a robot that has no life. But it works. Because it’s routine. Because I like the varied route. Because I know exactly where I can rest, where I can access the internet. and where I can go to the toilet on my route, which seems random to outsiders. And it is this certainty that mentally disadvantaged autistic people like me need.

While I’m preaching about the walking lifestyle to you, I’m just trying to make it clear that if you need more exercise in your life for whatever reason, you just need to find something that doesn’t completely fuck you off while you’re doing it. That’s why I’m going to put on my smelly sneakers, listen to a five-hour podcast about the best Super Nintendo games from the nineties and then go out into the wide world like Hänschen klein. If I do get run over by a bus, at least I’ll have died doing something I really, truly love. And not everyone can claim that.

The Empty Heart

The Empty Heart

If I want to, I can become friends with many people in a very short time. No matter in which place, no matter in which situation, no matter with which counterpart. Then I’m funny, rousing, and open-hearted, as if we knew each other forever. I share intimate stories and secrets, confess my biggest sins and fears, and make them feel like I understand them. I would leave no stone unturned, no matter how unattainable, to make them happier just by having met me. Even though we’ve just seen each other for the first time five minutes ago.

I used to pride myself on being able to shut down my shyness, lethargy, and social phobia and have it turn into the complete opposite. Thanks to a trick I call mental distraction, which works by thinking of something different just before doing something illogical, I do the bravest, craziest, and most likable things without being able to reflect on it beforehand. These deeds then feel natural and not wrong at all. And I’m always glad that I dared to do it because it allows me to get close to people who would otherwise have remained inaccessible.

I’m a ghost. An empty heart wrapped in flesh without any hint of empathy. The only reason I make friends so easily is because they mean nothing to me. And if I do get a crush on someone, I analyze her intensely until I finally get to the bottom of her maddening fascination, only to drop her like a hot potato afterward. I practically suck people dry and then move on. Like an unscrupulous emotional wanderer who just feels, celebrates, and fucks amid his loved ones and the next moment, when no one’s paying attention, suddenly disappears into the void.

I wonder if I’m just a soulless shapeshifter who only ever echoes what brings him as close as possible to his current target. Preferably into the favor, thoughts, or genitals of his opponent. The question of who I am is is as old and clichéd as life itself. I’m probably just a Frankenstein’s monster cobbled together from book quotes, TV wisdom, and sayings I picked up from someone I once thought was cool, who merely pretends to be human but is nothing more than a parasite somehow kept alive, feasting on the fears, dreams, and problems of others.

Like a predator, I pounce on the first victim that crosses my path, rip it apart, and gorge myself on its remains. A new body, a new thought, a new warmth. But the satisfaction lasts only a short time and then disappears as quickly as it came. Because nothing can fill this endless void within me, especially not someone who only wanted to be loved, held, and saved, and is now not much more than a vague memory in my continuous bloodlust. Then I move on to the next pretty face, hoping that this time everything will be different. For sure.

The Modern Diet

The Modern Diet

I don’t even know why I’ve been eating less meat lately. The cafeteria serves a portion of French fries with ketchup and mayo for a buck. Vegan salami is actually quite good. And an avocado, hummus, or pickles with a cheese sandwich: Best. I’m not concerned about health, climate, taste, culture, or even the animals in my newly discovered meat reduction. But I can think of reasons why I don’t have to think of roasted pigs, fried chicken, and freshly butchered cows all day long, because I stuff myself with nothing but fruit, vegetables, and cereals.

I’ve reached a redemptive point in terms of nutrition, where the focus is on coffee. And everything else is second to seventh priority. I don’t give a fuck whether I’m shoving a veal cutlet or some soy wheat bean mash-based alternative pudding into my mouth - as long as it doesn’t make me throw up. It also makes me feel above everyone else. When I put the vegan cold cuts on the conveyor belt at the checkout in the supermarket and the guy behind me has his mixed mince for 2.99 dollars, I think to myself that I’m the more modern person of the two of us.

But the most important reason of all is that I’m deeply inside a random trend follower. You just have to tell me certain things often enough, and eventually, I’ll believe them. When I watch more or less secret recordings of some redneck slaughterhouses, where chickens are trampled, piglets are castrated, and cows are mistreated, then it has at most a short-term effect on me. But the more often I witness such things, the more I think to myself: Okay, okay, from now on more cucumbers, tomatoes, and potatoes should suffer instead of animals. I get it.

I don’t buy meat and sausage produced from cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys or, I don’t know, monkeys. But I do eat these meals when they are offered to me by people. I’m also not a vegan. It doesn’t matter if it’s milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, eggs, honey, or whatever else you can squeeze out of animals: It ends up in my mouth. And I eat fish. Salmon, pike perch, dorado, trout, halibut, herring, scampi, tuna, clams, crabs, eel, squid, cod, mackerel, oysters, shrimp, and sardines. Whatever is crawling around in the sea, I will find it, catch it, and inhale it.

As I write this, I’m stuffing myself with some more or less healthy cheese sandwich with the last vegan salami slice that was still lying around in the fridge at home and some mayonnaise on top, and I just can’t find a reason why I should have bought the ones with cows, pigs, or horses in them instead. But maybe this is just the beginning of my latest life-changing journey. I will eventually evolve into a superior higher being who can live on nothing but sun, air, and coffee. And probably only then would I be truly satisfied with myself and the world.

The Terror of the Underworld

The Terror of the Underworld

When Arano steps out of the station, his fate is already sealed. The young man came to Tokyo to make his dreams come true: It should rain knives. Preferably into the hearts of the yakuza, on whom he cultivates an inexplicable hatred. There are too many superfluous elements in this world, is the credo he keeps muttering. Caught in the crossfire of two rival gangs, the otherwise taciturn Arano befriends club owner Kamijo and skater Alice and joins their chaotic world. But the bonds he forges are torn apart by greed, revenge, and arrogance.

Pornostar is a mixture of drama, thriller, and gangster film, covered with a bucket of fake blood, and sprinkled with a touch of love story, all within the restless backdrop of Tokyo just before the millennium. The movie is full of splatter, violence, and death. And yet it all happens so crudely that you almost have the feeling of sitting in the same room and witnessing how one human life after another is extinguished, only to stand on the street again afterward with a cigarette in your mouth and squander your hard-earned yen in the nearest arcade.

The story lacks sympathetic characters. Arano’s motive to rid the world of the yakuza can be guessed at but remains hidden. Kamijo’s fatal step into the clutches of the underworld happens just as casually as the last meeting with Alice, who might have been a way out for Arano and his dream of gory knives. We don’t want these people to find happiness. They have chosen to participate in this game and maybe even earned Arano as an avenging angel. And with the first murder, he also plunges into an abyss from which there must be no escape.

Pornostar is the debut work of Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda, who continued with movies like Blue Spring, 9 Souls, and The Blood of Rebirth, and cannot claim at least one thing: to be normal. It reminded me of Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop, released the same year, without having anything in common other than being set in Shibuya. But the handcrafted, raw, almost documentary style of shooting by both directors could almost be two sides of the same coin. Except that one side is full of naughty schoolgirls and the other is just... well... corpses.

When you watch Pornostar expecting to be satisfied, inspired, or even happy after the credits finally begin to roll, you’re mistaken. The film takes no prisoners - even quite the opposite. You would indeed begrudge one or the other character to experience the Grand Summer of Love on Fiji and thus slide blissfully into the year 2000. But as it is already said in the Bible: He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword. And to resist this holy prophecy seems to be almost an impossibility in this heartless world. Especially when people like Arano live in it.

The Meaningless Love

The Meaningless Love

As she makes her way home, I shout the first stupid thing that comes to my mind. The black-clad, slim person with the white sneakers marked by life turns around once more, grins, shouts back, and raises her hand. The smoke from her cigarette dances in the otherwise clear air. I look after her only very briefly, open the heavy glass door, and once again enter the building which is bursting with dreams of strangers and in the past months has turned into our refuge from the mostly noisy, chaotic, and abandoned by all good spirits world outside.

There is no worse feeling than being in love with someone I shouldn’t be in love with. Because there are just too many differences between me and the person on the other side. Because the person of favor already has someone who fills the position that I’d like to hold myself. Or because the person I have to think about again and again, at the most impossible times, just doesn’t share the same emotions that I so exceedingly vulnerably extend to them. And when things go really bad, all of these points apply equally and hit me all the harder.

This love has no meaning, no future, and thus no value. I try to find arguments for why it would be much more logical if I had no affection for the impudently grinning girl. But there is nothing to be said for not wanting to dive into this body. How could I resist this person’s sober, disarming, and perceptive charm? She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s sassy. She always has a silly saying in store, either glowing with energy or apathetically sinking into her thoughts, and every time I talk to her, she opens up like a man-made grab bag of interesting stories.

I collect every new detail about her life, like pieces of a puzzle scattered all over the globe, which, when assembled bit by bit, create a lovingly decorated and partially scarred treasure map that I can use as a guide to discover ever more adventures, memories, and inspirations. I listen, marvel, and travel with her to those fateful moments that made her wonderful the personality she is today. And no matter how great, meaningful, and varied I think my existence is, it’s nothing compared to the plays that are playing out in front of my mind’s eye.

There is no worse feeling than being in love with someone I shouldn’t be with. But I’m happy about it. This emotion can turn into a veritable treasure trove of mind-expanding ideas. Meaningless love is a bittersweet gift from which I can gain a lesson about myself and the people around me. And hope, no matter how small, puny, and unrealistic it may be, dies last. Sometimes that’s all I need to keep going in this mostly noisy, chaotic, and abandoned by all good spirits world that is waiting for me out there, in front of these light-flooded halls.

God Is Chill

God Is Chill

To do justice to my offensive openness, I don’t want to withhold from you how I fared in my first semester of the Interactive Media program at Technical University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg. In the Basics of Visual Design course, I passed with a grade of 1.7. In the Basics of Three-Dimensional Design course, I passed with a grade of 2.3. In the Basics of Computer Science major, I passed with a grade of 3.3. In the elective Japanese 1, I passed with a grade of 1.7. In addition, I got a few credits for nude drawing and a trip to the Bavarian Forest.

I postponed the exam of Basics of Programming to the next semester because I had not prepared for it sufficiently and had lost faith in humanity after our computer science exam. But praying with my fellow students did help. And that was even though I had learned that you should never demand from God but only ask. And: If you only ever take from God in a crisis but don’t think of him when things are going well, he is first busy forgiving you before he helps you. But apparently, God is more chill than you think. So all I can say is: Thx. And: LYL.

While I’m pleased with the results, I’m also aware that I’ll only be able to master the coming years if I can squeeze the content I need to learn into my head more consistently, more regularly, and with much more commitment. Through the right mix of Anki, repetition, and the Pomodoro technique. I’ll focus on those three strategies. Maybe. I’ve also realized one other thing that I hadn’t finally decided at the beginning of my studies, and that’s what degree I’ll be pursuing. Bachelor of Arts or Science. We have to know that by the third semester.

If the computer science exam gives even a small glimpse of what’s to come, then I’ll try with all my might to cling to the Bachelor of Arts. Otherwise, I might end up empty-handed. You can always justify good or bad art, but computer science is like an out-of-control killer robot. It knows no mercy, only zeros and ones. Pass or fail. Life or death. And I know which side I would be on. Apart from that, I can say that Interactive Media is a lot of fun, rich in variety, and should be interesting for anyone who feels at home in both the artistic and technical worlds.

Most of the entertainment value comes from fellow students with whom you struggle through lectures, trainings, and exams. Unfortunately, I can no longer claim to be a freshman. This temporally very limited term, in connection with my no longer quite so dewy person, had always led to wide eyes and the one or other stuttering in people facing me. I’m excited to see what new adventures await us in the second semester and will spend the next few weeks reviewing the basics of programming to get through the postponed exam just fine as well.

You Can Have Alone Time When You’re Dead

You Can Have Alone Time When You’re Dead

My biggest concern when I started college wasn’t about the courses, the professors, or future fears about what I would do with the degree once I had it in my pocket, but how the other students would react to me. After all, I was twice their age in my late 30s. Most of them could have been my children. I was already mentally preparing myself to spend the next few years in isolation. While the president of the university gave a speech, the campus was packed with young people scurrying back and forth, equally confused and full of nervousness.

In between the guided tours, through the buildings, the city, and the room where the beer fridge throned, I got into conversation with my fellow students. Gradually, the more or less fashionably dressed puppets turned into interesting characters with names, pasts, and humor. I realized that they were just normal people, each of whom also had their fears, hopes, and dreams. And they were all as excited as I was, just for different reasons. A week full of parties, I no longer felt any fear of not being able to make friends because of my advanced age.

When I entered the cafeteria the following Monday, the first familiar heads were already smiling at me. Hey, Marcel! I heard from one of the tables cheerfully call over. I grinned back, followed the hustle and bustle, and sat down on a free seat amid my new companions. Of course, I’m still the old fart. Just like Kerstin is the stoner, Jonas is the farter, and Dana is the one who got mounted in a fire truck. I’m not the only one who gets stupid looks from other students I don’t know yet, no, everyone has to carry their baggage in whatever way.

Since that fateful first week, various friendships have emerged from the hundreds of encounters that have taken me all over the city, to buoyant apartments, clubs, and bars. No matter where I go, I catch sight of familiar faces everywhere. Not only from my university, but also from friends, roommates, and relationships of those who didn’t avoid me because of my difference, but, on the contrary, invited me into their lives with open arms. Of course, I still have to listen to one or two stupid comments from time to time. But that’s just part of it.

As we stumble out of Iveta’s apartment, hooting loudly, and smelling of tequila, wine, and popcorn schnapps, into the nearest convenience store to buy a few more road beers, I glance down the brightly lit street. People are streaming through it. There is laughter, singing, and dancing in the buildings. I am, now, at this moment, part of this backdrop, this ensemble, these stories. Because I have dared to do something and have not closed myself off from the unknown. Since one truth is certain: You can have alone time when you’re dead.

Feelings Without a Name

Feelings Without a Name

In the most unexpected situations, I meet people whose existence fascinates me so much that I can hardly comprehend it. It’s not like I’m overwhelmed with love, hate, or pity. Because the affection I feel for the person doesn’t fit into the emotional template into which I’ve squeezed all previous encounters. It’s not love because I’m not consumed by jealousy, desire, or grief. It’s not hate because I finally feel a touch of empathy again. And it’s not pity because any supposed fragility I see in the other is merely a reflection of my own inadequacies.

The more interesting I find another girl, the more I naturally want to know about her. Even the smallest banalities that no one else is aware of, become significant, important, and even overrated. The intangibility of a different being can drive me crazy if I’m not careful. Not only can’t I find a definition for my own sensations, no, I don’t even manage to file the other person away in shelf-like categories. Because every encounter brings new insights and I feel compelled to shatter again the theories of the previous day that were already set in stone.

Maybe I project too much into the breathing body in front of me. Maybe there is nothing over there. Maybe it’s just a normal girl who wants to cope with herself and the chaotic world around her and has enough to do with that alone, and I just imagine being just a little bit infatuated with her and her secrets, because I can thereby ignore the complexity of my own life for a short time. I can only receive the happiness of myself when I have found out how the other person defines happiness. After all, reality will be able to wait that long for me.

I rack my brain over the question which emotion I feel now. If I could think of a name for it, it would be easier to find a way to deal with it, to put it aside, to cope with it. I’m not even sure if it’s a real feeling that’s buzzing around in my head, or if it’s just a figment of my imagination because I’ve got too much time to think about it. The feeling without a name is too strong to ignore but too weak to deal with it. So I carry it around out of a creeping habit and wait anxiously for the moment when it knocks again on the door of my world of thoughts.

The worst thing about the nameless feeling is that I may have no right to it. I’m nothing more than some random guy in the background. Maybe it doesn’t even make sense to find a meaning for it. Because it can disappear as quickly as it came. Soon the girl has moved on again. On to new scenes, people, and stories. While I linger in the backdrop that has just been abandoned by the spotlight and is about to dissolve, gazing after the once so disarmingly smiling silhouette, only to have forgotten shortly afterward that the feeling without a name ever existed.

A Student for Life

A Student for Life

After the more or less sudden end of AMY&PINK, I felt lost. For fifteen years, I had put all my energy into a project that used to be full of fun, passion, and hopes at the beginning and towards the end was just a slowly languishing burden. I sank into idleness. The days passed me by. Was today Tuesday or already Friday? February or September? What year was it anyway? I couldn’t get myself up for anything productive and spent days, weeks, months scrolling through Reddit, YouTube, and Pornhub by turns. From sunrise to sunset. And vice versa.

By my late 30s, my life seemed to be already over. What was there to come of it now? Except a heart attack from too many frozen pizzas, too little exercise, and too much jerking off to dubious porn. The only things that kept me alive were the interminable voicemails from my good friend Hannah, who probably knew me better than I knew myself at this point, the programming course that the employment office forced on me so that I wouldn’t be completely useless to society, and the fact that I was much too lazy and cowardly to commit suicide.

On a hot summer day, I went to Munich. After I had bought a coffee-table book about Japanese pop culture in a bookstore, I sat down on a free bench on my way back into the center to leaf through it a bit. I noticed that I was in front of the city’s university. Young people were milling about the grounds, chatting, laughing. Some were in a hurry, others were sitting on the grass. There was a boisterous mood. The large buildings watched over the small figures, most of them scurrying around frantically, whose future would be formed in them.

Two fashionable women had taken a seat next to me. The blonde proudly told me that her little sister had registered just in time for the entrance exam for the upcoming winter semester. The brunette marveled somewhat exaggeratedly. I hope she gets in! For sure! I found it a little sad that I never had the opportunity to also lead the exciting existence of a student. When I got back home, I was interested in what I was allowed to study with my qualification. Communication design. Graphic design. Interactive media. The last one sounded cool.

I filled out the application form from the nearest university. After that, everything happened quickly. I was invited to the entrance exam. I was invited to an interview. I was sent the application for enrollment. Then I was a student. A few weeks earlier, I had thought that my life was over, that there was nothing more to come, that all my dreams had been dreamed and all my hopes buried, but suddenly I found myself in a new story, with new goals, new tasks and new people. An unexpected adventure had begun. After all, I’m a student for life.

People Who Stare at Streets

People Who Stare at Streets

Yusuke looks out the window. Under the voice of his late wife houses, trees, and the sea fly past him. He doesn’t notice that another person is sitting in front of him in the red Saab 900 Turbo, while he fills in the sentences’ gaps with his own words. Misaki will soon get him to a place where he can finally find himself. I watched Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi last night. The movie, based on Haruki Murakami’s short story, recounts the experiences of two people whose fateful encounter no one could have foreseen - least of all themselves.

Successful stage actor and director Yusuke lives in Tokyo and is married to the mysterious Oto, a beautiful playwright with whom he shares a peaceful life despite a painful past. When Oto dies, Yusuke is left with unanswered questions and the regret that he couldn’t, and didn’t want to, truly understand her. Two years later, Yusuke accepts an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. There he learns upon arrival, that for legal reasons he is forced to have Misaki, a young chauffeur hiding a traumatic past of her own, drive his car.

Rehearsals progress, and Yusuke and Misaki develop a routine, with the car increasingly becoming an unexpected confessional for both driver and passenger. Less pleasant for Yusuke, however, is the decision to hire Koji, a handsome young television actor with an unwanted connection to his late wife, for the lead role. As the premiere approaches, tensions between the cast and crew grow. Yusuke’s increasingly intimate conversations with Misaki force him to confront uncomfortable truths and uncover haunting secrets left behind by his wife.

Misaki’s character reminds me of someone I know. Her sober, disarming, and perceptive manner invites me to want to know more about her. What does she believe? Why does she think that way? And who or what made her who she is today? The conversations in Drive My Car are like dances with the purpose of building bridges to other people. Stone by stone, inch by inch. With each new day, the chance arises for two people to open up a little further to the other, only to be rewarded with new insights - no matter how painful they may be.

Only those who haven’t even begun to try to understand Drive My Car would describe it as calm. Every scene is seething, bursting with human emotions and expectations. The movie is adult in the truest sense of the word. Its characters have shed any childishness, any banality, indeed any trace of joie de vivre, and try with their last ounce of strength to maneuver themselves safely through the thicket of painful memories, only to have to admit to themselves at the end that they cannot drive away from the past - not even in a red Saab 900 Turbo.

When the Voice of an Entire Generation Fell Silent

When the Voice of an Entire Generation Fell Silent

Even today, more or less strangers still ask me by email, letter, and shouting through the open window what happened to AMY&PINK. The portal of good humor. The party ship of Berlin’s newcomers. The voice of a generation that never wanted to grow up, partied for three days in Berghain, and woke up one morning in the ruins of their denial of reality. The reflexive answer to the exceedingly individual question of why AMY&PINK no longer exists is: I don’t know. Maybe things just have to end at some point, before they are artificially kept alive.

At the beginning of the new decade, AMY&PINK was the digital destination for rebels, hipsters, and avant-gardists. We were invited by brands like Sony, Mercedes, and Microsoft to events all over Germany, Europe, and the world. New York, Toronto, and London. Rome, Shenzhen, and Los Angeles. Lisbon, Monaco, and Las Vegas. To get drunk with Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, and Frank Ocean. All because we wrote weird things on the internet, using swear words all the time, and posted vomiting naked girls and swastikas made of cocaine.

The problem became that I continuously maneuvered AMY&PINK into a spiral of what the fucks, from which I soon couldn’t get the site out. While in the beginning, everything was funny, ironic, and over the top, at some point a completely far-fetched professionalization of the content took hold. On the one hand, we had to be more blatant than everyone else to keep readers interested, on the other hand, advertisers demanded less exposed private parts on the front page. At some point, more and more irrelevant articles took over the front page.

If I were even a touch as cool as I’ve pretended to be in my articles, I should have doused AMY&PINK with gasoline years ago, set it on fire, and let it explode behind me in cinematic slow motion as I walked crazily smiling toward the camera. But I’m not cool. And I can’t let go that easily either. After all, the page views continued to be quite good. But in the end, I put way too much time into saving AMY&PINK that I should have rather invested in important things. Getting a real job. Having children, planting trees, building houses, stuff like that.

So one fine morning I sat down in front of my laptop with a hot coffee and purged the server. And I felt nothing. Nothing at all. It was finally over. Better late than never. I’ve learned a lot from AMY&PINK and the people who even had anything to do with it. But now it’s time to let it rest and start something new. After all, the world out there is huge and the possibilities to find happiness are limitless. You just have to have the courage to let go, to reach out to the unknown and let it lead you to new adventures - before it’s finally too late.

Songs From Another World

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, not Japanese after all. But 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. Can you blow my whistle baby, whistle baby? Uh, no thanks, I’d rather not.

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 an anime convention. 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.

J-pop isn’t cool. Japanese people like Swedish indie bands, American rappers, and British DJs. But not a bunch of pasted-up Yukis who greasy pimp managers threw together into a so-called idol group, and now bounce up and down and back and forth to poppy beats until something inside them breaks. Because they realize that middle-aged office workers want to mount them. And that they are subsequently replaced by younger models after their crisis of purpose, often accompanied by shaving off their hair and crying in front of TV cameras.

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. But I can’t pretend to like people like Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, or Ed Sheeran anymore. It just doesn’t work. Their songs. Their stories. Their thoughts. They don’t mean anything to me. Nothing. Instead, I sit here, close my eyes, and listen to Perfume, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and Babymetal with absolute pleasure. As they confidently sing about sekai, dokidoki, and hanabi. And I’m happy. Truly happy.

The Transience of Written Words

The Transience of Written Words

This blog has changed again and again over the past years. From the little diary of a Bavarian 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 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 world. 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 and 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. The ones that had long since been lost in digital nirvana and pounded with a cement block of meaninglessness. I read them. And they were good. Those ten-year-old lyrics about love, dreams, and the expectations of an entire generation, they were better than most of what I had published in the past few years.

I realized that there was only one way to save my blog. And that was to do the exact opposite of what I saw as my task in the past years. I want the writing that appears on this blog to be relevant not just in the next ten minutes, but in the next ten years. Someone in the far distant future, when hoverboards really can hover and we fly to some kind of space spring break over the weekend, should read them and think to themselves: this speaks from my soul. It inspires me to try something new. I should show this to those I like and love.

My blog should once again become a small, 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 words 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 simply amusing. I would be happy if I could continue to accompany you as a reader a little bit on your turbulent life, entertain, and inspire - doing it my way.