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adamgeorgiou · 3 years

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Arthur, My Cousin and Me

I don’t know how to detangle Arthur from myself enough to write dispassionately or accurately. Instead, what follows is something like half him, half me. It’s more journal entry than elegy. To a general audience, that might make this less interesting than it otherwise could be, but it’s what I’ve got. Remember this if and when you get to the end.

Anyway…

I feel like I knew Arthur. Then I heard what others had to say and saw what others had to feel. Following his death, I still feel like I know him. In certain ways better than most or all. But there’s a part of me that’s often strained to believe that I was in more of his inner circle than I actually was, and his death exposed the truth of my position.

It’s a practical observation, not a dramatic one. I’m not saying he had a dominating and hidden alter ego or that he pitied me. It’s simpler: his death revealed my confidence in our bond as an illusion innocuously leftover from being kids together, from back when we actually spent serious time together. I want him back now like I’ve continuously wanted back what we lost long ago, but now it’s double-permanent and legible. Before it was remediable and blissfully hidden — embarrassing in hindsight, like most nostalgia.

But he also had that same nostalgia and held onto it, too, which makes me feel better. That mutual thread to our shared past was strong for both of us. It gave us a lot to lean on, but we leaned on it a little too heavily. Without that crutch, our adult lives were mostly opaque to one another, but also we were getting close again, involving each other again. Building anew. The left hook following the right. It’s a shame we weren’t closer than we were, when he died. It’s a shame our getting closer was cut short.

I guess it makes sense, generally: as adults, we’re all doing niche things, and niches are small and excluding, so everything else trends towards becomes small talk. (And that’s fine and right, because focus is necessary for growth. Just try and stay loyal, which Arthur did and my cousins do.)

Maybe it wasn’t so much that I was uniquely outside of Arthur’s confidence, but more that we had both (or all) grown a bit into our own isolation. In any case, I mourn the loss and its new finality.

So that’s him and I as adults, apart. Who was he, though? What can I tell you?

Well, I’ll briefly start with me, for context. Who I am is still him, the result of his influence, for sure. Of growing with, then adjacent to him, then apart, then converging again (more on the converging, later). If you distilled me down and got rid of all the litter and trivia, the rare and potent stuff remaining would be similar to what I knew of Arthur. We had the same essence, as I saw it. So I can show you that reflection, and you can tell me if it’s accurate (See: first paragraph’s disclaimer). (Also, note my calling out our similarity is carefully placed right before I go on to flatter him best I can — tactics, baby — but don’t read my ego into this. What follows is all my cousin.)

Arthur and confidence. Old saying: the pro fails more often than the amateur tries.

The subtleties of his personality were sophisticated and complicated. He could spar at an exceptional level from an early age. But he started out lazy and overthrowing a lot of his punches, gassing out quickly.

As a kid, he was autistically independent, preoccupied and hyper focused, but without any of the social hangups. He could talk to anyone and impressed everyone. He was adored, and rightfully so, but he also marched to the beat of his own nunchucks, exclusively. You couldn’t bullshit him, and you couldn’t placate him unless he was genuinely fascinated with what you offered. This is how kids should be, insatiably curious and wild. It was my favorite era of his, and where we spent the most time together. I was such an asshole to him, and he still always hung out with me. And we followed each other into a lot of similar interests.

Then he got his first hit of testosterone, and followed a phase where he literally held a fist up in every photo taken of him. Ha. Puberty’s a bitch. That didn’t last long. Reality checked and he stabilized. The important thing is that he knew he wasn’t going to watch, he was going to play. I loved him here, jealously and from a further distance. I couldn’t hang.

Then maturity: The firm handshake, the direct eye contact, the bright teeth, the smiling cheeks. Approachable, but not daffy. If anything his charisma was a prank and shrewd tactic; a car salesman during the first act, a playful subversion before the intellect and wit made their debut; or, worse for you, they didn’t. You’d start talking to Arthur and think you were walking in on a frat-boy breakfast table, then he’d go on to tell you why your problem was really because of what Robert Moses did back in ‘56, or he’d ask if you thought the The States were in a similar stage of decadence as Rome before its fall.

To him, your reason was more important than your choice, which is an axiom of all good conversation, one that most people are afraid to admit because doing so requires the ability to tread water. It’s easier to talk about the weather or watch sports. But Arthur wasn’t afraid of going deeper, and he had the tact to know when it was the right thing to do.

He was a man of appetite. A true traveling gourmand. He could scoff at you from within a seersucker, but he never compared oysters. If a menu offered Seattle’s or Rhode Island’s, he’d reply, “keep ‘em coming” and demand littlenecks or (and) crawfish to follow. He was less interested in varieties of wine, more in varieties of tomato and whether you had a good coarse salt.

He was spoiled rotten — as we all were, and mostly by the same sources — but he lacked pretension, except for that deliberately wielded for ironic effect. Underneath all his developed and developing taste was a lot of comical stoicism — laughing at gross injustice and absurdity, but also doing something about it, literally. His principles were conjured up from experience with the trappings of pleasure, with readings of history, with a variety of surprisingly worldly stories. I always wondered where and how he got it all. The guy had seen things, but not that many things. How was he always so versed? I don’t know, but if you’ve ever watched him eat a box of clementines straight up, wide-eyed in a wrinkled rugby shirt, then you would also know he was more pensive than pleasure seeking.

Entertainment was a defense, one he was growing out of as he realized it interfered with his goals and their requirements. A defense against what? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the typical. On one hand, a lack of patience and a petulant refusal to be bored. On the other, the existential and solipsistic. A defense against the subconscious shame and pain of cynicism. Was love real? Was wealth worth anything? Was the world bogus? Was anyone authentic? Ethical? Himself? Others?

Look, I’m not saying he was overwhelmed with this gooey crap. He was a thinker, not a navel gazer. I don’t know if he even said any of this stuff out loud, but anyone with a brain is going to ask some questions about the life they’re living and the society they’re in, and most of us don’t like the first obvious answers we come up with. Then we do something about not liking those answers. We put fingers in our ears some of the time, we do what’s easy some of the time, and we do what’s difficult some of the time. And also, anyone with any talent is going to find themselves bored among the average, and falling short of their own standards. These were Arthur’s struggles, I think. At least, they’re kind of my struggles, and Arthur seemed to harmonize with me when we’d commiserate. Or maybe we were both pompous assholes, wannabe aristocrats from the suburbs. Or maybe that was just me. Ha.

To some, it might seem appropriate to haunt him here in this postscript, as if to justify his death as the terminal approach of a depression into cessation. Let me be clear: this was totally not the case, from my vantage. Instead, the above attitudes are more like the required cost-of-entry to a great show. If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, it does not mean the examined one is easy to live. The alternative is Judge Judy and a monogrammed armchair. Not for Arthur. Caulfield eventually quits his bitching, but he has to eat a lot of shit first. Siddhartha finally leaves the brothel, but he had to walk in that door in order to walk out of it later. Hard times are the prerequisite to epiphany. Painful and confusing; but hopeful, not despairing.

And you could tell Arthur was among this company because the personas he employed became increasingly sophisticated, useful, attractive, and comfortable. From the brawling, pack-leading, indulgent, jokester/show-off into the relaxed, independent, luxurious, conversationalist who wasn’t as afraid to let his guard down, who was increasingly responsible. He was cultivated. He had a tamed self-consciousness (as we all aspire). It was impressive to watch him pull his own strings, to compare that with your own attempts and be humbled.

And thus, as I see it, the irony, hard to swallow, is that Arthur was finding answers to life’s hard questions in fistfuls. Love was possible. Work was worth it. Viktor Frankl was right. And he was learning patience and conviction, already better at their practice than most (e.g. me). As Dan put it, he was just taking off. He jumped and then a hand reached up from the almost escaped gravity and cut him by the heel.

A complete, but simple tragedy.

Complete, because the good guy lost.

Simple, because Arthur’s life was not some melodramatic airport novel. His death was a lightning strike, a deus ex machina in reverse. A two sentence accident, not an assassination. Not much more to be read from it. Mortality is hard, right? (See: Genesis).

And for all my elaboration, I don’t even think Arthur was all that noxiously introspective or exceptionally self destructive either. The guy knew how to love and be loved. How to let his hair down, appropriately. How to shift gears and drive forward. How to resist temptation. How to find and be good company. How to stare at a fish tank. How to sit and read. How to eat fruit in the sun. He was typically bright, with a lot of flair and personality. I know he was grateful.

Or I’m wrong. Maybe I’m inventing a story to make sense of something more concealed or of pure chaos. I don’t know. I don’t think so.

In any case, it’s a tragedy. And regardless of what is true, I’m still glad I got to hear his story and be part of some of it. He was and remains a good influence to me, a fellow bright eyed boy attempting to sustain himself in the body of a straight-backed man. He’ll live on for a long, long time. And I keep talking to him.

That’s some of what I knew of him. And given this is my catharsis, forgive me further, but more about me:

Sadness, gratitude, and disappointment.

I’m sad. Still? Yes. Always? Probably not. The inevitability of death hits a certain emotional bedrock after enough love is lost. I’m probably not there yet, still more distance to fall, but things are tapering off, in the aggregate. Maybe I’m just cold.

Sadness is the least interesting. I am separated from someone I love, and that sucks. We all have people we’ve loved, and we are all damned to lose them. But yes, I get those black bile clutches to the chest as I’m reminded that Arthur (et al.) is gone. And I wanna hold your hand, if you’re feeling it too.

It’s a curse that requires gratitude. Time keeps on slipping, and the portion of time that one spends with good people is shorter still. I’m thankful for Arthur’s good company. From childhood to peerdom. This is what I’ll try and focus on. It’s the mantra I’ll repeat. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Then there’s the sulking disappointment. My head slowly shaking, my eyes unfocused contemplating the loss of the unpredictable conversations, the refreshingly interesting trivia, the uniqueness, the independence, the honed never impersonated taste, the great breadth of knowledge, the artful ball busting, the avoidance of cliches, the shared recommendations, the belly laughs. Obnoxious mutual indulgence — food and talk — during Thanksgiving at Stacy’s table, the shared past at Everit Ave, the just started planning. The feeling of a just missed answer to the question of how to get it back, continuously nagging.

More on that: I’m dealing with a huge mess of unanswerable questions and impotence. There’s so much broken by his leaving, least of all in me, and I can’t fix any of it. No way to organize it. I can’t even help others fix it. Acknowledging the impossibility of the situation seems better than ignoring it, so I will (…acknowledge that death breaks the world and makes inconsistent a lot taken as granted). Arthur’s death is an oily surreal void in the middle of the road. A portal to nowhere. And sure, life will go on. We will preserve. Time heals all wounds. That’s all true. But any schmuck can offer a platitude. I want to be responsible for what he’s left behind, in precise detail. I want to pick up the slack, fill in the blank. But what was his remains his, locked up behind whatever door his soul is now shut. It’s maddening.

I went so far as to tell Olivia that I was her brother, too, and that I would be there for her. Idiot. I love her, she knows I love her, I know she loves me. Yada, yada. I need no pity for my vomiting on the rug. My point is: I can’t be Arthur. I can’t even be close to Arthur. Adam — while still pretty good — isn’t a substitute for Arthur. I apologized for being so naive and sloppy, but the moment taught me what I was trying to say above: that I am ignorant of so much of Arthur’s life, and in ways that can’t be remedied by interviewing his friends or reading his book or wearing his shoes, sort of speak. A lot of it isn’t just unknown, it’s unknowable.

This requires more thought. Surely something can be done. Entropy can’t be rewound, but duct tape can keep a plane in the air. So here’s something I’m going to try: I’m going to be more vulnerable. I’m going to expose myself the way a brother or a son might, and see what happens. It won’t transform me into a replacement, and I’ll probably make a clown of myself. But it’s worth a shot. To build different connections, instead of replicas. I can already see that the cousins have been hammered stronger by this. Now it’s time to be deliberate, and keep that train going, if possible. And yea, I’ll do the practical stuff. You can’t call Barb, enough. And I’ll call Liv, too, but with finesse, without overdoing it. And the rest of our family, as well, because we all lost something. For some a spleen; for others, more vital organs.

Moving on.

It’s further maddening to have Arthur’s death aligned and intertwined with so much of my pleasure. I’m a week into marriage. I’m ecstatic and overwhelmed by the potential of my future. I’m also newly terrified of losing a child not yet even conceived. That’s a fun one. Probably a lot more neurosis to come. But, yea… it’s a violent set of waves to endure and ride. It’s exhilarating and crushing, and guiltily I’ll admit, more of the former. I’m pronoid.

The guilt compounds as I realize that I’m only comparing the conflict between my pleasure and pain, when the actual accounting includes my pleasure, my pain, and all the pain of all the others he left behind, those we both loved. What about Alexandra? Barb? Liv? Dan? A dominating, trailing factor; ego-hidden and selfishly deprioritized. What would Jesus do? Not have a wedding during shiva, although I appreciate all the encouragement and insistence from the also mourning invitees.

Back to Arthur and I having grown apart and then, more recently, back together:

There exists a line separating most relationships. On one side of the line you have people who have a reasonably complete model of you in their head. (See: Theory of Mind.) On the other side of the line are people who have a functional model; they know what they need to know to get the job done, but they don’t know, perhaps have never seen, the whole thing. For ex., a spouse vs a colleague (most of the time).

The line is called intimacy, and relationships on both sides of the line can be valuable, but the intimate ones have more potential in both directions, fat tails; the intimate ones can yield fortunes and bankruptcies. Acquaintances are tepid.

I described it above, how Arthur’s and my relationship moved from the intimate to the distant. I’ll skip further detailing that transition, and just get to the thing that hurts now: we were getting markedly closer, again. I could see the trajectory of our friendship and would bet on our returning to intimacy and confidence.

If the isolation of vocation and growth drives most bourgeois adults apart and into impersonal silos, then eventual mastery and plateau allows room for a focus on humanity, again. And humanity is universal and objective. People can stand on it, together, and get to know each other (again). That’s where I felt Arthur and I were.

I felt like Arthur and I had taken two separate tracks at a fork 15 years ago, and just recently those two roads started to merge back into the same path. We had stories to tell each other, of our time in the wild. It was the basis for a new bond, perhaps stronger than the old one.

Unsolicited phone calls. Talks of marriage, health, wealth. Suggestions of books and podcasts that were actually followed through with, instead of disappearing into the void like most cocktail party prescriptions. We’d follow back. Not rushing each other past awkward silence. Being patiently invested in one another. Showing up. Talking about vulnerable topics, like fears and aspirations for careers, and relationships, and family. And then, right during the peak of this rekindling, this jubilee, he died. And I doubt that I was the only one whose newfound growth and compatibility were cut short. You’re not alone.

So I hurt for the spent love, yes, like that of most grief. But I hurt more for the lost potential. I had so many fresh dreams that included him. It’s disappointing and sad.

To be clear, I’m disappointed in what’s lost, not disappointment in him. I blame him for nothing, even if maybe I should or others do. But any of his mistakes could have easily been mine, and so I sympathize. I’m not angry. Ambition implies risk. Vice is vice is inevitable. Growth means growth from something. Different contexts, need not apply.

Anyway, what else? The thing I linger on now is a weird faith. I have little faith or rather I have difficulty finding faith. I scrutinize faith until it’s demoralized. And yet, the discontinuity introduced by Arthur’s absence gives me faith, illogically but compellingly. I don’t strive for it, it’s simply there, point blank. I can’t explain it, but I can describe it.

Arthur is gone forever, and Arthur is part of my future. Both irrevocably true, yet incompatible. What to do about it? Apparently, not much. My mind absolutely and happily refuses to budge. The feeling that Arthur is part of my future supersedes the knowledge that he’s not. Knowing he’s gone does nothing to my belief that my future includes him. So it continues to. Sue me, I can’t help it.

See you in the funnies, Arthur. (More trivia: I never called him Artie or Art or Archo. He was always Arthur to me.)

Lastly, some good, more recent memories (skipping some that have already been shared):

The last thing I spoke to Arthur about was extensive advice, over the phone, on how to structure a prenup. “Don’t put anything about kids in there, because the courts won’t accept that you understood what you were agreeing to, prior to actually having the kids.” Smart. “Everyone should get one! The courts encourage it! Helps ungunk the works.” Ha. Kelly and I never got a prenup, but the candid advice on such a touchy subject makes me laugh.

Eating a whole pig at a communal table, biergarten style, at Saxon and Parole, in New York. Arthur talking the whole table’s ear off about everything, and then after discussing eating brains, we asked the chef to bring the pig’s over, and he did. Afterwards, walking to our trains, jolly, drunk.

Visiting Arthur in Scotland. Going out to some Uni warehouse party, and me getting lost with some bird. I didn’t have a working European phone, and so when I got home at dawn, seeing him and his big bravado looking like a worried mother goose made me laugh and proud, like a big brother again. Him cooking the two of us mussels and linguine with three whole heads of garlic. Delicious. Steak in Edinburgh, and him showing me the castles like he was himself a duke, personal friends of Hume and Smith.

I wished we went on more walks together.

Us planning on going to Joe Beef, in Montreal, with Alexandra and Kelly.

Him calling me to tell me Anthony Bourdain had died, and subsequently talking about it. “If he can’t make it, who can?” There’s that cynicism again. But it was a candid moment. And we ended that talk, more or less, believing we could make it, even if Bourdain couldn’t.

Discussing whether we were fated to end up like our parents.

Him shooting the .38 up in Gilboa.

Legos, spanky, ice box bedroom, V8-turbo toilet, the pool, the trampoline, the screen porch and its green furniture, endless chicken rolls followed by cold pizza, karate in the basement (no shoes on the mats), rolling on the carpet (i.e. roll mosh), forts, the Barbie game on the gateway computer in Izzy’s room, Snood, army men in the mud ripping up sod by the square foot unit, jealousy listening to Timberlake camp stories, the suburban with 100 blankets in the third row and Don McLean on the radio, toxic farts, the Pokemon store, the Pokemon cards I’d steal from him after going to the Pokemon store, a million cups of Lipton at Barb’s table, Rage Against the Machine in Dan’s car, lanyards, fishing in the Hewlett Bay, Harry Potter, him never sleeping over my house and getting rides home at 2am after attempting to (me pissed), hiding in that lone pine tree in the front yard, making window art out glitter glue, salamanders, watching him attempt to ride a bike in the driveway.

A menial history, but ours. Anyway…

Arthur, you were great. It’s not for me to say that you’re now resting in peace, because I think you were pretty zen while you were alive, in your own pastel-colored kimono kind of way. So instead, I hope you’re as satisfied there as you were interested here. I’ll see you soon, and until then, I’ll try and hold the line for you. Love ya’.

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littlebosseslb · 4 years

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Becoming a mommy has weirdly enough become natural for me. I thought it was going to be difficult, given my past decade of life hasn’t been exactly what you would even consider to have been mine, when first seeing or meeting me. Everyone is amazed at what I have been thru. What I have done. Whom I have grown from as well as whom I have become. It fucking blows my mind sometimes. Despite all of that shit, I love where I’m at now. I love ME. I fucking love my daughter and my pup-son more than anything in this entire world. I think i’m doing a pretty damn good job at being a mommy and a sober ex drug dealing/drug using/felon. Yeah. This should be pretty interesting.

I’m only blogging at this very moment because I want to get myself into the habit of giving myself some ME time. I mean, granted I kind of do that when I take a cigarette break throughout the day, but I’m always on my phone. Meme-trolling like a motherfucker. I love to write. I love to journal. Lately though, journal-ing has started to feel somewhat meaningless now. I’m a mommy 24/7 now. My baby girl is barely about to be 2 months old next week and like, when I sit down with my journal... I don’t want to just write and write and write because I’m already fucking exhausted and my hand definitely cant move as fast as my mind goes. I cant even keep up with myself most of the time. Fuck me. It’s going to be hard as fuck to ever get into another relationship. I barely have time for just me, which honestly does not bother me at all in any way, because my ME time has just become WE time for me and my baby. I can never get enough of her! I never thought that I would put the whole game down for anything or anyone. That’s all I saw myself stuck doing. I still dont know what the fuck I want to do with like the rest of my whole life... But one thing I’m fucking fosho fosho of, is that I want to forever be the best mommy I can be to her. She’s so perfect. Lemme stop and thank God right quick. Thank You, God. Because fr fr, I only stopped doing dope, stopped selling dope, and moved up outta the trap and the hood, just so I could start building a better life for her and becoming a better me so that she can always have everything she could ever want and need. It sounds hard as fuck. Well I know it fucking did for me at first! Something inside of me just knew that it was what needed to be done. There was no way around it. No alternatives. I had to just fucking stop and change my direction in life, if I truly wanted to be able to maintain my freedom, keep her and forever be her one and only mommy.

I’ve been talking to this dude tho, right... and like, at first I was all gaga over this nigga. He honestly is the most incredible and perfect-for-me kinda nigga that I have ever started vibin’ with this deep. It’s fucked up to say this, but it hasn’t been 3 months yet and I’m already just kind of over it. I’m a Gemini and for me, if I get turned off by one small thing that you do, then I’m just like over it and ready to shrug it off for good. I’ve got too much on my shoulders rn and I’m not ready to give attention and time to any other mothafucka besides my family here at home, my pup-son (yes, my mfkn dog), and MY DAUGHTER. I feel bad because the dude is locked up. I’ve known him for some years, but we recently linked back up before he went to jail... then I had my daughter, then I started writing him, then he started calling me everyday. It was cute and shit and honestly, like I said he truly is the type of nigga I feel is perfect for me... buuuuuut, like I said, some shit just rubbed me the wrong way and I’m already like just fucking over it. It honestly doesn’t phase me, which I feel like I SHOULD feel fucked up about #thatpart ... but I don’t. I feel bad that when this all falls down, it’s gonna hurt him more than it will bother me. Is that wrong of me? I mean, I said what I said, I felt what I felt, I’m even the one that pursued him first... but now I’m just like, meh, I don’t want to put all that extra effort into it anymore. I’ve got so much other stress and priorities on my back rn. All of it was just moving too fucking fast and like, the nigga still in jail rn and wont be out for another two months, ya feel me, so like, I’m not sorry that I feel like this. I’m not being a bitch in any way and like I give a fuck about the nigga. I give alot of fucks about the nigga. Got nothin’ but mad love for him, buuuuut, commitment to a nigga is NOT on my list of priorities at all. Period. #sorrynotsorry I’m ready to get back on my feet, after this damn virus paused all of life for a few months. Ya feel me? I want to be an independent, single, mommy. I see me and my baby having our own shit, by ourselves. Not with no man in the picture. Period.

Thats whats crazy too, he already LOVES my daughter like he loves his own and he’s never even met her. He says I’m the most perfect girl he’s ever vibed with and said he loves. Like, this nigga is being so deep with me and I’m not being cocky in any way, but I’m a good, loyal, down-ass female to be with. If you can catch me long enough to get me to commit, long-term. I’m not tired of it because of another person catching my attention or anything. It’s been heavy on my mind and like the main source of all of my anxiety and frustration and nausea for the past week, because I’m like, what the fuck. What if I never find another nigga like him? Like this dude tells me shit that no man has ever genuinely said to me before. This dude is gangsta and thugged the fuck out, but still trying to come up and live the right way as opposed to how we used to live. Reckless shit. No fucks to give, type shit. He wants to take care of me and my daughter (AND my pup). He believes that it is now his responsibility upon his release from incarceration, to protect and provide for me and my little bundle package that I come with. It’s crazy as fuck to me. I grew up seeing my mother do it ALL on her own. Working crazy af. Single. Raising not just me, but my 2 other siblings. She is the reason why I don’t want a man to just “take care” of me. FUCK THAT. I can take care of myself thank you.

People annoy the fuck out of me.

Well, I tweeted about starting my new blog earlier and I’m like, “Idgaf if nobody reads it. ... If people read it, then people read it. I honestly was going to just leave a small post at first, like... “hey, my first post on my new blog. Dope.” then leave it the fuck at that.... guess that shit went out of the window.

I don’t really know what I’m doing...

Just some shit coming outta the mental of a Little Boss.

#mommy newmom babygirl fuckanigga boss littleboss miniboss insomniac newpost firstpost ranting journaling journal #ranting #mommy #newmom #journal #journaling #insomniac #miniboss #littleboss #mini rant #babygirl #fuckanigga #boss #newpost #first post #thatpart #dope #sorry not sorry

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jackshithere · 5 years

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Till and Schneider in an interview with the "Stern"

source

They sing about child abuse, incest, necrophilia. In a video they show excerpts from Leni Riefenstahl's body-cult Olympia movie. And when singer Till Lindemann rolls the R, it roars out of the speakers as it once did from the Volksempfänger. The Wall Street Journal stated, "Woah, that's German!" Rammstein, a german band. A [politically] right band? Since its founding in early 1994, the six musicians from Schwerin and East Berlin are suspected of doing right-wing rock.

In fact, the lyrics with their portrayals of sex and violence are often close to censorship - but fascism is not even between the lines. Now Rammstein, with around three million albums sold, the internationally most successful German-language band since Kraftwerk end of the 70s, a new CD on the market: "Mutter" is by pre-orders even before the release on 2 April for the top 3 of the German charts written down.

The 'Stern' spoke with singer Till Lindemann and drummer Christoph Schneider about their youth in the GDR, Rammstein as a therapy - and provocation as a stylistic device.

On your new album you have underlined the title "Left 234" with the sound of marching boots. That sounds like the newsreel 60 years ago.

Schneider: The piece was the first attempt by Rammstein to deal artistically with the eternal reproach that we are a right-wing band. It's almost funny that this will cause some discussion again.

But you could have omitted the marching sound. Would not the message that your heart seems to be "leftist" be less clear then?

Till: That's the intention. One lets something march and then answers.

Schneider: We hate to express ourselves clearly. Rammstein always has room for interpretation.

That makes for misunderstandings.

Till: That was right from the start. We all grew up in the GDR, come from the punk scene. If we wanted to perform there, we had to present our repertoire before the so-called rating commission. Of course, you had to think very carefully about what you say, what you sing and sometimes how you play. Any criticism of the system was prohibited. So you had to try and make a loop. That's probably why it's still within us that we like to respond ambiguously.

Schneider: When you look at lyrics from GDR bands, you can see how good they are in part when they rewrite a subject with lyrical means. This past is closely connected with us. We can not get away from it. That was our youth. If we came from the west, Rammstein would not exist. At any rate, we would not be so violent.

Why not?

Till: What do you want to do to get you to play in front of more than ten people? You start using provocative means and being extreme. There we were certainly more courageous than East Germans. It started when we sang that kind of hard music in German. And then something has also unloaded what had accumulated in our GDR youth, because we have reacted abreacted. Finally we were allowed to say everything, do everything. Basically it was quite simple: look into your stomach, look into your soul, and start making music.

Out of your seemingly very dark soul came out lines like:

"My black blood and your white flesh / I'm getting hornier from your shrieks". [Mein schwarzes Blut und dein weißes Fleisch ich werd immer geiler von deinem Gekreisch]

Was that more than a provocation?

Schneider: The provocation is exhausted at some point. There are only a few topics that are good for it. We used them up.

Till: What's the use of writing the same kids fuck song for the third time?

Schneider: We started with the tank at that time, regardless of left or right or losses, and we broke through. We have been heard. Now we're going to deal with the pieces left over. And start to realize what we really are - a German metal band. With the new album we often asked ourselves: Is that still Rammstein? Are we starting to make only beautiful music? So far, the new record is no longer provocative. That's certainly mainstream. But good mainstream.

The provocation of Rammstein is not only based on the ambiguous texts, but also on the aesthetics of the band and their show. Military headlights [basically Batman signal thingy] shining in the sky are evoking images of Nazi Nazi party rallies; Lindemann's throaty chant reminds us of the rolled-up R Nazi sizes. Does it have to be that way?

Till: The R comes on its own. When I sing so deeply and expressively, my vocal cord flutters, and then it just rolls. By the way: Peter Maffay's vocal cord reacts similarly, but also rolls the R. And the light dome, which looks good, right? It's not about more. Just because it's associated with those twelve crappy years, should not that be allowed anymore? Then tear down the Olympic Stadium and all the other Nazi buildings in Berlin! This is twelve years that this idiot named Hitler has on his conscience, and again and again one comes back to it. It's about art. There is no relationship between one and the other.

Schneider: This discussion shows that there seems to be no coping with the past in society. You can say: Okay, there is the light dome, I think that's good, and there's the Reich Party Rally, I think that's shit. You can separate that, everyone for yourself. Only in this way can one find the way to one's own history. I can not always think, oh, it's all so loaded, I can not talk about it, and the others could think ... No, open dispute! The task of Rammstein is also the search for an independent music, a German music. Of course, we come across our story and get all these allegations. But I see that rather positively: We try to find our own identity, which many musicians or artists in Germany have given up long ago.

This also means that you show no emotion on stage and Lindemann beats his head bloody with the microphone?

Till: We're actors on stage, that's show. You do not notice the pain when you hit the same spot every night on the head. Schneider has even received a broken neon tube in the shoulder. Paul, our guitarist, burned my ear in Australia now.

Schneider: It's probably like this: Rammstein is like a self-help group for us. Like a therapy.

When did you first learn about the era of National Socialism?

Till: We grew up with Auschwitz. With us was the everyday life: group travel with the school to the camps, see Buchenwald, flowers lie down at monuments, join the concentration camp march through Mecklenburg, to Güstrow along the highway. There are such monuments on every corner.

Schneider: In the GDR civics and history lessons were strongly antifascist-colored. Everything except communism was evil: fascism, West Germany, capitalism. These were all taboos. I think that's why we now have this pronounced right-wing extremism in the East: I'm shit, and I want to draw attention to myself. So I use the worst of what I know - and become a neo-Nazi.

Why do not you participate in concerts like "Rock against right-wing violence"?

Schneider: We do not want to be tense with these carts. That would be ridiculous. Then it is said that we used it only to become even more popular. Besides, what's the use? The right ones are there. They are part of our population. We have to accept this problem and finally accept that there are these tendencies in Germany. It does not help to always exclude the right. We have to talk to those who solve their problems.

Rammstein reaches the Far right scene.

Till: We reach many, including the advertisers in Hamburg. And as far as the right is concerned, for me the state is too soft-spoken about the problem. You have a black half-dead, and there are construction hours as punishment. We used to beat ourselves with skins even before the turnaround in Schwerin - why do not you go through harder today? I grew up with a girl who is a mulatto. She still visits Mecklenburg every summer. She is afraid of people and does not dare to go to certain places. I'm just ashamed of that.

Nevertheless, you play with a Germany image that evokes certain memories.

Schneider:DRammstein is not a concept. We've come together to do this music and show, and we work like a support group. We do what we like well, nothing more. Maybe that's why our fans think we are authentic. Following the motto: Rammstein do their thing and are not like the others. This may also explain our success in the US. But with that our critics get a problem again: They fear that the American kids will not associate with Germany any more than Rammstein. The Americans are really only on our artistic skills. This is politically overrated.

Till: One does not ask Ricky Martin which political attitude he has. You listen to a song, find it good or bad. That's all.

#Rammstein #long post

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qlistening · 3 years

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Marriage: What is it Good For?

Alright I’m going to be 22 in a week and I think I’ve done enough drugs at this point that I’m really starting to get myself, so I am going to go ahead and tackle my feelings on marriage. And instead of journaling, as many mental health professionals have suggested I do, I will continue to post my shit on the internet because you guys are always so nice about it. I think the best way to approach this issue is a Q&A session with myself.

Q1: What are the perks of getting married?

As a woman, I would say perk number one has to be that people don’t ask you dogshit questions about your personal life if you do choose to get married. Questions like “Do you think you never got married because you have trust issues?” or “Wow I don’t know how you stand to be alone all the time like that”. Would you ask a divorced woman “Do you think this whole situation could have been avoided if you weren't so quick to trust him?” or ask a woman in an unhappy marriage “No you think you’d be better off if you just got over your fear of being alone?”. No! Because these questions are obviously disrespectful. Yet I witness middle aged single women like Chelsea Handler have to put up with this shit on the reg. Hopefully society will connect those dots before I reach that age

Another textbook perk to marriage is financial interdependence. “My money + your money = lots of money! YAY!” No bro. My parents have been unhappily married for the last 20ish years strictly due to a poorly thought out financial interdependence set up. And they are certainly not alone on that one. After overthinking their situation for 22 years, I have determined financial interdependence is only advantageous for a woman if she truly feels she has nothing to contribute on her own to society and would rather funnel all of her western educated energy into keeping her man happy so that her name stays on the joint bank account. If you don’t feel that way, then you should probably plan on financially supporting yourself, or else you’re going straight to resentment town. But don’t get too empowered over there. Financially supporting your husband isn’t a super lit move either. Imagine coming home to your husband overcooking the salmon that he bought from Whole Foods after you know he got to spend the whole day playing with the kids you almost died in the process of birthing. Express train to resentment town for sure.

Sex? This is kind of like the financial thing. You’re committing to give up sex with everybody else for your husband, who is probably not above the 75th percentile of pipe that is available to you. You’re also committing to not have sex at all if their shit malfunctions or the vibes go south between the two of you. Very dark but very real. My guess is only 25% of 50ish year old married couples are still fucin. You sure are optimistic if you’ve convinced yourself you will be in that demographic.

Having someone who completes you? I’ve always been conflicted about this one because it is kind of logically sound to have someone around that can do the things you can’t, but there is also loss of independence that comes with admitting you can’t do something. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m feeling pretty complete at this point in my life. I know I’m about to have a fun career, be rich, and be a better homemaker for myself than any man could. I also have confidence in my adult self to stay hot and cool enough to have friends and get laid. What’s missing? Someone who can fix cars and stuff around the house. Husbands can be a nifty source of free labor for this, but so can contractors and mechanics if porn logic applies and you offer “another form of payment”.

Wedding. Ain’t got shit to say about this one. Weddings are dope.

Q2: What are the drawbacks of marriage?

Sharing a room with someone else. We all quit that shit after sophomore year for a reason. It is not possible to fully be yourself in a living situation where even in your SLEEP your actions impact someone else. Beyond having to be considerate, you also have to provide an explanation for everything you do. Like if you want to wake up at 4AM, deep clean your bong, and binge watch a garbage show on hulu, suddenly you have to explain this to someone else. Not a great look. Also you can probably kiss your vibrator goodbye, because unless you are railing your husband nonstop, you’ll probably have a weird guilt complex about getting yourself off while he’s around.

Having a husband is tough from a PR standpoint. What if he’s ugly? You love him for a lot of super valid reasons, but unless someone knows you pretty well, they’re going to see y’all together and think “that’s the best she could do”. Maybe I’m shallow but that feeling would almost definitely eat away at me until I had to chat on him to prove to myself that it wasn’t true. Flip side, my husband is the hot one. He’s got motive to do the same.

Monotony is kind of inherent to the arrangement. Same house, same dude just about every day. Be real about this one. Imagine coming home to that continuously for about 3X the total amount of time you have been alive so far. That’s what you’re patting the cute old couple who have been married 60 years on the back for doing. Big ups to them for sure, but is that really what you want for yourself?

Q3: Ava would you still get married after making all of these valid points?

Yes but only with the following unrealistic stipulations:

Husband is perfectly equal in hotness to me and gives me best sex I’ve ever had.

Our money can never touch. No joint anything. No resentment. Clean divorce.

He’s chill with us not sleeping together all the time.

He’s chill with getting divorced if the vibes go south.

He doesn’t wan’t kids

He has some tangible and intangible qualities that make me better off with him than without him.

I’m sure not many men are coming to mind that check all of these boxes, but that’s okay because according to Q1:A4, I’m already a decently complete person. I also don’t have a biological clock to answer to and I will have more time to travel the world and hang out with my lovely friends if mister right never comes along.

Finished reading and want to tackle your own qualms with marriage? Make sure to follow in my footsteps and smoke some CBD for a warm and fuzzy conclusion.

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yourghastlycloseness · 4 years

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lately i have become something of an android. not sure when it started. i’ve been reviewing my past entries to track the development of this android-ness lol. i think i started to feel this after my october 2019 trip to tokyo.

a few years ago, i wrote that i aspired towards a sterile, android-like existence. i wanted nothing to do with people because they affected me so much. i fantasized about operating like a cold, calculative machine because i wanted to be more in control of my overwhelming em0tionS.

for a while, i was even namely attracted to people who struck me as cold and aloof, because i envied how they lived as human calculators, processing the world around them rationally. they had traits that i wished to emulate in myself. i thought that whatever magic they had would rub off on me if i just hung around them. that said, i never actively tried to be like them because that just wasn’t me back then. i did, however, repress emotions that weren’t useful to me as a way of coping with all the depression/mania/anxiety i was going through.

then it happened overnight.

one day i woke up and realized i have become that human calculator lol. it’s not that i’m unfeeling now. i’m still in touch with my emotions and get anxious about picking up phone calls and work. i still have severe self-esteem issues and problems maintaining relationships (the fact that i consider them problems means that i want to work on my relationship skills).

but i can be...startlingly calculative in my relationships with people. ultimately, i know i don’t truly love anyone beyond my immediate family. these days, i can even rank people in my life and prioritize the ones who matter. i factor a few things into consideration:

i) how long they’re likely to stick around

ii) how much i enjoy their company

iii) how much they likely value me as a friend

i consider their jobs, the speed of their replies to my texts, the time they spend with their family/significant others relative to the time spent with me/our clique of friends.

i make mental flowcharts to help me think about what steps to take next when interacting with friends. for eg., if X replies me on this, it demonstrates this, which means i should offer this. if X says this, i should say this in reply.

i don’t know what happened. was it financial independence? lol. i attribute a lot of my newfound state of calm/contentment to having a working adult’s financial independence. i always thought people were vital for us to sustain ourselves. only to later realize that no, practically speaking, what you need is a source of income.

with that income, i was able to fund my solo trips, where i discovered that i can go for tremendous periods of time with no social interaction at all, and that i feel more at peace in solo mode than when i have to actually keep in touch with anyone who isn’t my mom/dad/younger brother.

the problem is: i like to talk a lot. but i’ve since found that vlogging and journaling help me to deal with that. i like talking. but i don’t particularly enjoy listening unless it’s a topic that interests me personally. so it’s fine if i don’t talk to people, actually. half the time i’m just talking and writing to get all the mental noise out of my head.

anyway i was looking at some old stuff today. as i’ve said — i might be terribly unsentimental. i can throw away nice letters people have written for me. all these were addressed to my past self/selves — versions of me that i no longer feel connected to. so i read these cards and likewise, feel almost nothing. i keep them more as archives of a teenage/young adult girl’s mind and social life at that point.

i used to be a huge romantic too lol. fourteen-year-old me wrote and made all these cringey af stories and sketches about love <3. lol. now all i want is to pay pale, pretty, lanky boys to entertain me for 3 hours or something and to have nothing to do with them after that. i still believe in love; i just no longer have expectations that it will happen to me. and yeah, i’m slightly salty about it. but do i really care?

nah. just give me the prettiest boy toys. i’d take 10 pretty boys paid to entertain me for one night over 1 regular dude who will love me deeply for the rest of my life. of course, for some lucky people, that’s 1 pretty boy who will love you deeply for the rest of your life. lucky bitches. the probability of that happening for me is close to a fat zero though. so i settle for what i can get. but if what i can get is 10 regular guys paid to entertain me for one night, then no thanks. i’m extremely visual where attraction is concerned. i won’t settle for something i don’t want.

my purpose here was never to be known and understood and loved. i only care about having fun. that’s why i hate that i’m not beautiful and wake up everyday at war with my body. beautiful people have more fun. tis a facT boohoo

i’m just thinking about fan letters that celebrities receive. if i can be this heartless with letters from friends, what would i be like with fan letters lol? if i ever got famous, i’d actually decline to receive fan letters because wow, what a waste of paper. planet earth is dying. let’s not kill it further with this shit.

sure, i’m a huge fangirl too once i felt sad that BTS live such important lives and will one day find people who will love them and whom they will love back lol, and that us fans would be nowehere in that equation. i get that sort of obsessive love for a celebrity. but also, sis, if you want oppar to notice you, pouring all your heart into a letter might only get you to the recycle bin. you could, alternatively, try to make a name for yourself and then let oppar know that you saranghae him in an interview or talk show. go big or go home haha

i’m actually trying to re-awaken the more caring and people-oriented side of myself. i can’t remember what it is to be that person. sure, it meant a great deal more emotional turbulence within me, but it also meant having a bigger heart. and that was probably nice. i want to have that for the people i love.

i’m also no longer drawn to cool, aloof, robotic people. i’m more attracted to people who are more sensory these days. people who ‘live in the moment’ lol, make things with their hands, are in touch with their emotions and ‘follow their hearts’ lmao but aren’t total idiots about it. maybe it’s because i need to reconnect with this repressed part of myself to strike a balance? since my robotic self seems to have taken over my hippie flower child self who wants to touch everything i see.

yeah, i could use some balance.

anyway around the time i became robotic, i also got a clearer idea of my sexual identity and orientation. i’ll go into that another time.

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heathersperspective · 4 years

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Why you can’t “just leave” a toxic relationship

A hard thing to do is articulate what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it and how you are feeling it.

It’s even more difficult to do the above when you’ve spent time denying, dumbing down and ignoring your feelings due to being involved in a toxic relationship.

2019 loves to call anything slightly uncomfortable “toxic” or carelessly claim that people are abusive without thinking about the implications of those words. I never want to be that person, I never wanted to be in a position where my words or actions could harm the reputation of someone else (I’m a journalism student, I don’t want to go to court for defamation #Karen).

I’ve denied being in an emotionally abusive relationship for months. Because I never thought that I was in one. Despite everyone who loves me telling me that what I was experiencing wasn’t okay, I ignored the warning signs and wore my rose-tinted lenses to block out the red flags.

The most upsetting thing about this is the fact that I know he wants to be there for me, a part of him still cares and wants me to be okay. I, thankful for the times that the only person who has been there for me has been him. But that’s it, I am sure there is a lovely beautiful person in there, and hopefully this experience will shape him into something bigger and better. I have no hate in my heart, and as ariana grande said, no tears left to cry over him. I wish only love and growth for him. I know this experience will shape him to be in a better position with his next relationship. This is not a shit post about my ex, this is not a dig at his character or personality or friendship, this is an honest interpretation of the relationship between two people who are not meant to be together

I firmly believe that most problems within a relationship should stay in the relationship. If your other half is being a bit of a twat, then tell them – and work through it. If your other half is making you feel upset about XYZ, then work through it. If you’re working together, growing together and not making the same mistakes, then you are in a healthy relationship.

However, there becomes a point where you may need to go to a friend or someone external for advice. Again, this can still be a sign of a healthy relationship and shows that you want to get additional advice in order to become stronger and work better together.

A third party source is a good way of having a perspective from someone who isn’t emotionally invested in the outcome.

My problem is, that every single 3rd party source warned me that what I was experiencing was not just a blip in a relationship, but a full blown sea of Matadors with red flags. However, I always see the best in people, and I refused to believe that the person who I loved and showed me the world could also be someone who was emotionally abusing me.

A key characteristic in these type of relationships is the fact that the victim is usually someone quite weak. I don’t think I am a wholeheartedly weak person – however my biggest weakness is that I am too caring and too kind towards other people. I allow myself to give, and fall in love with people who I believe in. I never give up on anything, and my weakness in this relationship is that I loved my ex with every single inch of my heart, and I was willing to forgive anything – as I couldn’t see myself living within him. My weakness is the fact that I felt safer in a toxic relationship than I did alone.

When sharing what happened, quite a few people have told me that it’s my own fault because I should have ended it the first time I found out that I was cheated on. However the problem is that I didn’t see the person who cheated on me. I saw the person who gave me the whole world, the person who made my sadness go away, the person who was always there for me – no matter the time or the day. The person who promised me the world, promised he would change for me and promised that he wanted to work on himself. I saw the person who made my heart feel complete. I didn’t know what life was like without him – which in itself is fucked because the intensity of the relationship was 0 to 100 in the space of 7 months.

I tried to leave multiple times. I tried to break free and live my life, but I was too intertwined and too dependent on him.

Every single time I found out about a new girl, a new date he’d been on with someone, a new lie, a new kiss, a new one night stand, a new affair – I started to lose any sense of emotion. I stopped caring, I stopped caring about the relationship and myself.

In these last few weeks, I’ve struggled to see the point in anything. I’ve lost my sense of reality and become dependant on someone who dragged me down.

Its going to take a hell of a lot of Lizzo, a lot of tough self love, some mistakes and some ugly crying – but I know there is a self dependant Heather still in there. I went 21 years of my life without giving a shit about boys and their half arsed attempts at relationship. I used to be the most independent bitch there was, and I will get back to that point stronger than before.

It’s not easy to leave someone you love. It’s not easy to leave someone you love and are terrified of. It’s not easy to share what happened, but I will use this experience to become better.

Thank you to the people who have encouraged me to share my story and use this experience in a constructive way. If more people talk, then more people can avoid this situation

Thank you for breaking my heart

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