25.12.21

Free fall

 You know

how all my life, I’ve been afraid of falling

stunned by the image

of my shattered body on the ground

so afraid that I refused to jump

if not absolutely inevitable

and when you asked me to jump

you promised I could trust you

promised you would break my fall

would catch me

would make sure I would not get hurt

convinced me that it wasn’t even that deep

and then

when I finally believed you

believed I would certainly survive

finally gathered all my courage 

closed my eyes and leaped

you were scared of the weight that came with it

the weight of me

despite me giving you the numbers

and you stepped aside in the last moment

and when I saw the ground coming closer and closer

I realized once more 

why I never jumped before


7.8.20

"The Long Forgotten" by David Whitehouse - Review

 

David Whitehouses „Mobile Library“ was probably the first review copy I ever got, back in 2015 when I just started my book seller apprenticeship. It was also the first review I wrote for my bookshops website. And I was lucky, because I had come across a rare gem back then, so the memory of this first venture into my profession happened to be a very good one. I am still holding “Mobile Library” very dear, partially for nostalgic reasons but also because it was a brilliant book.

Now when you have read and loved someones debut novel, a second book being published is equally exciting and scary – your expectations are high, so there is plenty of room for disappointment. But like with most things in life, there is just as much room for things to go well.

I will admit it, it took me shamefully long to pick up “The Long Forgotten”. Not only because reading isn’t part of my job anymore and therefore, I find very little time in my day to day life to do so, or because my pile of shame is so much higher than I’d like to admit (but I will: Currently 55 books). I also was scared to be disappointed.

I was wrong, and I have never been this happy about being wrong in my entire life.

On the first glance, in “The Long Forgotten”, David Whitehouse tells not one story but three and at first it seems odd since these people do not seem to be connected in the slightest: Dove, an odd-ish young man from London with anger issues and memories that are not his own. Peter Manyweathers, a cleaner from New York in the 1980s who is swept away by a sudden obsession with botany. Professor Cole, a grumpy scientist who stumbled across the black box flight recorder of the lost flight PS570 in an incident that almost cost him his life.

These stories seem to be only connected by them being unlikely enough to be of interest but just likely enough to actually happen. For the sake of a spoiler-free review I will only say: They are connected, and it is astonishing how. Please do read the details yourself.

David Whitehouse has a talent to make the reader fall in love, with his language, with his characters and especially with whatever subject he decides to write about. I have never been this passionate about rare flowers and botany before. I have never related this much to an orphan curious to find his parents. And I certainly have never felt that much interest in cleaning in my entire life and hope to get some great accomplishments from this newly found and most likely shortlived obsession.

Whitehouses habit to find and portray the magical in the most mundane, to tell stories of such wonder in an every day life setting that you inevitably start to view your own life through completely new eyes, is remarkable. Personally, I hope to read much more from him.

25.5.20

Where are my struggles!? - Hollywood on Netflix - Review

I think one of the most important things I have learned in my Literature classes in school was one simple but effective rule: If you want your story to be interesting it needs conflict. There needs to be something your characters are going through that the audience wants to hear about.
The new Netflix show Hollywood had the perfect material for this rule to come into effect, a gay black writer writing a script to be directed by a half Filipino director, produced by a studio lead by a Jewish woman and a gay producer and a black actress and a gay actor competing for roles in 1940s Hollywood, with the topic of prostitution thrown into the mix - and then it dropped all that potential. Everything goes perfectly smooth, somehow everything is magically made possible, the black actress gets the main role, the writer, director, producer, studio boss, everyone just gets to do their job, and while I get the sentiment that it's amazing to see marginalized folks succeed - it does not make a great plot. In fact, it makes this story not only feel boring and overly polished, it also makes it feel unrealistic. A bunch of white studio executives just agreeing that of course the very talented black girl is the perfect cast for this major motion picture? I honest to god doubt that this would be realistic in 2020 Hollywood, let alone the 1940s. Now it is mentioned a lot that all these controversial choices the studio makes would cause trouble - characters discuss protests, murder threats, the KKK, people not getting any more work after coming out as gay, but nothing actually happens. Not only is this not a struggle or conflict, it also breaks the other very basic rule of writing, especially scriptwriting, "show, don't tell", and more importantly: It makes those very real problems that are imminent even now, 80 years later, seem like something marginalized people make up, they are shown as something people are afraid of but that are not actually real. That's what I'd call wasted potential because if all those issues were fleshed out more, this would have been an amazing and important story to tell. Additionally, because of the missing struggles, all of the characters become incredibly two-dimensional, which in itself is a waste of a very talented cast. What could have been a masterpiece has instead been a utopia, lovely to see, but hard to believe and harder to keep in mind. Personally I will easily forget this whole story in just a couple of days now, and I think that is sad.
Dear Netflix, you had gold in your hands here - I would love to see this rewritten as more than a beautiful but forgettable dream. Give me the harsh reality of 1940s Hollywood. Give me the harsh reality of a world where racism was even more imminent than nowadays, where homophobia was up another level, where sexism was a more profound issue than figuring out the details - don't give me a feelgood story that I couldn't ever believe no matter what decade it was set in. Give it a rewrite. Because the base material does deserve it. This can be done so much better.

30.4.20

Time and again

Time and again
breaks for silence
who would have thought that quiet can be so loud
who would have thought that seconds can be so painful
even more so when they accumulate
you say you like me
don‘t believe it
a bit because I can so rarely even really stand myself
a bit because you say it but I can only vaguely see your doing
this soft glow is hard to make out in the dark
and seems like nothing
when I am ablaze next to you
tell me
are you burning just as bright as me?
Are you burning up from the heat inside of you?
Or is it more, like
a bit of warmth
just what is needed
when all else is cold
Do you desire me?
I always desire you
constantly, really
every second I can‘t touch you
feels like a waste of time
how will it be when we meet?
Will you finally burn
for me
as much as I do for you?
You slow me down
and smother me time and again
but this is magnesium, baby
you can not smother me
only make it harder
to endure the burning
are you burning just as bright as me?
Can I only not see your fire because we are both ablaze?

25.3.20

Stay healthy

So this is life now.
All the fires that have been burning inside me just weeks ago, no, days only, have gone out. Silence around me and inside me. More calmness than I had in years. Peace, not to be confused with happiness. It's remarkable how quick and easy it was to accept this new normalcy.
We write history, stay home, it was never that easy to (hopefully) save the world. Okay, maybe we leave some behind, maybe once again we can see the arbitrariness that was given to the executive just like that, too easy to say now that they know what they‘re doing, oh they know what they‘re doing, alright, the signature on the free ticket hasn‘t even dried yet. A bit of control over the situation for the small price of a few lives, a few homeless here, a few refugees there, what's the world cost, I'll take two.
Only a few lives for the safety of the rest, the dregs are rejects, and just above that float the really important ones – applause! Standing ovations for the relevant! Appreciation for your daily bread, which you might not actually be able to buy because the shelves are empty when you, oh relevant one, finally get to do your shopping too, but that's no problem because you sure have our APPRECIATION, be proud of yourself! Because we‘ll only be in writing, we admire you, enduring the stress and let yourself be treated like shit by those who you are keeping alive, keeping everything running, it is so easy to forget who treats you like shit as long as we just clap loud enough. Maybe play the ode to joy in the evenings. Ignoring that your job has been hard for ages, not rarely unbearable. NOW you are important, congratulations, here is your participation trophy, and then we can hopefully forget soon why you were important and be important again ourselves.
The realization that we are not actually important when things get rough tastes bittersweet. Never has our work seemed less meaningful, never has it felt so empty to just keep going on but at least it gives us a bit of purpose, a bit of security while the world around us breaks apart. We don‘t have anything else, after all, we can‘t drown our depressions in booze and meaningless sex, not even a hug between friends to let us forget our pain for a moment. When things get rough it‘s clear who stays alone with their thoughts. How many will the virus kill, how many the economy, how many the solitude? What will we tell our grandchildren if we survived all of this? What will we say in a couple of decades?
So this is life now. We write this story. Let‘s hope that it's going to be a good one. One that we can tell without being ashamed. Be kind to each other. We have nothing else left.
Stay healthy.

4.3.20

Take your broken heart, make it into art

If you had a dollar for every time I said this
for every time I quoted Carrie Fisher
you‘d be a millionaire.
If I had a dollar for every time
you brought up this dollar thing
I‘d be a billionaire.
We just easily fell into place
with our quirks and
our scars
and
I lifted you up
when you grounded me
I kicked your ass to do things
when you made me chill the fuck out
for once in my goddamn life
and
now I am afloat.
Hundreds of feet above the ground
a balloon in the night sky
being nudged further away by the wind
Slowly drifting away
Its calm up here
Quiet
Not a sound between the stars
And cold
Freezing
And I wonder how I ever breathed
and did I ever need to, really?
I lost my ground
casting off
anchor gone
And I am scared
and yet a weight was lifted
but still scared of what‘s ahead
and scared ‚cause I‘m not burning
(why am I not burning)
Why do I feel so calm
and so cold
And nothing feels real anymore
I‘m just floating higher
and higher
(They say sky is the limit but
they didn‘t account for the infinity of space)
and forget that I have ever breathed
or moved
or felt
crystals on my face
that used to be tears
as I drift away
so much faster than I thought
Into emptiness
Take your broken heart
make it into art
but right now
art feels shallow
How can I make it art
when my heart has
yet to be shattered by the ice
Making art is just a habit
but how can I express what I feel
when I can‘t feel anything?
I am just floating off
it's so easy to fly when you weigh nothing
‚cause you‘re empty
Staring into space
and space stares back
as we become one
calm
and
cold
and
infinite nothing
and it will feel like peace
until I finally
implode

5.2.20

Excursion To Poetry #6 - FIP

I am scared.
I am scared
that I am living in a world
that is always going to
hurt me. A world
where I‘ll be pushed and kicked
and beaten
until there is nothing left of me
but a pile of ashes.
I am scared
of a long path of suffering
getting narrower and narrower
until it fades out into nothing
and I am scared
that this path could get too
tight at some point and I‘d fall out,
jump out and face
nothing pre-maturely.
I am scared of this being my life
and I am scared that my only alternative is
(or at least might seem like it)
to not live at all.
I am scared
to endure all of this
and I am scared
that I could not endure it,
of walking the path
or leaving it
or just not finding
the goddamn middle way
that could keep me alive,
where I could breathe
without something tightening up
my chest every other moment,
I am scared
that this is my life
and my only way out seems to be anger,
to be angry at this life
that I just can‘t seem to be able to leave
without leaving it completely
but the anger
is only a reflection after all
of the same life
where I also can‘t be okay
because everything sucks.
I am scared that this life is always going to suck.
I am angry because this life is always going to suck.
I am scared of being alone with this and I am scared of not being alone at all.
I am angry and I am scared.
No punchline.