Regrets

The young middle-aged man with his shirt stretched across his broad chest came home late in the evening after an extensive battle with his boyfriend who had accused him of being starstruck with the Fab Four. He had argued that his lover couldn’t understand that as he was too young to have experienced the magic of the Liverpudlian lads. He hadn’t been there when he had sat in front of the TV with his older sister who still was an avid Beatlemaniac. When she had screamed in seeming agony and then held him close to her, had stroked his hair and had told him, how much he reminded her of Ringo with his prominent nose and his narrow eyes. This had always made him smile and had made him feel, well, special. 

His lover hadn’t understood it back then when they had gotten together and he couldn’t understand it now, after nearly four years. Whenever he was here, was sitting in the living room with the nearly larger than life poster of Sergeant Peppers and the seemingly endless row of vinyl with so many doubles and triples and quintrupials – of course the different labels and the different colors and the little differences mattered! – his lover couldn’t understand him and often referred that the owner of such a place right here in the middle of nowhere, in Smalltown America was living in the yesterday only wanting to get back to the hey-days searching for a day in the life of someone else. That’s why they hardly met here and those continuing struggles had been the reason why he had not gone to see John a few years back in New York.
​
He turned on the TV and listened to the news that had just begun. The anchorman was not smiling his usual half-smile. Not welcoming like he always did. He was very serene, very smitten and he looked straight at the camera, not reading off anything but merely speaking words that did not make sense. He spoke of an assassination in New York City and of a fan turned murder. The news did not only drop like a bomb or a bullet, they struck like a knife and the wound they tore was deeper than any before. The tears were welling up in his eyes before he could even notice. He fell down to the ground and started crying. He should have gone to New York, to that concert and maybe he would have met him at the Lakota, too. Now it was too late, forever. He hadn’t imagined that. Never in his life. 

Thorsten

(editor's note: Music inspires us all, especially reviewers. Sometimes the music we listen to inspires our writers to come up with something different, like a poem or a short story. In these series we compile those writings. Or, as Thorsten wrote:
"This record forced me to write something else"

ambient

Life exists only in connection to witnesses. Post-Modernity can only exist after modernity. Black cannot survive without white. And yet – they are all the same, the are language. Thoughts. A stream of consequences rushing through the tips of tongues or fingers in order to sound and evoke something, be it empathy or a feeling of togetherness or antipathy, a sign of intelligence or utter stupidity. 

However – how to describe something that is voiceless but speaks to us? That instills insight but never affirms? Well, pictures might do. And for the sake of this review, pictures painted by binaries will... 

A state-of-the-art WWII motorbike sliding across the Berlin streets. A left-alone helmet lying on the street, no wonder that high-ranked Ivan is not alive.

The beams of the star gliding across a surface black. S/He wakes up, beams tingling her back.

The mere sound of a deep-tuned bass rolling over it all. The shadows for our hero’s last withdrawal.
 
The rocket slowly getting deeper and deeper into the abyss. Kubrick’s visions – nothing more is this. 

The building right next to the Spree was a palace of rust, but it would never falter, never fall to dust.

Harrison Ford on his last neon-lit run. His search for solution undone. 

Embraces are held for a bit too long. Permeated by each and every part of the next song.

A million words to choose from, but nothing to hold to this form.

Sounding from left to right all is glistening tight. Each idea is shown up when the time is ripe.

The ship is sinking slowly into pure deep. Nothing holds on, it is too steep. 

Falling back onto cushions of drone. All unique, somebody’s clone.

The first voyage to the next planet in line, floating closer to Mars. The humans are about to turn this planet too into a farce.

13 songs, an unlucky number. Thirteen miracles, not one going under. 



Thorsten