woa, i should totally update this place. i hope you understand, dear readership, that there’s just so much stuff happening all the time everywhere in the world - including this rainy little town called tartu – that i’m struggling to put it into words. or weld it into words. yeah, weld sounds so much better than put. weld it till it shoots sparkles in your eyes. not sure where this is going, but it certainly puts an image in my mind, while sitting here and sipping my raspberry yoghurt.
i had a thought the other day about this town. in a way, it has affected me more than any human being. affected, in the most positive way possible. this place has these kind of paranormal vibes that bring out the best in me, or sort of letmebecome the best in me. i don’t know about you, but this makes total sense to me right now. but to be perfectly honest with you, i kind of miss travelling a bit. the hassle and the mess and the fatigue and the thirst and the post-sleep-on-a-plane knockout feeling you get.. and then you discover yourself from a place that sort of looks familiar, but you know you’ve never been there. well, fortunately i’m going to berlin this saturday for some modest self-indulgence: john maus on the 3rd and thurston moore on the 5th. also meeting up with a mate from luxembourg, who happens to live there now. nice one, bro. but my goodness, is my spoken english rusty or what! i played a gig with this swedish industrial-techno-rock-whatever band called ninedee last friday and while i was talking to them.. some serious lingual slow motion stuff going on. but they weren’t very good either, so it was fun all around. and i’m talking early morning depeche mode bar kind of fun. the real fun.
okay, i have to post something to finish this up. most of you probably know this, but it’s just so goddamn gorgeous, heartbreaking and amazingly ironic at the same time. dan boeckner and alexei perry have to be the sexiest act on the planet. i mean, it’s just.. that eternal sadness in his voice is so comforting, you know?
thurston moore and kim gordon broke up.. so, yeah. there’s a certain amount of love anyone can have for another person and at some point it just dries up, i suppose. the beginnings are pretty cool, though. some only live for the beginnings. to be honest, i had almost forgot what the beginnings feel like.
i have to admit i’m slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information i’m constantly exposed to. i think the time when i’m going to hide my computer and ipod from myself is quite near.. november, maybe. after all, there’s some reading i have to do about finno-ugric cultures and john cage and glenn branca and no wave music and so on. not to mention the lectures.. god, there’s so much of everything!! i can feel this little punk raising its little head inside my bigger head, screaming: “GO TO AUSTRALIA! GO TO ICELAND! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE AND START LIVING YOUR PATHETIC LITTLE LIFE!” sometimes i like what he’s saying, but sometimes i don’t. i can’t figure out who’s right. sometimes i’m too much of a romantic and think that i could actually pull off that fuck ze world i need real experiences attitude, but then again i like my cozy little love nest too much to leave it just yet. i guess i’ll just keep flowing with the go and see what happens. works all the time.
by the way, check out that awesome video for one of my favourite tracks since this summer. my kids are going to be exactly the same.
i finished the first part of my endless educational road today. yup, it’s all about hanging out with cool university students now. i feel as though i could scream on top of my lungs, but at the same time.. i’m too shy. whatever, freaking the fuck out in my mind is good enough. so.. what’s next? who’s next? when’s next? where’s next? why’s next? i can answer some of these questions, but don’t worry, i won’t. i like to live in secrecy from the general public. that kind of ties in with the question i got for my estonian oral exam today: a newspaper article about how, in recent years, UFO sightings have increased in finland. could’ve there been a more perfect question?? i don’t think so.
after doing some hardcore studying of igor stravinsky for my music oral exam last wednesday i became really fascinated by the orchestral music of the 20th century, again. in light of that i rediscovered sufjan stevens’ the age of adz, released last october. a truly remarkable record, which achieves that so-very-delicate balance between pop and orchestral music and, in my opinion, serves as a great example of early 21st century music. early because, as we all know, there is still 89 years to go before the next century. can you imagine the amount of music the world can make in 89 years? i’m struggling.
the actual reason i started talking about the age of adz is that the video for get real get right was released today, on the 7th of july. now, wait a minute.. the album was released on the 12th of october, 2010. why release a video 9 months later? well, judging by the tripping-balls-spaceships-aliens-robots-covered-in-glitter stop-motion video, i would say that he actually spent those 9 months making it. you can (AND HAVE TO) watch it here because it’s not on youtube or vimeo, yet.
so that’s that. i’m leaving this place on sunday evening, for the time being. kind of sad, really. fortunately, though, i had a last minute surprise visit from one very special hanna korp, who raised my spirits to the heavens, theoretically speaking. i do appreciate a good surprise. especially such a pleasant one.
hell yeah! i had a lucid dream tonight/this morning. i think it’s been over a year since the last one and i had almost forgotten how cool the whole concept is. the dream itself was actually quite nerdy, so bear with me on this one.. i was on a mission in an abandoned factory of some sort. the whole environment looked very similar to the one in half-life 2 with which i had a massive obsession in february/march this year. i kept following this mysterious person through all sorts of pipes and creepy corridors until finally reaching some laboratory. something happened there and i can’t remember exactly what it was, but it seemed surreal. everything was very futuristic. suddenly i found myself sitting in a train with 3 other people. i was sitting next to A, a man and a woman were sitting opposite us. i looked outside and, judging by the way the landscape zipped by, realized that the train was going really quite fast. there was a full moon in the sky. for a moment, i looked inside and noticed that there weren’t many people in the wagon. i then looked back outside and, to my great surprise, saw that the moon had shrunk to a half moon. well, i thought to myself, this couldn’t have happened within the few seconds i didn’t look at it. it was at that moment i realized it is actually all a dream. i remember looking around in the train and thinking: well, this is awkward. none of these people here know that they don’t actually exist. that they’re nothing but a figment of my imagination, an illusion created by my tired brain.. or are they? i felt as if i possess some great knowledge, something everyone is dying to understand, but never will. as long as they live, anyway. suddenly we had to get off the train and as i was walking towards the door i turned around and said to A: by the way, did you know that we’re dreaming right now? she looked at me with saucer eyes, full of disbelief. without saying a word, she started laughing like a little baby. i remember finding that really peculiar, moments before waking up..
here’s where it gets crazy.
i change sides and fall back asleep immediately. i find myself sitting in the same place, on that same train. i’m alone this time around, except for an older man and woman who are sitting opposite me. they look at me, jaws dropping to the ground with amazement. the man pulls himself together and says that they didn’t expect to see me again after the last time. i remember being really puzzled and asking why. he then explains that it’s been 35 years since the last time they saw me on that train. i think i was so freaked out by that answer that i woke up out of sheer excitement. this definitely qualifies as one of the most meaningful dream incidents i’ve ever had. zhuangzi sums it all up quite nicely: “only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. and yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. how dense!”
in other news.. i went to two amazing gigs last week. warpaint on thursday and eels, for the second time, on friday. warpaint, for some reason, managed to exceed my expectations by miles. the sound was perfect.. you could hear absolutely every little nuance from the reverb drenched hazy vocals to the shimmering arpeggios to the heavily syncopated drumming. the looks were also perfect. it was a total package of almost indescribable beauty. eels, by comparison, were an alfa-looking bunch of bearded gentlemen with a cooler-than-life attitude and a unique sense of humour, mostly courtesy of E. in what way was it better than their last show in this tiny country? well, for starters, they had a brass section. they also included novocaine for the soul in their setlist this time around, which means my life is now complete. and they played for 2 hours with 2 encores. oh, and they also had a magician come on stage in the middle of souljacker, part 1, let E lie down on a table and levitate him. pretty cool stuff.
education-wise.. my oral exams start on next thursday. not really looking forward to them, but then again.. what the hell. in the end, everything is going to be alright anyway. i’m going to leave you with a sad song, again. i hadn’t listened to it for a long time and i sort of rediscovered its brilliance.. what an ingenious cover.
my final written exam is tomorrow. it’s philosophy, so it’s very fitting. i had my what the hell moment today when i discovered i actually have a small castle in my next door village. fortunately i had my philosophy notes with me so i figured i might as well study there, in the pretty little park with a small pond. it was actually really productive and i’m definitely going back there to prepare for my history oral exam in exactly 17 days.. fuck this, i don’t want to think about it now. it seems i kind of have some sort of mini-holidays after tomorrow. to be honest, i have no idea what to do. i guess i could say goodbye to every significant place i’ve been to here in the past 5 years. yeah, that’s sounds interesting enough. i think it’s going to be a busy week, this one. lots of gigging to do. got warpaint on thursday, eels on friday and myself on saturday, playing for some BBQ party the school is throwing for us. ah, i suppose it’s going to be fun.
nothing else really happening at the moment. everything seems sort of away.. or maybe it’s just me going through that sentimental phase prior leaving the country that raised me through the teenage years. i also found the perfect band with a perfect song for these kind of moods. i don’t know why, but it just clicked this one evening i was cycling on the fields. i had that whole euphoric feeling that comes with a great song and it’s hard to determine whether the feeling is extreme happiness or eternal sadness that just strikes you down and beats you with a baseball bat until you discover you’re actually enjoying it. sort of like fight club.
so i dragged my sister to the cinema a few days ago to see the tree of life, a film that could be best described with words such as surreal, beautiful and epic. i’m only using words because i am unable to form sentences that could actually say something about that film. all i’m saying is that everyone should definitely watch it, sooner or later. actually, make it sooner and later. be patient.
the only problem with the film was the time of the release. baaaaad timing.. how can i possibly study for anything or care about my future after seeing drops of water falling in slow motion onto green leaves, children playing carelessly in the garden, stars exploding and galaxies taking shape.. god. all i know is that everything is going to be alright. the horrors are really good at reassuring me that life is actually very simple and that people worry too much about things that haven’t even happened yet.
it hasn’t fully dawned on me yet, but shit.. everything really is ending here. the last days of secondary school. i had my last biology lesson today. ironically, the last two were the most interesting lessons of the whole two years i had with that teacher. we talked about evolution and horses. also, my maths and english teachers wrote really nice comments to my yearbook, both of which made me smile. other comments were really sweet and funny as well. in my opinion, it’s so weird how we get the yearbooks at the very end and only then find out how nice the people, with who you shared this whole experience with, actually are (or are they..?). whatever the truth may be, it is certainly heart-warming. it is, yet again, ironic how the past month has been one of the most interesting times here, ever. i’ve connected with so many people on so many different levels and now we’re all leaving. how unfair.
i’ve been spending the past days and evenings simply by wandering around on the fields surrounding my house. how sentimental and boring, some might think, but there’s definitely some, often invisible, quality to the sunsets which disappear behind the hills, the deserted little garden house by the road with slowly crumbling insides, the wind farm on the horizon and the lonely pear tree with the nicest shade. however, all this heartbreaking atmosphere led me to discover an album that simply tore me to bits with its overwhelming melancholy and some of the most beautiful melodies i’ve ever heard.. smoke ring for my halo by kurt vile. i simply have no words to describe how incredible it is. listen to it, dig into it.. like you’re searching for that missing piece of your soul, that you just lost.
the past few weeks have been pretty hectic. finishing off last pieces of work for school, practising with the band, thinking about the future.. all that, you know. the highlights were, without question, the past two days. the school on friday was quite nice, especially the music lessons in the end. i’m working on my composition for the final exam and it’s going pretty well so far. sounds quite asian, actually. gotta love the eastern culture. anyway, so i went home and had a nice dinner before going to see the soft moon. i have to say i was surprised that they didn’t have a drummer because it would’ve definitely been even more amazing if they’d had one. nevertheless, the reverb-soaked guitar, post punk beats and ethereal vocals created an atmosphere, which was difficult not to love.
the second part of the two-day awesomeness marathon happened throughout the whole of saturday, starting at 12.30 with the last band practise before our first gig with two other bands, both comprised of good friends. the soundcheck was quite different to what i’m used to, but it was cool because the bass amp proved to be a tiny bit too weak for the gig, so we had put it straight into the PA. unconventional, but effective. even too much, at times. so the gig started well, both of the bands before us put on top notch shit and everything was going great. then we went on, quite drunk, played, made some mistakes, but generally enjoyed it. in the end i abused my guitar with two knives, molested the amp and while i was at it, created some serious feedback. fun all the way. however, the encore, which was originally supposed to be a nice little blues jam with some mates from the previous bands, turned into an avant-garde mayhem to the likes of animal collective-meets-african tribes-meets-sonic youth-meets-john cage with something like 20 people onstage, banging on everything they could get their hands on.. after 20/25 minutes of this chaos i packed up my stuff and looked at the empty stage. broken glass (someone broke a neon light tube, which hung from the ceiling) and pieces of wood from the broken drumsticks everywhere. it was like a tornado had wiped over the stage. i guess that’s the best way to describe what happened exactly.
i think that’s definitely one of the coolest things i’ve ever participated in, onstage. it was an immensely purifying experience for the soul. i haven’t felt so pure and empty in quite a while, actually. i also rediscovered pavement and one of their saddest songs. i had listened to it before, but when i heard it yesterday something just clicked and i felt such sadness wash over me. it’s kind of difficult to describe. it was almost romantic. anyway, here’s the song. take care, i’ll be with you soon.
it’s been some time now since my mother and sister went to estonia for the easter holidays, leaving me here in solitude with the sun & all sorts of mind altering substances. not that i would abuse any of them, of course. life is as it is. it’s a river, like always. the go-with-the-flow attitude i’ve adapted over the years still holds water. the days after coming back from maastricht have been somewhat blurry, however, due to the irregular sleeping patterns i’ve been having. nevertheless, it’s all good for the creativity and the hedonistic pleasures like listening to music 7/24. one of the albums i’ve fallen in love with is nine types of light by tv on the radio. i’ve also grown more attached to them after the fairly sudden death of the bassist, gerard smith, due to lung cancer.
it’s an album which reminds us that music knows no limits. human consciousness is merely a fragile medium through which the vibrations surrounding us are written down and recorded. what we make of them is universal and should be appreciated by everyone in their own ways. amen.
anyway, this is one of the most beautiful songs i’ve ever heard from these guys, along with DLZ from dear science. i suppose it could serve as a peaceful farewell to monsieur smith. ciao.
