Hm, I just thought this was a nice picture. Am I acting like I was obsessed with SV? Probably. My first gig was in 1993. I think. I mean the first *real* gig: I on my own playing guitar. I had rehearsed a couple of Vega and Cohen songs and I had made a demotape which I had sent to various clubs in Bielefeld. Most of them did not answer, but one day in November 1993 the phone rang and it was somebody from the Irish Pub. They asked me to come by so that they could talk to me personally. And so I did. I took my guitar and drove down to the Irish Pub. I met somebody who was the manager. Actually I thought that they wanted to hear me play live to see my gig but he just told me that they would call me in January and that I can play there but that I would not get any money.

So I simply started. I think I started with "Gypsy". My voice was trembling and of course nobody paid any attention to what I was doing. Everybody kept on talking, shouting, laughing, making noise. I played "You know who I am" and "Luka" and then, when I was playing "Neighborhood Girls" a string tore and I had to stop. Luckily in the meantime another musician had arrived, a pianist, who continued. When I was packing my things two people near the stage said:"Hey, this was nice. Why do you stop? Go on playing!" So it was not like I thought it would be. Later I learned that Daniel worked at the Irish Pub as a waiter. He cannot remember the night I played there but it might have been the first time we met.

Subject: Kunscht ...
   Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 06:53:28 -0400
   From: Uwe Schwagmeier <USchwagmeier@compuserve.com>
     To: "entropic.empire@bigfoot.com" <entropic.empire@bigfoot.com>

blau gedreht und
zweigestellt
die fuchtel hüpft
bedenklich
die nacht hat sanft
die maid verstellt
acht hunde stülpen
fast
zur Zeit ist Großes
gerade die hatz
hat kaum geschluckt
ein kind,
das lächelt: schade
ich habe weggeguckt.
mein butterfaß, dein
bärenmut auf eis
Du Rätsel radelst
lade
win'st den prize.

Subject: death
   Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 06:19:07 +0900
   From: Sue Conolly <conolly@pop21.odn.ne.jp>
     To: undertow@vega.net

It's half past five in the morning, and I have been sleeping since something like eight o'clock last night.  My mother arrived here yesterday on her way home from Denmark, and today is the day that my father died last year.  Lying in bed and trying to sleep the extra hour until a civilised getting-up time, I started to think about some of Suzanne Vega songs and their relevance to death.

If your love were taken from me
Every color would be black and white
It would be as flat as the world before Columbus
That's the day that I lose half my sight

If your life were taken from me
All the trees would freeze in this cold ground
It would be as cruel as the world before Columbus
Sail to the edge and I'd be there looking down

I recorded this song onto a CD for my husband a month before I knew my Dad was even sick; I knew it was about the experience of having a child and I was about to have my first.  I guess I was still in the stages of trying to imagine what it would be like to have a baby.

I then got the news that my father had cancer and several other medical complications too many to mention, and so I returned to Australia to spend time next to his hospital bed for the last month of his life.  I thought it would be nice to give him a copy of the tape I'd made for Makoto (not just World Before Columbus but other songs as well), but as we started to listen to those first lyrics they stabbed at my heart and drove home the awful fact that I might have been spedning my last days with my Dad.  I know he thought that I'd recorded the song especially for him, and I saw the pain in his eyes.  I don't think he ever listened to that tape again although I wanted him to; he preferred instead to listen to the Japanese lullabies my husband was singing our as-yet unborn child on the other side of the tape.

Looking back to when I met Suzanne Vega in Nagoya a couple of years ago, I can only think that I was as yet unborn myself.  Looking back to that whole time, in fact, I feel that I was so immature I may as well have been riding a tricycle and playing hopscotch.  I'd never experienced having a child, and I'd never felt the pain of losing someone so special to me.  Now I have done both I would have a whole set of different questions if I were ever to have the chance to interview her again.  These questions and discussions go around and around in my head and compete with each other for space; the truth is if I ever did get the chance again I would probably do as garbled a job as I did the first time.  I don't know what I'm trying to say.

I wondered aloud at the time to Suzanne if she felt her songs had a Buddhist influence.  Thinking back to that now, I can see what a fucking stupid question that was.  I'm sure it wasn't the first time she'd ever been asked, and I could sense the irritation of having to deal with that label again.  As a sidenote, after that interview, I have been struck by all the little Christian references (please don't roll your eyes) in songs like Song of Isaac etc.  Anyway, I don't want to get back into religion, but I wanted to explore the concept of death on this day of death.  This time last year I was saying goodbye.

He is not my friend, but he is with me
And he promises a peace I never knew
I cannot give in, no, I must refuse him
But could I really be the one to resist that kiss so true

I can only guess at what it felt like for my father lying in that hospital bed.  All I could feel was the frustration and pain that I felt making the daily trips to the hospital and dealing with all the family emotions that arose daily (an interesting family I have, but that's another story).

I can imagine that my father now has a peace that he never ever had in his lifetime.  He had a hard life; two marriages and very strained relationships with the kids from the first marriage.  He lived in Africa for the first part of his life and I suspect never felt peace again after his parents sent him to boarding school in Kenya at a very young age.  I rethink and rethink his stories again in my head; some of them he wrote down and are easy to imagine...but others I can only guess at.

Death promised him a peace he never knew, and yet I know that he didn't want to give in.  He died two weeks before my first baby was born, and I know that he wanted desperately to see the baby before he died.  When I went into the hospital and saw his heaving chest and his tremendous pain during his last spasms of life and heart failure, I gave him permission to let go.  "Just go, Dad", I said.  I wonder to this day if I had asked him to stay, would he have?  I know that he was a very very sick man and needed some peace, but selfishly I still wonder if I could have made a difference by asking him to stay and forbidding him to die.  In the end he wasn't the one to resist that kiss so true, and of course as someone who loves him I can't deny him any part of the peace that he has now.

I like a tombstone cause it
weathers well
and if it stands or if it crumbles
only time will tell

if you carve my name in marble
you must cut it deep
there'll be no dancing on the gravestone
you must let me sleep
and time is burning burning burning
it burns away

I guess this one is about inevitability and the process of time passing, but I'm not particularly attracted to the image of the tombstone.  Of course I wouldn't be; Mum and I scattered Dad's ashes to sea at the rocks near their house, so he has no name carved in marble and nothing to stand or crumble.  The rocks get weathered and change shape each time I go and visit, but the timelessness of the sea seems to defy the whole concept of this song.  Of course time does change things, and the sea changes as everything else does.  I spent a lot of time swimming or looking at the sea and thinking about how even though the sea will always seem the same, it's compounds and the way it moves and shapes itself will never ever be the same again twice.  I wonder why a tombstone weathers any better than anything else.  Everything changes, even memories.

By day give thanks
By night beware
Half the world in sweetness
The other in fear

When the darkness takes you
With her hand across your face
Don't give in too quickly
Find the thing she's erased

Find the line, find the shape
Through the grain
Find the outline, things will
Tell you their name

The table. the guitar
The empty glass

All will blend together when
Daylight has passed

Find the line, find the shape
Through the grain
Find the outline, things will
Tell you their name

Now I watch you falling into sleep
Watch your fist curl against the sheet
Watch your lips fall open and your eyes dim
In blind faith

I would shelter you
Keep you in light
But I can only teach you
Night vision
Night vision
Night vision

OK, so perhaps it's not about death as such, but I have a new slant on this song since I lost Dad.  It's a lovely song, and I have used it in the past to try and remember that however dark things gets, you can find the shape and the grain and get through hard times somehow.

Now, a year after Dad left this mortal coil, I wonder just what coil he is inhabiting, because I have the strongest sense (call it blind faith) that Dad is with me, and showing me the line, the shape and the grain... over and over again, so long as I remain open to it.  I wish that I still had Dad in the living world, but I can't deny all the good he is doing for me in the "other".  I may have lost some of you.  In fact you may not have got this far, even.  Bear with me.

Last year after I came home from Dad's funeral and having my baby (I ended up having to have the baby in Australia and stayed there for a month afterwards), I found something in our house that blew my marriage apart.  The way that I came across this thing in itself was strange, and I can only think that I was led there by Dad, who now knew things that he felt that I needed to know too.

I left my husband, taking my one month old daughter, and thinking that it was curtains for us as a family.  Without being specific, try to understand that in any normal circumstances this marriage would have been over, irretrievably dead and deceased.  However, the marriage has not died, nor have we washed over the chemicals that caused the explosion in the first place.  We've both been through hell, and come out the other side to tell about it.  Every time I think that less than a year ago, I was on the edge of disaster, I have to do a double take a recheck my figures.  There is literally no other explanation than that I have had help from a powerful source.  It's good, no, miraculous, to have someone like that on your side.

Dad is teaching me Night Vision, just as carefully and just as pain-stakingly as he taught me to read.  He was always a teacher, and it seems that he still is.

That said, it is so hard to be without him.

The house I live in at the moment is huge, has character, a big garden... and costs $100 a month in rent.  You can't tell me that such a deal comes along in my life without the presence of someone who's really on my side... but I wish that I could show Dad in living person this house and this new life I'm forging out of the ashes.

I know that Mum goes through periods of deep bottomless loneliness having spent thirty years with my Dad.  Even with my new family I can hit the depths of loneliness myself when I think of my mentor and the way I didn't make the best of him when I could have.  I miss him so much, but my pain is peanuts compared to what my Mum is going through.

During the time after Dad died, I played Mum "Night Vision", trying to share with her a little of what I liked about SV and also in a misguided and vain effort to ease her pain.  After "Night Vision" came this song, which cut her in two but has come to have special meaning for me.  I'll leave it with you:

Solitude stands by the window
She turns her head as I walk in the room
I can see by her eyes she's been waiting
Standing in the slant of the late afternoon

And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame

Solitude stands in the doorway
And I'm struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we've met

And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame

And she says "I've come to set a twisted thing straight"
And she says "I've come to lighten this dark heart"
And she takes my wrist, I feel her imprint of fear
And I say "I've never thought of finding you here"

I turn to the crowd as they're watching
They're sitting all together in the dark in the warm
I wanted to be in there among them
I see how their eyes are gathered into one

And then she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame

And she says "I've come to set a twisted thing straight"
And she says"l've come to lighten this dark heart"
And she takes my wrist, I feel her imprint of fear
And I say "I've never thought of finding you here"

Solitude stands in the doorway
And I'm struck once again by her black silhouette
By her long cool stare and her silence
I suddenly remember each time we've met

And she turns to me with her hand extended
Her palm is split with a flower with a flame
 

    Subject: death 2
        Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 19:52:23 +0200
       From: Philipp Hofmann <philipp.hofmann@mail.uni-bielefeld.de>
 Organization: Entropic Empire
            To: Sue Conolly <conolly@pop21.odn.ne.jp>, Undertow <undertow@vega.net>

Dear Sue,

thanks a lot for your post which has troubled me a lot. I wish I could react to it appropriately, giving you some kind of comfort. Instead all I can come up with are words and words again. Maybe it's because of the weather (it has turned from a sunny summer to a dark fall within two days here in Germany), maybe it's because of the way your words have moved me: but here is something I wrote to fill the void and the despair your post has left me with. Please feel free to ignore or delete it....

I met Rob in 1993. He was playing electric guitar and his friend Daniel was playing the drums. I was looking for a band to join as a singer and acoustic guitarist and so the three of us got together. From 1993 to October 1998 we met each Monday and Thursday from 7 to 10 rehearsing and playing and composing. On the weekends we had gigs or made recordings or discussed covers. Rob was a great guitarist. He had learned everything he knew from the bands he was listening to: The Smiths and Radiohead, Gene and Blumfeld. He could not read sheet music and did not know anything about music-theory - but his intuitive understanding of music was remarkable. He loved Oscar Wilde and Franz Kafka. But what he loved most was Disneyland. He went to Eurodisney every year and he was waiting in the first line with all the kids to see the parade. But despite Rob's sometimes boyish ideas nothing else that I have done in my life has felt so right like the work I did with him. It was like we were sharing the same thoughts musically. There were only a few times when we had different opinions about how a songs should continue. Mostly things just developed almost effortlessly. I don't know whether the songs we did were really good, quality songs, but they sure felt like it. I was proud of them and I had high hopes in what we were doing. It was the perfect team-work. Rob was like the missing link that set my mind and petty creativity going. Alone we couldn't do very much. It was when we sat together that one chord was added to the next and suddenly a melody or a chorus came out of that. All this I understand only now. I wasn't aware back then how important Rob was for doing what I have always dreamed of. We had a lot of fun. During the rehearsal, at the gigs, while recording.

Rob died when he was vacationing with his brother in the South of Germany. They wanted to visit a castle called "Neuschwanstein" which has been the role model for all those castles in the various Disneylands all over the world. On the way up the hill he collapsed and was dead instantly. He was born with a permanent heart failure. He never told me this. He died at age 30.

This was on October 27 last year, the day that I bought "Tried & True". While I was sitting on the bus reading the lyrics to "Rosemary" for the first time a cold shiver went down my spine when I read the words "All I know of you is in my memory. And all I ask is you remember me". Two hours later I learned that Rob had died. I do not believe in God but then I wished I would just to hate him, to despise him, to scream into his face that I would never forgive him this. I cannot express what has scattered this day in October last year and I have given up to pick up the pieces.

Do you remember how you played with me
for our supper, against the fears?
And that day that I bought "Rosemary"
Daniel called me and he cried
and he said that you had died
and I cried your weight in tears.

Since then there hasn't passed a single day
on which I did not think of you.
Now that you have left and gone away,
you are with me even more
than you ever were before
but what am I supposed to do?

In the silence all around me
and the ruins which surround me
my need for you is growing
like the flowers on your grave.
I never cared to tell you
that you were a a good friend -
but I hope that where you are now
is forever Disneyland.

All I know of you
is in my memory.
All I ask is you
remember me.

Fortunately I had some good friends who have helped me cope with the loss. But still I have these fits sometimes when I can't suppress the pain any longer and it boils onto the surface and covers my eyes like a black curtain. Then I don't see how I should go on, now that everything I have worked for is slowly going down the drain. The dream has turned into a nightmare. I still feel the urge to write, to play, to sing but it's like sitting in front of a keyboard with the hands hacked off and this feeling is running like acid through my veins and eating me from within. And then I curse myself for being so selfish and for all my self
pity. Because in the end I don't feel sorry for Rob but only for myself. Because I feel cheated. Because I feel lost. Rob has gone and where he once was there now is pain. At his wife's side and at the side of his friends and his family. And at my side.

          Ooooh Disneyhead, oooooh Disneyhead
          So how can we be close when you're so far away?
          You're skin touches mine
          but we're light years away.
          Sometimes when it's dark
          I think you're very near,
          when the light comes on
          this is all I hear.
                                                   "Disneyhead", the blue aeroplanes

I have become what Melville would call: "a sadder and a wiser boy": death has stepped into my life without warning and it has given every song a new meaning. Over the last months I have decided that I have to go on. On October 27 I will remember Rob's death as I have done every day of this last year. But I will be somewhere else, I will have moved because I just can't stand at this spot for all my life. I don't think that I can run away from the pain. But if I don't move my life will overtake me and what then? Of course there is the fear of leaving Rob behind. And there is the uncertainty of where to go because right now I simply don't know where to turn to. But it's some comfort to know that I am not walking alone, that other people are also on their way pushed by a loss. And it's good to know that they are also accompanied by Suzanne's songs.

moving

i have packed
i'm leaving this place now
empty as it is now
that you have gone

i did not sleep, just waited
and anticipated
your coming home

and i guess my life will just go on
the way it did before
except that the fine line
between song and sign
will not blur
anymore

i have packed
all which reminds me of you
so that leaving here does not mean:
leaving you behind

if you come back and read this
finally
i hope that you will follow
and find me

because my life will just go on
the way it did before
except for these words
like drops from a tap
that will not close
anymore

except that the crack
in my heart
will not heal
anymore

    *

Sue, I don't know how you are feeling. But I am feeling the same. And the impossibility of expressing this hurts me. I'm missing. And sometimes this missing fills me so completely that it suffocates every sensible thought. And then mails like this happen. I'm with you in thoughts. I don't know whether this is a comfort. But it is a fact.
Thanks for listening.

remember me,
philipp

It's 00:18, I'm sitting here coughing and with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders.

I am a poor
freezingly cold soul
so far from where
I intended to go...

October 05, 1999 (Tuesday) I'm going to meet Dagmar tonight. Actually I wanted to go to the University today but I' still feeling sick and I have a slight fever. I've been trying to write some Java Script programme for the last hour but it won't really work. Anyway. On saturday Uwe and Christiane will come and we will meet because of my birthday (which is on Thursday) and because Christiane is back from England. So, if you're reading this and you would like to join us you're welcome! Saturday, 19:30h, Siegfriedstrasse 44, 33615 Bielefeld. (And yes! the red thing on the cellular phone is in fact a Schnitzel...)

It's wednesday night. 22.38. I'm sitting here alone. Inga is in Essen visiting Katja. I#m eating sweets and drinking diet coke. I've started gaining weight uncontrollably. Tomorrow night we're going to see Morrissey in Hamburg. Hopefully. everybody's sick. Inga and Christiane eand I was just a couple of days ago. I've been sitting in front of the sreen all day, trying to get the index-page for Chaos/Control:Complexity work. It does now. Looks quite nice.
So, here is another task for you. It's a tricky question, and if you can come up with an answer I'd be very happy to hear from you. Now, the question is:

What do you answer somebody who says to you:"Well, Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead is a really great song - I'm just wondering what the lyrics mean. What do you think? Do you understand them?"

It's a clear night tonight. The stars are out and it's gonna be freezing cold. I know that the yntax and tense in the if-clause above is somewhat wrong. I don't care. It's just another reason to start musing about the English/German question. Wie soll ich weiterschreiben, wenn ich weiterschreiben soll?

It's 23:09 already. I think I'll go to bed now. Glaube nicht, daß Inga noch anruft.
 
 

Subject: words and words again
   Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 12:33:21 +0200
   From: Inga Westerteicher <inga.westerteicher@gmx.de>
     To: philipp hofmann <philipp.hofmann@uni-bielefeld.de>

hallo philipp,

ich habe mir gerade zum ersten mal dein online-diary durchgelesen. ich habe das gefühl, daß wir im realen leben nicht viel miteinander zu reden haben, daß uns da nicht recht was einfällt, worüber wir uns austauschen können, weil wir zu müde sind, weil es uns egal ist, weil es zu viele profane ärgernisse gibt, weil uns der atem fehlt.
ich habe das gefühl, daß es dich nicht besonders interessiert, in kontakt mit mir zu sein, auch wenn ich den größten teil der woche gar nicht zuhause bin, auch wenn ich nur abends da bin und du dann doch nur am computer sitzt oder bei der probe bist. am wochenende, wenn wir zeit hätten und ich gerne einfach nur mit dir wäre, dann ist das aber auch nichts für dich.
ich will wissen, was in dir vorgeht, damit ich endlich wieder weiß, mit wem ich mir die wohnung teile und wer abends an meiner seite liegt und dort atmet und schläft und träumt. dich interessiert es nicht, mir das mitzuteilen, also wende ich mich an deinen closest friend, der wenigstens gerne informationen an mich rausgibt und freundlich und still mit mir kommuniziert. dort entdecke ich ein anderes gesicht von dir und plötzlich weiß ich, was dich so am rechner hält. dort existiert eine andere welt, die mit der in unserer wohnung und außerhalb unserer wohnung nicht das geringste zu tun hat.
virtuality against reality. virtuality wins.
sie ist irgendwie echter und tiefer und aufrichtiger als das, was hier ist, warm und pulsierend, schweißig, stinkend, schmutzig die üblichen abfälle des täglichen lebens produziert, uns unsere sterblichkeit vor augen hält. es ist die profanität, die uns ankotzt und uns abstößt, dich noch mehr als mich. darum fliehst du auch konsequenter vor mir, als ich vor ihr. das kalte, ruhige, gleichmäßige, stille flimmern ist irgendwie sublimer, es riecht nach nichts, es ist non-consuming und es schilfert keine haupt ab. mir ist klar, daß das genau das ist, wonach es dich und mich verlangt. heißt das, daß ich dir nur wirklich über den computer nahekommen kann? daß wir uns nur in der virtualität so begegnen können, wie ich es ab und zu gerne nur mal einfach so hätte. oder erwarte ich einfach mal wieder zu viel? du bist einfach so fern von mir. ich glaube manchmal der computer ist dir näher als ich, oder der raum, den du dir dort nehmen kannst. dort lädst du all das ab, worüber du mit mir nicht sprichst. dort geht es um deine zukunftsängste und deine trauer um rob und deine verzweiflung wegen der musik. zwischen uns ist das nicht möglich. ist das überhaupt zwischen menschen möglich? ich meine mittlerweile ist mir auch klar, daß wir alle alleine sind und es auch bleiben werden und beziehungen nur eine art von selbstdoping, damit man es nicht so merkt oder sich gegenseitig was vormachen kann, aber du läßt es mich manchmal zu überdeutlich spüren. oder willst du mir etwas bestimmtes damit sagen? oder ist das unsere art, uns tiefe zu schenken? über den 0/1 code? ich weiß nicht. i am upset. ich bin ratlos. und ich fühle mich dir momentan so fremd wie noch nie zuvor. oder liegt es an deiner prüfung? ich bin darauf angewiesen, daß du mir zumindest was schreibst. ich glaube nicht, daß ich so stark halluziniere.

remember ME
ingo

Maybe it is time to end this project. I'm starting to lose control of it. It has developed a life of its own. I can't substitute between what I have made up and what is real. Where have I been when I made up the mail above? Where have I been when I invented Uwe and his strange reactions to the online journal. Where have I been when I made up Rob's death? Where have I been when I made up myself?
 
 

and the only one here now is me I'm fighting things I cannot see I think it's called my destiny that I am changing changing changing