[feb 10, 2002]BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND! well, not really, but back nonetheless. it's 6:24 pm and i'm shaking. i've just come back from finishing something and now i need to start something new. i feel the waves of longing rushing beyond the line of expression again. it's windy and rainy outside. i'm not sure whether i understood the complete importance of what i've just done... i'm cold. anybody out there?
it's 9:07pm and i already regret what i've done. i'm such an
idiot and i wish there was a way to
[feb 11, 2002 |ok, i did it. i did what cedric & tara, what blaine and what even thomas advised me: no contact anymore. stop hoping, stop begging, stop writing, stop thinking about her. stop turning this into a mere friendship. and yesterday night i did. i broke off contact, wrote her not to write to me again. just like that. fuck. and of course i'm regretting it already. the backlash came instantly. hours of despair and a dream in which i saw her face before me, close, very close, and there's love in her eyes, her eyes are filled with love for ME, filled with love and the overwhelming beauty of those eyes made me wake up in terror and i was thrown back into an empty room in the middle of the night. 'i can't get used to falling' paula once wrote, anticipating all my life.fucking valentine's day]
whenever i felt better the last couple of days i always lived
under the impression that she is just temporarily gone, like she was on
vacation for the weekend but would return on monday. when she wrote to
me today and asked about the cassette that she's missing and that HE had
compiled for her i suddenly realized that she will never come back, that
she is with him now. and a cold hand gripped my heart and shook
it and squeezed it until it was all dry and crumbled and had lost all its
shape. i can't recognize it, it doesn't look like my heart anymore it is
perforated all over and the slightest jolt will be enough to tear it into
he and art. 'i've been down, down - but not like this before...' i've been
nervous and restless all fucking day long, feeling as if i had to write
a math paper tomorrow. i just want some peace! why can't i just have one
day without memories, without longings, without crying and bloody waiting
for you for you for you?
the rain is drumming friendly against the windowpane like it wants to show me that i'm not alone. i catch myself in a waiting position every now and then: when people hurry past my window with collars set up and heads held low i raise my head and hope that it's her. when a car passes by i run to the window to see if it's her car. yes, i wish she would just ignore what i wrote and come storming into my flat furiously shaking her fist with the letters and yell at me and yell at me madly and i would spontaneously self combust and burst into flames and burn in an instant so unbearable would the love be that i feel for her. 'it's better to burn out than to fade away'.
tomorrow i'll be off to cologne again. hopefully this will distract me a little bit. blaine and i will be trying to play a couple of songs together, which should be fun.
[feb 12, 2002]i'm on the train to cologne and with each inch that the train pulls along a new aching memory encircles me. i'm wrapped in a blanket of thorns and whenever i move they pierce me and open old and new wounds. the solution would be of course to lie very still and quiet and try to not move at all, but my mind leaps forward again and again, into the pain, into the cuts like it was a dumb, blind animal. fits of panic come in waves of cold flames leaving me wide eyed and breathing heavily.
[feb 13, 2002]
|
'but you tell me it's temporary, it's a matter of time by god don't you think i know what's in my mind?' the last two hours i have been playing and singing with blaine. we tried a couple of indigo girls songs which worked pretty well. but every beauty seems wasted: i cannot share it. every kind of beauty weighs like a stone on me, in me - no way to get it out, no way to use it. it accumulates and i don't want to feel any longer. i want to be numb and deaf and blind. every feeling of enthusiasm or joy becomes stale immediately and turns into frustration. it's almost ten pm and i'm heading home except that i don't have a home. nobody is waiting for me.
unfinished haiku:
'i wish
i had
a pet'
there you go. that's all the humor i can come up with these days. i'm
scared.
[feb 14, 2002 | actually TODAY is fucking valentine's day]i'm still in cologne but i'll return to bielefeld in an hour. we almost have finished the blueprints for 'chaos/control:complexity'. i'm tired, tonight at 2am somebody turned on the music, god knows why. a single song on repeat for hours. 'couple in the next room is bound to win a prize'. bad thoughts on repeat as well.
i'm on the train again. the sky is hyperclear, the sun is shining onto
the paper, blinding me. that's a good light. it's light to overexpose my
mind. i wish i wasn't stuck in this feedback loop of emotions that is shrieking
into my ears. today everybody comes in pairs and i don't understand it,
there is not a single cloud in the sky and no signs of a wooden ship as
far as *i* can see. i dread the time when the rain will set in. i'm sitting
crouched in the corner of a crowded train with heaps of paper on my lap
and it's a days work just to hold back the tears and i don't know what
to do against the fear of the future. i'm telling myself again and again
that the worst is over – but it doesn't feel like it.
[feb 15, 2002]t h e r e i s f e a r e v e r y w h e r e
[feb 16, 2002]bad, bad dreams. 'i go missing in my own life...'
jesus, what a day. i've just come back from a meeting with daniel and reiner: the nerve bible is back. we will start rehearsing next friday and i'm really enthusiastic about it. reiner even spoke of doing a couple of concerts in fall. this would be sooo great, although my motivation is more than obvious. still i can't wait to play again with drum and bass!
paula wrote and she sent good news and comforting words:
paula wrote:
philipp, we are together. not bodily, which is the most comforting, i'll agree, but we're connected with words. and from words grow trust and love, and be sure of this: i won't leave you like xxxx. our relationship is different, but your fear of being abandoned must be huge now, but i won't go. you're a part of my life and i can't imagine you not in it.my answer:
yes, you're one of the few constants that they could not take away from me. and it comforts me to be able to write to you, to be with you in words - it always has. but i know that there will come moments - and they will come tonight and they will come before or after the bad dreams - when it is not enough to write to you, when i will curl against the covers and clench my fist against the pillow because the longing will send cramps all through my body and in those moments words don't work anymore, in those moments i'm a million universes away from you and everybody else. sometimes it's just minutes, sometimes it's hours but every time it's the total annihilation of sense and hope and future. and this is a pain that only a body can ease, it is immune to words. and the task is to get through these endless moments on your own without losing your mind to regain reason, strength and structure afterwards with the help of the constants that they have left you. your voice is halfway between body and the word and i listen to it again and again. i am very grateful that you're out there. and i'm very grateful that i've found you. you make me a little less lost.
[feb 17, 2002]another sunday. went for a long, long walk in the woods today, listening to the indigo girls/pete seeger's 'letter to eve' on repeat for twenty thousand times. i rehearsed not looking up but only right in front of my feet, which worked sometimes. now i wish that not every movement outside my window would make me look up. tried to fight the fear this morning by a fit of consumer frenzy: ordered 'calvin and hobbes' volumes for 80 €. so, sue me!
every car that passes by makes me look up. every car that passes by
and in which two people are sitting makes my heart miss a beat. every car
that passes by and in which two people are sitting of which one is male
and has short hair and the other female with long hair messes up my mind
completely. and you can multiply this with pedestrians. thomas
would say
i've been nervous again all day like i had to pass a test or had to
go
[feb 18, 2002]finished that new song this morning. actually the lyrics
space walk
[sold my soul to mission control]
VERSE I:
the lift off was spectacular
we were speeding at full pace
you & me on a space walk
the joy was written on your face
BRIDGE I:
I've never seen the stars shine clearer
I've never seen the moon been nearer
we were floating free in zero gravity
CHORUS INSTRUMENTAL
VERSE II:
on our way past Jupiter,
past Vega and the milky way
we were lined to each other's spacesuits
so we wouldn't go astray
CHORUS:
now we're a million universes apart
and the black holes that i pass can't keep up with your heart
VERSE III:
i did not hear you cut the line
for in space there is no sound
but you suddenly were distant
when i clumsily turned 'round
BRIDGE II:
with your heavy moon boots you kicked me
waved goodbye slowly and then sent me
on an endless space trip while you dock to the ship
CHORUS II:
i'm at the edges of a universe so vast
and i don't know how long the oxygen will last
if you see something in a night sky that is clear
that's just me burning in the outer atmosfear
 |
just checked the blueprints and i found a couple of typos that we still
have to eliminate. blast! we've neatly woven complexity theory into the
production of the text. the slightest change will have biggest results:
i'll probably have to do the entire line makeup all over again just because
we have to chang change one fucking comma.
i'm considering taping a rough demo version of 'space walk' tonight.
it would be cool to have some drums sounds looped through a flanger. maybe
i can come up with something that fits the guitar pattern...
later...the rough demo version turned out to be quite good. found great backing vocals for the chorus. unfortunately the song is over five minutes, which might be not so bad if we polish it up with the band: reiner will have to play some 'spacy' bass lines! i made a pretty good voice sample of neil armstrong and he's saying: 'it's one small step for mankind and one giant leap for man'. thought for the fraction of a second to make a cd for suzyv. with the queen and the soldier (you know, the special version), space walk and the other new one: first day love.
there's a soccer game tonight and i'm living next to the arena. just
great, the whole street is crowded with people and cars. but then it prevents
me from inspecting everyone who passes by and from expecting someone who
i wish to come by.
the soccer game has just ended - and every drunken fan passes by my
window, singing, shouting rather, waving flags and being guarded by policecars.
when i started to let myself have unmotivated thoughts tonight i thought
about my chicken brain and unica came to my mind again.
'die bekannte Panik setzt ein und sie hat ihrit's late and it's dark. my fingers ache from playing guitar every night. but it's a good feeling, a well known feeling. a feeling of learning a skill that i had almost forgotten. i wish i had a reason to write songs.
Gutes, sie foltert bis zur Entscheidung: Flucht.
Auf diese Weise vermindert sich das Gepäck.
Allmählich pfeift man, besonders auf die
Heimat, obgleich oft in diesem ungeeigneten
Moment die absurde Hoffnung Knospen zu
treiben beginnt. O menschliches Ungeheuer! Anstatt
endlich aufzugeben will ich nach wie vor das, was für
mich gemacht ist. Eher glaube ich nicht an meine
Existenz.
Und damit fahre ich in die Hölle.
Und das ist mein Riegel, mein Stolz,
mein Vorhang, meine eine Hälfte - Hoffnung
und Hoffnungslosigkeit - beinah alles...'
this morning the comic books arrived. just in time to brighten up a gray, rainy and dark day. so it'll be a hard descision whether i will start reading 'gravity's rainbow' or 'homicidal psycho jungle cat'. i think i'll ponder that one while having breakfast...i'm putting a candle in my window for you every night [feb 19, 2002]
Subject: usseems like i have infected all of cologne university the other week: blaine has the flu and thomas' whole family is sick as well. to swerve & to infect.
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 00:39:15 +0100
From: Schwagmeier <cornfield@xxxxx.de>
To: ph@xxxxxxxxx.comSometimes, I wish I were a reason for you to write songs.
I'm trying to be ...
Always yours,
us
i navigated to the online diary and there's only one thing that bothers me - the big question mark where my picture should be. what should we do about that? in a way, i don't want to be faceless to you anymore because i have seen your face.and i answered:
paula, you are not faceless to me. you have many faces and they are constantly changing. you have the face of somebody whose face i have never seen because you are constantly behind me, a support, someone to guard my back, someone to lean on to, someone to catch my fall. i don't think that i want to see your face. yet. what, if you're *really* old and ugly and look like madeline albright? what if you look like xxxx? what if you are as beautiful as your words and then i'm not only in love with a woman who has another man but also fall in love with a woman who has another woman?so she sent in a 'substitute' photo: something to replace the question mark. i listened to the recodings she made for me of some of her poems the other night and i realized that her words and her voice transform the blanket of thorns that i wrote about the other week: they turn the thorns to tears, and although they still sting on the skin they won't make new wounds anymore. just like talking to cedric. just like being hugged by tara. just like singing with blaine.
[feb 20, 2002]i'm on the train to cologne. i feel my heart unthawing. which is not a good sign. i've kept it frozen and numb the past days which held the thoughts and longings at bay. it's dark and rainy today, the train cuts through urban landscapes and woods and fields clumsily, shaking and rattling and leaving the letters on the page in a twisted, odd dance. 'i might as well have stones for eyes | and sticks for limbs | i'm that unable | to change anything.' paula's voice echoes in my ears, speaking over the opening chords of suzanne's 'song in red and gray' that are repeated over and over again and over and over again. 'his open head like a verb slowly descending' her words and the music melt the frost from the muscle, thaw the ice that runs down on the inside of me in long cold creeks like the rain runs down on the window of the train in chaotic patterns, imitating the streaks on my cheeks.
when i was walking through the woods on sunday i kept staring down to
the ground because i did not want to meet abny anybody,
but then suddenly i saw from the corner of my eyes that a figure was standing
in the middle of the path and was approaching me. it thought it was somebody
asking for the way so i looked up and straight into the face of her uncle.
"I've heard the news..." he said, "...best of luck!" and all the mess that
i had tried to leave behind by walking, by hiding in the woods found me
and caught up with me and sat on my back laughingly. i saw him again at
the station this morning: this time i turned araound as
fast as i could and hurried for the platform.
later:it's 5pm and the university is quiet. almost everybody's gone and i will soon as well. got a new haircut today. 'So can you squeeze me into an empty page of your diary; and supernaturally change me ? Change me, chahahange!!?!' the late evening sun is shining into the office and makes me sigh. if i had your number i would call you right now. to hear you say your own name. to hear you say my name. pearls on the keyboard. i have your number. but i don't have the strength to do it. i'm so tired. find me
[feb, 21, 2002]
| Subject:
(Kein Thema)
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 11:05:32 EST From: Epohl@xxxx.com To: ph@entropic-empire.com
Du verschweigst es mir
D ie
|
funny how you can meet people a thousand times in a crowd although they're
150 miles away in a different city. 'it's dangerous for the weak | in a
place like this | where strangers carry whips and stones' on their faces,
in their figures.
what my new haircut can do: no, actually i don't really
want to write now. i'm on the train back 'home' again. my eyes ache, thomas
and i have been printing and proofreading all day. suddenly it's like paula's
train poem had become true: i'm sitting opposite myself in 50 years - an
old man, reading a salman rushdie novel, his brown suede coat and leather
bag back next to him. he's wearing thin rimmed glasses and every now and
then he falls asleep while reading. he has gray, stormy hair and attentive
eyes. where am i going? i could cry. paula once wrote that she used to
feel like living in paintings. lately i feel like i'm living in her poems.
or in suzanne's songs. maybe if i keep trying hard enough i can write myself
a life of my own. i don't want to wait for years until this will get better.
i don't want to wait for years until i can stop thinking about her, dreaming
about her, living with without her. it's been a clear, cold day. the sun
distant, blinding but not warm. the day has been clear of your presence
and clear of hope and freezingly cold. i don't have enough clothes that
i could put on to keep myself warm. where are your arms? the wind is blowing
hard through every buttonhole and i'm shivering like in a cold fever but
of course i'm healthy and of course i'm strong and of course i will get
out of bed tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and the
day after that.
[feb 22, 2002]got a mail from paual when i returned from cologne:
> well, amazon has just delivered the 6 volumes of 'calvin & hobbes' thattalk about a mutual wavelength! before i went to the station yesterday afternoon i met with blaine and a friend of him who has been flying in from england and we went shopping. well, i did not really buy anything but i kept arguing with blaine about what i *should* be wearing. i guess i'll have to team up with him one saturday morning and buy some new clothes for me. jesus, he wanted me to buy one of those bright pink shirts! und das mir! i've always been reluctant wearing colorful clothes. most of the things i have are grayish or blackish. but maybe it's time for a CHANGE. thought about coloring my hair. i wonder how i would look like with blond hair. no, don't say anything! but a touch of red looked always cool. but it's windy and raining|snowing outside so i'm not really in the mood to go out and spend money on a totally useless and infantile attempt to bleach my feelings.
> i've ordered.i LOVE calvin & hobbes! i have most of their books. at work, my desktop wallpaper was calvin running through the snow, and hobbes right beside him, carrying a sled.
..he said and went to buy some coloration. on the way i met nadine by accident and i asked her: 'quick! i want to color my hair? which color?' and she said with a firm voice: 'no coloring at all!' there you go! no room for improvement... well, i'll see whether i can get blaine to make a suggestion. somehow i think that he has more fashion imagination than nadine.
latertried to tape a better [
heavy thunderstorms this morning. rain, hail, storm, thunder and lightning. my first thought was: i hope she'll have a save way to work. then i realized that its saturday. then i realized that it's not something i should be thinking about anymore. bad thoughts while doing the washing up. if they have only half as much fun as i keep imagine i'll never see her again, i'll never be able to look into her eyes again. i'm scared of seeing happiness and contentment in her eyes, and i know that this is not good because the most important thing should be that she's happy but i'm so afraid of realizing that it isn't me that can bring those feelings into her eyes, that it is somebody else she really needs and she really loves and she really wants to be with. i just can't stand it. 'mark on my should that won't go away' maybe i really just wasn't good enough. maybe i was just not pulling my weight. maybe i'm a beautiful loser in relationships as i am in all other things. but why can't i then file this under 'just another failure'? why does it have to keep worry and scare and sadden and hurt and despair and confuse me? you should think that my ability of denial - that i have cultivated so maliciously over the years - would come in handy now. but it doesn't. these thoughts are denial resistant.[feb 23, 2002]:o(
 |
[feb 24, 2002]worked on completing the cd-rom for c/c:c. yesterday night cedric and i started to put together our little 'hollow earth radio play' which really worked well. we read a couple of paragraphs from important he-texts and mixed it with he-music. sounds cool! we've got to get tara and blaine to read a couple of texts as well.
Subject: Edith Sitwelli'll be in the rehearsal room for the first time in two years today! daniel, reiner and i will meet to play together again. i'm really nerous about it (in a positive way though). i'll play the new version of 'space walk' to them, maybe we can already start to work on it today. i can't wait to play gigs again. it would be fun to do an unplugged gig like we did shortly before we split two years ago. i think we could put together a set in, well, let's say four to five weeks.
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 02:37:48 +0100
From:Schwagmeier <cornfield@xxxx.de>
To: ph@entropic-empire.comThe king of China's daughter,
She never would love me
Though I hung my cap and bells upon
Her nutmeg tree.
For oranges and lemons,
The stars in bright blue air
(I stole them long ago, my dear),
Were dangling there.
The Moon did give me silver pence,
The Sun did give me gold,
And both together softly blew
And made my porridge cold;
But the King of China's daughter
Pretended not to see
When I hung my cap and bells upon
Her nutmeg tree.
well, there's another story connected to the nerve bible to be told. click here.
sometimes i really feel like living in a novel.
it has snowed all day yesterday. even now all the cars outside are covered by white blankets that slowly melt in a bright sunday noon sun.
laterthe snow is melting and it is running down the streets in front of my kitchen window like little, glistening snakes. the afternoon sun shines upon it and makes the water sparkle like it was filled with millions of small diamonds. and it makes me think about your heart and it makes me hope that is is save and it is still whole and that all these diamonds are not pieces of it that are washed down my street. in that early band-photo that is hanging above the sink in my kitchen rob is looking down at me, his hands deep in his pocket, his eyes tired and his mouth thin. 'i can't get used to falling' where are you? 'i go missing in my own life'
even laterit's 2 in the morning. spent the whole night talking to nadine. she brought a fortune cookie, mine said: 'Respect, you'll take the responsibility'. whatever that might mean! rehearsal was hard but lots of fun! it's good to feel the dynamics of a whole band again. got another very nice letter from eve.
[feb 25, 2002]found an old draft in the depths of my mail folder this morning that i never continued...
Subject:i still can't belive it. in a temporary fit of mental unsoundness i stumbled into h&m this morning and when i stumbled back out i was carrying bags with five (in words: 5!) pair of trousers. i have so many trousers now i could provide the wardrobe for three boy bands except for that they would look *really* baggy on them, i suppose...i also bought a new shirt and something to color my hair. tara suggested black and i wasn't sure at first. but then i was standing in front of all those packages and on the cover of 'toxic waste blue' there was a guy with a really cool look, so i bought that one. three cheers to critical consumerism! but i must say that i like the result. except that half of my forehead and all of my fingers are blue now too. talked to blaine in the afternoon and he said i should go for blond. ah, but i'm not sure. maybe in a couple of months.
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 09:23:00 +0200
From: Philipp Hofmann <philipp.hofmann@uni-koeln.de>
To: paula <Pckostel@xxxx.com>the other morning a soft awakening with the morning sun like a blanket upon the bed. her face close to mine, resting on the pillow as if nothing had happened, her eyes calm and closed, her mouth slightly opened, almost forming words, and then the eyes open and the look meets me that brings back eveyrything: ungarded and giving away the disgust with my presence and she turns around and pulls the blanket over her head. loneliness hits me in the stomach and makes me sick and she falls asleep again
[feb 26, 2002]fucking hell! i've just deleted a c/c:c file that i had been working on for two days!!!!!! i'm such an idiot! of course i did not make a back-up! jesus! now i can start all over again. AAARRRRRGGGHHH!
i needed instant compensation for deleting that bloody file so i went shopping. worked well. got myself another shirt and a sweater and a new pair of shoes. i don't think that you can imagine how broke i am now [if you want to send me any money drop me a line....]
i've been sort of tired and unable to concentrate all day. actually i have to finish the cd-rom because i'll go to cologne tomorrow and we want to send off the blueprints and the cd-rom on thursday.
i'm listening to the tape that cedric made for me the other week and it really is a wild mix. somewhere among chris rea, fleetwood mac, lou reed and johnny cash the soft strings from the last act of glass' satyagraha fade in and then paula's voice is reading the 'untitled entry' [if you want to hear it too you can by clicking here (paula.mp3|800kb)]. and everytime i'm hearing it her voice tears my heart from my chest. now willie nelson is doing his paul simon impression, covering 'graceland': 'losing love is like a window in your heart' - i suppose that's a pretty good description for what this pathetic writing here is.
thought about the conversation i had with nadine sunday night|monday morning. for a couple of hours it gave me hope. and i thought about changing my attitude, to be tougher, to be colder, to make less words. at least about certain topics. i don't know. it's gotten dark and from the candle in my window you can tell how much i have changed. despite new haircut. despite new clothes. despite new haircolor.
have to make a descision: prepare the cd-rom or write back to eve tonight.
laterwell, i did both. i've got to pack my thin
[feb 28, 2002]i'm in cologne now and boy, what a rotten night! when i got home as 7 yesterday night i took a long hot shower, fell on the bed and was asleep instantly. in the night i woke up frequently, having bad dreams and aching all over the body. when the alarm rang at 6:30 a most delicate full moon was shining into my face directly. it was so clear and so bright and so near, you could see all her features as if she were a person you've known very well for a long time sitting just an arm's length away from you. it looked like she would shine with an inner light. the silver, the brightness, the sea of tranquility. your eyes, your eyes, your eyes. 'It's up to me to get it right' love lost like your voice among the heavy morning traffic. love lost like a dead man's blood that pours out in your line. 'I've been stirred by it | still I can't figure why it doesn't live' the cold grip that i find myself in this very morning. poster's for suzanne's gig tonight all over the place and next to them: vonda shepard in concert. thank god it's not just me.