Scenes from New Year’s Eve 2011/2012

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Live on Stage

You know there are days where I think we’re all just going about it completely the wrong way. Yes, the Internet is bringing us all closer in ways your late grandfather would have issues to comprehend, and that would be cause for celebration if the flipside of it wasn’t the incessant, inescapable maelstrom of information that tags along with it.

Being connected nowadays also means a daily chore of weeding through updates, coupons, unsolicited junk like cute cats I don’t care for, job openings I cruelly can’t or wistfully won’t fulfill – and let us not forget that weird uncle of electronic correspondence: the Act Now Viagra offer. We’re all getting wired to swallow it whole, regurgitate it with our own inimitable twist, or just copy-pasting “What he said” when inspiration is lacking fundamentally.

The Egg (Every Now and Again)

It felt like waking up inside an egg, and maybe that’s exactly what it was. My head was clear but I remembered all of it. And while I couldn’t see it, I sensed its presence. I felt no lips moving yet we talked.

“You want to go back, don’t you?” was the first thing it told me.

I’ll spare you trying to describe what it sounded like. I couldn’t do the sensation justice and would only come across as the kind of person you’d want to shut up unless you’d been there.

“Yes,” I thought – or said; the difference was blurry but the intention so clear. “Yes, I wanna go back.”

Famous Last Words

The man was in his exit years, no longer able to add much of significance to anyone or the world around him. A world on which it seemed he left no marks worth mentioning. He was reaching the point where his only legacy would be the words about to be etched into his gravestone, paid with the funds he’d duly been saving for the occasion.

An Epic Poem About Sauce

There once was a man,

Very set in his ways

A bit of a bore

You could tell by his face

 

He always worked vigorously,

Never spent frivolously

Neither drank nor took drugs

He refrained from debauchery

 

What most men would yearn for, our man didn’t crave

The common and tawdry he perceived only abstract

Thus a sin or a dozen he could easily waive,

As part of the rules of his life’s daily contract

 

Rarely letting the good times roll,

He entertained but a solitary vice

Which in the end, would still suffice,

To make him cough up the final toll

The Beginning of the End

“Het begin van het einde.” B. Didderen, Café ‘t Pothuiske.

Unfinished Letter to the Pope (II)

Dear Ben,

It’s sure been a while since my last letter, my apologies for that. Truth is I’ve been a little out of it for a while and I’ve neglected my correspondence somewhat, even if there’s been no shortage of topics for us to reflect upon!

Renaissance Man

Last year wasn’t my most inspiring one to date. In hindsight, starting it with pedestrian goals like buying a trash bin, curtains and lamps probably got 2010 and me off on the wrong foot right off the bat.

I vowed to make a change this year – and where better to look for inspiration than in new experiences? It was time to face the new year looking fresh…

Crossroads

The Day We Caught the Train

Never saw it as the start
It was more a change of heart.

Songs rival smells for recalling something untouchable yet oh so specific gone by. The Ocean Colour Scene’s song will always bring my early days in Utrecht vividly back to life. The days when I was young, when my brother and his friends were still so very much three years older and I hadn’t caught up yet.