Back in Berlin and Feelin' Fall

Greetings from Berlin, and the apartment I’m in for a whopping third year in a row. Last year I celebrated the remarkable state of affairs that led me to not have to move in August for the first time in six years. I’ve been here for over 24 months. I’m the neighborhood granny, in artist years. Though being next to an assisted living facility does make the title a bit silly.

Because circumstances have not forced me to inventory my entire life, I’ve decided to do a self-inflicted new-school-year spruce up. I’m moving all the clothes I haven’t worn in over a year to the cellar, and if I don’t desire them for another season, out they shall go to donation. Or to my friend Maureen, who is perennially on the receiving end of “do you want this?” 

In Edinburgh I had three dresses and four shirts and I realized I could live quite comfortably without more. I was, in fact, delighted to not have to make decisions about what to wear in the morning. I had three outfits I liked, so that’s all I chose from. I think part of me envisioned adulthood as having this magnificent cavalry of clothing from which I could choose every day. The luxury of options. But I don’t actually enjoy that. I’d just like to wear a t-shirt and leggings, or a sweatshirt and leggings, every day for the rest of my life.

I was listening to this podcast episode about consumption and it hit me that I really do buy things to make myself feel like I have the status of a person who can buy things. No no, surely not I could be subject to such base frivolity! But I must admit it is true. I have lots of pieces of clothing I do not wear, or wear once a year, or love when I put it on but hate an hour later. 

I want to be a jeans and sweater girl. I am only a leggings and sweatshirt girl. If I put on jeans, thirty minutes later I wonder if I could have just worn leggings. I live in Berlin. Of course I could have just worn leggings.

This has led to a week of reorganizing which neither Loaf nor I have particularly enjoyed. But it’s almost done.

The weather here finally turned and today it felt like Fall. I used to be a summer girlie. I am now a fully fledged Fall/Winter girlie. Give me the sweaters and cold evenings and excuses to read a book all night.

People in Berlin bemoan the endless winter darkness that settles around January. I have come to love it. I think it’s a vestige of the first covid winter, when I was alone from January until May. Mommy had just died and was living alone in an apartment in Vienna. Every evening I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed with my Dolly playlist and then I cried myself to sleep listening to my Sad Taylor playlist.

Lyrics written for me, specifically:

I woke up this morning in a strange place

I looked into the mirror at a strange face

Then I looked for you but you could not be found

And then I felt the lonely comin' down

-

You booked the night train for a reason

So you could sit there in this hurt

-

So I'll go back to L.A. and the so-called friends

Who'll write books about me, if I ever make it

-

I was dancing when the music stopped

And in the disbelief I can't face reinvention

I haven't met the new me yet

There'll be happiness after you

But there was happiness because of you

Both of these things can be true

There is happiness

-

My world is such an empty place

I need someone to fill the space

And here I am, oh here I am, here I am

Because I've got so much love to give

I need someone to share it with

And here I am, oh here I am, here I am

-

Don't treat me like some situation that needs to be handled

I'm fine with my spite and my tears

And my beers and my candles

-

And the piece de resistance, the saddest stanza ever written, which begs the listener to twine their grief up with the speaker:

My body aches the time is here

It's lonely in this place where I'm lying

Our baby has been born but something's wrong

It's much too still I hear no crying

I guess in some strange way she knew

She'd never have a father's arms to hold her

And dying was her way of telling me

He wasn't coming down from Dover

These songs are from the winter I learned how to get up in the morning, which means it’s the winter I learned how to go to bed. And the way I went to bed was with Dolly and Taylor, wrapping me up with the grief of every woman across time, for every hurt imaginable. I was alone in a foreign country, permitted no visitors, with my mother’s body in the ground eight time zones away. I found a way to go to bed and I found a way to wake up the next morning. 

Something about that period of my life changed my relationship with myself and with solitude. I need it much more now. I learned how to survive the dark nights of winter, and I don’t fear them anymore.

Show announcement: I’m doing 11 Lessons on Being Loud in Berlin! On October 12th I’ll be at Wein Salon, the most fabulous venue in the city. Tickets are on sale now!!

As promised, if you came to my WIP show before I left, you are entitled to one free ticket. Please message me to reserve it.

It’s also my brother’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Little Doodle! But more importantly, it’s the ten day anniversary of Finley Daniel DePrez’s Actual Birth Day. Entire odes shall be written about my nephew. I’m going to save them for when I get to squish him in a week and a half. Prepare thyself.