RIP Johnny Winter

Around this time yesterday, I came across the cover of Johnny Winter's 1973 Still Alive And Well album while browsing through some of my drafts for this blog, and I smiled thinking about good old Johnny and the fact that he had decided to call his album that way. Apparently, God was willing to prove once again that he does indeed have a really sick sense of humour, because, at the time I was reflecting on the album's title, that affirmation was no longer true.

Johnny Winter had died just a few hours earlier in his Swiss hotel room, only two days after playing his last show. At 70, he was still touring, and he went doing just that, like every musician should.

The cause of his death has not yet been revealed, so right now it's impossible to tell if it was just old age or if there were some other factors involved. He had struggled with substance abuse (like pretty much everyone) in the past, in the form of alcohol and prescription drugs - the Bluesman's Cocktail. Even that he had in common with Jerry Cantrell, and knowing it fascinates me and terrifies me at the same time.

It's hard to find the right words to say when somebody dies, expecially when you have known them for so little time. You have just discovered their existence and, all of a sudden, you have to get used to them not being around anymore. It makes everything seem a twisted, calculated joke of fortune; it leaves you feeling a hollow sadness you don't quite know what to do with.

So you just keep going, trying to honor their existence by making the best of your own.

And, at least, you can find some comfort in the idea that they did that too.

70 years might not be the longest life, but it's quite a lot if you see it from the perspective of Johnny's blues buddy Jimi Hendrix... and he dedicated all of it to the thing he loved most. He started playing in a band with his brother when he was just 10 years old; he made his first record at 15, in a time when 15-year-old musicians didn't necessarily get raped and murdered by the music industry, and went on to release about 20 studio albums... which is not too bad.

Johnny Winter was a legend; a living relic from the golden age of rock music, and, every time a musician of his size dies, a piece of that era is gone forever. He left a hole nobody else can fill, and, as hard as you try to prevent the depressing thoughts from taking over, you can't stop yourself from feeling like real musicians are an endangered species, bound to disappear after the last exemplars are gone.

And then is when you start feeling depressed as fuck... again.

 I feel so alone

Gonna end up a big old pile of them bones

Jerry Cantrell said it all.

+    +    +

Rest in peace, Johnny Winter. You've earned it.

Now it's time for us to try to keep your spirit alive.

Up Till Dawn With Alice

Up till dawn with Alice

Just my headphones and I

Up till dawn with Alice

Just Rotten Apple and I

...

*    *    *

Only three days left before my birthday. 

Am I ready to turn 25? Hell, no. Absolutely not. 

I'm so not-ready I'm just about to suffer a severe atack of Brian Kinney Birthday Syndrome... again. Only it keeps getting worse every year. I didn't mind turning 24 so much... it's a cool number. But 25... man. 25 is a quarter of 100, and that shows just how bad it is.

And don't get me wrong: the fact of having survived on this Earth for 25 years is nothing to get depressed about - that's definitely something to celebrate. What is fuckin wrong is turning 25 having achieved fucking nothing in your whole fucking life; having given up almost everything other people consider a life because of your commitment to your cause and still having (almost) the blackest future perspective imaginable, despite all the efforts you'vealready fucking done. That is what really sucks.

Doesn't sound very cheerful, heh?

Well, I'm sorry. That's the fucking world we live in. 

If you don't like it, you could help me try and change it instead of sitting there doing nothing, growing increasingly numb to everything and everyone around you while your brain escapes to easier places.

But hey - who am I to judge you, anyway? I only feel at peace when I'm plugged into Alice. 

When the early hours of the morning come and we get back together I feel like I can deal with pretty much anything, and all the bullshit that torments me becomes insignifficant, and suddenly everything makes sense.

If onlly we could make it work in the real world...

Seattle, I think we've got a problem.


PS. Yup, I was actually referencing Connor Maynard with that one. That's 100 points for elite pop culture knowledge LMAO

Drought When I Die

The sun is still shining on L.A.'s Sunset Strip as Lemmy Kilmister takes his favorite spot at the bar of the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Sipping from a glass, he feeds dollars into a machine to play games of trivia and chance like Clock Teaser, a quiz about women and nature. At 67, the Motörhead frontman looks just as he always has: black cavalry hat with gold insignia, prominent warts and mutton chops, embroidered cowboy boots. But that's Diet Coke in his glass, not Jack Daniel's. And while the jokes roll out easily in his distinctive British rasp, he sounds like a man who's still recovering from a gut punch.

+    +    +

Lemmy's illness kept him quietly at home as Motörhead's thunderous 21st album, Aftershock, brought in the band's best first-week sales in decades last October. A few months earlier, his friend and onetime songwriting partner Mick Farren had collapsed onstage in London while performing with the Deviants. Farren never regained consciousness. "There are worse places to go," Lemmy says. "It's better than having tubes up your nose. I'd much rather go dressed in my best, trying to reach that last note."

After being forced to cancel the rest of Motörhead's European festival dates last July, Lemmy backtracked and tried to perform for the 85,000 rock fans at the Wacken Open Air concert in Germany. But he had to leave the stage after just a handful of songs. "We only did 38 minutes and I was done," he says. "I was too tired. I had to come off." Adds Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell, "It reminded us that this mountain of unwavering Lemm is actually a tiny bit mortal like we all are."

+    +    +

Lemmy says he worries about the future of his beloved rock & roll as his generation eases past middle age into retirement or worse. He sees few younger artists committed enough to the tradition to carry it into the future. "There's nobody now," he says. "There is going to be a huge hole, and nobody to step into it." You can see the concern on his face. "I think it's important music. It's the constant music of this generation and the last one and the last one."

[♠]

+    +    +

You are not the only one who's worried, Lemm. You are not the only one.

...But how does one keep on existing in a world that seems so willing to erase them? Is it possible for a single man to change the tide of a river just by swimming against it?

I can only hope the answer is YES.

Happy Dark Year

The sun sets on the horizon for the last time in 2013. 

As we prepare to bid farewell to another year, we gather all the things we never want to see again and burn them in a huge gasoline-fueled fire. And, as they burn, the wild flames make us teary-eyed, and the thick black smoke of our bad memories blackens our view a little more, before going up and merging with the black sky above our heads.

We are surrounded by darkness, but we feel fine, and we celebrate. And we display our best Hollywood laughter, as we toast to another black year gone by.

Two years ago it felt like we couldn't make it, but we're still here, and we're getting stronger. We've grown accustomed to life inside these dark woods. We've made this strange place feel like home; we've turned this hell into our playground. And we will keep on fighting.

We have no resolutions for 2014; no plans; no objectives. Our only aim is to stay strong and keep on resisting, blow after blow. We might not win, but we will not surrender. 

Whatever fate has in store for us, we will face it together... And perhaps one day the dark side will shine for us, like the song said. 

But, until then, let's celebrate our one and only victory: the enormous triumph of staying alive.

+   +   +

Let's have a black celebration

Black celebration

Tonight

To celebrate the fact

That we've seen the back

Of another black... year

+   +   +

Happy dark 2014.
 

Der Anfang

Hello, readers old and new.

To those of you who already know me, this will probably come as a big surprise. I bet you did not expect me to get back to such an anachronistic format as the personal blog is, but here I am... once again. I'm here and I'm going to keep writing, because that's what I do... or at least a big part of it. And even if the big-data-oriented Internet 2.0 doesn't favour this form of expression, I'm going to keep on doing it. 'Cause that's what I fucking do. 

The intrusive big data collectors we've come to know as 'social networks' are not going to last forever. Art is. In every possible form.

I've kept myself away from writing - REALLY writing - for more than two years now, and the reason for that - aside from the changing internet demographics - is that I've been dealing with depression. That's right, my old friends. You might not have noticed that, if you've been reading my tweets, because that's what we all do in twitter: we smile and we pretend to be moderately satisfied, because that's the way Mother Google wants us to feel. But not anymore. 

I'm so tired of not being able to express myself as the person I REALLY am, I just can't take it anymore.

I'm tired of being tired.

I'm bored of being bored.

I'm sick of being sick.

So yes, I've been depressed for the last three years - more depressed than I ever thought I could be -, for so many reasons I can't even begin to explain them here... but don't worry - you'll find out, eventually. During these dark years, I've seen all the things I believe in shattered. I've seen all my hopes destroyed. I've seen the people I love and admire being slowly deprived from everything they were, stripped from every little bit of human dignity they had left, forced to go through the most humiliating experiences I could ever have imagined, confined to the most miserable forms of existence; robbed, enslaved and outraged; reduced to a sad ghostly projection of the people they used to be... and my own spirit slowly dying with theirs. I've seen the light of my world extinguished. I've lost my faith in freedom, my faith in humanity, my faith in life.

But here I am... still. And I'm not planning to give up anytime soon.

As you might have already noticed, I'm writing in English now. I don't think that matters too much, though. I've always liked twisting languages a lot, and that's definitely not going to change. 

I don't even know how many of you - my loyal old readers - are still left here to care about whatever things I have to say, but we'll find that out along the way. We created great things together. I hope we can do that again.

+   +   +

To those of you who don't know me yet... I'm sorry - I sort of forgot you were there. It's hard to explain who I am or what this blog is about at this point. The only thing I can tell you is I'm NOT writing about fashion (I have another blog for that). I'm NOT writing about cosmetics. I'm NOT writing about cooking. And I'm definitely NOT writing about lifestyle.

This blog is just me, in my purest form of expression - nothing more, and nothing less -, so be prepared for some potentially explicit content, the occasional swearing - whenever the fuck I feel like it -, polemic themes, unedited raw emotions, lenghty autobiographical tales, scary journeys through the depths of my psyche, exhaustive analysis of the cultural reality, pieces from my everyday life, picutres of beautiful androgynous people, endless love for Germany and the Germans (not all of them LOL), countless Simpsons references, Japan, cats, an insane amount of music, mindblowing absurd and, if my spirit ever gets back to form, even uncontrolled fangirling. We'll leave that one out for now, though.

Welcome to The Deadly Fetishes.

Enjoy it... if you can.