Late Autumn Philosophies

A long long time ago (well this is a rather disturbing way to start a sentence, since it kind of implies I am ancient, which, related to the overall age of the universe and such is of course utter nonsense), but, nevertheless, a long long time ago I read one or two novels by Paulo Coelho with a certain pleasure. Not a guilty one, mind you, I just simply found the Alchemist sort of interesting in it’s slightly one track way.

And it can be applied to real life, no kidding, here is my alchemist’s tale involving Darjeeling tea.  Just last month I was boring people who know me or by the result of some strange accident happen to chance over my blog with how I cannot find proper Darjeeling tea leaves in Budapest.

I actually thundered those lines down- well, okay, softly keyed them in, since with the somewhat sad demise of typewriters you can’t really have a fit of pure destructive rage over your keyboard anymore, in My Little Melbourne, slurping my coffee while shouldering the pain of all existence and within it my pointless miseries. Quite obviously, a few days later I happened to check a shelf in a corner of the store I rarely look at, because it does not harbour any elements relevant to my morning routine (meaning the pretzels aren’t there), and indeed, there it was, Darjeeling, grown in the Himalayas and packed in county Antrim.

So there it goes: what you’re looking for is right under your eyes. Except when it isn’t, of course, and so as to be able to handle the mind bending implications of these statements, here are some pretty shots of Budapest inexorably hurtling towards winter.

Fog Moves in Mysterious Ways

I like to take proverbs (and mostly anything) with a pinch of salt, but it's dawned on me recently that I quite agree with the Romanian one stating that you know a good day by its morning. Which in my case, in utter conflict with everything my younger self believed in, is an early morning. Possibly a disgracefully early one, which in winter involves freezing on pitch dark streets and then warming your numb limbs in the empty office to the pleasant hum of the dispenser warming the first tea water of the day.

I had planned this morning to be the same, but, as every so often, fate mercilessly intervened, setting my whole day on an awkward trajectory that culminated with an hour long wait to reach a stammering call center assistant, or, pardon my rudeness, service professional, who most likely judged me by the stupidity of the issue with which I was ruining his day. (Infernally stupid would be a mild way to put it, so I valiantly accept his assumption.)

Before I ramble into further nonsense, let me return to the reason of this veering off orbit: as I peacefully approached Andrássy avenue, I noticed something odd. I couldn't see a damn thing, although, according to my wise weather app, the sun should have risen. Well of course, fog again! I had waited for this fog, on other days, days for which I had no grand designs, besides shooting the fog. And were they splendid days- of unfiltered, uninterrupted, undisturbed sunshine. And no fog. But now it was all around me, thick like insolent candy cotton. So I decided to go wherever it would call me. 

Dark Nights of the Soul- Grooms, A Place to Bury Strangers and Chelsea Wolfe on A38

Two weeks after the Colectiv club fire, here came another Saturday when I went to a concert in the aftermath of a tragedy. As I was waiting in the hull of A38 to hand in my coat, I could not help but notice the last band on this month’s schedule: Eagles of Death Metal, sold out. Only they won’t continue their tour after what happened at the Bataclan, and that’s completely understandable.

What isn’t completely understandable to me is some people’s reaction of don’t you ever go to a concert again, look how dangerous it is. Concerts aren’t dangerous, irresponsible and evil men are. If we give in and live in fear, they win, and we can’t let that happen. Music, and live music in particular, is about communication, and understanding, about people finding a common language that goes beyond the surface, beyond what is seemingly dividing them.

I couldn’t even claim to be a great connoisseur of any of the acts that played on Saturday in A38, but I went nevertheless, because I wanted to indulge in something slightly different, something outside my usual comfort zone and  just listen to some music. It’s such a simple thing that can work wonders.

I had actually never listened to Grooms before, not  even once, they were a bit the ’opening act to drink beers to until the bar is mostly empty’ but I ended up being quite absorbed and forgetting about the beverage altogether- they don’t even have a proper Wikipedia entry, so there, a pretty good name to throw around when you want to flash your musical knowledge.

A Place to Bury Strangers are a slightly different matter, they’re the kind of noise rock band that occasionally has a song or two seep through into the half mainstream, and also a cohort of die hard fans who dove into the merch section like vultures having found rare and exquisite morsels. As a generally irrelevant piece of information, APTBS love to play in the dark, interspersed with the occasional killer strobe, so for the first three or so songs of the set I kept seeing the classical Boromir meme with ’one does not simply shoot APTBS’ added to it.  

In the end I just let go and joined in the wall of sound, which was intense, distorted but also strangely melodic at times. The final song of the show was played by the band from the back of the boat, creating some confusion among the crowd (and blocking Its Holiness, the bar), and, though it was definitely intriguing, felt a bit like an anticlimax.

My grand objection to Chelsea Wolfe will sound somewhat silly and weak minded, and I would apologize for it if I thought myself unfit for the two previously mentioned adjectives, but I am not: so here it goes, the lady is lovely, but her songs have no chorus. And I love a good chorus.  I must have it in order to feel truly happy.

Chelsea is of course a bit too gothic and pensive to want us to be truly happy, and maybe this Saturday was a day when you couldn’t have been happy no matter what, but even really sad songs occasionally veer into a chorus, maybe a sad one, but a chorus nevertheless. There’s undeniably atmosphere in her music, and feelings too, but they just fail to take flight in the end- they hover somewhere close to the ground. Yet in such a dark November maybe that’s how things are supposed to be after all.