A long text about me.
This is a long text about me. Everyday there is a new perspective and a different text would be written. But today's perspective is this one:
I would like to tell you a little bit about me. My first form of art was intense ballet dancing for six years when I was a child. I loved it and was really good. When my former best friend quit, I followed her into hip-hop dancing. This was not my thing; I felt awkward as I couldn’t deal with the oversexualized movements as a 13-year-old. A bit later, we switched again, to basketball. This is where I met my teenage best friend. The community was good for me, but since then, I am not a fan of running.
While my puberty turned out to be a very lonely and isolated emotional place, I was able to share my world with my then-best friend and others around us who organized concerts, hung out, took drugs, and drank a lot. This is when I first silently, then more loudly, started smoking cigarettes. My voice training started as classical opera singing. When I was 15, I wanted to play electric guitar though, and my biggest love showed itself to me: Nirvana. So not long after, my best friend, another friend, and I formed our first all-female punk rock band called Mister Bronko. Later, one of our guy friends joined as a drummer. But until the end in 2008, we played without a bassist.
This was a fun, exciting, and tumultuous time, and I enjoyed making music ever since (until recently). In my twenties, I cut emotional ties with most of my surroundings and moved away from home. This was somehow necessary to find my own healing, I guess. I started writing quieter songs, solo on guitar. With the rise of solo electronic acts like Soap&Skin and Grimes, I got into producing – first FL (the free version) and later, when I had moved to Berlin, Ableton Live. But still, my dream was to study fine arts, and I was endlessly happy when I got accepted at Brunswick Art University. I joined a class for photography and new media. But I never felt at home in this city; I missed Cologne, where I had spent the last two years, and felt alienated and very alone again. While I was in Cologne preparing for art school, I joined a community in art classes, and this was so good for me. I also helped elderly people on the side. I wasn’t able to find my stability in Brunswick and decided I wanted to become a musician anyway and move to Berlin, so I did that quite fast. A few months later, at the age of 23, I lived in Berlin, got a job as a personal assistant in the social field, and for the next four years would work, produce music, spend countless hours at home on my laptop, and start performing. I dreamt of becoming a touring musician, to be able to realize all of my sonic dreams, to be able to dream bigger and bigger. It never really took off.
At the age of 27, I started another degree: Musicology and Art History. This time, I felt comfortable. The intellectual side was enormously impactful to me and very inspiring. I actually finished those studies with a B.A. six years later. During that time, I continued working in the social field, had my heart broken properly for the first time, and started collaborating with people on my music. This was a major shift for me, as it felt like things were getting easier and more alive. I also got into producing real-life music videos (not just collages of found footage) and found my love for videography.
I later continued to offer myself for video projects for other teams and have found both joy and gigantic disappointment in people, where the felt purity of the art has taken a huge hit for me.
In 2018, while I was still quite optimistic, I started playing on the streets and enjoyed most of it. It was such a rush; the connections were insane. People were affected, touched, moved, and shared their feelings and words with me. It was such a beautiful time, and with Covid, all of this came to an end for me. The sudden loss of freedom of movement, freedom of playing outside, meant that I did not know what to do with myself anymore. I tried more video projects where possible and created my first music video for another singer. This was a big project where I put in a lot of energy. It turned out beautiful, and I will be proud of it forever. Unfortunately, the cost of it was very high and got me into a spiral of mistrust after the video was presented as someone else’s main work at the screening event.
As I was at the same time giving fine arts a second chance and began my studies at Bauhaus University in Weimar (still over the internet back then), one of my best and closest friends passed away. This was the biggest emotional pain I had felt in my life up until that point. At least it was the most obvious. I have pain from my grandmother passing that is more lingering, but this one was heavy. And in that pain, with no creative outlet in the real world, I decided to move to Weimar for a bit.
Weimar was such a lovely small town, very idyllic and pretty. Lots of nature, nice architecture. I had a cheap small room and even a lousy studio. My roommates were very young and immature in many ways, which led to conflicts around how to live together. I got two baby cats, and when I couldn’t stand the emotional and physical chaos at home anymore, I moved again, to my own apartment in Erfurt. What a big mistake this was. The city is boring as hell behind some nice old facades. I very much began missing Berlin and planning my way back home, but it turned out to take another 1.5 years until I finally could find an apartment in Berlin while living somewhere else.
During that time in Weimar, I lived off my savings and tried to find productivity and a creative outlet again, and, again, totally failed. For some reason, I am not suited for art school, because I don’t understand the rules, I find the egocentricity prevalent there hard to ignore, and did not see any purpose in what I was doing there. There is so much empty talking in these contexts without any social impact, higher good, or warmth in their words. Just my experience. While I was struggling there and trying to also finish my BA thesis, the Russian war on Ukraine had started. This came as a shock to many people, including me. Three weeks after that, my grandmother in Russia passed. Without the necessary funds and time, I was not able to attend her funeral. The sanctions led to unaffordable flight tickets and travel times of up to 24 hours. Had this not happened, I would not have realized the impact that this war and its consequences had on me. I was so saddened by this death. Up until this point, I had started to become more and more familiar with my Russian culture side. I enjoyed spending time with my family there, speaking the language. I dreamt about being able to spend more time there, getting to know the cities, the countryside, being able to help my grandmother in the garden, and join my friends in their life in Moscow.
But while I got sadder due to my grandmother’s death, my grandfather in south Germany died. He was so deeply in my heart and my main connection to the region where I grew up, as I always wanted to visit him and spend time with him. Prior to his death, after my grandmother in Russia had passed and I was so isolated in Erfurt, I thought of moving back ‘home’ to spend more time with him. But my doubts and insecurities were so big that I was unable to act on it, and then he passed. I cannot explain how much this hurt and does until today.
A few months later, in winter, my uncle in Russia died, and this time I did not hesitate. I took a flight to Helsinki, then the bus to St. Petersburg and the night train to Moscow, followed by a long car ride to attend his funeral. At this point, my godmother, after whom I am named, was also no longer with us as she passed in 2020. It is absurd to think of how many people have died within three years, and I absolutely understand and do no longer wonder how I got so depressed and sad after that. It was just too much.
One good thing was that I had my first full-time social job in 2023 and was able to afford coaching for my BA thesis. With their help, I was able to write my BA and hand it in at the beginning of 2023. Two months later, I moved back to Berlin.
It has been an emotional rollercoaster since then. I can’t shake the sadness, the disconnect that I feel from our world and society since 2020, and not only that but how I feel somehow unable to express myself musically. It is as if I am no longer looking for connection with an audience. The trust has broken. But I do value closer relationships; I value trust in a friendly context. I do value trust in a societal context, but given the state of the world and our society right now, I am not sure it will be regained.
While I have a creative mind and am endlessly productive in creating ideas, I had the least amount of productive output in the past years since my teens and have doubted everything many times. I find joy in the smaller things now, like projects where I can just help, be a part of, but don’t necessarily have to perform. I read and think a lot. I go on long walks, play with my cats. Sometimes I play three songs and have to stop because I am too sad.
The past two years I have learned skills in IT, but oftentimes I miss purpose in this, so I will start uni again, study history, and connect the dots either for myself or also for others.
If you read until here, wow. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the content of this site and can click through the links to see what I have been doing since I started out creating publicly.
Have a good life.