Old Würzburg Night

In that summer of things that went terribly wrong, I lived in a rather empty apartment in which the shadows of an old love still danced on the wall. Every month I bought „Sounds“, the best music magazine that existed in old Germany. I was browsing through the latest issue when my eyes fell on a small advertisement from Polydor: „The man in the background“, a monochrome gray cover was depicted, and the release announced with calculated understatement. 

Two or three days later, I held Brian Eno’s „Music For Films“ in my hands. And heard it for the first time. I have listened to this record, with its fleeting sketches that take me on every flight, its utter incompleteness, its longing and fear and dream material, endlessly since then, consciously, unconsciously, in the background,  in the foreground, in between. When walking (with a button in my ear), when writing, when falling asleep, waking up, in a foreign country. And as an alternative for „the cigarette after“. The first time I heard it, I knew that this music would accompany me throughout my life. It quickly became a medicine too, helped me to dance with the naked shadows on the empty wall instead of scaring them away. 

And when a giant tried to throw me out of bed and out of my apartment on the 7th floor. I tried to calm my mind with cocoa, but the nightmare returned and I made myself a hot toddy with the good old pot, then took the car to a large empty field near Würzburg, experienced the sunrise there and had my only deeply moving encounter with a Bach cantata from the weird car radio, and then returned home to the nightmare apartment, I played Brian‘s album and experienced how completely irrational vibes of happiness that had already set in on the cool morning field continued to spread and I even looked forward to the next encounter with the giant. (m.e.)