EUROPE - BERLIN #2, URBAN SPREE

Awake with the specific type of hangover known as Karaoke Regret. Had most of the day to hang before the show so brunched at Silo then wandered from Friedrichshain to Kreuzberg for street beers and a visit to Coretex. 

Berlin winters are pretty brutal. The city looks extra grey and dirty, the junkies even more haggard. But it’s still Berlin, the promised land. Dirty old town of my heart. Freedom is in the air, endless possibilities down every needle-strewn street. Of everywhere I’ve been, Berlin’s burning spirit embodies the Graeber maxim, ‘the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free,’ like nowhere else. 

Chris Drums’ (there are 3, possibly 4, Chris’ on this tour) first show handling battery for Inhuman Nature. A new warrior enters the arena of madness. Naturally, he crushes it. Sometimes I still get nervous playing London and Berlin. You want to prove something. I think we did. Until next time. 

London expat friends from Berlin and beyond come to the show. Played a lot of new cities on this run so seeing familiar faces who I’ve missed for a long time is a real treat, the heart bursts. We talk about our old lives, how much we’ve changed, my book, the bands. People I admire and respect telling me they’re proud of me is almost too much to process when I have been living like a demonically possessed boozesponge for 2.5 weeks. Like the intervals between my road diarrhoea, the reunions are too brief. 

Celebratory whiskey/weed back at the hostel that is playing desert rock in reception. Zoned out in the shower for maybe an hour. Up at 6 to get the ferry from Rostock to Denmark, that we miss anyway. Emotional comedown from Berlin so I’m not as thrilled to play the land of hygge as I should be. But I’ll get it on come showtime, no other way. Stirb nicht im Warteraum der Zukunft.