Tag: Music

Berlin: College Event at Barbara’s Place.

Posted on by Mayowa Osibodu

I heard this used to be where Barbara lived with her family. Husband and I think two kids. They had just moved to a new place. Probably the rent here wasn’t up yet, so it was still available to host a college event.

I think it’s an interesting place. I like the main door. It’s this tall and somewhat grand-looking wooden door. Like something you would see in Lord of the Rings. But it was covered in graffiti.

Everywhere in Berlin is covered in graffiti. Berlin is making me see graffiti differently. I used to associate it with chaos and slummy areas. Now I’m beginning to see it as art. I think. It’ll take a while.

I just got here. Pretty much everyone else was here like thirty minutes prior.

The girlfriend was hurrying me up in the morning.

It’s time to go, get dressed Oh my God we’re going to be late Mayowa what is wrong with you

God.

At some point I told her to just go. That I would join them later.

There was already an Uber waiting. The Uber for the hurry hurry people. And she didn’t want to miss it.

Just go please. Go join your fellow serious classmates who are always prompt for every event and never miss a class. Just go, mwah.

I’m looking around the room. I see Jake. I’m happy to see Jake. We were roommates in the first year. We don’t seem to spend as much time together anymore.

Well first we’re no longer roommates. He and some fellow American, very frat-boy-ey classmates decided to share an apartment this semester.

I was annoyed.

Frat boys plotted in secret and stole my roommate. Ugh.

And he allowed himself to be stolen. He was willingly stolen. Ugh.

There was this time I came across he and Kah, on the way back to my apartment from the corner store with the Turkish guy who makes interesting pizza. The one who was asking for my thoughts on Trump. Jake and Kah were going for some hallmark Berlin event. Festival of Lights or something like that. They asked me if I wanted to come along.

At the time the girlfriend and I had already made some plans for the night. And so it was just my physical body they came across that evening. My thoughts were somewhere else entirely.

Jake recently suggested going snowboarding for the winter. Snowboarding sounds like a lot of fun. I have never done that before.

I just don’t know what my December is going to be like. I just don’t know.

I am looking around the room.

Skye is walking alongside two other women. They seem like relatives. Maybe one is her mother and the other is her aunt or something, I don’t know. They all seem very angry at each other. They’re walking side by side but they are all looking straight ahead. Skye has a particularly displeased look on her face. The look gives me the impression that she was displeased before she even walked into the room. I wonder what they’re angry at one another about.

Omer is calling me over. I head over. Omer is pretty cool. He’s one of the Israelis. They’re significantly older than the rest of the class because of the mandatory military service thing they have in their country.

I feel like if he was a number of years younger, there would be a higher likelihood of us enjoying each other’s company. At least more than is currently the case.

In San Francisco, he was usually in the common room. The one on the third floor. Always seated at that centre table and doing serious stuff. Like, always. He was always there.

There was this skateboard deck he brought into the common room. At some point someone filled an empty bottle of ginger ale up with water. I used to stand on the skateboard deck and see how long I could keep my balance with just the sideways ginger ale bottle under it. Swaying from side to side while the bottle rolled underneath the deck. Right next to the very soft and roomy and comfy chair where Esther liked to curl up and read.

I think I was the one who came up with the ginger ale bottle idea. I think.

Omer is always excited about the strangest things. One time it was one “Freakonomics” textbook. He kept talking about how cool it was. To me it just looked like a book about boring adult stuff.

India’s GDP increased by 2.5%.

What’s my business.

And Omer could be an annoying adult. Condescending. Every once in a while I would get to the common room to see a hostile poster on the door. Something like:

Go away. I am having an interview. I am an adult and I have a future and I do serious stuff. Do not disturb me you hormonal teenagers, go make out and just generally be hormonal teenagers somewhere else.

Fuck you Omer, fuck you and your important interviews and your serious adult stuff.

Omer is asking me what I think of some music he is playing on his computer. He passes me an earbud. I do not understand his excitement. It sounds like some ancient Middle Eastern music. Like something some Arabian king used to listen to, to lull himself to sleep.

I don’t understand why he is jamming his head. I don’t even see the rhythm to which a head can be jammed to. I don’t get it at all.

I keep walking around the room. I talk with Corey a bit. We talk about Professor Doyle.

I keep walking around. The girlfriend says she wants to take a few pictures. Says there’s a separate room up ahead.

Separate room.

To “take a few pictures”.

I abandon everything else and go with her. I wonder why she was so much in a hurry to leave the apartment earlier in the morning.

I am in the kitchen. Louis is helping out with some stuff. I think he’s cleaning something. Barbara is also here. I think I try to be useful at some point.

We’re back in the large main room.

I’m talking with Barbara. At some point the girlfriend’s flower-patterned scarf catches her attention. She says she used to have one just like that. I think there’s more. I think being very young is another thing she might also be thinking about at the same time. Another thing she used to have. I don’t know. It just feels like it.

I am in a different room. There are a number of different bottles of alcohol. I ask Jake to take a picture while I pose with some bottles.

Haha. This room is crazy. Why are there so many bottles of alcohol I don’t understand haha

The girlfriend says she’s leaving. Off to a cafe. To prepare for class and generally do serious stuff. She’s always hurrying somewhere. There’s always some very important thing she has to do, I don’t understand. Left to me we’d both probably still be in bed right now, wondering if going for the event with all the other college people was still a feasible possibility.

I reluctantly let go of her hand as she heads down the stairs.

Image: In the crazy room with all the alcohol bottles.

Calheta Funda: Ethereal Visions, Voyaging Discomfiture, Craggy Rocks and a Shingle Beach.

Posted on by Mayowa Osibodu

Ilha do Sal, Cape Verde.

February 2017.

Waves periodically crash against the black rocky shores of Calheta Funda.

 

I shift a little in the cave where I lie- the ground is hard and interspersed with pointed edges; I am shifting to minimize my discomfort.

[What song was I playing?]

There is a hole in the roof of the cave. I stretch my right hand outwards through it. Maybe cellular reception will be substantially better outside.

 

 

Waves periodically crash against the black rocky shores of Calheta Funda.

I am thoroughly heartbroken.

There are a number of unattended messages on my phone. A number of people wish to interact.

I do not want to talk to them. I do not want to talk to anybody.

I miss my girlfriend.

I’m scrolling through her pictures again. This is probably where I expend an inordinate proportion of my internet data budget- scrolling through pictures.

I miss my girlfriend.

It feels like I have the emotional space to care for very little else. People wise? Nobody. I do not feel like I have any room to spare. The entirety of my emotional insides feel thoroughly wounded.

I was watching the waves earlier in the afternoon. The rippling crest of each wave looked like a troop of glittering translucent horses, each racing all of the others-determined to reach the shore first.

The wave crest had layers of these ripples- these horses. And every few seconds, a new layer of water horselets would clamber over the row preceding it.

I found it fascinating.

 

 

Yes, cellular reception is indeed better outside the cave. I withdraw my arm. The page on the screen is done loading.

I think back to a number of popular scary stories I used to hear people tell when I was younger. In Nigeria. Superstitious stories. Stories about mermaids that transformed themselves into beautiful women, with the intention of wreaking havoc on the lives of men.

And apparently being alone right next to the sea at night had its caveats, because these very dangerous women could emerge at anytime to accost one.

I have been sleeping in this cave for a number of days. No maleficent mermaid has come to demand rent from me, not yet.

Psht. Nigerian superstitions.

 

The sound of the waves is calming once you get used to it. It’s very easy to learn to see the waves as your friend- the ocean as your bosom companion on your solitary, amply-apprehension-inducing expedition.

Bosom companion my foot. I got back from the city the other day and virtually all of my food supplies were gone. One half of my pair of skateboarding shoes. The entire pair of the Italian shoes- the ones I only ever wore like once- with the suit in San Francisco.

I searched and searched in vain.

Bosom companion my foot.

Please make calming soothing sounds as much as you want, just don’t touch me or my things ever again.

—

I very recently learnt of the term “Shingle beach”. It’s a beach consisting of rocks- smoothed and rounded by progressive weathering by the waves, in lieu of sand. I did not know that before.

“Shingle beach”. Hah.

—

I shift a little in the cave.

I have very little money left. I’ve inserted discreet job-hunting into my island exploration bucket list.

 

Virtuality the entire rectitude of my future plans depends on some research I am conducting- which in turn is presently typified by a piece of computer code I am working on.

A piece I have been working on for more than a month now.

I wonder what sort of an impression a person who had very little experience with technology, would have of my current situation.

 

Like, hey. Hey, look at me. I am pushing a number of black buttons on this silver piece of metal. Is there some sort of reason to my pushing these buttons? Some sort of order? Some sort of rationality?

Who knows?

The meaning is only known to me. I believe I know what I am doing. Against all of the scaldingly adversarial social currents. To you I might as well be a monkey at a piano.

And yes. Here I am- on this island where I know absolutely no one- in this country within which I know absolutely no one personally. and my entire future and my entire life is reliant on the sensibility of all of these my disconcertingly abstruse endeavours.

Hah.

Goodluck to me.

Good good, luck to me.

I am playing a metal song I just downloaded. I’m not particularly sure what the singer is saying. I think the volume is too high.

But it’s Metal. There is really no such thing as the volume being to high, is there.

I am outside the cave now. I am staring into the stars.

I hear people’s voices in my head. People I know- people I used to know. I can hear them talking. Not to me, no. About me. I can hear these people talking about me. I am not sure what it means.

You know how feel when someone you hold in some sort of regard, gives you a compliment? Yeah? Good?

This is like that, but the other way round. Like I feel a particular way, and then in my head I hear these people saying things about me, that usually would inspire that sort of a feeling.

Like inverted ethereal complimenting. I am not really sure what it means, or what purpose it serves- not really.

The Metal song is still playing.

 

 

Waves periodically crash against the black rocky shores of Calheta Funda.

The moon is floating in the sky, entirely immersed in adoring its glamorous reflection in the black waving water.

I am thoroughly heartbroken.

Crystal black sky.

Stars.

The Metal song is still playing.