... and then she says goodbye

god you poor readers have been through a bit of a rollercoaster with me this year.

what am i talking about.. i've been on a bit of a roller coaster this year!  the last couple of months have been quite the ride. love and loss. love and loss.

i'm sure i'll look back on this part of my life with true love and affection, knowing that this was the crucial point in the movie - the turning point that made an amazing and obvious outcome, that redefined the character of the main protagonist from here on in.

at the end of the month, i'll be getting on a plane back to the UK and europe. the plan has always been that it's for good. well, you know, in an attempt to set up a life there - try my hand at living more permanently somewhere. that somewhere being back in berlin: a place i always felt most myself, close to art, ideas, other artists and a greater gene pool of cultural production.

but really fucking far from my lover, family and dear friends.
none of whom can physically join me on this journey for various (and heartbreaking) reasons. i'll be leaving them behind.


a few months ago, the idea that i would sacrifice relationships for my career felt right. heroic. stoic, even. the obvious choice.

today, as i sit and cry for the umpteenth time about saying goodbye, it doesn't feel so obvious.

of course i've been doing all the wrong things - like listening to a mixtape my friend will made for me years ago after i left london (full of goodbyes); watching sad movies about facing ones fate, like stranger than fiction; talking to friends about relationships that could never be reading about romance and emigrantion.


unhelpful. but oddly comforting.


it's quite lucky that i'll be in the london for my first stop - i'll be spending a lot of time in the embrace of those wonderful (free) art institutions, being consoled by the arms of art history. and by the time i get to berlin, i'll spend a destructive month dancing until daylight in an attempt to shake the last of regret, sadness and fear from my booty.

and before you all try for pithy consolations, i do know that i can come back.  i know that 'if it's meant to be, it will be'. and that i am doing the right thing.

but it doesn't mean that this kind of decision isn't fuckin' hard.



stupid pop songs that suck right now:

adele: someone like you
maximo park: going missing
peter gabriel: here comes the flood
nick cave: as i sat sadly by her side
jay-z and beyonce: '03 bonnie and clyde
billy bragg: the price i pay