"... my room, which right now is a waiting room."
hxme, wxmen, wxtches
Hi there,
How are you feeling today? Recently, I’ve been trying to carve out as much time as possible to prepare the all-nighter I’m playing on Saturday. With a dayjob, ongoing activist endeavours and plenty to take care of/for, my room has felt like a safe little paradise to play music, host friends and nurture magic.
I’ve been reading miranda reinert’s “step one of a plan” newsletter for over a year and one of my favorite posts she shared is a blog about her apartment. It’s full of zines, prints, music and links to relief efforts.
This month is a bit of that, a bit of music, gigs, news and also a lot of happy birthday to my flatmate! Ele, thanks for bringing so much color into our home and so much fun into daily life. I adore you.
Be well, friends, and see you at Sameheads, hopefully! May the 4th, be with us.
Xx
Nono
Some music, old and new, from me and from others:
Fictions 64, a bells special:
Fictions 29, a blue special:
Paige Emery, Intercommunications, more blue! Been playing that one to plants in the morning :)
Levitation Sessions! This one has been on loop when cleaning my room. Now, how and why I ended up in a psychedelic rock phase, I do not know …
Ambient, on Egregore:
hxme, wxmen, wxtches
“My room, then. There has to be some space, finally, that I claim as mine, even in this time.
I’m waiting in my room, which right now is a waiting room. When I got to bed, it’s a bedroom. (…) I am trying not to tell stories, or at any rate, not this one.”
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
In the 1650s, French philosopher Blaise Pascale wrote that “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he can not stay quietly in his room”. The history of literature is dotted with experiments around room settings, from Xavier de Maistre’s A Journey Around My Room to Huysmans’ hyperaesthetic fiction Against Nature. None of them feel quite as relevant today as The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).
In Margaret Atwood’s novel, the ruling regime has deprived women of the control over their own reproductive functions and as one of the few remaining fertile women, the narrator is forced to produce a child with a “commander”. Offred spends most of her time stuck in her room.
In the last six months or so, it’s been hard not to feel trapped in a weird dystopian novel. The discourse of mainstream German media about the genocide in Gaza, the ongoing state racism, police repression and violence against peaceful protesters are not only uncomfortable. They’re disgusting. Some of my friends have taken steps to leave Berlin.
A year ago, I wrote about being grounded somewhere. I’d been reflecting regularly on the environmental implications of hypermobile lifestyles but this essay engaged specifically with the notion of responsibility: what does it mean to live everywhere and not be accountable for a specific territory?
This year, I started working with an anti-capitalist non-hierarchical vegan collective. This means that I am not as flexible to play gigs abroad. I often need to work at weekends and I can’t be away for too long. This is an issue for a grounded traveler, but there is a certain satisfaction in settling in somewhere.
The collective owns a shop and we mutually share the tasks to run it: retail but also ordering, cleaning, organizing, communicating. There is soft magic in this dream made true every simple day. Yet, our hours are both packed and paid minimum wage. Distributing food -not least in an ethical way!- is vital to the functioning of our society. Yet, it is not merely as valued as people behind their computers doing … what? A desperate pre-AI attempt to sell us hot air, something, anything, anybody’s guess!
In his installation, ‘One Pound’, my friend and artist Oliver Walker put aside six videos depicting people working. “Each video lasts as long as it takes the person depicted to earn one pound. The films vary in length from well over an hour for low paid agricultural workers; to their slightly higher paid counterparts in industry; via those on middle income wages; down to one minute, and with one film little over a second long."
In addition to pondering labor issues, I've been contemplating the value of care and the diverse forms it encompasses, recognizing its undervaluation in our society. In a recent interview, degrowth scholar Timothée Parrique declared that: “We should give activists a basic income and consider them the R&D department of the Ministry of Ecological Transition. If they were startups, we'd say they were geniuses, but here, we call them ecoterrorists.” So much of these actions happen underground and not every commitment can be documented, let alone paid for. But then again, who can even afford to take part in them in the first place?
Care happens in so many subtle ways. Here, I’d like to reiterate that today’s essay is all and entirely dedicated to the gentle, humble and steady ways in which my flatmate shows up into the world. Happy Ele-day! Amongst many things, she is a member of the hologram, an anti-capitalist care practice network. Our conversations have reminded me that intersectional feminism is more vital than ever. Handmaid’s Tale might be a fiction but the patriarchy is real. (Tip: several friends have been recommending the work of Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac, Le genre du capital, which has helped me making sense of some recent experiences.)
When reading local and international news in my room, the walls have been reverberating with despair, helplessness and more questions about what to do with these emotions. In my most frustrated moments, I’d be tempted to moan at certain kinds of commitments that feel “performative” and therefore not … what, I don’t know … “authentic”? But maybe things are more complicated than that and it takes a certain willpower to remind myself that my anger would do better to be turned towards repressive states than potential allies.
Thus, at times, my newly painted walls resonate with deep senses of gratitude, a sentiment I don't find incompatible with the prevailing despair. Gratitude, again and again, for those who speak up and those who act silently, for those who show up at protests and those who take care of the protesters. Those who wake up early to grow and share the veggies and those who make art to help us make sense of it all. Those who have the complicated conversations, write the carefully articulated Instagram posts and those who’ve risked their lives in ways that could never publicly be claimed for.
So here I am, at times a knight of swords, at others a queen of pentacles, caught between fire, gratitude, and the delicate art of balancing them both; both grounded and underground, in the world and in my room. Closing myself up with my 10 years old record collection and trying to make sense of it all is far from dystopian. It’s also far from only easy. I’m desperately trying to live up to my visions for the all-nighter: that first thing I currently think of when I get out of bed (in fact, futon!) every morning.
I like to wake up in that room. I like the oddly-named paint color “my peanut” and the many shades of blue. I like that I share my kitchen and really, why a bathroom for one person, in a world full of concrete and a cost-of-living crisis?! In fact, that I don’t like!! I hate that housing is so ridiculously expensive and inaccessible in Berlin. I don’t like it at all. Knight of swords, queen of pentacles.
Oh wait, where was I?!? It seems my thoughts have been bouncing too much… May I be caught in a stream of consciousness, akin to the endless voicenotes I share daily with my closest friends, my kindred spirits, the witches. Ô the wxtches, to you I bow most deeply. For you, I will play this Saturday!
Xx
Nono
Gigs
The next Fictions party is this weekend. We’re prepping some new posters. Got a pun or poem? Wanna spread a message in bold font through the thick and filthy smoke of the Sameheads basement? Send your headlines through by replying to this newsletter.
More gigs:
08.05: Workshop + Panel, Nuits Sonores, Lyon 🇫🇷
09.05: Artist Talk, Nuits Sonores, Lyon 🇫🇷
11.05: DJ set, NS, Lyon 🇫🇷
18.05: Open Ground, Wuppertal 🇩🇪
31.05: DJ set, Iboat, Bordeaux 🇫🇷
01.06: Octofolies Festival 🇫🇷
07.06: TBA, Berlin 🇩🇪
08.06: Open Air, The Volunteer Sessions, Berlin 🇩🇪
08.06: Acud Macht Neu, Berlin 🇩🇪
09.06: TBA, PL 🇵🇱
15.06: Dans An Diaoul, Bretagne 🇫🇷
23.06: Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau 🇩🇪
30.06: TBA, London 🇬🇧
05-07.07: Freerotation Festival, Wales 🇬🇧
30/31.08: Meakusma Festival, Eupen 🇧🇪
14.09: TBA, Amsterdam, NL 🇳🇱
21.09: TBA, Berlin, DE 🇩🇪
++ I wrote an article for the Reset! network about the “need to shrink”, an argument I also made in the newsletter last month.
Friends of Fictions:
My friends have better music taste than me, as they say in newsletters these days. Here’s what some of the fam has been up to.
Abibi: Abeera recorded a show which has become my regular lunch background and this is much more than a compliment than it sounds like. Recommended! + happy soon birthday A <3
Aequa: Sarj started a fundraiser for Aequa. They’ll also be moderating a panel this Friday at 90mil.
Bakläxa: Tash released her EP on a limited tape!!!!!! Bakläxa, soon to appear on a Fictions line up ;)
Gonsher: Aaron helped out releasing this killer Hekt EP on Numbers, which he’d also played at our last party:
Marylou: The wondrous otter recorded a show inspired by an afternoon spent together at the lake last summer:
Naga: The girl is back in town and here are his latest shows. David always plays before me at Cashmere Radio, so if you want to hear great selections, join us at the station. Just reply to this email and i’ll send you the address. Next slot May, 23rd.
Ophélie: A cute interview with the humblest of us all.
Reverse Engineering: Jojo, Seb and the RE crew are throwing a cool party for Mayday. If you want to catch us dance, here are the infos.
Sunny: Sinan recorded this mix I may have stolen one too many tracks from.
Susanna: If you’d like to come to Berlin and have a room to offer in another European city in July/August, Susanna would be interested in flat swaps!
Spargelzeit: Jeff’s takeover of the February Fictions is now also on Soundcloud. Now more than ever, it truly is Spargelzeit.
Tobha: Thomas’ closing set at Globus has been recorded and shared!!
Ugo: The immortal has been planting trees, caring for friends and turning every party he is attending into the best event happening on planet earth. If you need any more proof that he’s not only got the absolute best musical taste of all of us but also the best dance moves, you’ll have to come down on Saturday to experience it for yourself.
“Do you know what it came from? Said Luke. Mayday?
No, I said. It’s a strange word to use for that, isn’t it? (…)
It’s French, he said. From M’aidez.
Help me.”
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale