Potential
Tonight, I went to see Peaches Christ Superstar with Brown. I arrived at the theatre and we stood on the pavement and drank beers and I smoked cigarettes surrounded by the warm smell of summer. We had a skittering conversation about how God doesn’t exist and how we kept on failing to appreciate the weather and then coming to and thinking we should be noticing it more. I was fast and funny and insightful and felt very cool in my baggies and leather jacket and white t-shirt. I loved myself, I think. I talked about dying and my upcoming date on Saturday with my boss (now brunch, Capture the Flag, a visit to his workshop, a bar for a colleague’s birthday and then the dubstep/glitchcore night) and .
The show was surprisingly wonderful. Peaches came out in a white, cotton catsuit that had a high, empressesque stuffed collar. She somehow managed to be the whole of a musical ensemble as Chilly Gonzales hammered the piano in accompaniment. It was like watching a far more expressive ’50s crooner. The last song of the first half moved me especially: just her singing, “You liar. You Judas”, high high high, one spotlight on her face, slowly fading her into a ghost and then into nothing.
At the interval, Brown and I went outside and carried on talking and drank more beer. When we went back in, I sat in my seat as Peaches sang a couple of slow songs, almost sobbing, “Will no one stay awake with me? Peter, John, James? Will none of you wait with me? Peter, John, James?”, and felt perfectly drunk and warm and bathed in happiness.
After the show, Brown and I walked to find a bar, and just ended up walking the streets, having one of those wonderful conversations where you reach into another person. I told her about Potential and how it talks about the joy of having exciting possibilities ahead, and the pain of the draining feeling as they come to nothing. We talked about passing happiness and trying to hold onto it and regretting it leaving even while it’s still here. We talked about how one can look back on a happy time and the feeling, the quality, the texture of the happiness can still be so strong. I said that I was pretty sure I would look back on these last three weeks in Berlin as a very happy time.
We walked and walked and then finally came to Kreuzberg and went to my favourite pizza place. Brown told me about her recent long-distance fucked-up relationship with this bloke. She got to the part where they were sending flirty texts to each other, her in her hotel room, him on his way back home, and then said, “I’m sorry, I’m going into too much detail”, and I blurted out, “This is the stuff conversations are made of.”
Finally, we parted and she said, “I don’t know which I enjoyed more, Peaches, or the walk around Berlin.”