Pre(r)amble (a.k.a. You Can Totally Skip This Part (But I Somehow Hope You Don’t)TM)
1. Acknowledgement
After an initial rush of enthusiasm and inspiration (“Now I’ll finally write again, yay!”) I often experience a long phase of recoil and doubt. Thus my passion is delayed for an arduous and painful while. It’s kinda comfortable and it kinda hurts – maybe you know the feeling?
(And sometimes all it takes to pick up a draft is a relaxing bathtub time and the strange blessing of beautiful challenges & challenging beauty ahead … More on that maybe later. We got this!)
2. Reclamation
I never easily give up on my passion. Thus may the time always come – and ever more swiftly! – when ink and quill return to my eager hands, and my longing heart rejoices as (letter upon patient letter, keystroke upon loving keystroke) words ecstatically pour forth from the realms of imagination, form slient whispers upon longing lips, and eventually – finally! – flow lavishly, like skaldic mead of poetry, from these dancing fingertips.
Maybe I’m just an incurable romantic … and maybe I like it. Ha!
Also: fuck it. Let’s enjoy this. :-) Come take a seat around the fire. Here’s a story I want to share with you.
Fuck it! (a.k.a. The Actual Story I Want To Share With YouTM)
Thursday, 11th September 2025 is a good day for a long train ride. After way too little sleep I somehow manage to pack (don’t ask, it is always a miracle), leave home around 5:30am, and finally settle into my seat on the first train from Graz to Linz. First step: done!
Then I proceed like 35 years ago (holy shit, how the time flies!) – I look out of the window and watch the beautiful lanscape of Styria, the green hills and little villages, the Alpine mountain rocks, all being pulled across my field of view by unseen forces. (Yes, yes, I know, it’s all relative.) But one thing is different: today I listen to music along the way, which resembles about 30 years ago. Back then I was a teenager, playing mixtapes from my friend R on my Sony walkman – to him I owe gratitude for introducing me to a variety of metal bands and genres: Amorphis, Blind Guardian, Jag Panzer, Manowar, Rhapsody, Therion and many others. He also tried to get me into Motörhead and the (newer) Onkelz, but I kinda refused, ha.
The other main music influences came from my uncle (The Kinks, Jesus Messerschmitt), my cousin M (Skid Row), and especially my brother who, during our teen years, introduced me to bands like The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, The Cult, Paradise Lost, Helloween, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath. Since this journey that I’m writing about here takes place not too long after Ozzy’s passing, and as I have recently paid homage the Ozzman by playing his entire discography up and down (and man, did he make some amazing songs!), this time I choose to listen to some Black Sabbath albums. I thought I had never payed much attention to Tony Iommi and his ever-fluctuating peers, and today most of their songs seem new to me (except for well-known classics like “War Pigs” and “Paranoid”). Until …
… I listen to the “Cross Purposes” album and immediately remember that I know every. single. song in and out. Do you ever get that feeling when you revisit a memory from the distant past that you had all but forgotten, whether music or something else … and suddenly, in the blink of an eye, it all comes back in one fell swoop?
As a teenager I have spent many an evening just listening to albums with headphones and dreaming along. I must have listened to “Cross Purposes” (critically unacclaimed, but who cares) a good few times. And now “Cross of Thorns” gives me chills. I remember the slow-paced doomy riffs and psychedelic songlines of “Virtual Death”. I get all romantic over “Dying for Love”. I rock to the groovy depths of “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”. Oh man! What is it about music that gets to me like that? What about it evokes such emotions, memories, and all those unnameable, unspeakable, magical, mystical feelings?
When you take a life and steal its shadow
All that’s left is humanity
On that note … Fuck war. Or maybe: fuck nonconsensually(!) enforcing war upon people who want to live in peace. Fuck sending others into the hell of war – you’re not even standing in the effin’ frontline yourselves, you cowards (yet you call yourselves ‘leaders’, what a joke!). I mean seriously? After all these centuries and millennia of senseless bloodshed, we can do better than that, can’t we?
But what if we still can’t? :-(
And still: “Can we don’t though?” (Thanks for this, Kyle!)
And still I know that (with all the shadow work and integration and whatnot) peace is the way.
Such kinds of thoughts can tear my heart asunder and comfort it at the same time. How can I explain? I’m afraid there is no explanation. Maybe you know the feeling. Why do I want to find people who know the feeling? Sigh. Even if I have found them, I still want to find them. Anyway, we’re gonna get back to this rabbit hole. Sorry not sorry for the digression!
A star shines upon the hour of this journey (how do you say that in Quenya: elen síla lúmenn’ journeyelvo? ;-)) because both ICEs are almost on time: one from Linz to Nürnberg (Nuremberg), one from Nürnberg to Köln (Cologne) where a local train (the only delayed one – someone’s gotta hold up the reputation of Deutsche Bahn :-)) brings me close to my namesake’s home.
Wolfgang picks me up with his car. Until that moment we have only ever seen each other on screen, and I realize I have pictured him to be a bit taller. I apologize for my slightly metalesque outfit (with the good old black Lee Denver bootcut jeans, well-worn after 22 years) and he assures me there is no reason for such. :-)
Wolfgang and I first met in 2021 in the late Terry Patten’s online community “A New Republic of the Heart”, where we were auspiciously assigned to become buddies for 2-3 months. After that period we decided to remain buddies, became friends, and kept on meeting online almost every week since.
Today, more than four years later, we meet “live”, and I get to stay for a night in the beautiful home that he and his betrothed (meanwhile his beloved spouse) have created. Their hospitality is amazing and reminds me of the beauty of hosting friends. I’m also impressed by the artful play of colours that is only topped by the absolutely stunning lighting throughout the apartment. We talk for a while, then go out for yummy dinner at a nearby Asian place. I love hearing the story of how Wolfgang and T met. We keep talking back home and conclude the day with a brief meditation together. Not much later I sleep like a baby – my best sleep during this journey.
In the morning, while T sleeps in, Wolfgang prepares breakfast for us and then drives me to the train station. But wait – that’s another story! :-)
- (P.S.: I might still add more details, including photos, maybe some things from chats and journal entries. Stay tuned. And thank you for reading!)