Blog no.28: Thinking of a place

Dear stargazers,

  I didn't know who to address this to and "stargazer" seemed like a really thoughtful, deep, pretencious-ish adjective to use so there you go. It's been a while and I'm listening to a track by The War on Drugs called "Thinking of a place" and I can't but do just that. But as I'm a man of many places that *cough* occasionally *cough* likes to sit on his ass and do literally nothing, I'm thinking of several instead of just one.
  I haven't been back to Cyprus in a few months, but most importantly I haven't been there for the past two summers which is pretty damn huge to me. I've always spent my summers there, same old boring summers, you know the drill, but they all had something in common: they were a tradition. Much like decorating a Christmas tree every Christmas and only taking it down when the first person tells you "Damn, you still have your Christmas decorations?", or having a "surprise" party for one of my university friends using the same non-birthday-candles and a lame excuse to hang out even though they probably expected it, as the sarcastic quotes aptly indicate. I've spent countless summers (well, 21 to be exact - guess counting ain't that hard when you're 23) sweating my ass off with my friends in the hot, humid bore that is the Nicosia "summer in the city" experience, but we always ended up having fun, more or less. Playing cards and videogames all day, getting drunk at live shows playing the same old, familiar songs, going to the beach every once in a while and arguing over the shotgun seat, randomly popping up on our vampire friend uninvited to watch a movie and raid his fridge, just being as carefree as one can be during the summer, basically. It's sort of like living in a semi-rural Southern US county, minus the guns and murder mystery novels. So those were my summers up till last year, when I thought that fuck it, I wanna try something new. Enter Athens.
  So summer last year was my first one away from Cyprus, from the ones that I do remember, and the first one away from my family and my friends. After spending a week in an island camping with awesome people, it was yet another summer in the city for me. And it's not a myth that the Athens city centre becomes a ghost town during August, it's the damn truth. After doing what I do best in these situations - sitting on my ass being as useless as I could ever be - I started going to some open air cinemas to catch a movie or two since they seem to flourish at that time of the year. I watched a few awesome movies and a crappy one, but the most important date of the summer was August 15th. The 15th of August in both Greece and Cyprus is celebrated the usual way: our families gather to slaughter and consume delicious animals because something happened to Virgin Mary a long time ago, supposedly. Not that we needed an excuse to do that but y'know, traditions and all. But wait, this time it's also AWAY FROM THE CITY! That's right, it's the one day of the year that everyone fucks off from the city and goes to the beach or the mountain to have their feasts because that's probably what the god wanted us to do, I guess. For my family this date is also quite important since it's my sister's nameday and the 16th is my brother's birthday, so we did something every year to celebrate both. My parents seemed to have planned their kid's births quite well, huh. Well, this time the celebrations were without a very key member in all the fun-havin'; that being myself of course.
  So here I am, alone in Athens, trying to figure out how to make this day seem not as miserable as everyone assumed it would be. After snooping around on Facebook I found a free showing of a greek movie called "Cheap Smokes", about a guy meeting and spending time with a girl on the 15th of August in the centre of Athens during the 00's and I figured, why the hell not. I was surprised to see that the theatre was packed, and I felt sad for those poor fucks that ended up here of all places, until I realized that I too was a poor fuck that didn't have very many choices and it all suddenly made sense. The movie was actually amazing for what it was, a nonsensical summer love story with wacky characters, a lovely soundtrack and beautiful views of Athens in the summer. The thing that resonated with me was the feeling of solitude it was oozing. The main character was just walking around the city at night, drinking coffee, pretending to know what he was doing, much like everyone else. His coolness, his effortlessness, just his general worldview seemed to resonate with me. Much like me, he enjoyed going places on his own. He liked these little talks with random people, learning about these small intricacies that make everyone unique. He liked looking for details, and in his words, he liked "collecting moments".
  After the movie I placed my headphones on my sweaty head and started walking at a random direction. I went through places from where I had collected these so-called moments, memories of the good and bad variant. The shuffle was on fucking point for the first time since forever, and the songs kept hitting me, one after another, with waves of nostalgia and moments of their own. I walked for what seemed like an hour and a half, following some of the movie's shots, with a huge grin on my face, dancing whenever nobody was around. I never wrote about it 'till today because it was an experience I couldn't easily describe. Saying this sounds cheesy, I know, but good god you had to be there.
  When talking about favourite cities or places in general, Athens comes up quite often. I've seen people shit on it for being too industrialized, too chaotic, too dirty or too crowded, and it is all those things but I'd be damned if I didn't love it all the same. I didn't use to be as fond of this city as I am now, it certainly grew on me I'd say, and it still does day by day. I do believe that for all the shit I often say about it, it has, I think, what others cities lack: character. I'm grateful for all the moments that it has given me, because these truly are the best years of my life. I wrote a piece, not long ago, about how the main character didn't feel like she had a place to call home anymore. I used to think that was the case with me as well. Now, what do I think about when I'm thinking of a place to call home?
  Bet.

Your fellow poor fuck,
Stelios. 

Blog no. 27: When the sun goes down

Dear people,

  It's just people this time, since I don't believe that "music" people exist. I refuse to believe that there are people who don't enjoy music; everyone likes music, it doesn't matter how shitty I think your taste is. Whether you enjoy some ultra complex progressive band with percussion, harmonica, saxophone and whatever the guy on cocaine figured would blend well together with his crummy guitar, or just some dude smashing the bongos at the corner of the convenient store for some spare change, you enjoy music, period.
 So, rant about music listeners aside, I went to a concert a couple of days ago. After paying a small fortune for my cheap ass to get the precious Arctic Monkeys ticket, and misremembering when it was taking place a month ago because I'm a fucking idiot, the day finaly arrived on the 6th of July, NOT on the 6th of June as some good people might have thought. I stocked up with some sandwiches and cheap wine which I was definitely not expecting to get through security, and after suffering a small heart-attack due to thinking I forgot my ticket at home, a couple of friends and I arrivd to the venue: a glorified grass field which, admittedly, felt a lot like a hippie festival.  We sat for a couple of hours while the supporting bands were playing in order to be ready for the tall task that was ahead of us: standing up for the rest of the concert.

  The wine I brought wasn't half bad, and the sandwiches I brought were, well, edible, so we munched through them quickly and listened to the "way better than expected" bands that would typically just be filler before the main concert, but were actually pretty damn good. When Miles Kane showed up on stage everyone stood up as if the pope was in the house, as a sign that the big names were starting to arrive. The dude was quite good, felt like listening to an 80's rockstar with modern influences, and of course, he was dressed appropriately, with a colourful flowery shirt and an equally flowery bandana. Everyone was really getting into the show while I was admiring the multitude of weird facial expressions his female drummer was pulling off and thinking about how freakishly long her tongue was. After his explosive hour-long set, and a small break inbetween, the next big name arrived:Alt-J.
  I hadn't listened to a lot of their songs before but what I listened to I liked, so I was pretty excited to see them live. The fact that their set was played out during the sunset might have skewed my enjoyment to their show, since I'm a sucker for sunsets, but damn were they good. Everyone was on their feet enoying the weird and oftentimes eerie sounds of the band. Occasionally, some cute girl that is actually a fan of them would hop on some dude's shoulders, and sing along to the unintelligible-to-human-ears lyrics while making a sign that could easily be mistaken for the Illuminati sign - heck, they both look like triangles to me. However much I wanted to listen to "When the sun goes down" when, well, the sun was going down, the moment they started playing "Taro", a song which even I and many other non-fans knew, the crowd went wild. I closed my eyes for a bit to take in the moment, because I realized I was gonna remember that one for a long time. The bass echoing through the speakers shook the ground so much it spread through my whole body, and I wasn't sure if my heart was doing its own thing or just following the rhythm: I could feel every vibration so clearly, I thought that even if I was deaf I'd be able to feel it. I turned around to see how much of the park had filled by that point, and the answer was all of it. Some people were singing, some people were dancing, a lot of them were recording non-stop with their shitty phone cameras, but all of them seemed to be having a good time, and that's when I realized why people go to all this trouble to see their favourite band live. It doesn't matter how good they actually are, the mere energy you get from being around fellow fans is enough for you to declare that money was indeed well spent.

  The Monkeys were great of course, and I'm so happy I got to see them live, but I wouldn't say that it was the highlight of my day. It's like Victoria's theory from HIMYM, that the moment that leads up to the kiss is the moment to cherish, not the actual kiss. That being said, the kiss was freaking good. Thrashing around during "Brianstorm", holding up our phones and accidentally taking a picture of the crowd during "Star Treatment", listening to high-pitched screaming when Alex Turner took his sleeveless jacket off and shook it around enough for its concentrated sweat to shoot in the crowd's direction, seeing the guy brush his hair every so often and "losing his train of thought" as if the bag of acid he had taken before the show just kicked in, all of that is part of the experience that contributed to making this an unforgettable night.
  To sum up: decent experience, a 4/5 from me.

Your friendly concert-goer,
Stelios Zesiades.

Blog no. 26: Blistered

Dear nostalgia addicts,

  Watching the sequel to Trainspotting a few weeks ago, I saw the now middle-aged characters latching to their previous lives and repeating mistakes of the past without missing a beat. I mean, seeing as they all were drugged up in their early twenties, their future was already looking grim. It's a miracle they all survived well into their fourties if you ask me, but it was sad that even though they tried to escape their past it just wasn't a choice for them, as is the case for a lot of people. Like how you get black-out drunk for the hundredth time, even though you promised to yourself you wouldn't drink again after your previous shenanigans, or how you decide to take out that tray out of the oven without using oven mitts, even though you've burned yourself the previous twenty times you've attempted this, as if this time you're freaking Elsa and your hand is magically immune to heat. Point is that sometimes even though we know we're making a mistake, we still do it because we feel the need to, and that's okay. Eventually our gag reflexes will reject alcohol, one hard liquor at a time, and our hands will be too blistered to even attempt cooking in the oven. Ι, for one, am fond of all those drunken memories (or lack thereof), and I can probably explain every scar I have with a cool story. By pure coincidence, those two usually go together. Who would have guessed  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  I once read somewhere that "it's funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different", more or less anyways. Looking back at four, five years ago is like entering a time capsule to a completely different time, with different people around you, different concerns, different tastes. Reading my diary entries from a few years back I realized how much different I was back then, and it baffled me because I didn't even realize it. Mind, me, I've only written a couple of entries since then, but those two are enough to give me an idea of who I was back then. I often find myself reminiscing about those times, much like Renton, Spud and Sick Boy did when "Lust for life" came on in the movie, not in a "life was so much better back then" kind of way, but rather because you've revisited those memories so many times, they've become familiar to you. And no matter how good your memory is, it's not like you're a reliable narrator of your own story, we tend to overexaggerate our memories to fit our narrative, and we tend to make them far better than they actually were. That's why we often revisit our failed relationships for another go, even though we know that the tray is hot, we still wanna touch it.

  Even in the off chance that our memories are actually as amazing as we think they are, there's still no point in feeling down that you're not reliving them, you should just be glad that you've actually lived them. Memory is a helluva drug, it drags you around and slaps you with waves of nostalgia, and it makes you reminisce about times that can't be replicated. All you can do is strive to make your days memorable and let go of the past. The sooner you do that, the carefree-er you'll be. It's a word, alright? 

"I wish there was a way to know that you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." - The Office

Your fellow memory latcher, 

Stelios Zesiades. 

About a cloud - pt. 1

Introduction

  You know that feeling when you think you’ve done everything right but you somehow still manage to fuck up? I mean, you have everything you wanted, friends, family, a girlfriend, a couple of dogs, and all of a sudden BAM. A car hits you on your way to the supermarket. No? Well I do, unfortunately.
   I must admit that it’s not a very pleasant situation to be in, but being dead does have its benefits. For starters you can’t die again, which is kinda neat. I can’t go through walls or anything worthy the attention of Murray and Co. but I can dο other stuff, I think. To be completely honest I still haven't found out what exactly I can do in this limbo-like reality I'm living right now, but I'm a fast learner so I'll figure it out. I like the one where I flicker the light for just a second so people are not sure whether it really flickered or they just blinked, it messes them up real good. That is my favorite past-time now that I’m eh, well, dead, y’know. Don’t judge me, it’s not like there’s a lot of stuff to do in the afterlife.
  But! This is not my story; I’m merely narrating it. This is a story of something much bigger than me, much more interesting and frankly, much more alive. This is a story about something that even though is seemingly insignificant, it’s actually of great importance. This is a story about a cloud.
  This is gonna be really long and weird, and I'm not gonna make it any shorter, so just try to keep up alright? To make it easier for you, I'll just break it off in 3 parts. The first one is the part where I die. Think of it as a How I met your mother situation, but instead of meeting your mother, I die. And no, it wasn't some idiot driver who got distracted talking on the phone, I was just jaywalking and, well, reading some funny post on Reddit. Hey at least the dude that made it can say that he literally made someome die from laughter, if that's any consolation whatsoever. Dying is all morbid and whatever but trust me, there's worse things that can happen to you. You could get expelled, for one.

  Yeah yeah, we all hate spoilers, I know, but the me dying part is actually the least important part of the story. I told you, this isn't a story about me, but since this part is integral to the events that occur afterwards I can't really brush it aside either. Anyways, to sum up, I was on my way home from the grocery store, on my phone, wearing headphones and crossing the road. Relatively new driver is cruising at a normal speed, perfectly in line with the rules and stuff, but she doesn't have time to react to the idiot crossing the road. She tries to swerve but it's too late; my face smashes on the windshield at first before my whole body is sent flying quite a few meters away. I die almost instantly, and that's that. And that thing they say about your life flashing I front of your eyes before you die? Well, either it's bullshit, or mine was just directed by some french new wave jackass experimenting with a still black frame, which is what I actually saw. If I see the big guy at any point, I'm asking for a refund.
  Now that I think of it, the actual dying part isn't even that relevant to the story, damn, I should probably change the name of the first part. Let's see: "The part where I ramble on for a third of the story". Nah, too tongue-in-cheek. "The one with all the exposition." Accurate, but it makes me sound like an awful story-teller, dontcha think? How about we name it something like, uh, "The part before I die." Yeah, that's a bit more accurate I'd say.
 I actually have to go way way back to give you some context otherwise it's gonna be a shitty story, and this is not something I'd like to fuck up. One would think that after dying you'd just seize to exist peacefully, like your soul rests and all your memories are gone or whatever, but I guess the universe has greater plans for some of us. I don't even really believe in god, or reincarnation, or life after death for that matter, but now I don't even know what or who to believe in anymore. In a totally unrelated matter, I really like squirrels.
  Since that's out of the way, now I can get to the real story. You know, the stuff that is actually important to the plot. To do that though I have to go all the way back, back to the day when Chris and I got adopted. Didn't expect that did ya? Well anyways, you ready? Here goes...

Nothing good happens after 2:00 am

I started rewatching How I met your mother the other day. At its best it's a brilliant show, not because of its comedic value, but because of the interesting way it treats concepts that are known to us but are left unexplored. At its worse it's a pile of crap that drags a single wedding to a whole season and then tears any character development of its last seasons to shreds, but that's another story.
  Last night I watched an episode called "Nothing good happens after 2:00 am" and it kept me thinking, how the hell did they come up with something so specific? It's such an arbitrary number that I fail to understand how such a rule can apply, plenty of good has happened both before and after 2:00 am. Then it hit me: it's not about the actual time is it? There's certain thresholds in which that rule applies, not because of its 2:00 am-ness, but rather because of the idea that there actually is such a threshold that makes us make all the bad decisions. Be it in the am's or the pm's, it's the point in time in which we're most vulnerable, a point where we seize any rational thinking and we let our insticts take over. Not the kind of instict that helps us survive from a bear attack or something, it's the kind of instict that makes you drunk text your ex after a night of partying, or the kind of instict that tells you that it's a good idea to eat that leftover pizza from last week's house party you hosted, or the kind of instict that makes you tell Robin you've broken up with Victoria when in fact you haven't, just to get a head start in your soon-to-be relationship. It's the kind of instinct that makes you drink your third post-midnight coffee in hope that you're gonna cover a semester's worth of knowledge in one miserable night. And trust me, in that context I can definitely agree: Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am, it's just that my 2:00 am is probably different than yours. Besides, it's always after 2:00 am somewhere, technically.
  So take it from me, or take it from Ted's ma, "Nothing good ever happens after 2:00 am. When 2:00 am rolls around, just go home and go to sleep". Whenever your 2:00 am is. 

One for the road pt. 2: Sweet life

...

  The park was about a couple kilometers away from Jessica's apartment, but she didn't mind walking that much. She wanted to clear her head anyways, she thought the best way about it was to walk in the "not-so-woken-up-yet" town of hers. Growing up in a different country, before moving to study abroad, created this weird conundrum for her; she didn't feel like she belonged anywhere in particular, like she didn't have a place to call home. The house she had grown up with she wasn't really fond of and the place she was staying currently was too recent to create a connection with, so instead of having two homes, she had none. Like a traveler who is between connecting flights, lingering in the airport terminal for a while until they eventually board their next plane. Her world was one gigantic terminal, and since she didn't have a particular destination to be at, she just sort of lingered.


  Shuffling through a couple of songs that didn't quite fit her mood she stumbled upon an old favourite of hers, Frank Ocean's "Sweet Life", who she discovered by accident. She was travelling to Germany to spend Christmas with her godparents in Berlin, for which she had a connecting flight through Amsterdam. Her flight was the morning after, so she had almost a full day by herself. She booked a small room in a cute little hotel she had found online, and when she arrived she left her stuff and ran right out to not lose any precious time. Visiting Amsterdam was one of the top things in her bucket list, even if it were for just a day, so she figured it'd be a nice opportunity to go for a walk an see some sights. Not missing, of course, were her white on-ear headphones, same ones she's had for the past 5 years, a graduation gift from her parents. Walking through the quite cold, Christmas - decorated capital she couldn't hide her amazement of the buildings and architecture of the centre. She was so used to plain old roads and houses you couldn't tell apart, seeing a city that is almost literally floating on water was something extraordinary for her.
  After some exploration and picture-taking in the beautiful canals of the city, she decided to treat herself to a nice hot meal before heading out again. The place was swarming with Argentinian steakhouses and Italian pizzerias, and being a college student she'd have the latter every other day so she chose the former for a change. There, a clearly-not-Argentinian-looking dude welcomed her with a smile on his face and sat her at a table overlooking the local cinema. Table for two for one; Jessica hoped she didn't seem too sad about sitting by herself in a strange city. The beer was cold, the steak was great and the restaurant was playing some weirdly out-of-place tunes which surprisingly fit her music tastes. Eating Argentinian steak while drinking Belgian beer in a what seemed like middle-eastern-ish decorated restaurant in the heart of Amsterdam and listening to old-school hip-hop was something she would have never imagined doing, but there she was. After some funky Biggie songs and chill Nas Illmatic-era beats when something newer, less well known caught her attention. It was chill and had a great vibe behind it, some sweet male vocals as well. She liked noticing small stuff in her songs, like the mellow guitar rhythm or a gentle drum beat that just elevates a song to greatness. Interrupting her delicious dinner she tried to get the attention of the waiter.
  "Excuse me!" she exclaimed, raising her hand.
  The waiter took notice of her immediately and approached her table in an instant. "How can I assist you?" asked the mustached man that kinda looked like a young, less muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  "Sorry to bother you but I really like the song, would you mind telling me who it is from?"
  The waiter let out a genuine laugh and stepped back from the table and into the kitchen. Jessica was baffled and kinda annoyed, as she thought that he was just being rude, making fun of her question. Just when she was ready to get up and leave, the waiter comes back with an even younger looking dude, tall, bearded and tattooed guy who looked like a guy who's last name ended in -sson.
  "This is my brother" said the waiter, "he's the sous-chef and our, erm, DJ of sorts." he added. He left the table and let the other guy do the talking.
  "Mind if I join you?" asked the guy.
  "I don't if you don't" said Jessica, kinda embarrassed by the situation.
  "Danny" he said, extending his arm to Jessica.
  "Jessica" she replied, a bit red on the cheeks. "Sorry about this, I just wanted to know about the song you played a few minutes ago, didn't mean to create all this trouble."
  "No trouble at all" said Danny, "I quite enjoy talking to customers with good music taste." His dutch accent was barely distinguishable through his crystal clear English, Jess thought. Guy before was Frank Ocean, think it was "Sweet life" playing if I recall correctly. I can check it for you if you want." he added.
  Their flirt-ish vibe was all over the dining table but in a weird, "This is fun but we aren't gonna get together" kind of way. They both knew it.
  "No I think that's it, I vaguely remember hearing 'Sweet Life' at some point in the song. Great stuff."
  "Been a fan since Channel Orange" said Danny. "Quite a talented dude." he leaned back on the chair and got comfortable. "So what brings you here?" he asked.
  "A plane" she said without realizing she just made a stupid joke. Danny's half-smile half-disappointed grunt made her retract her statement. "Er, I mean, I have a plane to catch tomorrow. I'm going to Berlin to visit my godparents for Christmas and I just had a connection here."
  "Awesome." said Danny. "Enjoying it so far?"
  "The city is so beautiful!" exclaimed Jessica. "It's just so different than-" She didn't get a chance to  finish her sentence before the waiter interrupted her by giving a disapproving nod to Danny which caught his attention.
  "I'm terribly sorry, I have to get back to work." he said, frowning.
  "It's alright, don't worry" Jessica  nodded.
  "If you'd like I can take you for a walk after I'm done, maybe grab a beer or something " said Danny.
  Jessica considered the option for a while and she found no reasonable reason to refuse the offer, which surprised even her when she did.
  "I was thinking about going to bed early to get some rest" she said, "but thanks for offering anyways!" She flashed an awkward apologetic smile at him while he was getting up.
  "Hey, it's OK don't worry about it." He reached into his pocket and handed her his card. "In case you find yourself lost in Amsterdam in the future." he said, winking.
  She blushed once more, thanking him. After finishing her meal she left the money on the table and sighed a half-hearted goodbye to a lost chance.
  She didn't actually go to the hotel right away. Instead, she walked around the city for a bit more, still listening to music. She pirated the whole Channel Orange album using some Starbucks free wi-fi and listened to it front and back a few times before heading to the hotel; "Sweet life" had become her official theme for the trip. The next morning she left early, went to the airport and flew an uninteresting, short flight to Berlin.


 She'd been walking for around 20 minutes without realizing, and her mood had instantly changed. Her face shifted from a frown to a big smile as she shuffled to a few Channel Orange songs until she reached the park. At one moment she stopped, took her wallet out of her back pocket and shuffled through her credit cards. She takes one of them out, a black-and-gold one with red details that read "Los amigos Argentinian Grill & Tapas Restaurant" with gold letters and a "Johan and Daniel Janssen" underneath. She stared at it for a while and let out an audible laugh. "So close to Jenson" she mumbled. She put the card back in her wallet and continued her walk towards the park.

...
  

Blog no.25: Sing about me

Dear insomniacs,

  It's 4:47 a.m. and I have an exam in roughly 3 hours and a half, so naturally it's a great time to write some stuff, ain't it?
  I've been listening to the my Spotify-generated playlist (which I update every week with my new suggested stuff) for the past few weeks, which is mostly comprised of hip-hop and indie tracks including some really good shit I'd never have known about. It's amazing how much music there is available to us and I'm so grateful for being able to experience it and procrastinate to some amazing tracks, but you know what baffles me? Some people don't even bother searching for music! I mean I get having favourite bands and songs, I have those too, but you are able to type a few words and swim in an ocean of incredible, never-heard-before music and you choose to listen to Drake, Katy Perry or Coldplay on repeat? Don't get me wrong, I like all of those artists and enjoy listening to their stuff but don't you think it's worth discovering stuff by yourself and expanding your music tastes? Hell, even my favourite band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have so many less-popular songs that are so much better than the overplayed "Snow", "Otherside", "Scar Tissue" and the likes. "Hey" (Not Hey Oh, as an unofficial YouTube video suggested) has one of the most orgasmic solos I've ever heard, even more so than Muse's "Madness". Talking about Muse, they have so many amazing tracks (especially from "The 2nd law") which are not that well known for being too different than their usual stuff. Even Coldplay which I mentioned before have the spectacular "We never change" and the minimalistic "O", two very underrated songs from their discography.
  When I first listen to a song from an artist I don't know about, first thing I do is look them up on the internet (well, Reddit mostly), and find their most popular albums and download them in their entirety. I know I know shame on me for pirating but I'd literally be living in the streets if I paid for all the music I listen to. Point is, listening to an album in it's entirety is a whole different beast from just listening to a few tracks. Albums are supposed to be connected works of art, they tell a story, they have a certain flow to them that gets lost when shuffled and they are destined to be played beginning to end. Haken's "Visions" tells a story about, well, visions, death, dreams, time and ends with the titular track, which loops it back to the beginning. Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs" talks about the effects of growing up in an uninspiring suburban neighborhood in a nostalgic, bittersweet way that takes you way way back. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the moon" is a brilliant example of a "concept album" because it flows flawlessly, with seemingly zero interruption from one track to the other and multiple callbacks to previous tracks of the same album. But of course the album I want to focus on the most is Kendrick Lamar's "Good kid m.A.A.d city". This album got me into concept albums in the first place a few years back. In the beginning you get in the back of the white van with Kendrick and his gang and you just start rolling around Compton, getting into trouble, going through shootouts, running away from the police, trying to escape the life of gangs, drugs and alcohol and ultimately making it big. It's a perfect album, but more than that it has one of the best lyrical songs I've ever listened to, "Sing about me, I'm dying of thirst".
  "Sing about me" for shorts tells a story from 3 different perspectives. The first person is a troubled young dude who lost his brother in a gang related incident (in the end of "Swimming Pools"), who recalls how difficult it is to grow up as a poor black guy with a bad background and thanks Kendrick for being there for his brother but is ultimately shot in a similar fashion as his brother. The second person is a young girl who blasts Kendrick for mentioning her sister in a previous album (Section .80) as an example of a girl driven to prostitution, saying that he doesn't understand that it was the only way for her and her sister to live since they were in-between foster homes. She mentions that he has no right to talk about her sister because he doesn't know where she is coming from and to let her do her thing without obstructing her life, but ends up fading due to some sexually transmitted illness. Now the third person, that is Kendrick himself. Kendrick talks about how he sees himself trying to make a difference with the only thing that he has, his raps, and that he thinks about death a lot and thus he's trying to make his mark in the world by helping others. Being an influential figure, he knows that he can help people from his neighborhood by getting their stories out even if it comes with sacrificing his own image. What follows is this:
  "And I hope that at least one of you sing about me when I'm gone.
   Now I'm I worth it?
   Did I put enough work in?"
First time I heard those lines they hit me like a truck, because I related so much to what he has to say. We're all trying to make our mark in the world, to be remembered, to have someone sing about us when the lights shut off and it's our time to settle down. It is said that you die twice, once when you stop breathing and once again when your name is mentioned for the last time. It's all very morbid but very true as well, it's in our nature. I don't care about being rich and famous, I don't care about having my statue engraved in the middle of a busy square, I don't care if my name isn't mentioned in the Guinness World Records book. All I'm asking, and all everyone is probably asking is to have at least one person who thinks you're important enough to be remembered. The feeling of knowing that you've positively influenced at least one person is more precious than all the money in the world, so all I have to ask is this: Promise that you'll sing about me when I'm gone, will ya?

Your chosen existentialist,
Stelios Zesiades