Once I had a close friend. We talked about everything. And we smoked a lot of weed. Really a lot of weed. He showed me that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure in musical taste. But we had also big differences in our music preferences. My friend was enthusiastic about so-called handmade, honest music. I’ve always had an open mind for kind of dadaist or avant-garde music. My friend probably not. He mostly described this kind of music as silly. But that little difference in our tastes was okay.
Sometimes I heard strange things about him. In the early morning hours after a night of partying, he often lost his composure. That’s not unusual. But in his case there was often an apparently dominant and manipulative behavior. Stories surfaced about his drifting into conspiracy narratives. But none of that could separate us.
At a music festival, we and other friends saw the American rock band Wilco for the first time. And for me it was one of the best concerts I’ve seen in my life up to that point. I’m thinking right now that the story I’m trying to tell is actually a bunch of pathetic shit. Anyway, my friend and I had different views on the qualities of what we were watching. We’re not really friends anymore. And maybe I’m the asshole in the story. Who cares? My friend is definitely not going to the Wilco show at Cologne’s E-Werk tomorrow night. If he doesn’t have to work on Wednesday, he’d probably sitting in his fucking apartment. Watching bullshit videos from some weirdos on telegram. And smokes weed while doing it. I think I should call him soon. To hang out with him.
Photo: Annabel Mehren
