The Power Of Music

We all know it – we smell a certain scent and it brings us memories that we have put away a long time ago. Like the smell of freshly cut grass, that reminds me, personally, always of the summers as a teen, when I used to play badminton with the two neighbor boys on the lawn next to our house.

And the same thing happens with music.

Last night, out of the blue, I started an 80’s playlist on Spotify. Don’t ask me why – maybe I can blame the Corona Crisis and the resulting lockdown that has kept me from being able to have my weekly coffee intake in my favourite coffee shop in over two weeks (seriously, though – do one, COVID-19, I need my hipster coffee!). Anyway, the moment the songs started shuffling, it was like I was thrown back into 2013; a crazy time, but also – the best time of my life. I earned about 400€ less than what I earn nowadays, and yet, from July on, I travelled every single month to London for a (long) weekend to spent time with people I met there at a musical who’s music was – surprise, surprise – all 80’s music.

Take “You Give Love A Bad Name” by Bon Jovi, for example. When I hear it, I remember the very first time I ever stepped foot into the Shaftesbury Theatre, where that song was played before the show, making you feel the buzz of anticipation.

Or “Livin’ On A Prayer”, also by Bon Jovi. All I think is about a show’s Cast Members walking through London, being generally weird as fuck in their Stage Costumes (Mullets rock!).

Or “Pour Some Sugar On Me” by Def Leppard. Hearing it, in my mind, I am standing next to a then not-yet-friend who was seated next to me on September 22nd in her “Franzy says No!” T-Shirt and who was infectious with her anticipation and giddy mood – which was the start of a wild ride of meetups and Stage Door antics.

Or “Thriller” by Michael Jackson – here I am, waiting in line at Madame Tussaud’s with the same friend, who not only knew, but also danced along to all the lyrics.

Or “Can’t Fight This Feeling” by REO Speedwagon – I know it’s a sad song, but whenever I hear it, I can’t stop smiling thinking of two men up on stage, one blowing fog with a Fogmaster 5000 and both basically having a makeout session in public.

“Radio GaGa” by Queen at the beginning of the very first West End Show I visited on my very first trip to London (which was actually at the end of 2012, but you know, it started it all and there were many more visits to that show in 2013), which, up to this day, never fails to give me goosebumps. Although, to be fair – all Queen songs do that, so…yeah.

Or, of course – the never not appropriate “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey (actually, it has just come up on Shuffle and now I’m sat here crying) which in the past 7 years has become MY hymn for the year 2013. If anything throws me right back into that crazy, hysterical year, it’s that one. It makes me think back to Standing Ovations, Lunge-ing hopes at every visit, mornings waiting at the Box Office to get the best seats for the day, evenings in the freezing cold (which gave me my first very serious Peri-Bronchitis, thank you very much, London!) waiting for people coming out of the theatre who had become some kind of family for our group of giddy girls, just the general feeling of belonging to something where you’re not judged, where you don’t judge, where each and everyone was one and the same. And a few friendships from back then are still going strong, and I think due to what 2013 and that 80’s music brought us, and despite us all growing up more with the years, moving on, getting married, having families, it will always keep us together one way or another.

In fact, I think the 80’s were one of the best era’s of music the world has ever and will ever have, right along with the 90’s (I’ll always be a 90’s kid, can I get a “Yayaya Coco Jambo”?). The lyrics back then, they made sense, they were uplifting, they spoke of heartache, of loss, of true love, of desperation, of hope. Nowadays, all that is on the radio is various abominations of David Guetta’s style (seriously – how can almost every song these days sound the same? That damn autotune…) or songs by idiots calling themselves RIN, Capital Bra, Apache or Bausa who degrade women in almost all their songs and call that “rap music”.

So…music. Lifting you up when you need it, taking you back to wonderful times (seriously, though…how did I pay for all those trips then? How did I not have to worry a dime about my IBS or my weight gain? How could I sleep for days in Hostel rooms with at least 3 other strangers? Was I possessed? We’ll probably never know), letting you dance and sing along to songs long forgotten that nevertheless still pull on your heartstrings. It can be a song that reminds you of a dream coming true (like Two Steps From Hell’s “Heart Of Courage”, which reminds me of witnessing the triumph of our soccer national team, becoming World Champions in 2014 after 16 years of being a fan and waiting for that day), or songs that make you so giddy you turn back into a 14-year old fangirl (helloooo, Backstreet Boys!). Music is timeless, and it’s more powerful than anything else in the world.

So thank you, music of the 80’s and really, any kind of music. Like a great poet once said:

“Now I’ve had the time of my life.
No, I never felt like this before.
Yes, I swear, it’s the truth.
And I owe it all to you.”

(Spoiler: it was not a great poet, it was a cheesy 80’s movie that I still have never seen and never plan on seeing up to this day. But you got to admit, that tune’s damn catchy.)

Book Review: John Green – “Paper Towns”

Who is the real Margo? Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life – dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge – he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. She has disappeared. Q soon learns that there are clues in her disappearance . . . and they are for him. Trailing Margo’s disconnected path across the USA, the closer Q gets, the less sure he is of who he is looking for... (Source: amazon.com)

I am going to be honest here: after I had read “The Fault In Our Stars” (read my review for it here), – I doubted I’d ever read another John Green book again. Not because I didn’t like it or because it wasn’t good – because it was good, it was amazing, actually, but normally I don’t read books like that, and it didn’t leave me as satisfied as books usually do. But somehow, while browsing through amazon, I came across “Paper Towns”. And after reading the story description, I decided to give John Green another go.

And I am so happy I did.

This book is kind of similar to “The Fault In Our Stars”, considering the main character, Margo Roth Spiegelman. She’s badass. There’s no other way to put it. While reading this book, I liked her from the first second she was mentioned – as a 9-year old, adventure-loving, non-scared little girl that drags her best friend, who is the exact opposite of her, into her weird and adventurous discoveries. As a reader, you just can’t help but helplessly admire that little girl that grows into an 18-year old woman, only a few months away from her High-School graduation, and still badass. I caught myself thinking about how much I would’ve loved to be like her, to grow into someone like her, with so many mysteries about her and an fearless attitude of pure strength. Strong-Minded. It sounds weird, but Margo Roth Spiegelman embodies everything that possibly alot of readers wish to be, too – me included.
But apart from the fact that Margo is one of the best characters that I have ever read about without her being a “physical” part of the story, all the other characters are nonetheless perfectly written:

Quentin Jacobsen
He is the actual main character, and Margo’s best friend when they are kids. One day, 9 years after they discovered a dead body in a park not afar from where they live, she shows up on his windowsill in the middle of the night and takes him onto an adventure of revenge that will change his life forever – and will mark the best night of his entire life. Quentin (or Q, how he’s often named by his friends) is such a lovable character; he’s in love with Margo from the get go, and from the moment she disappears, becoming yet another mystery, his everyday life evolves around finding her, finding out who she really is. He is determined to put everything into his search, even if it means almost losing his best friend and missing out on his graduation. It’s easy to feel sympathy for him, whatever he does – he’s the nice boy next door that you just can’t help but fall for.

Ben Starling
Ben is Quentin’s best friend – and god, from all the characters in this book, I could and can never get enough of him. He’s the most hilarious and sympathetic character I have ever had the pleasure to read about, without any doubt. He’s best described as the poor dork at High School that doesn’t have a lot of friends, but he’s perfectly happy in his own little world, and his nerdy, funny character makes you smile whenever you hear his name. There is one point in the book – in the last of the three parts, – where I almost laughed out loud on the bus (I’m not going to spoil it for anybody here, I’m just going to say “pee situation in the car” – utterly hilarious), and for me, that is one of the best moments of him in the entire book, although I can’t really picture anything that does not strike me as awesome about him. He’s quick-witted, sarcastic, and he handles every situation the way that I personally, would love to be able to handle. He’s that one friend that you just need in your life to get through (High) School, that one friend that makes your life bearable and worth living. So if it’s possible to be in love with a fictional character, then I am now in love with Mr. Ben Starling.

Radar
Radar is the other best friend of Quentin, an Afro-American boy with parents who are obsessed with collecting Black Santas. Radar is kind of the “brain” of the group, he runs an internet knowledge thing called “Omnictionary”, and basically, he knows a bit about everything. Plus, he’s kind of what keeps the friends together, even when there are bumps in the road (e.g. when Quentin feels let down by Ben due to him having a girlfriend). He’s also the one that helps Quentin piece together all the clues that he has to face on his quest to find Margo and despite all the difficulties, he never seems to lose his positive energy, something I really admired through every chapter. He’s definitely the kind of friend someone like Quentin and Ben need in their life: a grown-up, yet still grounded and somewhat “young at heart” young man.

I have to say: for me, the book never really loses its pace, although you would expect that from the way the story developes; in part one, the reader is first introduced to Margo and Quentin and is led into the night that Margo “kidnaps” Quentin for her weird revenge spree, the second part is based on the moment that Margo disappears and Quentin dedicates his life to her safe return home, and the third part describes the road trip of the friends that lead to the ultimate revelation.
Although you might think that the 2nd part can be the one that is the dullest of all, because, basically, all that’s happening is leading Quentin everywhere and nowhere. It can be easy to lose yourself in the storyline, you can get easily annoyed by thinking “He finally found a clue to her! Now he is finally going to find her!” only to then being disappointed again. But for me, that was even more of a reason to keep reading, because I felt like the disappointments that Quentin felt whenever he realized he wasn’t closer to finding Margo than he had been before, was my disappointment. I felt like I was Quentin, because I could easily empathize with him – which is only one of many reasons why this book is the perfect example of modern literature.

My favourite part – without a doubt, – was definitely the third part, which is called “The Vessel”, where the friends start their road trip. I think I have never grinned so much at every single chapter, and neither did I ever have so many difficulties to not laugh out loud at what I was reading. For me, reading something and instantly having the situation infront of your inner eye, is beautiful (although I have never been in the USA, neither have I ever been on a road trip of 21 hours), and it makes the story so much more vivid than it already is.

The end was something I did not expect in the way it happened. I will not spoil anything for anyone here, because honestly, I think everyone should read this book for him/herself. But what I’m going to say is this: the end made me highly emotional. I barely ever cry over a story/book (mostly due to the fact that I always read thriller or horror books, I guess). But right now, I am a somewhat emotional wreck, because I don’t even know how I actually feel about the end. In some way, it’s the best ending that, in my opinion, the author could and should have come up with. In its own way, it’s absolutely perfect.

And for me, that is enough to give this book a special place in my heart. John Green now definitely has me as a fan among his readers. “Paper Towns” is one utterly beautiful piece of literature.

P.S. Please make Ben Starling a real life person that lives next door to me and is single. Thank you.