The man with the white shirt

When the man with the white shirt came onto the stage last night, my heart skipped. I was again 16, in my room, listening to his songs and learning his lyrics by heart. Yesterday, he was handsome but plain: a white shirt, black trousers, his hair not as long. But he was still Brett, he was still the one.

When I first moved to the UK, back in 2001, I thought I had missed the train of seeing Suede live. And then I sort of forgot them for a while, their angst and melancholy didn't seem to fit my newfound life. But they were always there, in the background, singing my dark star, she's not dead, still life and the asphalt world to my deaf ears.

And then last night I saw them live for the first time. It's exhilarating to see the band that you felt defined you for years, there, in front of you, some few meters aware from you. And when Brett came down to the crowd, I felt like running to him, like an infatuated groupie. I got embarrassed and stayed where I was.

When the played Trash last night, followed magnanimously by Animal Nitrate (my God that riff still sounds good), I was back. Back to my room, back to my 16 year old self, back to this feeling of discovering the world, of discovering myself. Discovering oneself through others, isn't this what adolescence is all about? And I felt this happy nostalgia, seeing my old self from afar, I nodded and she nodded back, we said hallow and parted ways again. What a feeling to see your youth, albeit briefly, and like what you see.

Love always, Brett, Suede. Let's chase the dragon from our home, indeed. 

Summer thoughts (take I)

Summer came and went, without a post, without a trace, really. Easily the fastest summer in a while. What happened? Why did it go so fast? Why am I back, my tan fading fast, trying to fight off the rain?But anyway...

This year it dawned on me that I live a double life: most of the year in Belfast, my second home, and in the summer and Christmas holidays, back in my first home, in Greece. This October it will be 12 years that I am away from Greece (a scary thought that I cannot really process most of the time), which means that the people I have back home are diminishing rapidly: my family, my cousins, my new nephews and nieces and old, trusty friends. When I go to Greece, I want to see them, but even more I want to have the illusion that I actually have a life there. A life where I can have someone to go out for a coffee with, or go for a drink with, or go to the beach with, or go shopping with, or go to an island with. I expect to have these people because I always did in the past: I am Greek, I have greek friends, right? Thing is, I am not there for these people, not in their everyday life. At best I am at the other end of a line, a fuzzy picture on Skype, and that when we manage to co-ordinate. But I'm not there there, am I? And still I expect to have these people on stand by when I decide to grace them with my presence for a month in the summer. And most of the time they indulge me, and they make me feel normal. As if they put their life on hold and just half-live when I'm not there and then when I come, we resume our life together. Sometimes though this doesn't really work. People are not available when I want to go on holiday. Or they have other things to do when I want to go shopping. Or they bring other people (OTHER friends) when we go to the beach. And then I get annoyed, or even worse sad. Because I know deep down that this double life is just a bunch of bullshit. I am a nomad, I always used to say, and I used to like this thought.

But this also means I don't have two homes.

It simply means I have none.