Suddenly too soon

Today is my birthday and normally I should be happy, thinking about the beauty of life, how lucky I am to have these amazing people, my family and friends in my life and all the wonderful guys I 'met' online, and I am happy but I'm also sad at the same time. Last Monday I heard that Cory Monteith died, who played Finn Hudson on Glee. I was shocked and still can't believe it. I can still read the Tweets he wrote last week, he posted a picture, I saw him on TV so often, was impressed by his singing and acting and now he's just gone. It's like when Heath Ledger, Aaliyah and Brittany Murphy died. All so young and talented, and it happened just too soon. 

Now it's revealed that Cory died because of a heroin and alcohol overdose, and once again I'm shocked. Drugs are so often the reason of many people's deaths, so why do still so many take them? It's not on me to tell people what to do and what not, but I hope that at least some guys realise what drugs can cause them, and as hard as it might be, they should try their best to get rid of them or better, do not even start taking them.

Source: Quote that talk Tumblr

It doesn't matter how you lose a beloved person, it's always horrible. Even more when you are far away, and it happened in a sudden. When I first read how Jim Parsons lost his Dad, I couldn't and still can't imagine how he must have felt back then. He had been very close to his Dad, he supported Jim and his wish to become an actor all the time, and while Jim was working on his final project, shortly before his graduation, his Dad died in a car accident. Jim came from San Diego, where he was studying, back to Houston and he didn't wanna finish his Master's degree at first, but then he did it. He realised that he "could only be of use to the family fully if [he] did what [he] needed to do and then went on...". Jim also told Pop Matters that he had a terrible sense of direction but his Dad was good at it, and when he went to New York after his graduation, he knew how to get around so quickly that it boggled his mind. This all reminded me of what my Mom told me when her Mom died in the year 2000. I felt her presence though my eyes were unable to see her. I knew she was there and still is, because like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in "The Little Prince": 

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

For me, heaven is not a place up above, it is in the heart of the people we love. When the soul has to leave its body, it will find its peace and be in heaven, when it can continue to live in the people she loves and who loves her. Some fans of Michael Jackson or Elvis think they are still alive and they are somehow, as long as there are people whe won't forget them. Through their music they will always be part of our lives.

picture by Vincent Lock 

Reading about someone who died is always a shock when she was part of your life, and it reminds me of how fast everything can be over. No one wants to talk about it, to think of it, but we have to face it because it's part of our lives. I lost three loved family members when I was a kid, and I never understood why they went. It's hard to realise that you will never see this person again, someone you grew up with, someone you spent so much time with. To realise you will never talk to her, never give her a hug, never hear her voice again, makes me so frightened. 

I thank God that I can celebrate my birthday today, that I completed another year of my life, and I hope much more of them are still to come. I don't take life for granted, and also not all the things I have. I feel lucky and blessed. My prayers go to Cory's family and to his girlfriend Lea Michele. And I dedicate this poem I wrote last year after the Mom of one of my friends died, to everyone who lost a loved person:

Save you

I wish I could save you. I wish I could stay, but you know that I can’t. I never wanted to leave you. And I want you to know, I will never leave you completely. I will always follow you, no matter where you go. I didn’t want to tell you that I have to go, because I never wanted to hurt you. But since you figured it out, I feel something has changed.

I wish I could save you, honey. I wish I could take all the pain away from you. I don’t wanna see you suffering, I don’t wanna see your tears. I need you to smile. I wish I could tell you, it’s gonna be alright. I wish I could ease your pain. But I know that I can’t. I will forever be with you, forever by your side.

Please stop crying, honey, I don’t wanna cry. I want you to smile, I want you to go on for me. I hope you’ll never forget me, as I will never forget you. You’ve been the greatest and best, that ever happened to me. You made me alive. Please understand, that I have to leave. I would love to stay, so please just never forget me.

I will go on living in you. Stop crying, smile for me. Just one last time. I wish I could save you, I wish I could say that it’s gonna be alright. I wish I could ease your pain. I love to see your smile, I love to see you being happy. I still love you and forever will.

The grown-up simulation

Kids want to become an adult as quickly as possible. But what when they are one? When they reach a point in life and want to be a kid again? Having such an easy-going life, a huge fantasy in which everything can happen. What a peaceful world. They don't have responsibility for anything, they just live and every single day is a new adventure. Children play the whole day, they get a register and play bank teller. And the next day they are a doctor. Kids can be whatever they want, whenever they want it. Isn't that great? And their parents protect them no matter what they do.

It's great to be a kid, but so often we want the opposite of what we have, of what we are. So a kid wants to have more rights, makes her own decisions, and doesn't want to hear stuff like "this is a grown-up talk, go playing". I heard that when I was a kid, mostly when we visited my grandma once a week. So my mom wanted to talk to her mom, which I can understand now, but back then... Well, when you are a kid, you have to be the number 1. You want your family to go where you want to go, you want to talk with them about your favorite topics and play with them when and what you want. But one day you'll realize, life is not only about you.

When I started to watch The Big Bang Theory about 1 1/2 years ago, and saw some videos on youtube afterwards, I could not understand why so many guys like Sheldon. He seemed to me the weirdest person of them all. But after I saw Jim doing interviews, I started to like him and so I kept focusing on Sheldon. I still see Jim in him, and so I like him now too, but I think people like Sheldon for what he is. Just himself. He is like a kid, who loves to play and who loves to be the number 1. And to be honest: who doesn't like that?

The thing is when we get older, we try to fit in, like to a group of people. We want to be liked by others, and because they are not our parents of who we can be sure that they like is no matter what we do, say or how we look like, we start acting. But sometimes when we act too much, we can lose ourselves in it. And this is when we stop being who we really are. The best thing of being a kid is, being simply yourself. They do not care that much what others think about them, because they know one thing certainly, and that is the only thing that really matters: my parents will love me.

Acting the whole time can be exhausting. It's a hard job, but we want to fit into the society, and so we go out, every single day, not playing, but acting. Life is a play, the stage is everywhere we go and we are the protagonists of our own play, doing our best that the audience, the people around us, like what they see. That they want to get in touch with us, maybe even work with us. We want to be loved, and think the more people love us the better. You can see that on Twitter or Facebook. When kids grow older and become teenagers they mostly think they are only great when the have thousands of followers or friends. But is that amount important? Does this mean I am not likeable only because I don't have as many followers as Lady Gaga?

Even Sheldon is growing up now, realizing that a relationship is between two people, and both are important. Life is not about one person. We all need each other. We can't expect people to like us, when we don't show that these guys are important to us, too. We want to be their number 1, and they want to be our number 1, it's all about give and take. And isn't it great to take care of someone you love? No matter how far his relationship will go, he will always stay Sheldon. A man who loves to play, to might do some stuff of which some other guy might say it's odd. But who cares? The people who are important will like him anyway, for just the way he is. That he dares to be himself.

I'll always be on your side

We need to grow up, to get through life, but we should also keep our childish side. We shouldn't stop playing, we should allow us to do sometimes some childish things, and think less about what others could think about us. You can act, and when someone's not liking you, just say you acted the wrong way, but it's braver to act who you really are. People who don't like you then, aren't worth to be part of your life. Because it's not important how many people like you, it's important that you are liked by the persons you love. And the ones who really love you, like your family and friends, love you the way you are, and not what you try to pretend to be.

Acted real life

When we grow up not only our parents inspire us. Also very important is the music and some celebrities. One of my fave singers was and still is, Britney Spears. She grew up with me, and she always made the music I loved to listen to. About ten years ago I wouldn’t have bought the music she makes these days and today I wouldn’t buy songs like Baby One More Time. You change and also your taste. As a kid I collected everything from her that I got from several magazines. I still have that folder, because it’s also a part of my past, of my teenage years.

But I also knew when I had to stop her being my idol. She went through a tough time, and nobody was sure if she would find her way out. Luckily she did. Being successful is good but also had it’s bad sides. People are envy, try to find something negative about that person. When she’s too successful people want to know more and more about her, don’t want her to have a private life. And someone like Britney is talented, for sure, and in my mind she totally deserves the success she has because she really worked hard to get this far, but it’s not just the own ability, and the will to do that, it’s also because of the persons who believed in her and helped her to gain that success.

But for her it meant like she had to work perfectly all the time. To entertain people permanently. I guess that was a bit too much for. She lost her childhood because she only worked all the time and never really had friends. Other people decided what she had to do and whom to believe. She never learned to work on her own. That was a big mistake and when she was old enough and wanted to take her own decisions, she took them wrong because everyone had always thought for her.

She was also told that she had to entertain all the time. And when she became more popular she was followed more by paparazzi, and maybe she also started to entertain them. We are all a bit different when we know someone is looking what we do and we see cameras all the time. So maybe she wanted to protect herself or she just did that for entertaining. But the sad part is, that when you are followed by cameras and people all the time, and you want to protect yourself, started acting, you might can get lost in it. That’s when you stop knowing who you really are. You just do things without knowing what you do, important is only that fact that you stay in focus and people are still interested in you and your life.

Kids need time to play, time to have friends, and time to be a child.

Maybe she wanted to show everyone what they did to her. That they took her childhood, something that she will never get back. Same like Michael Jackson. I guess as he had no memory of his childhood, or at least something that felt like one, he still felt like a child and never wanted to get old. I guess that’s why he had the Neverland ranch and why he loved to spend time with kids. Unfortunately it didn’t end that well with him. But Britney found her way back into life. She needed help and got it. She can now handle her life, lives and enjoys her present, the time with her kids and her boyfriend.

I guess what she went through had to come like that sooner or later. And it’s fact that kids want their parents to be happy, and when they see their eyes sparkling when they go on stage singing, then the kids will do it. They don’t think about it, for them only their parents are important, and that they are happy and proud of their kids. Britney has changed a lot of lives and inspired lots of kids, and still does. She is the proof that a lost childhood can’t be replaced. That kids have to learn to take their own decisions to be prepared for their life when they’re grown up. And that being on the focus all the time can cause big stress and trouble - for a kid more than for an adult. When they have to act to protect themselves for having at least a bit privacy, they will get lost in their own acting, and forget who they really are.

Life's a play

After months on the run, every city becomes a blur. Every disguise takes you one step away from your true self. Finally, you forget who you are. But you never forget who you’re after. And so it begins. 

This was the start of a commercial series, made for Hilary Duff’s clothing line FEMME for DKNY Jeans. This was about three years ago, but I watched it again yesterday, and I still like it. It is a story, something extraordinary. You see this, and the last thing you think about is: this is a commercial, isn’t it? On the website Hilary wrote that with the different characters she played in the seven parts of this mini-series (the vid on my blog is only the first part, the others can be found on youtube), she wanted to showcase the versatility of every woman (Femme is the french word for woman).

It’s a chase. In the last part we saw two cops, who wanted to chase her all the time. In the end, they are really close to her, but did they get her? Well, just watch it and see.

I also like the fact, that we all sometimes feel like being on the run. That someone wants to chase us, but we don’t wanna let that happen. So we change our clothes, try to make an illusion, that no one can find us, no one can unravel our mystery. We wanna stay a mystery, because we wanna be interesting. But the more we disguise, the more we try to hide and pretend to be someone else, we lose ourselves. Life is a play. No curtain falls, but lots of guys are in the audience watching us. Everytime and everywhere. We are the protagonist of our own play. No rehearsals.

Of course it makes fun to be someone else, but only sometimes. When I watched the German musical ‘Linie 1’ in 2008, which is by the way one of the most successful and most performed German theater plays which was also enacted in cities like New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Kalkutta, London and Paris, I still remember one line of it:

Everyone is an actor, but only a very few know that.

It’s on you to think about that. I only wanna add that we don’t have to showcase everything to everyone. Acting is a good thing, but when we are too good and forget who we are, it’s really bad. Everyone has so many different sides and everyone should explore and change and stay curious, but also always find back to himself or herself. That at least you know who you really are.

PS: If you wanna know more about ‘Linie 1’ or Hilary’s clothing line, just write me.

My best friend’s a rabbit… and imaginary

Who had never had at least once an imaginary friend? Is this one of the geeky things on us? I guess I hadn’t just one – I had lots of imaginary friends. When you become older, you find out that is better not to have such friends. Otherwise someone will take you to a shrink, or directly into a mental institution. And you also know, that having real friends to talk to is even better.

Anyway, having an imaginary friend can sometimes help and encourage you. If you have something on your mind, but you don’t wanna talk about it to anyone, you can think about someone. No matter who this person is, if it’s someone you know, any star or just someone completely created in your mind, it can help you. You can talk to him or her, feel better afterwards and maybe you also think what she would answer you and so get another point of view. I don’t think that anything is wrong with that, maybe because I do it sometimes. Just when no one is around, or I am not sure how or even if I should tell to someone real.

But why a rabbit? We know the Easter bunny. We know that rabbits are smart and fast. And they are also symbols of birth, a new beginning. A rabbit seems to be loyal and frankly. He is clever, and so gives useful advices when you have a problem. This might help you to get a new start, or a new point of view on something.

Today is the offical start of Harvey on New York Broadway. When I read the first time about it, and I haven’t seen it so far, I thought this is really interesting. An imaginary friend, that no one else can see, and his ‘inventor’ is such a warm and friendly person who wants to connect with everyone. I would really love to see this. The story is wonderful and I guess also Jim will do an awesome job. I like seeing him in other roles than Sheldon, and live on stage would be extra special. But as a student I’m probably richer of knowledge than of money…ha, joke, would be great if it really would be like that. No, but I also have soon my exams I have to work for, and such a trip to NYC is simply impossible now. But I am happy for everyone who’ll get the chance to see this wonderful play.

Seeking in the box

I am a person, I wanna live, give me air to breathe, I need it. Let me outta the box.

My last blog entry was about the acceptance of everyone, that everyone is unique and special in his or her own way. The audio project I was working on this week was about goths, so I gave them as an example of a group of people who are part of our life but still aren't accepted or even tolerated by so many people. I also considered to mention the gay guys, because it's the same. We do now have a change and I really like that Barack Obama is now in favor of gay marriage. I mean why shouldn't they be allowed to marry? In which century do we live, that we still have to treat them differently? Who cares which gender is preferred?

It's like box-thinking. We see someone and we want to know everything, that we can put him or her into a box, and we won't stop, until we have what we want. But do we wanna live in a box? You can't put all goths, all gay guys into one box, as well as you can't put all blonde girls into one. I guess that this is the reason why everyone now is talking about Jim Parsons and the interview he gave to Patrick Healy of The New York Times. This interview was also published on Wednesday, the same day I wrote my blog entry. I see this as kinda sign, so I come back to my last post.
If you read the whole interview of Jim, you know he said so much more things, really interesting things like about the work at theatre. But what do we read all over the internet? All articles about that interview, are about only one thing. Google it if you don't know, but I guess you do.

So why on earth is THAT the most important thing? Back to my question: in which century do we live? Seriously? Is this really worth to be a 'news', beside the fact that as the word says itself, it should be new? Why are the most people so much interested in other's private life? We don't want someone else talking and writing about our private life - okay some might want that, but in my mind these are the guys who have to talent, no passion except for themselves.

Being an actor, or a singer is as normal as any other job. I appreciate a lot what these guys do, share their talent with the world. Without music, movies, tv shows, we would have less to talk about and life would be very boring. We need them as well as we need plumber, teacher, architects. They might not be known by so many people like an actor or singer, so the chance that many persons are interestend in him or her are less, but also they will talk. Only not in that wide range. But as the internet is open to everyone, imagine your co-worker heard that you talked to a friend that you are in love and wanna make him or her a gift. The next day a foreigner comes to you, giving you an advice for the gift, and an other guy tells you he can't imagine what you like on her/him. How would you feel? What would you think about it? Later you found out, that your co-worker wrote this about you and put it on the internet.

Do you think this is far-fetched? Do you really think that only because someone works in the public, he or she has to share everything with total strangers? Certainly not. If he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to and we should respect that. Also all the actors and singers out there aren't different persons, they are no superheroes. They do their job as we do our job. Let's stop digging, let's stop seeking in the box, let's stop putting everyone into a box.

Here you can read the interview with Jim Parsons http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/theater/jim-parsons-prepares-for-his-lead-role-in-harvey.html?pagewanted=all

Not only a fence to share

Some neighbors only share their fence, but we shared everything. -Susan Delfino on the serie's finale of Desperate Housewives

How fast can eight years pass? The answer: incredibly fast. Even though none of the guys will ever read this, I really wanna thank Marc Cherry for creating such a wonderful show. I honestly will miss Bree, Gaby, Susan and Lynette. How great was the time with these ladies on Wisteria Lane? Since that show, I know that we are all actors in this life. We do our best to hide our darkest secrets, we pretend to be perfect, even if we are not. There are only a very few in our life, we let know everything about us - but really everything? Certainly not.

Not our closest friends really know everything. We all have our role in this life. No matter if we are the perfect housewife with her best behavior, her well-educated kids, and her wonderful husband. Or the manager who has everything under control: the job, the husband, the kids. The one who is simply beautiful, has nothing to do but her husband earns lots of money that she can have such an easy-going life. Or the one showing her feelings, who can't lie and might cares the less of what others think about her. Or she just ignores that, or at least tries to do that. We now know, that these four are not just like that.

Four very different girls who lived on the same street. Neigbors came, neighbors went. And they all had secrets. In the last ep, when we saw who moved into Susan's house, also this girl has a secret - one we might never find out. She pondered that it could be boring in the suburbs but Susan replied that it's anything else than that. Okay the stories were a bit far-fetched, we all have to admit that so much never happens on one single street. But what makes us sure of that? How much do we really know about our neighbors?

Do you talk to them? Are they your friends or are neighbors just neighbors? What do they know about us? What do we tell them? What do we want them to know, to believe? Are they supposed to know everything? Yes, some neighbors only share their fence, most of them. I have learned a lot from Desperate Housewives. About life, about family, about friends. I love the way Mary Alice told us about her friends after she passed away. It's sad that they all drifted apart in the end - maybe not Lynette and Susan as they have the same grandchild - but it's true. I also lost good friends, when they moved away. Some did not move but changed a lot.

This is the first Sunday without an new episode of Desperate Housewives. One of many to come. The path we walked together is over. It was a great time, I will miss it in some way, but I am also happy that this show was part of my life. Open your eyes to your neighbors, you don't want them to be your enemies. Life is right around the corner, only a fence away. A neighborhood, no matter where it is, is, when you look closely, anything else than boring.