There are cities in which I’ll never go back. Wuppertal, for example. My life started there in the orphanage. An impoverished city. I’m escaped the town by luck and intellect. Even the music carried me away like the river carries away a boat.
photo: me, sitting in the suspension train of my hometown Wuppertal
The composition NEVER GOING BACK AGAIN by FLEETWOOD MAC inspired me not only because of its weighty title. It flows from the ease of leaving as if on wings. But it is still very difficult for me to achieve on the guitar, Lindsey Buckingham did a great job, indeed!
original:
LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM (guit.) (FEATURING female singer STEVIE NICKS):
Flickr Comments 
The music carried you away like a boat carried away by the river. I love the music….I know this is getting old, but do you know how Hawaiian this sounds? A plane has no rear view mirrors….it only goes forward. And that is what we must do.
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hi Angeline,
I like your
“A plane has no rear view mirrors….
it only goes forward…”
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Me as well…I love that words..And the image as well…I have never thought about it…
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The beginning of your post started me thinking if there are places I’d never go back to. What an interesting thought. Thank you for sharing your beginnings and the photos.
Peace,
Siggi
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hi Siggi,
you need a fast flowing river
and a boat with friends
to leave bad memories behind…
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It’s never easy to leave bad memories behind, they will come back to you crushing in at the most unpredictable moments. But it’s our choise to dwell in them and let them make us feel miserable or to move on. Great post, Frizz and as always: great picking.
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yes honey-Hanni:
you got to move:
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You did a great job, Frizz. I love Fleetwood Mac too.
You can’t outrun those memories but you can (and do) focus on better things. Like your guitar playing. 🙂
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thanks Johanna, for the twitter fave – and about killing bad memories for to focus on better things:
yesterday I read from blogger Skye metaphorically about standing on a bridge:
http://ohthethingsweshallsee.com/2013/07/26/letting-go-at-the-lake/comment-page-1/#comment-963
“Your past is just a story. Once you realize this, it has no power over you.” So, that water under the bridge is just inching itself away from you back to the sea and has no hold over your future days…
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I can see why you would not want to go back to Wuppertal with its memories, Frizz. But then it has its good points like Pina Bausch and Wim Wenders brilliant film Alice in the Cities.
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thank you, Tish, yes Pina Bausch (R.I.P.) was our local hero and I wrote a post about her work at
citizens of Wuppertal can discover a lot locations of their town – even the famous Schwebebahn. In the movie my heart especially was touched by a funeral march
later I realized it was related to a song of the old blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson. I tried to play aversion for myself – it was MY tribute to PINA …
https://soundcloud.com/fingerstyle_guitar/eb-major
I wrote about Lonnie Johnson and his JET BLACK BLUES at
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Like your tribute to Pina, Frizz. The Seasons March clip is also one of my favourites from the Wenders film. I can’t begin to say quite why it is so extraordinary: it just IS. Pina was an amazing woman.
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FT, you’ve left the past so far behind it will never catch up to you! Keep on keep in’ on my friend!
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dear Tina,
maybe it is like we do it with the money – so much coins are given away by us in a lifelong practice – and at last we know very clear: not the money is important. I made this photo today:
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Love it FT! And excellent analogy 🙂
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thanks Tina, for accept the analogy (friends often attack me, because they can’t follow my risky behaviour, to find an analogy) – coins, like memories, floating through my hands and mind, I’m leaving, leaving it all behind (and also the places, where they first met me):
———————–
1 switzerland
2 burma ?
3 germany, meißen
4 token for NYC subway
5 DDR
—–
6 france
7 uk
8 germany, mecklenburg
9 arabia ?
10 italy
———————————-
11 france
12 spain
13 greece
14 denmark
15 austria
———–
16 uk
17 cyprus
18 germany, old currency
19 uk
20 sweden
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There are some places one should never revisit. Instead it should be celebrated that they have been left behind.
Love your inspiration song.
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Hi Colline, yes, celebrating that the town, where I went to school has been left behind: Because I like to find out daily, what I’ll learn. I like to learn. But do not like to be oppressed to learn, what isn’t important, even wrong in my opinion. In the city ARNSBERG they forced me to join the army. I had to learn, how to shoot with a tank using nuclear grenades and bullet-heads…
I had to learn to run after a tank, shoot down the nuclear munitions with a maximum range of 20 kilometers. Then move forward carefully and see what was still alive. An idiotic concept. It would have been during the Cold War more sense to put in diplomatic negotiations, than in technically ridiculous concepts.
first much too near:
then more and more pale in my memories:
then 1989, East and West Germany decided not to fight vs. each other, but to join peacefully. Military was reduced. Me, sitting in my favorite restaurant, no more weapons on the (mind-)wall:
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A great song for a great post ! You gave me ideas…
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dear iceman75, I know you are against bull fight in Southern France and Spain. If a bull ever has managed to jump over the fence and escape, I’m sure, he would never want to go back again. On the other hand, this famous (and silly, stupid, crazy, idiotic, bewitched, insane) torero came back, though a bull had extinguished one of his eyes before:
title=”Pertinacity” by Guib_Did – the photographer commented: “Maestro Juan Jose Padilla , feria 2012 .
On Oct. 8, 2011a bull’s horn ripped into Juan Jose Padilla’s lower jaw and caused his left eyeball to protrude as spectators screamed in horror. Padilla was seen getting up shouting, “I can’t see, I can’t see anything,” his face gushing blood as assistants distracted the bull.
Now, wearing an eye patch and speaking with a lisp, Padilla fulfilled what he describes as an unquenchable desire to once again face massive 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) fighting bulls with the aid of only a cape and sword.”
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But it’s not against the same bull…and the men doing (and even watching …) bullfight have a strong problem in their mind. I think it’s like an addiction to a drug for us watching violence and killing animals after making them suffering. So I’m not surprised that Juan Jose Padilla is going back in the Arena. But the hundred of bulls he killed can’t say that, even the bull that injured him, killed like the others.
Gladiators had more chance….
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and what, dear iceman75 in France, about all the immigrants from Africa to Europe, who tried to escape from their homeland, but were sent back again by force? (nevertheless every week new arrive, waiting in the near of the tunnel, to cross the canal and reach Great Britain):
title=”Cayuco con inmigrantes” (Boat with Subsaharian immigrants) photo by Miguelángel, sent to my group BLOG IT
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Sometimes it is hard to leave those memories, even when you have already gone.
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my mother (East Germany) drove this car, a Trabant, called TRABI. I lived in West Germany, behind the Iron Curtain. After 40 years the wall fell, and the two German nations joined. My mother and me, we could meet now. Some people in West Germany speared the Trabi on a pole like a trophy.
yes, I can’t forget the Trabi. It’s symbol of a lost life … – “hard to leave those memories” – as you say Mlissabeth…
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Leaving a not so perfect past is difficult, but at least each following day offers something better!
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thank you, Frances Antoinette, for the reminder, that there will be a following day. At least my grandchildren have a new chance, to make it all better than me …
me and one of my several grandsons. I’m so tired from life, but he is fresh and curious 🙂
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and merci for your Kundera quotation there:
~
“Where have they gone,
those loafing heroes of folk song,
those vagabonds who roam from one mill to another
and bed down under the stars?”
Milan Kundera, Slowness.
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and what about Edward Snowden?
it’s not easy, to leave it all behind…
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Snowden is such a brave person, all these whistleblowers are brave. I haven’t got that much courage myself but I respect it in others and wish them well.
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Understand your feelings, Frizz. There’s no going back for me as well.
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Shalom Shimon,
like the cats we know:
it’s good to focus straight forward:
so we do not lose energy
to the wrong direction…
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Understandable, Frizz. Sometimes it’s best not to return to a place of bad memories, and move forward to a better life.
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but if there suddenly cancer comes, as in your life, we want to go back in the life before … hesitating, to make the hard way through that unknown country…
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I didn’t realize you were an orphan–my novel, if I ever finish it, is called “Achille’s Orphan”. Many of us feel orphaned emotionally, even if it’s not a biographical fact–plenty of baggage to not want to go back to. I LOVE the photo of you with your grandson–so rich with treasured emotion. God bless you today, and always.
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dear Benetta, though “Achille’s Orphan” Memories still hurt – I like to look forward with my 3 1/2 grandchildren – and we have a lot of fun and laughter together …
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I’m so glad to hear that–what an adorable picture, moves me nearly to tears.
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Excellent job Frizz – you are a man of talents! I understand the never going back – It’s always best to put the past behind us and move forward. Our house is still on the market. We have a lot of lookers, all claiming to love it but not the right buyer yet so we wait and hope… it will happen and I pray it is this year. Take care friend 🙂
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Frizz, you have travelled far!
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it was a long way, Patti. And then comes the end: I’m sad about J.J. Cale: https://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/j-j-cale-r-i-p/
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Hi Frizz, your guitar rendition has beautiful notes, but it feels lonely. It does describe a place of oppression. A musician creates music from their inner being, so it really expressed to me an ode to flight. I hope all is well with you.
Thank you for the advise about walking in the AM instead of PM. I started to walk in the morning instead to keep my energy instead of being zapped by the sun.
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dear Allyson, I felt completely free and not oppressed mostly very early in the morning, when the air is fresh and the streets are empty, first birds are singing, in my head the song: here comes the sun (sung by George Harrison, who died in NYC)
+
related:
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dear Allyson, you inspired me to play this on my guitar:
https://soundcloud.com/fingerstyle_guitar/89-1
for sure better listen to the original, when you are jogging (a.m. not p.m) near the East river or in Central Park …
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Frizz, thank you so much for your guitar rendition of “Here Comes the Sun!” It was so lovely of you to create it. I especially loved the part from 0.24 on to the end 0.46.
I also had a nice time listening to:
“Eb-Major” a few times because it is very soothing with a very freeing kind of feeling. It is quite beautiful 🙂
“48″ took me to the old west. The rawness of life in westerns are very inspirational for me. Like my sister says “I am a sucker for westerns.”
“E-guitar-01″ I found to be profound, especially 0.46-1.00. I listened to it, maybe 5 times, to feel the notes.
Thanks again for your thoughts. Allyson
PS: What a cobblestone path. That looks to be a peaceful morning wandering.
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You’ve given such a great effort, even though you have little time!
~
you made me post, as a motivation for others:
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Beautiful rendition! I absolutely love Fleetwood Mac!
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What a gorgeous looking shop, we need lots more of these instead of the faceless chains which seem to seep into every town, rendering them all the same.
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Lovely skylines 🙂
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It looks amazing, and as you say, the views, the views….spectacular 🙂
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Wow, what an amazing looking place, a real masterpiece of mans hands 🙂
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