The Love Book

                             
The LOVE Book

  
 
 
Love.  Who knows what it means anymore?  It's a word that gets used to sell dishwasing detergent as much as it is a word that defines your life, your lifestyle and your definition of yourself.  The Love book came about in a dark month of the year when Berlin ceases to smile in an especially unfriendly sort of way.  I had just played what I would call a "burn-out gig". The moon was hidden, and so were everyone's manners.  I had brought my best friend, my man, and my babe along with me only to find out there was no PA,  and I was just supposed to stand in a corner and play for tips to the rudest most rubbish arseholes in Prenzlauerberg,.. which is why I now have the saying "I don't go to Prenzlauerberg unless I get paid".  It's fair to say in retrospect I  perhaps overreacted (who me?)  and did have some fans in the crowd, as well as an apologetic waitress who was awful nice... but I had the overall feeling of soul-crushing exhaustion. Years of work for this? To have them smack their gums while Dirk plays insanely brilliant lines that slide in and out of this dimension?  No shit, It sucks to be a musician sometimes. FREE BEER will never make up for the fact that you are often tricked into situations by venues, grossly underpaid and made to feel that if you don't lick their arses you are some kind of diva.  Maybe I get it worse because I AM a lady banjo-diva of sorts. (no, old man, I DON'T know how to play Dixie- and I don't care to learn songs from the confederacy any more than you want to wear a swastika, ok?)  I am not a jukebox, I'm an artist.  Oh yeah, I'm an artist- I'd better act like one and start cranking out that lemonade, eh?

That night I went home, took off my brown boots, had a soothing lavender candle-lit bath and had myself a nice long think.  Berlin is this huge city and apart from New York the biggest I've ever lived in.  In most ways it knocks me out... I can't help but draw the *insects to humans* parallel when watching that centipede of a train slip by on the horizon,... it all seems so regurgitated.  On top of that we live in the digital age,  no one writing with a pen anymore, not really.  Everything seems to be stuck in a fancy-pants microsoft-apple cloud... nothing tangible. In it's simplest form- I love the intangible made tangible whenever and however possible.  I love, I love to love, I love to write songs that are about love because it's so clear that's what the world is aching for from the inside of every marrow & every seeping, sweaty pore.  If I could just collect five things of LOVE from every individual I ever met at a show, I would at the end of my days really have something worth something, no matter what. And you know what?  It's also a great way to engage people in their own thoughts.  Everytime I write a song, I am examining life as I know it-  and my duty as a muse is to bring that out in people by hook or by crook... but there is more than one way to tickle that tired old teddy- and I'm gonna use every trick in the book.
 
Love
What do you love
Specifically
unscientifically
Eternally
Oddly
Plainly
Gratefully
What? What? What?

Tell Cera one thing you love for each of your five wits and please- for once take up space, take up time!
ps.  Everyone loves cheese, beer and sex- if you love these things please be as specific as possible and sign this book with your super un-super power+animus.
for instance: "Pontificating Panda"