There is a manner in which certain things ask to be written, not so that they may be found, but because to exist in silence, for too long, eventually becomes insufficient. It is not urgency. It is something closer to a necessity that makes no noise, waiting patiently until it discovers the proper form. This archive was born in such a way.
Not as a diary. Not as a blog. Not as something that is updated merely for the sake of appearing alive. It is a place where certain thoughts come to rest, those which do not dissolve, those which return, those which insist with the silent obstinacy of things that truly belong to you...
A country can reach you long before you reach it. # The Netherlands I knew before I knew it was almost entirely invented from fragments. Hardcore. Rotterdam. Thunderdome. Gabber photographs....
Tiny pictures beside comments and suddenly I have spent forty minutes caring about pixels again. # Today I lost an unreasonable amount of time to Gravatars and comment-related site nonsense,...
Some things leave marks without becoming wounds. # There are things that stay on your skin even after nobody else can see them. Music. Places. The way somebody once spoke...
Not a costume, not a phase I need to apologise for, not the whole of me either. # Gabber was never just a tempo to me. It was a culture...
Fifteen is close enough to remember and far enough away to feel like somebody else’s bedroom. # When I was fifteen, adulthood looked like a country adults already knew how...
Some attractions look sudden only because you forgot their first chapter. # It started much earlier. That is what March made obvious. The Netherlands did not suddenly materialise in my...
Amsterdam opened the door. I am beginning to think the room behind it is much larger. # It isn’t even Amsterdam, which feels almost disloyal after months of using Amsterdam...
Also not relocating for wooden shoes, cheese or any other item available in souvenir form. # Not the windmills either. This series is becoming ridiculous, but I am enjoying myself....
I feel the need to defend myself against an accusation nobody has actually made. # It is not because of the tulips. I like tulips. I am not emotionally opposed...
March gave me back something I apparently never lost. # March has been strange. It began with an old folder and somehow reopened an entire corridor of my adolescence. Then...
Consistency is for people with smaller music folders. # At eight tonight I was listening to country while making dinner. At eleven I was listening to hardcore while fixing something...
Old school is a dangerous phrase once you are old enough to have one. # The clocks changed and apparently we have entered that part of the year where seven...
Why?
Because every thought leaves a trace. If something moved you, disturbed you, softened you, or made you think, leave it here, quietly.