The Winter Spell Siblings

At the Soundwardens' Hideaway, 2006 - 2009.

It was a special day in December. We were about to move out of the village which had been my home for the past 9 years. I was sitting in a mostly empty room when I found a piece of music that recently had been uploaded on my favourite music producing portal. It was a winter-themed Trance song evolving around a melancholic piano theme with a taste of classical music, elaborating the theme in various synth sounds which illustrated the winter feeling. I was completely caught within minutes. I did not understand how this song touched me so deeply, but it was very different from the common Trance sound back then. It was just the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard.

I wrote a comment and with the time connections evolved between the text columns and musical pieces which, as I more and more got aware of, were clear signs of other human beings sitting in front of a screen somewhere in Germany, living a daily life unknown to me, making music and wishing for connection. It proved that three of the guys uploading Trance music there actually were brothers. Sharing the software, there was a certain similarity in their sound, but each one had his own handwriting, evolving the music in a way which was quite unique.

The middle one had classical training at the piano and loved this instrument. While the first lasered piano lines appeared on the dance floors in the Trance club music scene (Mike Foyle, still beautiful), the guy with the winter song on my headphones combined classical music elements with playful Trance sounds into colourful symphonies full of details and soul, which, to me, was on a completely different artistic level than everything released by music industry. He liked to write elaborated comments as well on this website which made me guess that he, like me, was into creative writing. Our exchange quickly turned into us throwing text walls at each other, literally nailing down god-and-the-world on virtual paper while sharing our music sketches and following each other's creative process. He took time for his work (considering he was managing his music, writing, as well as our text walls, next to a full-time work, piano lessons, family obligations and friends). Each of his music sketches was an artwork of emotion.

He did not have any interest to connect with the Trance music scene and I'm almost certain he never in his life has seen a club from inside. He never bothered with trying to achieve that Trance sound of a certain label or producer (like everyone else was trying in one or another way, including myself). He was just expressing himself. Neither did he have any ambition to get his music known by a larger audience than the website we were using - which seemed like a waste to me at that time, but in fact he was just immune to this doomed chase for fame and success. Which probably makes him the most down-to-earth dreamer I ever met.

At a time where school and life around me was miserable, making music had become my refuge, and these messages in my inbox, this wonderful creative connection with the people who deeply inspired me, were what seemed to make all this struggle worth it. What I was eagerly looking forward to on unending school days and exhausting ways home. What highly motivated me to progress with my own music as well. It was the drug fueling my heart.

More than one year after finding the song I boarded the train, after an almost sleepless night and in eager anticipation. When taking a break from their music I put Andy Blueman into my headphones who was releasing beautiful orchestral Trance these days. In front of the window passed a landscape of green hills with wine drapes in the sunlight. The Colours of April.

And if I disappoint you? If you stop to write me?

First train change. One more hour. Gosh, this was actually happening!

Second train change. Now find the right train... yes, should be this one.

Three stations. More wine hills. So this is they area where they grew up...

Two stations. Nervousness.

One station. The river appeared behind the hills, glowing brightly in the sunlight.

It's here.

This was how I met this wonderful family. The four siblings (three brothers plus one younger sister who later got into music producing as well) were running up and down the stairs of a big house on several levels together with their parents, grandma, three cats and often some guests from the family friend circle. It was incredible to imagine how daily life might look like at this place. How they were testing new music software together, showing each other their music and carrying the cats through the house. It was like walking right into a dream. Into the Weasleys' house (the Swabian equivalent, if that makes any sense). Where suddenly magic was a real thing. Where making music was something to share and get excited about. Where people were caring for each other. It felt so wonderfully warm to be here with them. Almost real.

In my memory of this scene, now fourteen years ago, the third face appearing in the door was round, pale, sprinkled, short hair, a pointy nose and glasses shielding grey blue eyes. He was four years older than me, like my brother. There was something special about him which I find hard to describe. Maybe his way to speak, or to move. Maybe not more or less special than anyone else. Maybe special just for me.

They had turned the rooftop chamber into their studio. Through a hatch in the floor we climbed up there, a room lit by a small window over the hatch, the PCs (and later, a midi piano) placed on tables under the tilted walls. Headphones, speakers, probably. Maybe some software DVDs (good old times). Here they created their beautiful music. Here he had worked on the winter song, shaped the sounds and melodies in hours of patient refining. Small sheets of paper were flying around where he used to note down the final changes he wanted to do on his music. The Soundwardens' Hideaway.

I returned home flashed with inspiration, with some DVDs in my hands and the eager hope to come back soon. There I got sucked back into reality, though reality did not seem to have any use for me, and the memories of that day became blurry and painfully distant.

One of the DVDs contained photos taken on their summer vacation in Norway. They had arranged them into a slide show and added beautiful piano music to them. I watched that slideshow countless times. At a point I suddenly decided I needed to learn to play the piano. I searched for the sheet music of the songs in internet, or just wrote it down by ear for some of them. Then I sat at whatever piano I could get my hands on... and tried to find the C. Which got better with the time. It was merely a way to channel this energy which was tearing me apart.

Spring turned to summer, and the siblings left for Norway again. It was a time where this meant two weeks without internet for them. I hoped until the last second for some kind of miracle allowing me to join them, but the days passed without miracles and I finally needed to accept the hurting truth that they were leaving without me. So I spent the summer at home, cycling to the lake on a daily basis and suffocating the loneliness in the evening with... well, producing music.

What are you doing today? Rowing the boat out onto the fjord? Going on a hike? Climbing a fjell?

I listened to the crickets marking the sound of a summer evening in my lines of latitude, and watched the Black Forest hills in the east, the ever same hill range casting in shadow the mornings of my life all along.

If I could just be with you. I want to enjoy the nature together with you. To sit in that boat. To go swimming with you. To listen to music, to be creative with you. To fool around with all of you. How far away are you now? How far... is the North?

With a sigh, I threw a stone into the water.

I want to hold you, you wonderful person. I want to feel you.

I took that train a few times, always with some months distance in between. Always walking on clouds.

Where are you going?

To paradise :)

Ah, ok. ...is that before or after Stuttgart?

At a point, after several cancelled invitations and more and more reserved reactions from their side, my clumsy teenage self started to feel that things were not going well. That the hope I was clinging to was more and more evading my hands. That I was going crazy of missing them. I could not go home again, reentering my state of emotional hibernation for endless months while fighting my way from day to day until they would accept to dedicate some precious energy to me which was reserved for a life which was filled and colourful without me. This story needed to end, the one or the other way. I needed to tell him.

It was January. It was already dark. Time was getting short to catch the train home I did not wish to take. We were sitting in front of the computer, he and me. He had a birthmark at the back of his neck... I liked it. I liked everything about him.

Shaking, I said his name which sounded so beautiful to me. I still know which song was playing.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Today, 14 years later, I can just lighten a candle here for these intense and painful teenage emotions. For the part of myself which lies buried under the snow. Beneath Winter's Grey. For the lost connection with an inspiring person I never really got to know, because Teenage Me got blindly and helplessly carried away by her dreams - and so did not take care of what is most important. To be respectful. To listen to the needs and limits of others. Of the ones who matter so much. She just could not know.

My path of learning has been a long one since then. It took time, but life moved on - washing other great people up on my shore, and me on theirs. Filling my memory with other inspiring stories. Going through this finally proved to be worth the struggling. Each painful experience was a seed to grow wisdom. Each happy experience was a seed to grow warmth. I hopelessly lacked both of that.

Ich wünsch euch von Herzen ein gutes Leben. Unsere Wege heute sind sehr verschieden. Mögest du so glücklich auf deinem sein wie ich auf meinem :)

Sophie