Maybe not so good.

Of course, what I have just written was the good part of that night. This is what remains in my mind from the 2010 MTV Winter but I can’t deny the fact that I had a very bad time at some moments of the night.

First of all, it is not a great idea wearing your Converse to ANY concert. The thing gets worse if you wear your Converse in an Arctic Monkeys show, where you definitely are going to be pushed and tapped by people. But, it becomes the worst if the concert’s premises are flooded.

So, the situation was the following: before all the show started I had my feet under water and I was about to die from freezing. But, as I consider myself a very positive person, I naively thought that things couldn’t get worse, I mean, I was about to see live one of my favorite bands on stage.

And yes, the show started and my optimism level was considerably high taking into account that I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. But suddenly, in the middle of my enjoyment, one of the most disgusting things you can ever see and feel, just happened. A drunken English man vomited just right by our side. Maybe you are already imagining what happened to us, or rather, to our legs and feet. I’m not going to describe the sensation of having someone’s vomit in your body; only remembering the feeling makes me want to vomit too. The “funny” thing (now, funny not then, obviously) is that the show was not even in the middle of its duration, so we had to spend more than 3 hours with vomit in our feet.

But, I thought, “Oh c’mon, this is maybe the only occasion you have to see one of your favorite bands performing live, so don’t think anymore about your feet and just concentrate on having fun”, so that was what I thought for an entire hour. But, by the time Arctic Monkeys had to come out on stage, more and more people started to push us, as it usually happens in massive concerts. I’ve been lucky enough as to attend many concerts and, I have to say that, that night was so far, the worst concert-experience ever regarding to people’s attitude. At some point, people started to push even harder, just for bothering and annoying everybody. When the band came out, the situation got completely mental. Everybody started pushing towards the stage so heavily, that I almost fell down twice on the vomit puddle.

In general, the concert went right despite of the fact that I couldn’t move or breathe due to the massive amount of people around me, I lost my friends like a million times and my legs were having more and more vomit on. At least, the band played my favorite song at the end “505”, as I have previously said.

After the concert, I thought that the night could improve by going out to some club or two. Everybody agreed with the idea but there was one problem: we were still full of dirty. Luckily, one of my friends had an apartment in Valencia so we decided to go there, clean up ourselves and the just go to party. I was craving for clubbing. Can I just say that again? I NEEDED to go to some disco and get crazy after what I experienced at the MTV Winter =(. But apparently, the luck was not by our side because there was no taxi around and after we had been waiting for one, we decided to go on foot. An HOUR walking.

By the time we got home, I was absolutely tired and frozen. We cleaned up our legs and feet and while we waited for our clothes to get dry, some of my friends fell asleep so my party-clubbing plan vanished. I was so upset with the end of what seemed to be one of the best’s nights ever, that I decided to go to sleep and just forget all that stuff.

The following morning, I got up quite early, I picked up all my things and I got a train back to my hometown, Castellón.
So that was my not-so-funny part the night of the MTV Winter. Anyway, I had a great time and thanks to my bad luck, now I have a story to talk about.

Love, love, love...what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

ANTHEA: “Oh! Seems that somebody likes you.”
PANDORA: “My boyfriend gave this to me. I only knew him for three days…Thomas…now he’s gone.”
ANTHEA: “But it was fun while it lasted, hmm? So much fun…”
PANDORA: “Yeah, it’s called love.”
ANTHEA: “Oh...that’s a big word.”
PANDORA: “I don’t know, four letters...…Ah.”

Yesterday afternoon, I had a very interesting and revealing chat with one of my best friends. We talked and rambled about love, relationships, emotions and how we like to complicate every little thing. I particularly found talking about all this stuff really corny, but I do love talking with this friend because we have conflicting thoughts about almost everything; everybody says that it’s hilarious seeing us arguing specially about these matters, and I always enjoy seeing other points of view that can make me think and question everything.
So, the thing is this: I have a very radical stance about love in relationships and over the years I am more and more convinced about my opinion. I don’t really think that love, as itself, exists actually. Of course, I am talking about love in couples not about other kinds of love as the one you can feel for your parents, sons or friends. I know that most people who may read this will think that this is so sad or that I haven’t live enough; I’m sick of hearing people telling me this all the time. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter how hard I try, every time I try to believe that yes, in fact love does actually exist, I face with the reality that I have been facing for all my life. This reality is very simple, but there is no doubt that it marked me so much that it made me be the way I am now. My parents got divorced when I was like 3 years old; it was a very traumatic experience for me, but it was even worse when they started to get on extremely badly with each other. They have been hating each other since then until today, after 16 years (unbelievable). I want to think that they did realized that I was in the f****** middle of everything, but actually they didn’t, because then I don’t explain how they allowed me to see all that hate between them. And my question is: how can you hate that much someone you have been crazy for? There must be something remaining there. Touché.
After that, my mom married again and got divorced again, and my father got married twice and divorced two times as well. None of these breaking ups were peaceful, of course. So there I was, growing up watching how my parents had love failures and telling me all the time that love was just a waste of time. And maybe they were right, I mean, in the end, love never lasts; daily routine and constant disappointments make love weaker over the years. One day, you find yourself wondering what the hell are you doing wasting your precious time next to somebody who doesn’t really makes you happy. As I once heard, can’t remember where exactly, at the precise moment when you ask yourself if you actually love that person, you have immediately stopped wanting her/him. I guess this is quite clear: when you are in love with someone you can’t even imagine that question, you are just feeling it.
So that is how I see it: people develop a crush on somebody just for a while but, love? Really? Let me doubt it. Furthermore, I think that well, it can be a good thing while you are super happy in love with your marvelous and loving boyfriend/girlfriend but as I see over and over again, people who are in love live in a permanent state of fear. They are afraid that their partner leave them for another person, because they got tired of him/her, or the worst in my opinion, you are just not good enough. I sick of listening to the friend who I mentioned above telling me how worried she is of losing her boyfriend and how insecure she feels about her since she started dating with him. I guess that nobody wants to get hurt. The funny thing is that they are very happy together, but anyway, the fear is hidden behind, right? Or maybe not. You never know what’s going on with feelings. What I definitely know is that I don’t want to feel miserable for nothing, I mean, there are so many things that are much more important that having love pain.
On the other hand, I constantly see those couples who apparently love each other. Then I can’t avoid starting wondering to myself, ok, what if IT does really exist? Just because I’ve never seen it around me, it doesn’t mean that love couldn’t be real. That is the endless argument I always have with everybody, especially with “oh-I’m-so-in-love-and-my-life-is-so-fantastic“ people. I would love to believe in love, so that I could understand so many things, but maybe my mind or myself are too plain to get it.
I feel like I’m going on and on for too long about this now, I’m even getting bored! (just kidding). In any case, I would like to end this thinking by saying that I’m very optimistic about all these things, I mean, even my mother, after all the incredibly bad luck she has had, is still believing that one day she will find the love in someone again. Maybe she’s right, or maybe not; one thing I know for sure, nobody wants to be alone. I’m on my way to believing.

“Maybe I know, somewhere
Deep in my soul
That love never lasts
And we've got to find other ways
To make it alone
Or keep a straight face

And I've always lived like this
Keeping a comfortable, distance
And up until now
I had sworn to myself that I'm content
With loneliness

Because none of it was ever worth the risk, but

You, are, the only exception…”

Unlucky day...part 2.

Well, it seems that today I feel ‘strong’ enough to keep up with my story. So, I ended yesterday saying that I was going to attend my Chinese classes. I still can’t believe it, but, eventually I caught the right bus, in the right bus station, at the right hour, and (I still can’t believe it now) it took me to the right place, on time. ‘Hallelujahhhh!!! In the end I apparently was having a little bit of luck. Yay!!! J
How naïve I was. I thought for a second that I was actually being lucky, but then (believe it or not, but this is the absolute and only truth) the class was suspended due to the teacher’s sickness. I was about to kill myself. How could that being happening to me? I mean, I’m not a bad person, at all…at least not intentionally. I’m a friend of my friends, I buy sweets and candies to my siblings, I recycle as much as I can, and I’m against testing on animals….c’mon I even had good marks in my A-level exams!! So, did I really deserve THAT??!! No, for God’s sake, NO!
But then, as always, the worst part was coming, because as you’ve probably guessed by now, I missed the last bus to my house. No joking. It’s kind of funny when I think about that now. Oh no! It’s hilarious when I remember that, in my way home, it started raining and I had no umbrella ( but I had hundreds of handkerchiefs!!). So yes, I made my way back home under a heavy cold rain, but hey! No wind this time. That was progressing. And you can make your journey a bit happier with some music. Well, certainly you can’t if your mp3 player’s battery is empty. Great. But… you can always sing in the rain, right?
No, don’t panic. I didn’t. Too many strange looks at me that day.
Aha! And then, in the second most humiliating moment that day, I accidentally came across with the person I had a little crush on. That’s so perfect!! While I was waving to him, with a big smile and saying ‘hello!’, he didn’t even put his eyes on me. I mean, I’d rather him to hate me, at least he would realize that I exist and it won’t be so miserable to say ‘hi’ in the middle of the street to anybody. Anyway, a couple of dirty old men standing near me gave the salute back, so I can’t complain, can I?
By the time I got home, I was soaked (not as much as all my important, note that, IMPORTANT papers were, but anyway) and I felt that I was beginning having a severe cold. And……… voilá! My favorite part. Not then, obviously, but it is actually a great moment for a comedy film or just something that you’ll tell people and they are going to be laughing at you for the rest of your life: aha, I forgot my keys at home and nobody was in. Isn’t that just incredibly unreal? I mean, these things never happen in real life. Well, they do in my world. I remember thinking ‘I can’t believe this is happening, this must be a sort of punishment or something like that.’
How my unbelievable story ended? Well, I had to wait an entire hour for my mom to get home, in the freezing rain, with all my university stuff, and feeling terribly sick.
It’s not that bad if you compare this with REAL tragedies, now it is just a quite funny story, but in that moment I felt very miserable. Of course, I was sick for a long time, but luckily I didn’t get pneumonia or something worse, so…
That was my worst-luck-ever day. Since then I’ve been working on my luck and now I am able almost not to miss one bus in a day. I’m progressing!

There are days when it's better not to getting out of bed...

Ok, now, who on earth has the worst luck ever when it is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life? Well, apparently, I have. But no, it's not my intention to expose here all of my misfortunes, no, I’m decided to use this story as a kind of therapy, I don’t even care if this interest people or not, I just want to laugh at myself and my luck; I think is the best in the end and, an important lesson I’ve recently learned: life could be hard and senseless sometimes, but we must try to look for the positive point of view in every situation we could face with. In my case, I used this for making my family and people around me to laugh at that unlucky human being that I am. And that’s a good thing, I think.

Let’s start.

I’m not the kind of person who likes to get up early(pretty early, in my case) in the morning, with a splendid smile in the face and in a very good mood. Ok, no I’m not, but hey, I respect if you do (for God’s sake, do you???!!). So, when you’re that kind of person, who has to wake up early, but by chance, your mobile phone alarm clock doesn’t rings that day, even worse!, when you realize that it is 7 o’clock and you have already missed the bus that takes you to the university, in an important day, oh God, you just want to go back to bed! I ran behind the bus, I ran as I’ve never run before, but I missed the bus anyway.

And, as people always tell me, I’m different. Because that day(the-most-windy-day-I’ve-ever-seen) I should have stayed home, (like a sensible person would have done), instead of trying to get to college on foot… could I possibly be more silly? 3 kilometers in a windy day could seem years, trust me. So, that was me, with my heavy rucksack, my boundless folder full of papers (half of them went with the wind, obviously) and a dozen or handkerchiefs or so (as you imagine, I lost a pair or more in my way). Now I can understand the strange faces of people in the street watching me. But I just hate that! When you’re in your most ridiculous moment, making weird movements with your face and your body because of the wind, and noticing how people in their comfortable and warm cars are staring at you with a smile. You want to kill them, although only because you want to get in their cars and get warm.

Oh! Another thing to point out: do you know how hard it is to walk (or drag in my case) with strong head wind? Well, I do. It makes your progress slower, and I felt as if I was in the slow motion mode. Of course, it took me three more times to get to my destination, but I eventually did after 2 hours, hundreds of papers and a couple of scarves lost and being a bit humiliated.

“Ok, it was not that bad, I missed the first class, but at least I can attend the other ones”, I thought. Poor me. I didn’t know what was about to come. When I went upstairs to my next class, some of my classmates told me that the lesson had been suspended. Oh no. I started laughing and crying at the same time and they looked at me as if I was mad or something. Again. I started complaining about how I hated my life and that stuff but then I thought “hang on, you’re a strong (?) and mature(?) woman, you can deal with this.” So I recovered myself and went to do something productive with my desperation.

After been waiting during two unproductive hours, I could eventually attend my next class: Catalan language. Lucky me, because I have zero command on it and is my least favorite subject. Is not that I hate the language itself or something like that, it’s just not my cup of tea. And after 2 hours in the class my classmate and I were some kind of ‘ The Octopus Boy’ and ‘ The Sea Horse Girl’ trying to save the underwater depths and the marine life from the evil plankton. Uffffff… I’m sorry 'bout that. I guess those lessons are just too much for me.

I was intellectually exhausted when I got out to the class and after that I had to go to the Official Languages’ School for my Chinese lesson. But, as lucky as I am, I missed the bus that supposedly had to take me there. Again. I was about to give up and come back home when my little and stupid common sense told me that I definitely should go there. So I just did.

Unluckily, I don’t feel mentally strong enough to write all the misfortunes that happened later, so maybe I’ll post them tomorrow. I kind of feel miserable now!

BON IVER

I’ve been currently obsessed with this wonderful group, and now it is one of my all-time favorite bands.

The band was formed in 2006 by American indie folk singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. His story still amazes me in some way.

A year ago after breaking apart from his band DeYarmond Edison, and breaking up with his girlfriend, Vernon went to his parents cabin in Wisconsin to hibernate for the Winter and he stayed there for three months. He did not intend to write or record any music during that time, he just wanted to be alone in a cold place; however, his creative instincts could not be sedated.
And, eventually, he wrote and recorded his first album there, a masterpiece called ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’. Vernon played all the instruments during recording and each song was edited with a large number of overdubs, which help the album to keep that ethereal and nostalgic feeling. He must of been feeling all kinds of melancholy because ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ is drenched in a sort of lonely, sad feeling as well. You can almost feel him searching for whatever answers he was seeking, all alone, holed up in a little cold cabin in the middle of nowhere. These feelings are tangible in the lyrics and the acoustic strums of his guitar. With his guitar and his haunting raw voice, Vernon recorded the album by himself using just a very basic small recording set-up, and, as he declared, some other small things that he made or found lying around.

When the album was finished, it was almost not released, but then, Vernon gave the album to two of his friends who encouraged him to sent his creation to some labels just as a group of demos. The album was released by Vernon himself and it had a significant positive reception, making Bon Iver quite popular around the net.

After that, Justin Vernon was signing to the indie label Jagjaguwar which gave Vernon’s album a proper and decent release. The album was re-released in 2008.

The listening of the whole album is such an experience, and every time I heard it I feel like I’m in the middle of a snowy woods, watching the freezing sunrise. In my opinion, all the tracks are just brilliant, but songs like ‘Flume’ , ‘Skinny Love’ and ‘ For Emma’ are simply superb and genius. An experience for all your senses.

In January 20 of 2009, was released the EP ‘Blood Bank’, the continuation of ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ which features four tracks, among them, the excellent ‘Blood Bank’ and ‘Woods’.

The label Jagjaguwar said about ‘Blood Bank’ that ‘as much as Emma is about the cold, the Blood Bank collection is about the warmth that gets you through it. You can feel the air move. Like a fire you've been stoking for hours and finally got to sustain itself, the heat blisters your face while your back is frozen solid.’ I totally agree.

This extended play had also a good reception, even arriving to the top of the UK indie chart in 2009.However, and despite his success, Justin Vernon has said that he will be recording his songs and making albums without producers and engineers because, as it is proved, he is capable enough to do it by himself.

FIB FIB FIB!!!

Well, as you probably have already guessed, this year I attended the FIB (International Festival of Benicassim) and it was such an amazing, crazy and musically wonderful experience that I feel like I must share it with everybody, what I saw, what I listened, what I lived in my very first FIB.

So, who would have said to me that this year I will be going to the FIB?

It was all coincidence; I was travelling with my family when I was offered three free tickets for Sunday (the biggest day at the festival). I didn’t even think about it. I took the tickets, two of my friends and we went ahead to enjoy the festival. On the bus route to Benicassim, you could already feel the excitement and vibration of all the people who went there. It was a great feeling, it seemed that everyone knew each other for years( well, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe those people REALLY knew each other…Anyway, I like to think that it was because of the festival :)

Once we got in town, we went walking to the site enabled for the fib. Benicassim seemed like a Little England due to the fact that there were so many English people. The terraces, bars and even every little restaurant were full of people and the streets were almost unable to walk without bumping with people around.
One of the things that most caught my attention was the number of people who were already drinking alcohol at four in the afternoon, a lot of them were almost drunk, but I thought that in my short experience at festivals, maybe this is the environment that usually goes with those events. Another thing that struck me was that all the ‘fibers’ (people who attends the FIB = fibers) that were going to the site we all formed a very long queue, one after another across the road, singing and dancing. From the outside this would have been a strange view: thousands of people singing and forming a huge row along the road.

I remember that day was very hot and the air was heavy and stifling, and as we walked, I could not stop to cover my head with a handkerchief, in fact, more than one person suffered a heat stroke that Sunday. Finally, we got to the festival site and I remember I was impressed by how big it was, and the number of people who were there. This was an area of 90,000 square meters, distributed in different areas and where there were about 36,000 fibers.

We quickly went to the post where you put the wristband to enter the site, and after looking at the schedule of concerts, we found ourselves completely in the center of the festival. What I saw fascinated me. Thousands of people (I have not seen so many people together in my entire life) of any race, color, style, all together. There were punks, rockers, preppies, indies, hippies, even rappers. That was something that I loved: people of all kinds having a good time, enjoying themselves with good concerts and better atmosphere. The thing is that apart from a few rude and disgusting people (I will relate in detail later), people in general was very nice, friendly and fun.

So, as soon as we arrived, we went straight ahead to the first concert which was the amazing Catpeople, who acted in the green stage. We actually didn’t know much of their work, but I liked their performance very much. For a group of Spanish-indie rock, the truth is that they do it very well, good music and good show

After Catpeople, came one of the great, in fact, the reason why we stayed to see Catpeople: the British alternative-rock band White Lies, who played in the green stage as well. In short, OMG WHAT A SHOW! Although I knew most of the songs, listening to them live, was incredible and the atmosphere was unbeatable. We all jumped, shouted, sang and danced to the tune of ‘To lose my life’ or ‘Death’ key moments in the performance of the British group.

After the concert, we went to recover some energy and because of there was enough time for the next concert we wanted to see (Friendly Fires), we dedicated ourselves to investigate the festival site. There were many food and beverage positions selling different sandwiches, pizzas, kebabs, vegetarian, etc... all at a good price and many of them were open until late at night (you need to eat something at 5 in the morning when you’re exhausted and just craving for something eatable). After filling our stomachs, we went to a resting area, full of green and grassy zones where you could simply lie on, relax and enjoy the environment.

After being there for a while, we noticed that the concerts’ schedule was changed and that Friendly Fires were going to be acting in 5 minutes! So we stood up as we could, got our things and run to the Fiberfib.com, the stage where the English dance punk group was already performing. After moving, pushing and bumping the huge crowd, and getting wet with beer and other liquids that I-don’t-want-to-know-what-exactly-they-were from people around us, we eventually got close to the main stage. Although I expected Friendly Fires to be better (I hardly could hear the singer, and even worse was the guitar and keyboard sound), I really enjoyed their hits like’ Your Love’, ‘Paris’ and the genius ‘Skeleton Boy’.

I can’t exactly remember when it suddenly got dark and we were in the middle of the night, I just know that in some moment I found ourselves wandering around with no fixed direction and sitting in front of the VIP entrance waiting for the next concert, the lovely Lykke Li. We were there for ages, and as we hadn’t seen the remaining part of the festival site, I decided to go for a walk to see the shops that were there, as the Fib shop (products and official festival merchandise), the fib market area with loads of clothing stores, music, posters, photographs, and so on.

The truth is that there were a lot of things to do between each concert. From playing the Guitar Hero, to dance until death in the Silent Disco, an original disco where you heard the music with a headphones.

And then, after almost 2 hours, we finally were enjoying Lykke Li’s performance in the Vodafone Fib Club stage. I must say that this was one of the best performances I had ever seen in my life. This girl is completely crazy! She appeared into the stage without shoes, saying ‘excuse me, I have no shoes, somebody stole them’ obviously she was joking..isn’t that sweet? Her performance was brilliant and her attitude on stage is unbeatable. She even played the cymbals with one single drumstick as if she was possessed for some kind of demon! That was really funny and we all passed a great time.

But then, I hated the FIB’s organization more than ever. They moved forward The Killers’ concert almost without announcing and we were in the middle of Lykke Li’s one, so we had to leave that wonderful show and run desperately to the green stage, hitting people and receiving more swearwords than ever. I did learned useful English that day! (In fact, that really helped me to be understandable a few minutes later…)

Eventually, we got to the green stage. Or where it was supposedly standing because literally I couldn’t see it. If I before said that I had never seen so many people together in my life, I was lying. It was in that specific moment, in that concert where I got shocked because of the massive crowd of people around me. In fact, The Killers’ concert has been the largest in FIB’s history. And I believe that! I was there!
Of course, the show was superb. They played the magnificent ‘Mr. Brightside’, ‘All the things I’ve learned’, ‘Human’, the awesome ‘ Somebody told me’ (where all the people, including myself, obviously, went crazy) and ended up with the great ‘When you were young’. Incredible and wonderful show. I can’t even explain it with words, I mean, Brandon Flowers didn’t stop moving throughout all the concert and oh god, those guitar solos! Best experience ever. That’s all.

Finally, and by the time we could escape from that mass of people, we came back to the Fiberfib.com stage to enjoy a bit of dance and electronic music. The thing is that we stayed there, almost dead, until 6 a.m., when I decided to go to one of those resting zones, because I couldn’t stay awake, not even standing, any more. And then, at 7.30 in the morning, we left the precincts, with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was so sad to leave that place where we had spent the greatest time of our lives, but, on the other hand, we were terribly tired, starvation processes were beginning and I was craving for a shower.

So that was my ‘little’ experience at the festival of Benicassim. It was special because it was my first time there. It was even more special because it was the 15th birthday of the festival and everything was absolutely brilliant. I would repeat it again, doubtless. And again and again.

OH! I almost forget. I should explain why I was nice to know some English swearwords in that moment: I had a little argument with some English bad-mannered clearly drunk boys that were bothering us in the middle of The Killers’ concert. They tried to spoil our enjoyment but they did not succeed. We had the best time of our lives!