Summerbreeze 2009

In the pretty countrside of southern Germany, metalhead-country was reinstated once again, for a period of 5 days. It all started on Wednesday the 12^th of August, when all camping-visitors started to arrive, me the boyfriend and a good friend of the boyfriend among them.

The nights

We found a nice camping spot with an old acquaintance of the boyfriend and his group of friends. Or what seemed to be a nice camping spot, until in the dark hours of the night some of the acquaintances of the acquaintance played very bad music from the 90ies, very loud, very close to our tent. Which lead the boyfriend getting very angry, which in it’s turn resulted in him trying to destroy the sleep-disturbing object, which failed quite miserably, but did make the noise-facilitators angry

We moved our tent the following morning, which seemed a good solution, and everyone seemed to be more reasonable, but that night they had also moved the getthoblaster, so the problem was not solved at all. After two hours of Captain Jack on repeat, I tried to reason with them, and the music was turned off. Too bad it was already getting light. In the morning, just a few hours later, we learned that we had not been the only ones being extremely annoyed by our neighbours.

Which resulted into some nice entertainment the last night. The night before had been quiet, and the boyfriend and I had slept for about 8 hours. A rare treat at a festival, but really necessary for us this time, after two nights of barely getting three hours of fragmented sleep. Around 3am the ghetto-blaster owners wanted to start their torture again. Another angry neighbour walked over, and requested that they turned the volume down. Their reply was that they could also turn the volume up. At which the, now even more angry, neighbour ferociously yelled that “if they did that, he would break their legs”.

It was peacefully quiet for the rest of the night.

The days

As real metalheads *ahum*, we spend our days in a nearby, Medieval town: Dinkelsbühl. At the second day we found an amazing place to have coffee or lunch. It looked posh and very upper-class, and so was the quality of the drinks and the food, but the prizes were more in middle-class range. we loved it so much there, we returned the next day. And the day there-after.

On the third day, we walked around through the town a bit, and it really is extremely pretty. Al the houses have different pastel-colours, no annoying signs of shops, but all the names of the shops painted on the walls in the same kind of calligraphy, lots of Medieval towers and other remains, a pretty little river… Really recommendable to have a romantic weekend, or to visit on a holiday.

The fourth day it was really warm, and we decided too have swim in the local “Strandbad”. That basically meant there was an area of the river reserved to swim in, with nice grassland with trees to spread out your towel. Also, toilets, showers, a possibility to buy ice-cream or something more filling to eat, and even dressing-rooms! And all of that for the price of just 2 Euro! Which was 50 cents less than the price of the showers at the festival terrain… We had some well deserved relaxation-time there.

The bands

And now for the most important thing of festivals (at least to my, abnormal, according to many, opinion): who did I see performing, which bands did I enjoy, which bands could quit right now without affecting me at all, and why!

Day 1

Powerwolf: It was a good show, as always. Nice, “standard” metal, with the over the top “we’re so satanic and evil”-theme. They take it so serious, that you can’t take it serious any more (and they don’t either, it’s just show and pretend). Too bad the audience downright sucked. Lots of people trying to get upfront and thereby pushing us in all directions, people smoking and almost

God Dethroned: We’d loved to see this band, but apparently there had been some changes of which the public had not been informed about, which made us not see them. Our guess is that God Dethroned and the band before Powerwolf had switched.

Day 2

Corvus Corax: Cantus Buranus: Downright amazing. One of the highlights of the festival. This is the way you can get metalheads to listen to classical music: create a good stage-performance and throw some pyro in every once in a while. They changed costumes about 3 times, had some nice dance/movement-choreography, and all the while playing very good music. Lots of dancing for me, and even singing along.

Day 3

Entombed: I did not really watch them, but I did listen while sitting on the ground. They were new to me, but it sounded very interesting.

Schandmaul: Pagan-ish stuff which was relatively boring. They do have cool shirts with “Folk you” on them.

Sabaton: A very good show! They play war-themed metal, and are always very enthusiastic. I really saw them grow larger and larger over the past two years. The crowd was huge, but there was still space to headbang. I really have to listen to their cd’s more often, so I can actually sing and yell along.

Amon Amarth and Haggerd: Missed them both, because there was a large time-gap between Sabaton and this band, and nothing worth staying on the festivalgrounds for. Since my knees hurt a lot (probably because of the dancing at Corvus Corax), we went back to our tents, and did not return. Too bad, because although I’ve seen them both before, they both are very entertaining.

Day 4

Evergreen Terrace: A metal-hardcore crossover band, of which I stumbled across a cd a few years ago. I loved their cover of “mad world” (which they also played live), and checked out some non-cover songs. All their own songs sound quite alike, but they have nice singalongable choruses, so I enjoyed myself.

Excrematory Grindfuckers: Grindcore. Missed them, because there was some overlap between their show and the Evergreen Terrace-gig. According to the boyfriend it had been a lot of fun.

Moonspell: Boring! Not going to waste more words on them.

Legion of the Damned: One of the bands I listened to while waiting for other bands to start. At one moment they even addressed the audience in Dutch, and bands who do that get points.

Volbeat: Rock ‘n Roll-metal! I had never seen them before, and I had never really heard songs, but the show was really entertaining and won me over completely. The singer wore suit-like stuff (must’ve been warm!), which was nicely out of character for a metal festival. I had to get used to his voice a bit, and I don’t think it is something I would listen too on cd often, but I would certainly see them again when they’re at a festival I’m going to.

Voivod: Weird that this band was placed in this timeslot on the main day. There was not much audience, and it couldn’t capture me.

Opeth: One of my favourite bands, and this was the 5^th time I saw them. As you can read here the show this not go as planned, with one of the guitars failing, and some other technical problems. Too bad, since they were the headliner of the festival. But I did love the jamming while the technicalities were being fixed, and I thought stuff sounded good, especially Åkerfeldt’s voice: he was amazing.

Promise

I discovered lately I cannot write when my head is too full. Many people write to empty their heads, but for me that doesn’t work. There has to be a certain space in my mind to keep ideas resonating and growing, I could not find that peace for the past few months, I am planning on writing more often from now on. I will update at least once a week, to get some rythm into it. Writing is one of those things you can only get better in when practising often enough, and weekly updates seem to be a good start.

So, as a belated new year’s resolution: every Friday you’ll see something new here. It can be in any form, in Dutch or English, it can be long or short, but it will be something. And I hope you will be critically reading and commenting. Which you will all do of course

Hair (or: To shave or not to shave?)

The last week I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my hair. Not about the hair on top of my head (that’ll stay as long as it is, and will grow longer over time, for looks and headbanging purposes) but my bodily hair. I’m one of those women who is “blessed” with a lot of hair all over my body from a very young age on (my pubic hair started to grow around my 8th year). I started shaving my armpits when I was 12, and my legs when I was 14. By then I had already heard other girls whispering behind my back “how I dared to go to gymclass with shorts and unshaved legs”. I still don’t know if they meant it degrading or admiring, but I do know I started wearing pants which didn’t show my legs shortly thereafter.

Bodily hair is not considered feminine. It used to be a very masculine thing, but even that is under debate now: look at all the metro-males out there, with their hairless chests. If you have hair on your belly, your breasts, your legs, your armpits, or god help us, in your face, you are an abomination of femininity and you should be punished. By being called names, being called ugly, a lesbian, a feminist, a man in disguise.

We might have forgotten along the way that real women do have hair on their bodies, just as men have. This forgetfulness is not that weird since we only see pictures of hairless women in magazines, only hairless women on television (I always wonder how the women in programs like “Expedition Robinson” achieve their hairless armpits and legs). If you would believe the media, women have no hair. The one thing which could prove the opposite are the commercials for all kinds of ways to get rid of the hair under your armpits and on your legs: all kinds of ladyshaves with special lotions to make your more feminine, epilators which don’t hurt (*ahum*) and creams and waxes and many more. For some reason the women on these commercials always look very happy and hairless, even while demonstrating the product. Something must be wrong here.

So I’m taking a stand here. I stopped shaving my belly, which is now quite hairy. I have a somewhat “masculine” body-hair pattern (too much male hormones, probably), so you can imagine how it looks yourself. I still do my armpits and my pubic hair, because I think that is nicer. For me, not for “the rest of the world”. I still shave my legs, but not as much as I used to do. This probably won’t make much of a difference in the larger picture, but that’s not the point: I am showing my stand in this debate, and I’m acting it. For me personally this small act of defiance against the societal pressure on female hairlessness means quite a lot. Besides the fact it also saves me a lot of time and money.

Patience please?

See the irony. I create this blog to post my stories, my poems, my observations in life, and now I have a serious writersblock. Everything I write, does not read how I meant it.

Actually, this writersblock has been here for a while. I started creating poems at a very young age, I think the first one when I could not yet write myself. Stories followed soon after, after I’d learned how to put letters onto paper. When I was 15 years old, there was this explosion of creativity in stories and poetry (mostly fanfiction and corny love poems, but still, I wrote and not all of it was awful). This stopped around the time I went to university and started to live without my parents. Since this time there have been sudden, short burst of inspiration of three poems in one night; a few nice columns over a few weeks. But now it seems I’m not able to write anything besides grocery-lists, or university papers.

It might come back, or at least I hope so. I’ll keep trying, writing random pieces, fostering inspiring thoughts. And if I feel it’s good enough, it might appear here. So, be patient.