Music

The Sound of Getting Out

Picture it: motorway, nothing in front of you, a good day. The wind comes in through the open windows. The engine is content with itself. You are leaving behind the things that weigh, and you know you will deal with them, only not now. Now you put the music on.

These playlists are for that. They are sorted by the countries where I heard the songs or picked them up. Don't expect folklore. There are local musicians in here, but mostly this is music that carries you further.

Georgia

Old country, old ruins, and people who struck me as rough and warm at the same time. The wars left a great many scars here, I’m told, and the Georgians I met stayed proud and stayed their own.

Their music has heat in it. Georgian dance looks to me like it descends from the fighting arts. In my experience, if you meet people here with respect, they hand you more hospitality than you know what to do with.

Turkey

I had only a vague idea of what mercy meant until I drove into Turkey. Almost everyone I met there was kind to me without asking for anything. A man with little shared his food, his floor and his good humour.

Most of the people I met think their country is poor. From where I was standing, it looked like one of the wealthiest places I had ever been. There were things about the way people dealt with each other there that I, coming from Germany, could not follow. I have stopped pretending I could.

Greece

Greece means monasteries to me, and family, and a certain kind of quiet thinking. On the way from Albania through Kalambaka and Thessaloniki to Bulgaria I was largely occupied with a relationship, and I could barely open my eyes to the country because personal things were in the way.

It is characteristic of Greece, I think, that I found something like a second family here, and that in their company it got easier to let certain attachments go. It would be a while yet before I could actually do it. But between the rocks and monasteries of Kalambaka I found my way back to trusting life at all.

Countries are missing here: Bulgaria, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Germany. I am working on it.