The Art of Standing Where I Technically Should Not Be

When The Mayor showed me the cartoon, I liked it very much. I was quite touched by it, actually.

The idea was simple, but also completely absurd in the right way. Garbage are playing at The Piece Hall in Halifax on the 16th of June, with Skunk Anansie, and somehow I am not only at the concert. I am on stage. Slightly behind the band. As a backing vocalist. Very calm. Very cool. As if this was always part of the plan.

Nobody explains how I got there.

That is the joke.

The Mayor explained how the cartoon had been created. First there was the whole idea: Breaking Routine Through Play. Then there was the prompt, the stage, the lights, the smoke, the guitars, the proper rock atmosphere, the real venue, the real band, and then me, standing there with understated confidence. In the crowd, The Mayor and Janita are looking up, not exactly shocked, because Brida people are rarely shocked, but quietly processing the situation.

The first version was okay, but the characters were wrong because The Mayor had forgotten to attach the photos. Then he did it again with the pictures of me, himself, and Janita. And then it worked. There was the stage, the band, the banner, the atmosphere, the lead singer, the drum kit with the Garbage “G”, and there I was, somehow in the middle of a rock concert.

The cartoon understood something.

It understood that the joke was not that I was embarrassing myself. The joke was that I looked like I belonged there.

And maybe that is the deeper joke. Maybe sometimes breaking routine does not look wild from the outside. Maybe it looks like a person standing in exactly the wrong place, but looking completely at ease.

The Mayor asked me what made the image playful for me, this idea of being a backing singer for Garbage.

I said: it is like a dream.

Of course, in reality, I could not sing one note. I would be far too excited. I would probably be frozen on stage. But the dream is still there. And it is not completely from nowhere, because I have already met people around the band. I met the husband and sound engineer, the tour manager, and last time I also met the singer from Angelfish and her husband again. So when The Mayor said, “Maybe in Halifax next month it is not completely out of this world,” I had to laugh.

Maybe not completely.

He then asked whether this play was humour, escape, imagination, obsession, ritual, or something else.

For me it is imagination. And escape.

But not escape in the sense of running away from life. More like stepping out of the normal frame for a while. The theme of the month is play, and for me this is exactly that: break the routine, play something.

Garbage has been part of my life for a long time. The Mayor and I have been talking about them for one or two years now. I have been to concerts in Wiesbaden and Edinburgh, twice. This year there is Hamburg, then Halifax in the UK, and then also Mainz at the end of June. Three Garbage concerts in June. That is not a bad month.

For some people a concert is just an event. For me it becomes a journey.

It is like a fixed point. Or maybe a fixed star. The whole year has a focus because there is a concert ahead. I live and work towards it. After one concert, there is hopefully the next one. And when there is no next concert yet, I start hoping for the next album. They will start working on a new record, maybe in September, so perhaps there will be something in 2027 or 2028. Then, hopefully, more concerts.

The Mayor said I sounded almost like a teenager, shouting for a favourite band.

I said yes, emotionally maybe a little bit like that. Not hysterical. But joy inside. Enthusiasm.

And there is also something like family in it. At first, the connection with other fans was mainly online, writing over the net. But after the last concert, it became more personal. It felt like a little family. A club of enthusiasts. People who understand why this matters.

Going to a concert also has its own routine, but it is a routine that breaks my normal routine.

I change my character when I go on such a journey. I arrive very early. In Wiesbaden, even though it was only a short trip from Kassel, I started in the morning and arrived long before lunchtime. I remember there was a bus there, and maybe the band could have been inside, I do not know. It was around two o’clock, long before the concert.

That is often how it is. I am there many hours before.

The Mayor told a story from his time in London, when he helped his landlady arrange flowers at the Royal Albert Hall and was able to listen to soundchecks and rehearsals of a famous Lebanese singer. He said the real concert is polished, but the soundcheck shows the human part: what goes wrong, what needs adjusting, what is not perfect yet.

I understand that. I like being close to that world before the show starts.

When the doors open, I try to get near the stage. In Wiesbaden I was a little bit to the side, but still close. In Edinburgh, I wanted to do it better. Maybe fifth row, because then you still have a bigger picture. The Mayor asked whether I wear earplugs.

No.

I want the full sound.

At home, I listen to music with big headphones. But at a concert, I want the full sound. The Mayor joked that someone might stand in front of Garbage and listen to a Beethoven symphony through headphones. That would not be me.

For me, listening to Garbage is both present and past. I listen to old concerts from the 1990s, and I also listen to concerts where I was there myself. Today, you can sometimes find almost the whole concert online afterwards. That was impossible in the old days.

The Mayor mentioned how interesting it is when musicians age. Sometimes they become better because they no longer have to prove anything. They do not have to say, “Look at me, I am your future superstar.” They just stand there and sing the song they wrote forty or fifty years ago.

I feel that with Garbage too. I love the old concerts. But I think they are better now than they were in the beginning. Shirley Manson’s voice is even better now, in my opinion. They are still a great live band.

Then The Mayor asked me what freedom being a Garbage fan gives me. What can I do in that bubble that I cannot do in normal life?

That question touched something important.

For me, it is connected to my sister.

When I drive to a Garbage concert, it feels like I am driving with my sister in my heart. Just listening to them is often healing for me. It connects to loss. It makes me sad, yes, because she is not there. But in another way she is there. We always liked the music. My sister discovered them from the beginning, and we shared this music.

So when I travel to a concert, I am not only going alone. I take her with me in spirit.

That is why July is difficult. June is already not easy because July is coming. This year they play at the castle in Edinburgh, with the support of her old band Goodbye Mr Mackenzie. It is a perfect combination, but the date is the 11th of July. That is emotionally too much.

So the music is not just entertainment. It is memory. It is grief. It is healing. It is joy. It is family. It is play, but not childish play. It is serious play.

The Mayor then moved to my other side, the side he finds interesting. I work with modern technology, but privately I like older things. I drive an old Mercedes. I still use Teletext. I do not use WhatsApp. I am not on social media.

He asked whether this protects me from something.

I said it is not mainly about protection. It is more that I like older things. Sometimes because of the style. Sometimes because they simply work. In the case of Teletext, it works. I could take my mobile phone and search for the same information somewhere else. My father is more modern than me in this way. Manfred once showed me a Teletext app on the mobile phone.

But for me, Teletext on the television is the thing.

I would like to go into an electronics shop one day and ask the assistant: “On this modern ultra-high-resolution television, can you please show me Teletext page 553 for the weather in Hessen?”

The person would probably not know what I am talking about.

But that is exactly the point. You can have the weather in high resolution or low resolution. If the bad weather is coming, it is still bad weather.

There is something about older things that I like aesthetically. Not everything old is better, of course. But old cars, for example. My Mercedes is actually not old enough for my taste. It is 23 years old, made in the 21st century. In my world, that is a modern car. Before that I drove a car from 1991, so there was a big gap in comfort and technology.

The Mayor understood this because he drives an old BMW. He said it is beautifully made from steel. It may not have an MP3 player, and some systems are outdated, but it is solid. It gets him from A to B. That is what it needs to do.

I feel the same. A car does not need to be connected to everything. It needs to drive. It needs to have character. It needs to be comfortable. And if you let the car drive, instead of forcing it, it can also be quite efficient.

This is maybe one of the forgotten lessons.

Not everything needs to be optimised. Not everything needs to be updated. Not everything needs to be connected. Some things just need to work. Some things need to have style. Some things need to carry memory.

During the conversation, we also drifted into politics, as we often do. The Mayor and I can start with Garbage and end up with Brexit, Trump, Germany, France, local politics, national politics, and the strange question of what has happened to respect. We talked about how complicated everything has become, how people contradict themselves, how ideals meet reality, and how politics without respect becomes only noise.

But the important part was not which opinion belonged to whom. The important part was maybe this: even in politics, perhaps we have forgotten how to speak with people we disagree with. We have forgotten patience. We have forgotten proportion. We have forgotten that the opponent is still a person.

And perhaps that connects back to play.

Because play is not only fun. Play can loosen fixed identity. It can let us step out of our hardened roles. I am not only the technology person. I am not only the man with the old Mercedes. I am not only the Teletext user. I am not only the quiet person avoiding social media. I am also the person who, in a cartoon, somehow ends up as a backing singer for Garbage at The Piece Hall in Halifax.

And in that image, I am not foolish.

I am calm.

I am focused.

I look like someone who has discovered that breaking routine is not a workshop topic. It is a literal career move for one evening.

The Mayor said the strongest line in the cartoon was:

“Is Martin doing backing vocals for Garbage?”
“Yes, apparently he was breaking routine.”

That is exactly right.

Sometimes play is not about becoming childish. Sometimes it is about becoming more yourself. Sometimes it is about following a band across cities because the music carries your history. Sometimes it is arriving at the venue hours before the concert. Sometimes it is standing in the fifth row without earplugs. Sometimes it is driving an old car because it still feels real. Sometimes it is reading Teletext because the information is enough.

And sometimes, in the imagination, it is stepping onto the stage with Garbage, standing slightly behind the lead singer, and looking as if you were always meant to be there.

Ja.

That would be breaking routine through play.