Spending the holidays in your hometown can be a complicated thing. The problem is that you can’t really do nothing. You are somehow always connected to the reality and the daily grind. But it was my own choice. And I had some work to do. But I found it somehow difficult to mediate and find a good balance of work and play in this situation. People were saying: Hugo, take a fucking break! … but taking breaks just seemed like procrastination to me, even though in my holidays.

Old story actually: I’m having too many open “construction site’s” in my life. No end in sight but at the same time I somehow embrace the stress — even in the summer. When not writing, designing, working for a longer period I begin feeling bizarre and not myself. I need my work to survive. It’s taking me closer to myself. It’s making me stronger.

Anyway, going to Berlin a couple of days was a good choice then. Staying in a less close-to-reality environment helped me in my practice of really doing nothing. Well, except dancing, sleeping, alcoholic drinks, rendez-vous’ with good people and taking long walks.
This city is always magic. It amost seems like a cliché these days, but you just feel an undescribable energy in Berlin that you can’t find nowhere else at the moment. I only stayed one week but it was intense. It started off with the 032c Bar Night which was super great. Met a bunch of nice people, also some who I knew quite well but never saw in person before — Cyprien Gaillard, Tamara Rothstein, Uli Schöberl — just to name a few!
Later on I headed with an old friend of mine to the Berghain to celebrate Ricardo Villalobos‘s birthday. Another mind-blowing night at the Panorama Bar. And it went on and on …

Since I’m back in Cologne I spend my days in Mike Meiré‘s Factory where I’m doing an internship at the moment. More info soon!

To end the Sommerloch dilemma or to enjoy it gracefully, here a little selection of good stuff I enjoyed a lot the last weeks …

Take a look at books like The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta) by Ernest Hemmingway, or Klingsors letzter Sommer by Hermann Hesse. I also explored some great summer flicks like La collectionneuse by Eric Rohmer or Pollock by Ed Harris … if you have some remorse-free free time, do it!
(And of course way too much new music to present here. But: check out The 50 Greatest Samples In Hip Hop History selected by Kon & Amir — good stuff to find there … but no techno this time! haha)

The summer is over — long live the summer!
I go back to work again!

À bientôt mes amis!

“Good designers (and writers and artists) make trouble.”
Tibor Kalman