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The Calm within the Storm

 

Chris: Well, heartily welcome to the very first Lord of the Lost podcast named “Lordcast”. That’s something we are trying to offer regularly in the future; so far we are planning to do a podcast every two weeks. This is Chris, by the way, for those who didn’t recognize me. I’m sitting here with Class and Pi (“Moin” “Hello Chris”), Gared and Nik will not be here today, we wanted to start just the three of us today and to viciously exclude the others…. and to give you the chance to ask “Where’s Nik?”

 

(0:33) (English)

Pi: Indeed.

 

(0:45)

Originally we had thought of picking a particular topic. I think, the topic for the first podcast is somehow predetermined already, I didn’t talk to you for a long time, so… let’s start talking about what we’re all doing at the moment.

Pi: And what’s up in general. I think, it is inevitable to talk about what unwillingly affects all of us.

Chris: Yes, maybe we’ll first tell you people out there … for the future podcasts we’d be happy if you’d give us topics that you want us to discuss about, when we share the date of the next podcast, whether all five of us, or just three, or two or four, maybe sometimes only one of us. In German, but also in English from time to time. But the topic for today it is somehow predetermined. What I did yesterday for example… I re-designed the mice cage completely. Like an interior designer. 

Pi: Cool!

Chris: Now you surely wonder, “Hey, you have mice?”  -No, I don’t have mice, but my son has mice, of which he has to take care himself, because I’m not interested in taking care of them at all, because I find pets stupid  in general, but I can tell you: doing that was really great, and I really put a lot of effort in it. Now the mice can run in circles, at the top of the cage, I installed tubes there, now there’s a “Mice-circuit” in the mice cage (this makes a word play in German, as it also means “Mice-circulation”). That was my highlight of this week.

Pi: So far.

Chris: So far.

Class: May I intervene? I think, at the beginning of the podcast number one we should inform the people, who are there, in English, that we’re doing this in German today, but maybe …

Chris: So we should cut it out? I think, we might put it in the description.

Class: I wouldn’t cut it out, as people will find it interesting, and it’s no big deal anyway, we can go back and forth, and point out to each other, if there’s something that needs to be told still, if something’s missing or whatever. This here is a really pleasant conversation and all natural.

Chris: But then we have to rewind now

*rewind sound*

Chris: … and put that to the beginning.

Pi: Nothing faked.

Class: I think, most people will keep up anyway and keep wondering, “what are they saying, what are they saying, what are they saying?” but ok, so far it has only been like 1-2 minutes…

Pi: And if they now get a quick introduction in English by you?

Chris: You know what? What I’m saying now, we’ll just put that to the beginning… what do you think of that? Because all the English speakers will have switched off by now already anyway.”

Class: Do you think so? How will you know?

Chris: They will think, “Hey, German is a really sexy language, but I don’t understand a thing!”

Pi: We could put “German and English, as we just discussed” – to the following title

Chris: We’ll make all of them happy. It’s important to find consensus, especially these days.

Pi: Exactly.

Chris: That’s why I’m saying something now, and we cut it out and put it to the beginning, and so the people who listen to this in German now, will only hear a *whistle* there – and then it goes on.

Pi: Right.

Chris: I do this now - *whistle* Done! We’re back again!

Class: It has worked!

 

(4:17)

Chris: What have you been doing so far? My highlight so far has been the mice cage, but of course I also have a lot of other, totally boring things to tell.

Class: You’re talking about yesterday, now it’s the question, about quarantine, if you can even call it that here in Germany, here it’s a lot more relaxed than in other parts of Europe…

Chris: It has been a highlight of a longer row of days actually.

Class: I have projects in my mind, like something I have been thinking of for years already, I am planning to tile the bathroom anew.

Chris: That’s also very exciting.

Class: To just do something, that I haven’t done for years, among others also to build Lego...

Chris: You want to tile 80 m² yourself?

Pi: Talking about the guest bathroom, right?

Class: Well, I have time. But talking about yesterday… I have pushed the limits of the quarantine rules by doing a cycling tour with our dear band colleague Gerrit, where we tried to keep as much distance as possible, and to stick to the required number of two people or below, to avoid possible police checks and the necessarily following fees. We pushed the limits, as now in quarantine the weather is perfect, while it has been really bad beforehand.

Chris: I have been outdoors yesterday as well and immediately got some angry messages, to which I have to say, “People out there, to go outside … I went outside with my son, I didn’t lick strangers, I didn’t lick bannisters, I went out into fresh air, to the Elbe beach, took a walk there and did some sports, I played some soccer with my son, which is also important to stay healthy. And as far as I know – I’m not an expert here – but as far as I know, this virus doesn’t stick in the air like an aerosol for hours, so, if you keep your distance, I think it is healthy to go outside. But as I said, I’m no expert here. But that’s just what I did.

Pi: But actually it’s the experts, who recommend you to go outside, also for your mental health.

Chris: Definitely, that’s not negligible. It was really nice. Usually I’m someone who likes to stay inside and likes to work from home and enjoys to be at home a lot, but this “being stuck together”, and also that “home-schooling” is a totally different thing. 

Pi: I think, at some point you just get highly stressed. That’s why I prefer to go outside, and recently I went jogging to the Alster (river in Hamburg).That was pretty long and also pretty cool, because the quarantine weather was just perfect.

 

(07:16)

Chris: I also have to admit that I miss doing sports a lot. After watching all of Netflix for the second time in the evening, I try to do some dumb bell exercise at home… and that Pornhub premium account for free doesn’t help with sports either.

Pi: Do we have that in Germany now, too?

Chris: I just got that funny message from Gerrit in our group…not sure if it’s supposed to be a joke…?

Class: I think in Italy it is agreed now that everyone gets a free Pornhub premium account till the end of April.

Chris: Really, no joke?

Class: no joke… and in Germany it is still to come.

Chris: May I ask a short question on this?

Class: Yes.

Chris: I don’t know every single video in Pornhub, but I have to tell, the choice is immense, also for what you get “for free” there. So, is it really worth it, if you have Disney plus already, to also get Pornhub Disney plus, like, seriously, meanwhile there’s even “Corona porn”.

Pi: What? No.

Chris: Really. You all - go to Pornhub and type “Corona”.

Pi: I’m really scared of that…

Class: Actually – please DON’T do that, you all.

Chris: Women wearing masks, men wearing masks, something like “Blah blah … young student fucked in quarantine”…

Pi: Is that the new way of “playing doctor”?

Class: Actually it is taken from real life - quarantine.

Chris: As well as there is “refugee porn”…

Pi: Really? Oh my god.

Chris: …something like “sexy girl from Idlib fucked hard by...whoever”

Pi: Border patrol.

Class: Sorry, we mean that… it’s a joke.

Pi: No, it’s not a joke.

All at the same time: pointing out, that they’re just stating facts here that these things exist, but that they don’t stand for that.

Chris: These things exist, just like e.g. Nik thinks, those shoplifting porn are real.

Pi: Nik, if you hear this now… these are not real!

Chris: “Young woman caught shoplifting by private detective and gets done in his office” - a really nice young lady with a freshly lasered pussy -what a coincidence! ... And she even wants it! But really, no joke, there’s “refugee porn”, and now, totally new, “Corona porn”. But, back to the question…

Pi: What was the question???

Chris: Is it worth to get Pornhub premium free? As the choice is already immense.

Pi: And you don’t actually need more than these up to 10 minutes, of which you skip 9 minutes anyway.

Chris: First I always light candles.

Pi: Yes, me too. And I also know that from friends: you watch the first two minutes, then you skip to the second third … and then to the end.

Chris: actually they are marked by scenes, there’s these little yellow lines there, so you know, “Aaah..”

Pi: Not in every video.

Chris: At Pornhub they are. So below you already can spot the changes of positions. Like chapters are marked. Think about it - someone has to do that job. What people are doing that? Is it the users, like, you produce your video, upload it and put these marks there yourself then? Or is it Pornhub employees? Or…?

Class: I think, both. I think, it is similar to… I don’t know, if people know that… at Twitch or something, that theoretically every channel can upload something there, but has to meet particular standards, probably there’s no blood to be spread or something, I don’t know…

Chris: But there’s deflowering porn also.

Class: Could be, I don’t know.

Chris: As I’ve heard.

Class: Like, everybody has their channel there, and I don’t know, if there’s advertising revenues flowing, that go to the users…

Chris: Why are you laughing now?

Class: Who can be amateurs, I think…  I’m not sure, how it works there.

Chris: If you get asked, “What’s your job?” – “I’m …file manager at Pornhub.”

Pi: “At a big video company for adults.”

Chris: Can you still fancy sex then? I can’t remember.

Pi: I don’t know.

Chris: When I had just finished my audio engineering education, I did an internship in a studio in Hamburg for two weeks, where they synchronized … let me explain to you people out there… voice synchronization. So when e.g. Johnny Depp speaks German in “Pirates of the Caribbean” – he usually doesn’t do that. There is a German dubbing actor, who speaks his part, and – actually even porn gets synchronized… which made me re-define the word “ Lip sync”… but that’s something different. I still wonder to this day, why porn gets synchronized in the first place, but anyhow, I did my internship there and synchronized porn there. Afterwards I was so horribly blunted… of course, for the first 30 minutes you find it cool, but then it turns to ugly, and then you get home and I really had no desire to have sex with my girlfriend in these two weeks.

Class: I can imagine that. But… concerning that “job description” – we have a common friend, who worked at a publishing house, where they also sold and offered porn videos via an online portal, and it was his job, to watch porn videos all day long, to filter out, if they are still legal or in this respect illegal.

 

(12:58)

Chris: Child porn, snuff etc, all those bad things…

Class: …so he would have to report them. It was his job to evaluate this all.

Chris: Right, I remember he talked about it.

Class: And that is a really hard challenge, there it is hard to imagine that one can maintain the relationship to one's own sexuality normally there. Really difficult thing.

Chris: How did we end at porn thematically so quickly? I think, it was my fault.

Class: Yes, you immediately went from quarantine to porn. Your second word already.

Chris: I’m sorry.

Pi: And the question beforehand was “What are we doing at home all the time now?”  - probably that was the shortcut there.

Class: Ah yes, right.

Chris: I for one didn’t watch any porn during quarantine so far.

Pi: Me neither.

Class: I don’t watch porn generally.

Chris: Now we’ve set that clear then.

Pi: Actually we are only informed about it by others.

Class: Exactly.

 

(13:53)

Chris: What have you been doing, Pi?

Pi: As I already said, I was jogging at the Alster, I caught up with some Netflix series, which I usually very rarely watch, for example “Love, Death and Robots”, a really cool series.

Chris: Some episodes I didn’t like that much, but some were really really cool.

Class: That’s because they are so very different from one another, which is the special charm there.

I’m looking forward to the second season. By the way, we are not doing advertisement here, nobody is doing any sponsoring here.

Pi: no.

*whistle*

 

(14:25)

Chris: Love, Death and Robots!

Pi: Yes, that was really cool. I didn’t do much more than that so far. There were also some things left to do for Swan Songs III and there’s still some things to do.

Chris: For me too, I need about one more week, I have some studio stuff at home now, and then I have to do the final mixing. I started watching “Picard” yesterday.

Pi: I also did, I watched two episodes.

Chris: Really cool!

Class: I started watching it on tour, in the nightliner bus.

Chris: I wanted to wait till more episodes are available.

Class: So far it did not really get me yet, but I think I will give it another chance.

Chris: So far I only watched the first episode. I like, that it starts off so calmly, for a bit you get to see it from Picard’s point of view, where he’s in a totally different state in his life, where so are led in smoothly, where those puzzle pieces are only indicated. And already this … spoiler alert! You can switch off for the next 10 seconds… this “Data has a daughter, so to say”-thing, from his …

Pi: Was that in the first episode already?

Chris: Yes.

Pi: I didn’t pay enough attention apparently.

Class: I thought you watched two…

Chris: Well yes. From his essence…that totally fascinated me. But I have to admit, that I’m a total “commerce-treckie”. If I get to discuss about it with Corvin (most of you out there will know him)… Corvin pays a lot of attention to what is real, what is not real, the connections, what is correct…

Class: And the chronology and such…

Chris: I don’t care about that at all. I want to get entertained; as long as I enjoy it …

Pi: I see it similar, the part about “being entertained”, but it’s difficult for me with series, where it takes me 2-10 episodes to just get into it. How many episodes did you watch so far, Class?

Class: I watched two, but I always did at about 3am, shortly before falling asleep.

Pi: Then the attention span is not that big.

Class: After a day on tour you’re a bit done anyway.

Chris: I have to admit, you’re not really into the story yet, because it starts slowly, but I immediately was in it emotionally, maybe also for sentimental reasons, because I grew up with Picard.

Pi: That’s true.

Chris: That was MY Star Trek generation, when I was a child, a teenager, all you could watch on SAT 1 (German TV channel) was Picard. Star Trek Voyager and alike. So already this - it starts, and you…

Class: Yes, definitely. Especially Picard, where you think, he’s an old man, his life is still good, but you get this slight melancholy that you get like when you become aware that for example your grandfather probably won’t live that long anymore. That’s also there somehow.

Pi: For emotional reasons or sometimes also for aesthetic reasons. “Hannibal” is that kind of series. It starts off pretty slowly at first, but there’s no take in that series, that’s redundant.

Chris: It’s a shame that series only consists of 2 seasons…or 3 seasons?

Pi: 3 seasons.

Chris: I found that too little, unfortunately. I was really into it and would have loved to see more. Was it not successful enough or why did they…?

Pi: No idea.

Class: Maybe it did not meet the production anymore, the proportion between the revenues and the expenditures. I have to admit, I found the first season congenial, one of the best seasons I have ever watched, second one was good as well, the third one was… I didn’t finish watching it. It did not catch me anymore. But I also have to admit, with these days’ series watching habits sometimes you don’t know, if you just had not been able to watch for a long time and so the story kind of “leaves you” and you’re not that attached to it any longer, or if you just didn’t find it that exciting anymore. That’s something you need to also consider. So I’m not saying, it just got worse, but…

Chris: This may be a reason why I waited till now to start watching Picard, now there’s the new episodes, now I can really dive into it. I find it really annoying, to really enjoy it… and then… damn, I have to wait for a week now.

Pi: Correct!

Chris: As it was with TV earlier. So I sometimes wait intentionally, so I then can really dive into it.

Class: That’s how I do it, too. If I know, a new series is about to come, a new episode every week, I just finish watching the other series first…

Chris: For example I would not have been able to feel the depth of the new Pastewka (German comedian) seasons at all. I binge-watched it the last 3 evenings. Very funny though.

Class: I watched the first episodes from the first season back then, when they came out. I found it really cool, I’m a big Pastewka fan too.

Chris: The concept is just…

Class:  But I need to get to it again and catch up with it. But at least when you’re retired, you will at least have a million hours of series that you can watch till the end of your life.

Pi: This here is like a temporary early retirement now.

Chris: Which of you is generation “Friends”? Did you watch “Friends”?

Class: I’m probably in that generation, but I did not watch even one episode of “Friends”.

Chris: Really? You neither?

Pi: I didn’t watch it either. I’m currently knock-off “How I Met Your Mother”, where everybody says, it is the better version of “Friends” or the worse version of “Friends”, I don’t know. Same version…

Chris: I know both, I love both, and I would simply say, it’s the same thing emotionally, I wouldn’t say “better”, because it’s too different. Both are really good. The feeling is the same. The same mix of humour and emotions.

Class: I can have a say there, as I am now at season 1, episode 10 of “How I Met Your Mother”…

Pi: And you never watched it before?

Class: I never watched it before, and right now I am…

Chris: Life without Barney Stinson …how does that even work?

Class: That guy is really cool.

 

(20:18)

Chris: he’s not cool, he’s legen… wait for it …dary!

Class: So far it is not totally getting me, not like “I need to watch an episode every day now”, but it is pretty cool and the characters are getting more cool, once you can really identify with them. For me it is starting to take shape now, so you know and understand where it’s leading to and how it will go on, that’s a perfect fit and is fun.

Chris: I love funny series, if they also include moments where you are moved to tears. “How I Met Your Mother” can do that, to make you cry, “Friends” could do that, even “The Big Bang Theory” could do that partly. Even “Modern Family”, which I find fantastic by the way, there you also sometimes think…

Pi: That one’s on my “quarantine list” too.

Chris: It has an incredibly great script. Especially considering the script, even in the German synchronized version, “Modern Family” is one of the greatest genius ideas of the last few years.

Class: It’s also important for these times…well, not only for THESE times, but actually for all times, that it doesn’t really matter who you are, you can be gay or whatever, it’s all no big drama, as long as the family sticks together, it will work out. That’s what I find great. It’s just about how you treat each other. That’s what I find really cool.

 

(21:54)

Chris: What do you think about the cover of “Swan Songs III”?

Pi: Hahah now that’s mean. It’s really cool.

Class: Really cool.

Chris: It got finished last night and we would really love to present it to you, but I think…

Class: We can hold it close to the microphone. Do you see?

Chris: But according to the time table the first music video is supposed to be released in early May and then the cover will be published too and the presentation starts.

Pi: It’s not that long anymore.

Class: These days it may feel like it takes longer, but in the end it happens faster than you thought.

 

(22:32)

Chris: It’s a strange feeling now, I sway between euphoria, now partly mixed with fear about the future, which is becoming fear about the present, because news come thick and fast, like now we have to cancel this show, virologists spoke with our booking agency, the big organizers assume that probably this year there will be not a single concert anymore in Germany. That is the worst case scenario. Others say, “it will be ok from Mid April on” , so you constantly move between hope, fear and on the other hand there’s such wonderful things like finishing Swan Songs, the new cover, the videos are in  progress; it’s like being happy, but on the other hand you have a feeling like “I’m totally looking forward now, but .. is it going to happen this way at all?” So, you cannot really look forward in a relaxed way anymore, like “Cool, we’ll do a nice classic tour in autumn” … will it even be possible by then? Are we going on tour at all?

Pi: Everything gets a really nasty damper somehow. I’m really looking forward to it all, but you really have to be careful to completely permit this anticipation without thinking “It maybe all gets cancelled anyway… or not…no idea…”

Chris: Do you know these conscious, lucid nightmares, where you have a nightmare and you are totally aware that you are dreaming?

Pi: Yes.

Chris: I often have that. I have a bad dream, but I am aware, I can wake up.

Class: Particularly in these times, or generally?

Chris: Generally. At night.

Class: So it’s not depending on the current situation.

Chris: I just wanted to know, if you know that, too. So, I often have this kind of dreams, I would be able to wake up, but sometimes I force myself to remain in the dream, to process the bad, but I am aware, I can get out of it. Sometimes it is similar to… like when I wake up in the morning, I check what’s the factual situation, every day it’s more, one morning it was more than 300.000 infected, next week it will be half a million, I get to think, “Do I wake up right away?” Then I realize, that I’m not even sleeping. To have this feeling… I think it is a feeling, I am no expert, that we probably are only at the beginning – that’s totally weird. Really, totally weird.

Class: I don’t know, sometimes I get to think, maybe my approach is not quite right, but I try to think… well, not to think, “everything is lost anyway”, but it’s possible that we have to persist for a long time, then I try, as many do, including you, to see how I can make through tomorrow, to stay positive, like I only make plans for this week and the next week. And everything beyond that … will come or won’t come. Currently we have no influence on that.

Chris: It’s a bit different for me. If it was just myself home alone, without a child, it would be easier for me to do it this way as well, but in my case there’s a little 8-year-old sitting there, who says, “Papa, what will we be doing next week, and when will school start again?” and I reply, “It will probably be closed for 3 more weeks at least, maybe longer”. We’re doing home-schooling, we got material sent from school… then it doesn’t work so easily with planning. Then I have to face what’s going on because I’m confronted with questions that I would never think about, if I didn’t have a child. Mika, my son, had a theory that I found really interesting. He said, “Papa, I have heard, once you had that virus, you won’t get it anymore at all or not for a long time anymore, because you develop resilience.” …I found it really cute that he expressed it that way…. And he said, “If enough people have had it at some point, can those return to school, who have had it already?” – And I thought, that’s an interesting point. If maybe 60-70 % of the population are immunized, may we go there? Do we possibly get different IDs in the future, with an engraved “R” for “resistant”, like, only when you have that you may go to the concert? Of course that’s a vision of the future, but already the idea of “You may go to school, as you already had it.” – As it was earlier with chicken pox or lice.

Class: Herd immunity. When all had it and everyone’s done with it then.

Chris: Exactly. That’s a question my son came up with and that’s why I have to face such things now independent of the question, what we could do tomorrow.

Class: Of course, it’s easier for me, as I can just decide, what I will do today, and what do I want to do tomorrow, and how do I feel about it today, how can I build on that tomorrow. That’s not possible if you are in quarantine in a family situation.

Chris: But I think that idea is not that wrong actually. That at the moment it is important to flatten the curve, that controlled shut down, to not overload the health systems, and at some point… it is a fact, that it is a disease that you cannot erase. It is a virus, that lives on our planet, like the influenza virus.

Pi: Probably, yes.

Chris: But at some point, when the curve is flat enough, and the growth of it hopefully has been significantly decelerated – at some point almost everybody will have had it. And the question is, how it will go on then. That’s really interesting.

Pi: I think, that’s the most important thing, that at some point you can have it under control.

Chris: It’s so weird, because everything we have in the EU – it probably won’t be there for years now. Like that you just go to France.

Pi: Exactly.

Chris: That’s so weird! What will touring in Europe look like in the future? Do you book a show, and then one in the bus, who did not have it yet, gets it years later, and because of that everybody has to go home again?

Pi: Maybe you can only go to particular cities, because those cities are marked with that “R” – that “resistant-R”. That you have to adjust your routing to this.

Chris: Or we are getting a new kind of “Apartheid”. Corona-Infected have to sit in the back or tour buses are split in “front” and “back”.

Class: To call that “Apartheid” … ehm, to compare it is ok but…

Chris: “Apartheid” originally only means splitting. 

Class: Yes, it has a negative connotation.

Chris: The word “Apartheid” in the original meaning is just…

Pi: Exactly.

Chris: That’s how you so easily get misinterpreted these days. People, go for it. Cut out that one sentence. No joke now… travelling in the future. Germany or the world are not totally immune yet. An ICE train goes to Berlin. The first 3 wagons …

Pi: Yes.

Chris: Or the last 3…

Class: The last 3 have to go on.

Chris: Sort of like, “You may, you already had it.”, or “You have to”… I don’t know. It feels just so very abstruse to me, that… I wish I knew more. The problem is, you watch a Trump speech, and Trump is the kind of guy who thinks he knows it all… we can’t put ourselves in that position. Everything you say is marked with a question mark somehow. There I sometimes wish… I can read as much Spiegel (German magazine) and reports from the RKI (Robert Koch Institute, German experts), you only get what they want you to get.

Class: But you’re already doing the main thing right, if you only do, what the RKI tells you.

Chris: I still question everything and don’t think I have eaten the wisdom from spoons. I wish, I knew more.

 

(30:34)

Class: Yes, to reduce it to put away the Bild (German yellow press), to put away Trump, that you put away all the friends, who spread theories in the net, that you think, if you even have to do that, that you check the reports from the RKI daily, where the boss, I forgot his name.

Chris: Robert Koch.

Pi: Robert Koch’s son.

Class: Where that person informs, what’s the current state, what the current scientific studies prove – and what is to be done now. That’s what I do and everything else I put to the left and to the right and…

Chris: Yes and the people out there with all those Whatsapp messages telling to “do this” “drink a sip of water every 15 minutes” “don’t take this medicine”, all those chain messages… seriously, people… get informed from the right places. Scaremongering by spreading fake information is so incredibly dangerous. “Stick crayons up your nose, then it can’t get in”.

Pi: And there’s a nasty “Chinese whispers” effect to it.

Class: Everything that’s important for the population gets recommended by that RKI. Their only concern is that we are doing better. That’s why they are doing their best to explain to us what is necessary. Everything besides that doesn’t matter.

Chris: Of course you always find conspiracy theorists, who argue the controversy. And they spread their info equally, key word “flat earth society”, but…

Class: But if you don’t pay attention to them in the first place…

Chris: Of course.

Class: …if you click their posts, because you find the heading really interesting, like “Tomorrow the virus will be dead” – and you read that article – they already raise money with that!

Chris: That’s an interesting thing, concerning information culture. I recently had a conversation about it with Pi. People with particular approaches form various groups. Also in Social Media. For example in my Facebook profile I also did that. There are these cool apps like “Remove all Nazis from your list”, or all people who vote for AfD or NPD… that’s what I did. It’s interesting to see, which of your “friends” likes AfD – bam – friend removed. So if I post something like “Fuck Nazis” … whom do I talk to there actually? In my profile I can only talk to people who in principle see it the same way as me anyway. I don’t “heal” someone there. When recently Pi and me, before this all here got dramatic, were sitting in the studio in the morning, Merkel was doing a speech, we were watching that speech, to see, what she has to tell, what important changes are there, even if I’m not the biggest fan of Merkel and I don’t vote for CDU, I have to admit that she did a really good job with that speech, calm, really good, I watched it and also could take away something from it. But those “stupid ones”, those who are not interested in anything anyway and are against it in general … those won’t watch that speech at all in the first place. That’s what I find so weird, like with such important things as you just pointed out… most of the people who are listening to this podcast now, will know that anyway or they think, “Yes, he’s right!” Some will grumble as always, but the ones, who SHOULD hear it, who need to see reason, by listening to good words by you… they will never get to hear it. Because you have nothing to do with them. How do you reach out to those people? It’s difficult.

Class: In some countries, I think France or so, they just do loudspeaker announcements from the police vehicles, so you can’t really avoid hearing it. Of course you can find it stupid nevertheless. The problem is, people, who don’t care about what’s going on in this crisis, also don’t give a damn if you tell them what they are supposed to do now, because they are “immune” against these advices. That’s what made them, who they are… that they don’t want to accept advice, no matter who gives them, like the parents back then or whoever. There the only thing you can do, is to impose fines.

Chris: Like with those drones… I don’t know where it is, but they use drones to monitor the curfew. Was it China?

Pi: At least to supervise it.

Chris: And via those drones they tell the people “Go back home”.

Pi: Somehow it has to be carried out, and … you always have to keep in mind and realize, that it is meant in the best sense for everyone.

Chris: What’s a shame about it, as you say, “They go there in the police vehicles and do those loudspeaker announcements” - that it has a totally different effect. Those people, who don’t care about it, who wouldn’t listen to a Merkel speech, because they don’t care, or they don’t listen, because they find her stupid in general … If they would listen to such a calm, fact-based speech, they would rather be convinced than with that “damn cops” or even a drone, who tell them to go home…. Like “They don’t have the right to tell me what to do!” Do you know what I mean?

Pi: Yes of course.

Chris: It’s a real shame that you just cannot reach out to those people that way. As I already said… I was on my way to the beach with my son yesterday, and I saw exactly those… you have to be really careful with the words you use in a podcast… I saw exactly those antisocial people, 20 of them in one spot in the street, there you think…

Class: The problem there is also about the role model function, when Angela Merkel speaks to us – our chancellor, for those who don’t know that…

Chris: Could be that some don’t know that…

Pi: Very good!

Class: I for one, to get back to the AfD - I have no idea, what the AfD tells the people. But I have the feeling, that now, in the crisis, the role models of the AfD for a particular amount of people hasn’t got anything to say at the moment. You don’t hear anything from them at the moment.

Chris: It’s like with Trump. You cannot popularize it away.

Class: Still I feel like there are no “Trumps” left in Germany.

Pi: Right, because they keep their mouths shut.

Chris: There’s no Greta anymore either, because right now…exactly. It has totally shifted somehow. The call for general ceasefire yesterday … who did it come from yesterday, some politician?

Class: I think from the UN…something.

Chris: But isn’t it a shame, that it takes a pandemic to make a call for ceasefire? It’s good that it happened, but still…

 

(37:26)

Pi: Yes, and also on a different level, that finally those people get paid respect, who are – I think this is the non-word of the year - systemically relevant. 

Chris: I hear that every evening. But instead of standing on your balcony and to applaud to them… you should better go and donate 5 Euros to the Red Cross.

Class: I also find it important that those people get better payment. But I guess, one of the problems is now, that many companies don’t earn that much money now, some companies, and therefore are not able or don’t want to pay their employees more.

Pi: That’s difficult now, too.

Chris: That’s interesting about the health care system: What is still in private hands, what is nationalized or has been nationalized again, I think it depends a lot on this also, how the subsidies are distributed. I really hope, that those, who keep the system going at the moment, really do all they can, which is not only the employees in hospitals, but also those who administer the funds. That they do their best that those fund go to the right places. And us, we can actually …well yesterday, when I heard people applaud from afar, at 8 or 9 pm, I thought, that’s nonsense. I will donate blood next week.

Pi: I’m actually doing it tonight.

Chris: I think I will have to do some kind of testing, because of HIV, HPV etc I don’t know, so that you are allowed to do that, your tattoos have to be older than 4 months, that’s important, also for you out there, who comment on Facebook “I may not donate blood because I have tattoos” … you can donate blood if you have tattoos, only they may not be new.  Also no new piercing, cutting or something… but that’s how I can help.

Pi: If you have been to non-European foreign countries within the last 3 months.

Class: The best thing, which I find really cool, would be to combine it with the organ donor card.

Chris: That one on the one hand, and on the other hand… if some politician is listening now… please finally make sure that homosexuals may donate blood. They don’t all have HIV… or what’s the reason…

Class: They may not?

Pi: They may not, because they are a high-risk group.

Chris: What stupid law is that?! Is it only about homosexual men or women, too? Men.

Pi: Superficial knowledge, but I think it is only about men. Despite the HIV testing.

Chris: HIV testings are secure to about 99 point something percent... what stupid law is that?! Just to say that on another note. I prefer donating blood once a month over going to the garden 30 times a month to applaud for a minute.

Pi: There has just been that article in the Postillon (German satirical site), saying “Nurse finally can pay her rent because of the daily applause she gets now”.

Class: I would not dismiss the idea completely, because it’s a nice thing to do, just in case it sounded like that now, if you think it is good, and it also does help somehow.

Pi: You sound like a politician.

Class: It’s also raising attention and can be uplifting, if in your neighbourhood – I think it was “Ode to Joy”… I heard someone… this sounds so strange now, but my dishwasher was on, so I thought, “Oh fuck, that’s too loud, I’d really love to listen to him playing his saxophone back there!” So, that’s a good thing to do too, but you cannot say “I have applauded 2 times now, now I’ve done enough for the next 3 weeks!”

Chris: I don’t want to dismiss this, I like it, but I would never go to the garden and applaud. I’m the kind of person who thinks, now they’re all applauding, it helps for the moral, but it doesn’t help… I always try to find something, where I can really help. That’s rather my kind of thinking.

Class: That’s the right “next step”, so to speak.

 

(41:26)

Chris: I’ll go make some mineral water.

Pi: Exactly. Applaud, before you go off to donate blood or before you sign the donation cheque. To stay on a positive note, as sad as it is, that it takes such an extreme situation first, that people start to rethink, I also see it …

*glass falling over, noises from the background* … Chris is renovating the mice cage again!  - I also see it as a big chance, that now finally this rethinking takes place. That not everyone has “the ME” in the foreground, but that we can see, that you can make a difference yourself – as well as many many others. 

Chris: As we are talking about world improvement now… in times like these, when Corona will also overwhelm Africa, and they will have massive problems there, also other Third-World-Countries, many areas in the South American continent, Asia etc where partly not only companies like Nestle are stealing the mineral water from to sell it here. What you hear now, what I dropped there in the back, is Soda Stream… or something similar… unpaid advertising and such.

Class: Tap water.

Chris: In 90 % of the German cities you can drink the tap water. Go buy such a soda stream, it costs like 100 Euros or something, then buy one of those gas cartridges, they cost like 7 Euros, you can get 60 Litres of water from that. 

Class: And water is per se not bad.

Chris: Exactly. You don’t want to go shopping anyway, you don’t need to panic buy it … and it’s simply totally amazing!

Class: And it’s also much cheaper. The most important thing is: it costs much less.

Chris: And if you have to do the groceries for your grandparents now, or I have to do the groceries for my parents now, I may not even see them now, I leave the groceries at their door… buy one for them! They don’t need to carry the water bottles any longer. And with the new Soda Stream thingies, the bottles are made of glass, no longer those ugly, smelly plastic bottles. You can put them in the dishwasher, or just rinse them, that said on a side note, to make advertising for something really good. Make your mineral water yourself at home. Cheers!

Class: Generally… when you drink water… and you should drink water, no Coke or something… then use tap water.

Pi: Cheers!

Chris: When we were taking the Black Halo video, we learned, that you don’t need to toast with each single person and when there’s 100 people sitting at the table you don’t need to look into everyone’s eyes, instead you can say “Zentrale”, everyone lifts his glass… I want to introduce “Corona Zentrale” from today on, please. That is “zentrale” with one and a half meters distance.

Class: What we did wrong now… the glasses should not touch.

Chris: I’ll give you fresh glasses.

Class: That’s what we massively did wrong here and I want to apologize for that.

Pi: We’re definitely not faultless.

Chris: “Corona-zentrale”.

Pi: Yes. To you all.

Class: But it’s important, that you …I think… that’s my opinion.

Pi: That’s what you always have to add these days, “That’s my opinion”…

 

(44:56)

Class: Even if you notice, “Oh, I didn’t keep the right distance now!” … that you DO notice, that you did not keep the distance. That you every time pay attention to it for yourself. And that you always get back to the zone, in which we currently have to be, to make sure that we don’t infect each other, and there it doesn’t help to think, “I will just skip that – only for today!” In my courtyard there’s a playground, like every playground in every community in Germany it has been “locked” by the janitor with a barrier tape, and there’s a note, that says, playing there is currently not allowed, as children have the habit to touch everything and they might get infected and infect others, in particular old people, besides that you don’t even notice if they get infected. Today I saw a mother there with her 3 year-old son, he went past that barrier for a bit, he touched the rocking horse.

Chris: And Class got out the air gun.

Class: The problem is not, that she maybe does it once exceptionally, she stays at the edge and she knows, that nobody has been there for more than a week so far, but if 100 families, who live in this huge complex  of buildings, see that… at the end of the day she shows off herself and her misbehaviour. People would be right, if they said “This person is doing it wrong, now more than ever we are not supposed to go there and touch that too.” On the other hand it would be wrong too – and luckily nobody did that there – to shout, “You go away! What are you even doing there?!”. I should have gone there and calmly talk to that woman, like, “I can understand you, but if you think about what has to be done in the community now, that you see, that you’re making a mistake here, and also that you are a bad role model here. And it’s very important currently, that everyone, no matter if it’s for a friend or for some stranger in the street, acts as a positive role model, so that all of us can give each other motivation to live in this extreme situation, to keep the distance and to follow the rules that are important in the next few weeks, so that also we will be able to play shows again as soon as possible.

Chris: Let’s hope so, by goodness (In German it is “Your word in God’s ear”, Chris said, “Your word in Thor’s ear” instead)… that it is just weeks, I am no pessimist and no doomsayer, I rather am a realist, I check facts and statistics, I hope, it is weeks, but I have to say, I think it will be months.

Class: That can be. But for me it is easier to motivate myself to keep up by thinking in 2-week-rhythms. Like “For the next two weeks I have to…”

Pi: And as you say, to look at every day with the thought, “What can I do to make this day a good day?” and if it is weeks, months, even a year… maybe you can also after this crisis keep doing positive behavioural patterns?

Chris: Yes, now everywhere they hang bags with food etc for the homeless to the fences…

Pi: Really cool!

Chris: That’s something you can do always. I don’t want to pretend that I’m some national hero, I’m not Mother Theresa either, but I’m one of those people, who usually…not now, because it’s closed currently, when I go to my favourite breakfast place in St. Pauli at the weekend, I often buy an additional cheese toast and give it to some homeless person in the street. That’s something some people start doing now as well. It would be nice if they keep doing that too. What I’d like to know, like a moderator now, that you name 3 things each, that you have committed yourself to for the next weeks. That’s what I’d like to know. And I also ask myself that same thing, as I just don’t really know. Need to check, need to look around in my head. How is it with you?

 

(49:22)

Pi: Generally committed to or how to make the world a better place?

Chris: No, just generally. Isolation activities.

Pi: I definitely need to muck out the closet. You always have those clothes that you love to wear, with me that’s black longsleeves, of which I have eight, and black pants, everything else in there just needs to be mucked out … and will be donated. That’s something that has to happen. Besides that…

Chris: Bengt needs…

Pi: We donate it to Bengt. Donation is never wrong.

Chris: Bengt doesn’t buy anything. By now Bengt’s closet consists for about 50 % of my stuff, the other 50% were yours, because Bengt just can’t be bothered. He’s happy this way.

Pi: Chrispi style.

Chris: Chrispi Couture. For Bengt.

Pi: Shouldn’t we create a collection? Real Chrispi Couture?

Chris: oh, oui.

Pi: I need to clean the windows.

Class: Unfortunately I already did that before the crisis.

Chris: I need to do that, too.

Pi: I did not do it yet. I’m lying to myself here… I don’t want to do it.

Chris: I like “soft light”.

Pi: And it’s warmer also.

Chris: I don’t smoke, so it’s just soft.

Pi: I don’t smoke either. And the third thing…  I already did. Was nice.

*whistle*

Chris: With one and a half meters distance.

Pi: I don’t manage that. In which case I’d like to go back to Bengt.

Chris: So what were your three plans again? Muck out your closet, clean your windows and…?

Pi: Muck out the closet, clean the windows and I felt really inspired by you, Class, I think I want to create a Twitch account. I’m not sure about that yet though. I’m still thinking about it.

Chris: We need to talk about Disney plus.

Pi: Uuuuuh yes.

Class: Right. No, we don’t. You may buy yourself an account for yourself, because the two of us live in separate households and you don’t share accounts.

Chris: That was not what I was suggesting, I just wanted to…

Class: Ah yes, right. I did not watch it yet, unfortunately.

Pi: Class immediately assumes…

Chris: I wanted to say that we have to talk about it, because…

Class: I can advise you there. It’s definitely worth to get yourself such an account.

Pi: Nice.

Chris: Was that unpaid advertising again?

Pi: Three and a halfth -thing: I wanted to watch “Freud” on Netflix.

 

(52:20)

Class: I saw a huge announcement for it on my way here, as I was walking across Beatles Platz.

Pi: I will start tonight.

Chris: Have fun (uses a word play here: “Freud(e)” means fun, happiness in German).

Class: So that’s your trinity, so to speak.

Pi: Those are the first things that came to my mind.

Class: So it’s my turn now. As long as you’re finished.

Pi: I’m finished. And I shut up now. Wait. NOW it’s your turn.

Class: As I already did not really regularly beforehand, actually not regularly enough.

Pi: You’re a freak.

Class: THAT I always do regularly!

Pi: That is done incidentally.

Class: As a welcome routine almost every day I stream Video games. I build in breaks though, so I have time to do other things too, in the evening.

Chris: I will never be able to understand today’s youth.

Pi: Class does.

Class: And I have to admit, this currently motivates me a lot, and also the people who are watching. They even have founded a little community now. Not now, but over time. They actually are happy to see me do nonsense and play games. And they meet every night in this community and discuss about the current situation in general or in their homes. This makes me very happy, it gets approved a lot. It’s nice to know that I for let’s say four days a week at 7pm prepare my computer and …even though it’s fun for me because playing is fun, I do these 3-4 hours.

Chris: Various games or the same one all over?

Class: Currently it’s Zelda.

Chris: The new old Zelda?

Class: Exactly, the Link’s Awakening, which makes me happy and gives the people a good time, because it’s very calming, relaxing, for a bit gets back a piece of your childhood, and distracts people from the current phase. But also collaborations. Tomorrow I will play with our valued colleague Skar from Equilibrium together in a team in one of those Zombie Apocalypse games, in a network.

Chris: That’s possible also?

Class: That’s possible also.

Chris: Crazy.

Class: And there you have projects with pals, or Pi comes along for a visit in my home, with the required distance, and we play a game with freshly disinfected controllers etc.

Pi: Or I bring gloves.

Class: And that’s what drives me currently. At the moment I’m more sporty than ever. Luckily I can do rope skipping in my room on a yoga mat, in a way that the rope doesn’t hit the floor, so my neighbours don’t get bothered. I do that at least every second day, because that’s how I start my exercising units. And every morning I do the greeting to the sun Surya Namaskar, so every morning after getting up I do these 15 minutes of stretching according to this and beyond.

Chris: Those are the things that you already do. What are you committed to?

Class: What am I committed to? I am committed to streaming with Skar next week. Sorry.

Chris: So you are committed to that… and two more things?

Class: Next or the week after I want to retile my bathroom, as I already said earlier.

Chris: Right.

Class: But I’ll do it with those stickers, which is really cool, as you don’t need to tear out everything beforehand. You just prepare the tiles and then put the stickers on.

Chris: But that’s like putting on nail polish without removing the old polish first.

Pi: Doesn’t your bathroom this way get smaller and smaller at some point?

Class: At some point it will.

Chris: “The walls are getting closer!”

Class: That’s true, but I think, it’s only like 0,01mm per renovation, so…

Chris: And it’s 80m² anyway.

 

(56:29)

Class: Well I will be doing that, and if the situation here in Northern Germany keeps going according to our sense, that I maybe will do another bike trip, I want to get out into nature as soon as I can, where I do not necessarily meet people. That’s mainly what I’m into. Not really that big goals. Wait! What I didn’t do for ages …music production, demo base, songwriting. I got myself some software for that, a kind of “full package”, with my controllers I want to…

Chris: “Logic”…!

Class: No, with instruments, that Komplete thing.

Chris: So you can also record with that?

Class: No or yes… no, well yes. There’s also a sequencer that...machine…jam…

Chris: But Native Instruments does exist in “Logic” as well.

Pi: He means Komplete, as a…

Chris: So, a DAW.  

Class: I have “Logic”, then DAW.

Chris: That was my question: you bought an add-on for “Logic”.

Class: Exactly, exactly.

Chris: I thought, Native Instruments has a new DAW, to do some nerd-talk here.

Class: Yeah with two controllers “to work natively”, that’s what it’s called, that you don’t need to assign all the controllers.

Chris: Ah, that!

Class: The sequencers were written onto the keyboards and controllers, if I got that right,

Pi: Plug and play.

Class: Plug and play, exactly!

Chris: Corvin recommended those probably, right?

Class: Well no, I have…I could, Corvin, maybe he did recommend it at some point.

Chris: Now I got it.

Class: And for this I’m also “tidying out” my laptop, so everything is completely “clean” there again, so I can start to use this software next week and spend the whole day trying out some sequencers, play the guitar etc. I have also learned, that it is important for the next days and weeks, these are the “Submarine Rules”, the quarantine rules of submarine drivers, as not many people live in such hard quarantine conditions as people under water in a submarine, and the most important, rule number one, is to have routines. Daily routines. That’s the most important thing to stay sane. Good food, as much as possible.

Chris: Yellow subroutine.

Class: I’m sorry, that I just spoke verbosely, so… basically it’s to retile the bathroom, to continue with my routines and commit myself to that software next week, develop things there.

 

(59:09)

Chris: Now I have to figure … I think… I have started doing that on tour, now I need to go finish it… the detailed research for our next regular, loud rock album, which should be, according to the plan, released next year in summer or late summer, which will be, as you know, a concept album – the people out there probably don’t know that yet, there’s not much I can tell about it yet, I have to read a lot, I wanted to do that on tour in-depth, but the topic is really complex and in research a pretty dry subject primarily, even though the basic idea is really interesting. That’s something I have to do. I need to force myself a bit to get it done. And I have resolved to practise to play the mandolin, because I need to be able to play this instrument better for the production of a singer soon. At the moment I’m searching around somehow, because that stupid thing is tuned like a violin, where I know, which strings to press, but I can’t play chords one after the other like on a guitar. And I have resolved to find some sports activity that I can do together with my son, I don’t know yet, what it will be, if we go somewhere by bike and then do Tai Chi and Kung Fu exercises, somewhere on top of the Hamburger Berg (Street in Hamburg, literally “Hamburg Mountain”).

Pi: Or rope skipping.

Chris: That’s not interesting for kids. As long as we can go outside, we will do that, and if that’s not possible, we’ll find something for indoors, recently we did a bike trip to the Elbstrand and there we played soccer, near the buildings there at the Elbe, where the cruise ships land, where those huge areas are, total ghost town, that was nice. So this is my goal, I try to find an activity that we can do independently from home-schooling. We play Star Wars together or Lego, or Pokemon cards, something physical. He has so much energy, he freaks out if he’s locked in always. For me it’s also hard without sports, to only just lift a dumbbell is frustrating. At the moment I have to wait a bit still, as last week I got four moles removed, three of which for vanity, one of which the doctor said, it should be removed and checked. But apparently it’s ok, otherwise they would have phoned me already; so I have to wait for one more week, then the stitches get removed and then I can start again.

Pi: Good.

Chris: I wanted to lose weight… that’s why I removed those moles. It’s not like it is with you, Class. If Class wants to lose 3 kilos, he just needs to shave his legs.

Class: That’s true. Another totally crazy thing is that now I’m trying to get into going on a fast, interval fast, now that many of us have time on their hands, that you between 10am and 6pm you can eat as much as you want, but besides those times you eat nothing at all. It’s so crazy, there has been this app, where there was… I’m luckily relatively slim by nature…there you could…

Chris: Relatively slim?!

Class: Yes.

Pi: You don’t have any fat on your body!

Class: It’s a bit difficult for me to say that without sounding…

Pi: That’s why I said it.

Class: …like a braggart. There I was asked “what are you aiming at?” and I entered, “I want to stay healthy, I want to live long, I want to feel good”. I clicked everything except for “I want to lose weight” – next thing I got asked was “How much weight do you want to lose?” so I entered “10 grams” – and there was no option to do it without weight loss as an aim. There’s people, who don’t need to lose weight. Of course, most people could do with a little less weight, but putting the “well-being” in first place does not seem to exist in our society. I found that pretty weird.

Chris: I tried that interval fast thing, too. It’s incredibly hard for me. Not because I need to eat that much, I can do keto diet, I can totally give up on things, but I cannot fall asleep when I’m hungry. That’s really a torture for me. I usually go to sleep at about 2am, or 1am, it doesn’t mean that I need to have three slices of bread with Nutella, but I at least need something. I just can’t fall asleep when I’m hungry.

Pi: Same with me.

Chris: It’s pure horror.

Class: It works with me.

Chris: Right now I don’t have a bad conscience, if I allow myself a chocolate muesli with oat milk at 10 pm, I weigh 76 kilos now, that’s the perfect weight for me. I’m fine with the lipid content on my body…. as you will be able to see on the new cover of Swan Songs III. Two years ago I weighed 89 kilos, and what I got rid of was not muscles, but fat.

Class: That’s what is most important currently, that you feel good, the psyche is burdened for many of us these days - people, not meaning us in the band, it is important to try to set your psyche to “well-being” - that sometimes works better with Popcorn than trying to starve out. That’s important, too.

Pi: I want to admit, it’s to “How do I keep my psyche in well-being-mode sustainably.”  We all know that… Popcorn, chocolates, whatever, is cool for that particular moment, and I think, you should use that then.

Chris: Exactly! For the moment it is cool, but it should not be an “everyday thing”, because then it becomes bad for the psyche again.

Pi: You know, you get back to sports on the next day, then it’s ok. There you get back your self-respect or self-esteem by doing sports and activities.

Class: Then it is maybe important, that on one day per week you eat more Popcorn.

Chris: To get to an end, after all we’ve been here for more than an hour already – important information at the end – if you really want to eat a chocolate bar, according to nutritionists, I just recently spoke with a colleague, who is very experienced about this topic, also a sports man – he said, if you now totally want the white chocolate “Ritter Sport Whole Nuts” -unpaid advertisement – then eat the whole thing at once, instead of eating one piece every two hours. Of course you give your body a load of calories at once, but your body isn’t able to deal with that much sugar in one go. So – better eat it all at once. If you feed your body smaller amounts of sugar during the whole day, it’s able to absorb that leisurely.

Pi: That counts for everything, right?

Class: Eat your popcorn completely during the movie, from the biggest container – maybe next time you don’t long for it that badly anymore.

Pi: Or you take the cheese nachos instead.

Chris: I really noticed that now. When my son says “Can we please buy that cool Langnese Königsrolle” (particular ice cream) – and the two of us eat it the whole thing… there’s no difference on the scales. Even if I eat the Ritter Sport chocolate afterwards. In a phase, where I ate sweets each evening, just a little bit, that was when the kilos went up.

Pi: True.

Chris: That’s how it is. And I’d say, that was a nice first Lordcast!

Class: And as we said, we do not tie ourselves down to serious topics only.

Chris: No!

Class: It can be everything, everything that touches us, everything that moves people, we are simply ourselves. We can reduce it to that… that this is us, and if we’re in a great mood, if there’s reasons, that we only talk nonsense, tell jokes, or whatever, or burp into the microphone.

Pi: Then we’ll do just that.

Chris: Do that then, Class.

Class: On order? *burps*

Chris: That was just…

Pi: …just to enlighten the mood *burps* ok, that was a bit massive.

Chris: I press the “Stop” button, ok? For the next Lordcast – sent us suggestions, topics…

Pi: And stay hard, right?

 

All together: Bye! 

 

 

Translation & Proofreading: Margit Güttersberger, Jari Winter