Fluctuating Flow of Fall

"Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage." Mikhail Lermontov in A Hero of Our Time

Autumn has arrived, winter is coming. It gets dark around half past five. The weather is more and more wet and chilly. It is the moment to enjoy the colours of autumn, in Brussels the predominant colour being a bright yellow. It is also the season during which I truly enjoy having a foodie older sister in town. Every other week I get a glass bottle with some good-good chai concentrate.

My main focus this week was practicing my mixing skills for Saturday's set. I just needed to play around with the mixing board enough to be able to do calculated quick movements whilst not destroying everyone's eardrums. At a certain point during the week it came down to adding songs to my playlists to have the options needed to fluctuate between different types of energies.

Even though I was confident in my mixing abilities I was truly nervous about performing in front of people. I started off the mix with some vibey house and I basically cleared the dance floor in the first five to ten minutes. My confidence took a hit at that moment, nevertheless once I started working in some more commercial tracks I managed to pull people back. A few times during the evening I even got the full room screaming the lyrics. That was pretty damn cool.

I mixed for a total of three and a half hours without breaks. In the end I got too many song requests so I had to improvise edible transitions between Spotify and the playlists within my computer (as a side note, avoid asking the disk jockey for songs, suggestions are fine but keep them limited). One thing that I was aware of but did not realise truly before performing is that during house-parties the transitions between songs matter way less than the song selection itself.

Also on Saturday, I was proposed to go play some ultimate, I took the opportunity without a second thought because I enjoyed the sport in my physical education lessons last year. I did not know what I had signed myself up for. The sport itself is very demanding technically but there is also a physical side to it : you have to do bursts of sprints continuously until a point is scored. Since I did not have a clue what I was doing I was basically just trying to sprint for 3 hours in a row while sometimes actually grasping the frisbee itself.

My grandfather passed away this Wednesday, the 3rd November. I am very thankful that I had him as my grandfather for 19 years. He was an inspiration on all fronts. He lived through the Soviet and German occupations, he was a teacher for more than 60 years, he wrote his own songs and chemistry books, moreover he organised huge family events with loads of singing. I have very fond memories of those events and of him at said events. As Estonians we value singing, if You do not know why, I suggest You read up on the Singing Revolution.

This week I finished Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It is Russian romanticism — it was an experience. At first I was quite confused by its structure and the Russian names but after glancing through the book once more it started to make some sense. The descriptions of the Caucasian landscapes are great, the pettiness of the 19th century characters is hilarious but I enjoyed most the moments of deeper reflection of our Byronic hero Pechorin : "After all, nothing worse than death can happen — and death you can't escape!"

See you on the other side!