Leverkusen & Personal Issues

Hello to everyone! Recently I was so busy with university that I hardly had any time to make use of my blog... Plus I'm still using my mother's laptop, because mine is being repaired. I won't be able to make a nice design and personalize my blog further until I don't get my own laptop back...  

In addition to that I forgot my camera in Leverkusen, so I'm still not able to at least post some nice pictures. But yes, I visited Eli in Leverkusen last weekend. We had a big get-together with all the Japan-girls, meaning all the girls which traveled to Japan for holiday or spent an exchange year and/or working holiday there. 

Some arrived on Friday, but Marie and I went there on Saturday and met with everyone in Düsseldorf. While the others went shopping or already to Elena's, Marie and I met up with Marius, an old friend of ours who went to Japan with the same exchange organisation as we did.

Afterwards we went back to Elena's to have BBQ with everyone. It was really nice, we drank lots of alcohol and talked and ate... I just went to bed a little earlier than the others, because I was really tired, but no one seemed to be angry with me, so it was fine. 

The next morning we all had a very relaxed breakfast in Elena's wonderful garden enjoying the weather. But since Astrid and I had to go to university the next day and Maria had to work, the three of us left Elena's at about 3pm to head back to our respective home towns :D

And now to my personal issues. Please skip this of you're not interested, it's mostly for myself, anyways. So, as you know I'm a passionate listener of music and like to transfer lyrics on my own life to get a hold on what's going on. At the moment I'm connecting the song Kansas by Vienna Teng on my latest failed relationship...

This it the song. It's really beautiful and there's much more behind the lyrics than you think when listening to it for the first time. I think it's about someone reminiscing about a failed relationshiop and realising how the relationship and its failed end pushed that person into some kind of abysmal status, searching desperetaly for something to hold on to.

Sun sets in an ocean of brown farmland haze
Power lines draped across roads you could drive on for days
Well it's all too perfect
Time to look back at us now

This is the introduction and the cause for the reminiscing. A calm, but seemingly endlessly expanding landscape with no mountains or buildings to spend shelter or the feeling of safety, but in its endlesness it's perfect, because it grands time and space to think about what's in the past. It's the same for the lyrical I... she's (I'm using she, because Vienna Teng is female) lost the bottom beneath her feet, there's nothing to hold on to, so she starts reminiscing about the past.

Endless and empty like Kansas
Our cities of clouds
Flat on the table like Kansas

But apparently it's not only the landscape that's endless and empty, but something else also is. "Our cities of clouds" is something that once belonged to the lyrical I and the person she loved. But cities of clouds are nothing real, they're not something you can live in or build on. As soon as you touch them, they will crumble or vanish in front of your eyes, and so they are "flat on the table like Kansas", because as they had to, they have vanished now. They based their relationship on something they should've known wouldn't last. So now, all the lyrical I can look back on to is a flat landscape like Kansas and the memory of cities.
But still, cities of clouds must be impressive and gorgeous. If you imagine for example rain clouds or clouds that carry thunder, how they pile up on to each other... but they also forebode storm, and therefore destruction. So even though the lyrical I and her love might not have noticed while being blinded by there impressive cities of clouds, there relationship was bound to fail in the end.

I lay down in sheets suddenly worn threadbare
Every wall I lean on transforms to sliding doors and thin air
Well I hope yours is kinder
Let go of this when you find her

This stanza describes the current state of mind of the lyrical I. She suddenly doesn't feel well in her sheets anymore, she doesn't feel well in her well known environment, she suddenly feels odd in her own skin. She feels threadbare, which can also imply that she suddenly feels old, or even tired from burning herself out for something, maybe for guilt or for her fight to move on. That she's lost the bottom beneath her feet is implied by the second line. It quite clearly expresses that the lyrical I has lost her feeling of safety in life. Now we also get an impression about what the lyrical I feels for her past love. She hopes that he doesn't feel the same, that he can deal better with what happened between the two of them. She also wants him to let go of "this" when he finds "her", which I think means that she wants him to be able to move on and to stop thinking about herself when he finds someone else he loves. But it also implies that she thinks he's still clinging on to their past relationship in some way.

Bury this hard
Down underneath your white canvas
Our houses of cards
Flat on the table like Kansas

The first line I think can be understood in two ways. Written there is "hard", but when sung it can also be heard as "heart". I think she wants to express two things with this. First of all she wants him to bury "this" which in one case can be seen as the relationship they shared, as in the previous stanza. This would imply that she wants him to bury there relationship strongly, hard underneath his white canvas. In the other case she wants him to bury his and/or her heart underneath his white canvas. If their hearts stand for the relationship they shared this only doubles the meaning of burying what's happened among them underneath a white canvas, meaning burying it beneath something neutral, new, something that has not been used yet. She doesn't want him to look back on their relationship with longing, regret or hate. 

There's one more possibility, though. If she wants him to bury her heart beneath his white canvas, this could also imply, that she's lost her heart to him forever and wants him to bury it beneath something neutral so he doesn't throw it away or tramples on it.

The houses of cards have basically the same meaning as the cities of clouds in the previous stanza, but houses of cards are much less impressive than cities of clouds, so maybe she knew how fragile their relationship was back then after all.

It's not regret
Just an unexpected accounting of debts
Only now called
No it's not regret
Just remembrance is all
Of how close we had come
The war almost won
But I sent up our flag and moved on

Now she explains exactly how she feels about their past relationship. "It's not regret", so she doesn't regret having been with him or having built this obviously fragile and bound to fall cities and houses with him, but it's an "accounting of debts" that she feels. But she realised it's there just now, apparently some time after their break-up. Her debt is, that after they had come very close, "the war almost won", meaning that they were near to master all the obstacles that usually lie in front of young relationships, she had sent up their flag and moved on. She broke up with him, and seeing that she spoke of cities of clouds and houses of cards before, she probably knew all along that she was gonna break up with him, no matter how good he was to her or how much she loved him. That is her debt, and the remembrance of this haunts her now, taking the bottom away beneath her feet.

You and I
Lost to the winter like Kansas
And all my goodbyes
Flat on the table like Kansas

Finally she unfolds how she feels now, after having realised everything, about her debt, her disorientation in life. "Lost to the winter like Kansas" implies that she knows that what's been between them is lost. "You and I" doesn't exist anymore, it belongs to the winter in Kansas now, which will probably wear it out and never give it back. But interesting are the last two lines. All her goodbyes are flat on the table like Kansas. They crumbled and vanished just like the houses of cards and cities of clouds. I think this means, that even though she was the one who said goodbye, who sent up their flag and moved on, her goodbyes don't have any meaning anymore. Even though she knows she can never get back what was betwee the two of them, because it's lost forever, she realised that she never really ended the relationship for herself. The goodbyes she said don't exist anymore. She realised just now that she never got over her love, that she's lost and without any walls to lean on without him. She acted the strong one, destroying what they had, deciding to move on, without ever really moving on. But because she knows it's over she at least wishes for him to feel better than her and bury their relationship, to find someone he really loves. She maybe does this to reduce her debt. Her debt to him on the one side, because she treated him badly, and to herself on the other side, because she now has to deal with the consequences of losing him and therefore the bottom beneath her feet. 

Well, that is at least what my interpretation of this song is and I hope I managed to write it so it can stand alone, set apart from my personal connection to what I feel about the lyrics and the song. 

But I think this is enough for today. <3 Good night~