Sometimes it’s hard to trust the world enough to be seen. Though I have over 20 years experience as a professional musician, though I edit and produce an amazing sexy calendar and CD, I’ve been clinging to a kind of safety. If I stay small as an artist, there is no need to worry about paying taxes in Germany and the U.S. at the same time. If I don’t book any big festivals, there is not so much pressure to be a top-game performer with the best bands. If my social media accounts stay small, there’s less of a…

I’m working a personal development course in order to boost my self-esteem and to get a better handle on life. At the beginning of this course we were asked to choose our core-values and it took me a lot of mental effort to find the ones that mattered most. Just as I had problems with assigning “Love” as one of my core values due to the fact that I’ve seen (and been involved in) using “Love” to justify unethical and unhealthy relationships, I have problems with assigning a “positive mental attitude” to the…

August is tourist high-season in Hamburg and they keep coming here right up through September. I can see why. It’s northern Germany, so… the weather is very changeable, the weather forecaster is wrong 50% of the time, and you never know when a rain shower might turn up. On the plus side, at this time of year it’s warm no matter what the clouds are bringing you. Many evenings turn into “lauschiger Nächte”, warm lovely nights with no wind and no regrets if you forgot your sweater at home. When you get a sunny…

Ingo told me not to go to downtown Hamburg today… I intended to stay home, I really did. But the weather was fantastic and warm, not windy… the ferries were running and so is my bike. The moon is almost full and the call to play some accordion on the street was just too loud.

I caught the ferry at the König der Löwen stop (yes that’s Lion King in German and the island where I live also houses a giant perma-tent for the German language stage production of this Disney musical.) There were more bikes than I’ve…

Visiting this massive, dream-like, gorgeous building inspired so many thoughts about Catholicism, nature, science, and the evolution of Western philosophy that I decided to blog about it, nerd that I am. It’s not meant to be an academic paper, just some philosophical musings which might inspire you to visit this place. Or, just to Google it a bit more and find some better photos of it on the internet for your own musings…

The first thing I noticed here is the immense size of the building and the cranes…