postcard from Berlin

Hello guys, hope everyone's ok ! This is already the second postcard I'm sending you aha, and this time I'm doing this from Berlin.

It's actually the first city where I decided to stay for like 3 weeks and see what happens ! See if this idea of releasing music from another country every month can work.

I've never been to Berlin before, I didn't know anyone and even though I took 4 years of German lessons the only thing I remembered was die Katze ist in der Kirche, which means: the cat is inside the church. So relatively useful ..
But my manager Clementin, who's actually younger than me and has a name suspiciously close to my little sister Clémentine, he works in Berlin, so he knew some other artists I could work with.

So together, we made a list of German artists that we really liked and tried contacting them. Sounds fun, but we got a lot of no, and even more left on read messages, but eventually we got some really cool YES too !
And among those yes were David Bay, Anaïs, Moli, SAINT WKND and Fil Bo Riva with whom I did this song with, grapejuice.

Coming to Berlin, I knew I'd have to get out of my comfort zone, I mean .. my bedroom, and try to write with actually real people ! To be quite honest with you, I struggled a bit.
I've been so used to do this alone, that having someone looking at me while I'm like ehhh-ahh trying to find a cool melody is weird !! And it also felt a bit like going to work too : I had to dress up first, be on time because people were waiting for me, and hand over my paper at the end of the day. 3 things I was no longer used to since I left school.

But the truth is, it was never like work. Music sessions were actually closer to going on a date than going to work. For example we talked for hours about life, trips, relationships whatever before even listening to some music. We sometimes had drinks and diner super late at night, well we never kissed - but could have even though it would have been super weird - but yeah, only eventually someone picked an instrument and started playing something. And then we would move on and try to write a song ! But the whole thing was just to have fun in a room full of instruments.

I guess if I learned one thing out of these sessions it'd be : don't think about the outcome, but rather focus on the moment you're living, just to keep the best memory of it. Cause if you enjoy whatever you're doing, then it's enough. Even though we didn't make real actual finished songs every time, I learned so much from these people and made some really great friends too. And that is enough I think.

And that's exactly how it happened when we wrote grapejuice. Fil, his producer Robert and I decided to go straight to an Italian restaurant just down Robert's studio. So the first time we all met was actually while eating a slice of pizza. A few hours later we went back to the studio : Fil sat in front of the piano, Robert picked a bass, and I picked a guitar. Then we just had fun playing, and it turned into a song.
I could never have written that song without Fil and Robert, without playing together and listening to each-other's ideas. So I guess I was right comin in to work that day.

I'm still not that comfortable being in a session, but I really want to get better at it, and I will.

I'll talk to you when I arrive in London,
Take care xx

Oscar