THE GLASS CHILD
CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON
Author. Songwriter. Dreamer. Wanderer.
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Another Vagabond Lost To Love
Berlin Stories on leaving & arriving
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A young writer’s search for a place called home, what it means to be an artist, and finding peace with a restless heart.
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Travel journals and poetry from a year in Berlin, where I somehow ended up. The broken concrete, conversations with strangers, small moments of ache or clarity. The dreamer’s fate of leaving and arriving, love, loss, and learning to go on on your own.
Another Vagabond Lost To Love is Charlotte Eriksson’s 2nd book,
published by Broken Glass Records.
6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottles
and this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough
because there’s no right way
to do this.
There is no right way to do this.
I have rooted myself into this quiet place where I don’t need much to get by. I need my visions. I need my books. I need new thoughts and lessons, from older souls, bars, whisky, libraries; different ones in different towns. I need my music. I need my songs. I need the safety of somewhere to rest my head at night, when my eyes get heavy. And I need space. Lots of space. To run, and sing, and change around in any way I please—outer or inner—and I need to love. I need the space to love ideas and thoughts; creations and people—anywhere I can find—and I need the peace of mind to understand it.
It’s the beating of my heart.
The way I lie awake, playing with shadows slowly climbing up my wall. The gentle moonlight slipping through my window and the sound of a lonely car somewhere far away, where I long to be, too, I think. It’s the way I thought my restless wandering was over, that I’d found whatever I thought I had found, or wanted, or needed, and I started to collect my belongings. Build a home. Safe behind the comfort of these four walls and a closed door.
Because as much as I tried or pretended or imagined myself as a part of all the people out there,
I was still the one locking the door every night.
Turning off the phone and blowing out the candles so no one knew I was home.
’cause I was never really well around the expectations of my personality
and I wanted to keep to myself.
and because I haven’t been very impressed lately.
By people,
or places.
Or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.
Am I making something worth while?
I’m not sure.
I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,
but am I making something worth while?
I’m not sure.
There was a boy last night who I never spoke to because I was too drunk and still shy, but mostly lonely, and I couldn’t find anything lightly to say,
so I simply walked away
but still wondered what he did with his life
because he didn’t even speak to me
or look at me
but still made me wonder who he was
and I walked away asking
Am I making something worth while?
I am not sure.
I am a complicated person with a simple life
and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.
this is for us.
This is for us who sing, write, dance, act, study, run and love
and this is for doing it even if no one will ever know
because the beauty is in the act of doing it.
Not in what it can lead to.
This is for the times I lose myself while writing, singing, playing
and no one is around and they will never know
but I will forever remember
and that shines brighter than any praise or fame or glory I will ever have,
and this is for you who write or play or read or sing
by yourself with the light off and door closed
when the world is asleep and the stars are aligned
and maybe no one will ever hear it
or read your words
or know your thoughts
but it doesn’t make it less noble.
It makes it ethereal. Mysterious.
Infinite.
For it belongs to you and whatever God or spirit you believe in
and only you can decide how much it meant
and means
and will forever mean
and other people will experience it too
through you.
Through your spirit. Through the way you talk.
Through the way you walk and love and laugh and care
and I never meant to write this long
but what I want to say is:
Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it: make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourself
and let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.
Let your very identity be your book.
Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.
So go create. Take photographs in the woods, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountain
where no one will ever hear
and your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar.
Make your life be your art
and you will never be forgotten.
6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
Blurred out lines
from hangovers
to coffee
Another vagabond
lost to love.
4am alone and on my way.
These are my finest moments.
I scrub my skin
to rid me from
you
and I still don’t know why I cried.
It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest.
But then you must have changed your mind
or made a wrong
because why did you
leave?
6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottles
and this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough because there’s no right way to do this.
There is no right way to do this.
There is no right way to do this.
“I am running and singing and when it’s raining I’m the only one left on the open street, smiling with my eyes fixed on the sky because it’s cleaning me. I’m the one on the other side of the party, hearing laughter and the emptying of bottles while I peacefully make my way to the river, a lonely road, following the smell of the ocean. I’m the one waking up at 4am to witness the sunrise, where the sky touches the sea, and I hold my elbows, grasping tight to whatever I’ve made of myself.”
My Story
I'm messy and I'm organized and I'm still trying to piece my own self together. I can't sleep at night because how could I close my eyes when there's a whole world out there, calling my name, waiting to be explored. I love intelligent conversations while laying on empty streets at 5am in the morning, and I love watching the sun rise over a world that is still asleep. I make mistakes and I mess up a lot, but I'm trying to learn how to be okay with that. Some days I couldn't care less about what all of you think about my art because this is my life and all I have. But then there are days when all I want is to be beautiful and good enough and someone to count on. Someone to like and love and believe in. I just really want to mean something to someone.
I believe in the future, for I have seen yesterday and I'm still alive. I laugh a lot and I believe in the beauty in small things. Like the coffee in the morning with someone you love, road-trips to nowhere and oceans. I love people who are curious and careless, because I want to be curious and careless and even though I'm mostly guarded, mostly shy, what I really want is to hug every single person I meet and ask them a thousand questions about their definition of a life lived well and if they've ever been in love and how they could go on when that love disappeared, because I am struggling. People fascinate me because I can't seem to understand them, and they rarely understand me. The way they can live and breathe and simply be, when I can't even look myself in the mirror without questioning every line, every expression and people’s perception. I remember every single word from conversations and I have a whole box of unsent letters to myself and every person I've ever met.
When I was 18 I moved all on my own from my home in Sweden to London to become the person I wanted to be, and create a life that made me excited to wake up in the morning. After a year in solitude with my mind and my music, I packed light and spent a year homeless on the road, dedicating my life to my art and music, determined to tell the world about it. I went everywhere and nowhere. Spent nights on the concrete, had beautiful conversations with strangers and walked foreign streets every day. I learned how to build my home in my music and my art. When I sing or write, I'm not scared anymore. I just want to mean something to someone because every person I meet means the world to me and I just wish to belong. I just wish to be me and be loved for that. I believe that if you want something bad enough, you can always find a way to get it. I love challenges because I'm here to prove myself and other people wrong.
I still don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way, and I'm giving my life to this journey. My life is this journey.
I wanted to turn my life into art, my very existence into a poem.
It might not always be easy, but it will always be beautiful.