yes i’ll come crew for free on your film, or i’ll even be in your film even though i’m not an actress, ok i’ll come see your band play and then fall in love with the drama of the performance so much i won’t be able to say no to being in your music video. yes i fucking love the wardrobe you designed for that short film, so i’ll buy a dress from your independant label and wear it while constantly saying how fantastic it is and how much i love your design, and yes i’ll shoot the behind the scenes for your first fashion show. actually i’d be honoured. yes i can’t wait for your book to be translated and published in english so i can read it, yes i love your poems, maybe mine are getting more lyrical, maybe yours have more rhyme, what you went home and wrote a poem? but you don’t even write poems? ??

yes use my studio to edit while i’m away, yes stay in my flat while i’m away, yes i’ll come see you dj even when i’m totally exhausted because i believe in what you’re doing, yes we’ll dance around the dj box even though its more of a bar thing, yes we’ll create the party around you because you make it that way for us.

by the way

did i tell you i took your poetry book with me and turned a poem into a song? by the way did you know i took the title of your poem and turned it into a song? come and listen to it. lets play. lets sit around in a somewhat pretentious hipster bar we once loved and play cards. well i won’t play, but when our friend passes around his ipod for us to listen one by one to the acappella tracks he recorded, our little crew will be resounding with respect and insist that yes the tracks are brilliant and they need to be out there. what you’re promoting a new night in london but you’ve been reading my poetry blog? are you sure you want to book me when i havn’t done it in so long. yes i’m keeping an eye out back in berlin to return the favour, you have to play here seriously.

what you write, and make music, and paint??? when i google the words *artist flat* or search in wikipedia will i see your studio? no seriously. but really is it ok if i come over and record. yes? we’ll spend two hours even though i though it would take twenty minutes and you’ll then come up with ways to meld it with sound design. what??? you turned down that gig as a booker to concentrate on your turntablism?, are you the last great diva of hiphop? and you still refuse to spin digital, props to you girl. come over to my house, lets get out the projector and watch a woody allen film with a mixed crowd of germans and auslanders and end up in a hyped up debate about the problems of dating. and i”m working on this edit and i’m feeling a little guilty because i didn’t finish editing the video we shot of his street art in action. but he’s busy. i think he forgives me for it. and i’m still playing with this script, because they’re both such great actresses and i want to write something for them. specifically. i want to play. lets play.

and we play alot. but somehow we also work hard. our work comes out of that play. and yes sometimes we stay out all night, and sometimes we play around with substances, but then we come down and sleep and wake up and we write and produce and perform about all this life we’re living. and we influence each other. we read each others blogs and listen to each others tracks, and give feedback on rough edits and talk in cafe’s and bars about all we’ve been getting up to since we last met. and the work is all really very good, so its easy to be supportive.

i have an illustrator friend visiting from new york this week. i can’t wait to show her this city, i can’t wait to show her my friends.

and yes its much colder. but hey, at least the sun is shining…

And I play so naïve, You’re forced to  make it clear, But it won’t come to that Don’t worry my dear its already happened

* Here *

And its not that  I don’t find you stunning, I was certainly stunned, You’re gorgeous darling,, But you see Its been done, From the moment  Your every movement, Made it abundantly clear I’ve already had you

* Here *

I know how the kiss will start, And how we won’t stop, I know exactly At whose flat we’ll end up, The moment we’re so desperate, We have to undress, When you finally give in and completely relax, The sounds you’ll make  When you start to…

So darling There’s no need to start, You’re safe

And… Don’t worry Mr.boyfriend

I won’t even begin Trust me

I’ve seen how it ends…

audio version at www.myspace.com/paulavarjack

gig this sunday in Berlin! london comeback end of october.

ADD PAULA AS YOUR FRIEND….

and I feel…
mixed up
like the change in my wallet
which is the foreign currency?
which is foreign?
which city am I in?
who can I call now?
who costs less to call?
who’s calling?

Oh sorry
the voice mail said
I thought you were still in London

I then read a text asking
if I was back in Berlin

an email asking when I’m back
back
I’m back to back
with two cities

all change
swap keys
swap partners
tick the next box
on your dance card

I was dancing to minimal techno
at a club by Treptow
before I left
three days later
I was dancing in a club in Old street
to minimal techno again
I said goodbye at the end of the night to my dj friend
four days later in Berlin
I said hello to him again

and there’s an ocean
there are borders
there’s a divide
but its laced with connections

I’m in
a german speaking country
but often i forget
because if my german fails
i’m questioned again
in english
but my german
felt trapped under my tounge
when i walked around London

and sometimes it seems like
wherever I am
I’m the other
the outsider
and yes its always been
a little bit that way
but London became home for me
definitively
I’d settled
and when the contract
was drawn up and ready to sign
I
walked away…?

but the thing is
I settle quickly so
months later Berlin was home
and as I set about making it so
explaining to those
I was leaving behind
I returned here and felt
homeless again….
and I couldn’t tell you why but

I feel…. like
I’m on borrowed time
between the between
an oyster card
where my bike key should be
or more like

the mixed up change in my pocket
which is the foreign currency?
which is foreign?
which city am in?
who do I call now?
who costs less to call?
who’s… calling?

www.myspace.com/paulavarjack

(photos by ashley chaloner)

Add Paula Varjack as your friend. she won’t bite (unless you ask her too…)

MYSPACE.COM/PAULAVARJACK

the audio files and player are still a bit glitchy but apparently myspace will sort it otu soon. and now with all that poetry madnesss sorted, i think i might go back to editing my documentary…

the spree is the river that runs through berlin… and now on with the show…

Why I love bar 25

It was sudden
I walked off
And found him
The friend I’d lost
Wandering off the dancefloor
He gestured for me to sit
Somehow I knew to be quiet
And as I turned my head
I saw it
What he’d saw
What had made him
Sit down
And stay there

They…them..
This random pair
Who’d probably met
Very
Recently
Were lying on top of one another
On the bank of the Spree
Fucking
Not making out
Not “messing around”
Or simply feeling each other up
No… they were
Frenetically
Frantically
Fucking
Clothes partially pulled away in places
To grant better access

Meanwhile
I turned to my friend
Who passed me a cigarette
That we coolly shared
As we fell into the easy role
Writers often occupy
As voyeur/s
Internal typewriters already clicking away
To document
(like this poem maybe)

and what got me
what moved me most
in this moment
of amorousness
was the narrative
my all too eager imagination
began to invent
the artillery of questions
that multiplied

when had they started
how had they met
how long had they been
well…
at it
what drugs had they taken
(and where could I get some)
but before I could
finish my thoughts
the girls body trembled
the boys hips swivelled
her right leg stretched

and then
he fell in
the Spree
not at all gracefully
but then
then
what really
got me
is he pulled himself out
drenched to the waist
and without even remotely
dropping his pace
he pushed back
into position
and continued.

And strangely
No one else
Seemed to notice
Or so we thought
Until we pointed them out
To a Berliner friend
Who simply said
Oh.. them
They’ve been two hours there

…only
in berlin
could two commit such carnal sin
publically
with not so much
as a brow raised
(or slight twitch even

ahhhh london london london. i had you all wrong. i must say i struggled to keep up with you (and am currently feeling an exhaustion even a week of nonstop partying in berlin could not match)  we fell into rhythm again, much like former lovers who fall back into bed with another , and i was suprised how much we still made sense together.

in less than two weeks i caught up with the shoreditch scene, updated my style accordingly (i never knew i could look so sexy in glasses), plunged myself headfirst into the performance poetry scene,  caught up with a precious few ihad missed so dearly, had a stint as a cabaret act (another blog may be written about that) learned what it was like to be a guest in my own flat, found myself falling for someone, then subsequentally being heartbroken, then having a suprisingly grown up closure conversation, got paid by t-mobile to brainstorm with their product designers about possible products for the future, fell in and out of black cabs, had the honour of seeing the next bar in the notbar legacy BEFORE it opened (and i tell you, you must check it out if you’re in east london, its easily the best venue yet)and amidst all this turned thirty.

admittedly i never expected it to be a a restful holiday…

i feel a bit guilty about my last post. more than slightly. you see the thing is… london is what she is. she doesn’t demand you change for her, but you have to accept she won’t change for you. and she was very welcoming. the weather was better than it had been in a month or so, pretty and sunshiny.  but generalliy london was much as i’d left her. maybe different only in that beign somewhat of a berliner now, i saw her differently.

i was tremendously freaked out about money, totally aggrivated by:

q-ing, traffic, all forms of public transport, the frantic neurotic busy-ness of everyone’s schedules, bar closing times, alcohol measures (now i understand why continental customers at club i used to work at complained no alcohol was in their drink, when you’re used to drinking abroad, british measures w/spirit mixers seem like soda with soda)

but on the positive side i was totally taken aback by how warm and chatty people were. i enjoyed random banter and flirtation with strangers. i am different here. i am hotter, more glamorous, more cheeky. i was totally inspired by shoreditch street fashion, and creative ambition. i was completely welcomed by the poetry scene, and after a week of going from event to event, felt recognized and respected and was even offered a gig for whenever i’m back.  and i felt how much my friends had missed me, and it was much harder than i expected to explain i wasn’t so sure when i would come back.  i was proud to be able to be there for a few friends who were going through tough times while i was here. and i was generally overwhelmingly proud of my friends full stop and very grateful to have them still feel connected and care about me.  (including someone who may be reading this who i discovered has been reading this ever since i left london, i think she may know who she is…)

i’ll be back and soon. it appears my affairs with cities theme has led me to being in a polyamorous relationship with two cities at once. thirty seems like a good time to become a swinger after all…

(p.s. and on the topic of my ridiculously talented friends, all club pics from my mate matt’s site megamegamega he has this kinky massive lightbox type thing on his camera which makes all us ravers look more out of it than we already are. check it)

Admittedly my german is not very sophisticated, and certainly lacking in vocablulary, but at least i’ve learned how to utilise charm , confidence and attitude to make up for all i don’t know. mostly it works. And in situations like this morning in the airport i’m insistant on using it. so much so that when the woman explains to me that i need to put all my cosmetics in a plastic bag and my eyes glaze over in exhaustion, the moment she changes tack and begins again in english, i cut off her translation with a polite *ich hatte verstanden*, and walk off to pack my millions of small mac containers into a 50cent clear bag.

When i come back and stride past, the metal zippers on either side of my black spandex american apparel leggings set off the metal detector. I shrug and roll my eyes up as I’m frisked. I suggest that the zippers might be what is setting it off, and the official who’s waves the hand metal detector over me, smiles. her colleage openly curises me, and seeing the gold key i wear as a necklace. he asks in german if its my house key. i smile back and say back in german yes of course. six months and now i can flirt with airport staff in german. is that some kind of success?

six months. six months. in six months i have learned my way around a new city. begun to learn a new language, learned new sides of myself , learned how to chill, learned how to truly party, found new freedom, found an art i had lost (poetry), been challenged, gotten lost, crushed on some and been crushed by others. become unseperable without my bicycle, found a new network of friends. finished a short film and plunged head first into a longer one. learned how to work for myself on my terms. and even though i can’t remember when in my life i have ever been so happy. on the flight back the question i keep repeating to myself is:

what does this account for…? what can i account for?. WHAT. HAVE. I. BEEN. DOING?…here..? there?.

my friend marty said last night that i had to get away from this sense of London being the real world and berlin being neverland.  i had said to my friend tony that if you left berlin and you knew it was right for you, of course you’d come back. but now i started to think, is it that easy when you’;ve left? is it? reallY?

The first friend i call when back in london,  actually utters the words “how can i help you” i’ve called my friend, i feel like i’ve called a hotline. i find out the keys to my flat have been changed. this is a normal responsible thing to do as new tenants but it freaks me out for a second. i want to know when we will have time to see eachother. i hear the pages of his diary flip and then a second later he says he should probably have time mid next week. i mumble that that sounds good. he has to go. i hear the dial tone. i can feel myself start to cry. i pull  it together and begin to ring round people. everyone is so busy. everyone is asking me for dates and times. lunches are good, mornings could be good. after 8 on tuesday, although there’s that pottery class, or french class, or yoga class, or rehearsal, or a shoot for, or taxes or… i’m in a different time zone, a different lifestyle. my diaryless life doesn’t work here. i begin scribbling arrangements on a scrap of paper. connecting names with days and dates and times. i’m just not used to this anymore. i confess to one of my best friends. he laughs and says.. oh poppet, you’re all chill now aren’t you. thats because no one in berlin has jobs. we have to work here you know.

and i get what he means. and i laugh weakly. but it cuts the same time.

you forget that when you create a new life for yourself somewhere else, the hole you left in the old one eventually closes up. i always worried that if i came for a visit the attention would be too much for me. it never occurred to me that i’d have to fight to fit back in. the best calls are with the friends who have visited. or friends who have lived away for a while and come back. the best advice i’ve been given is to remember to treat it like a holiday. but its damn strange to be on  holiday in a place that was home, that is suddenly not home at all.

i’m hoping i’ll fall back into it in the next few days…

big this city may be, but its worth remembering/knowing/remind yourself this
there is no such thing as hit and run

you will run into…
the boy you told repeatedly in german he was beautiful

you will run into
the girl you suggested should leave her boyfriend behind and come with you

you will be served again by
the bartender who saw you making out with a random girl in a dark corner at the back, just days after making out with a random guy in the same bar, in the same dark corner in the back (the bartender will not judge you)

you will meet
the girlfriend of the boy you not so discreetly fiirted with

you will also meet
the boyfriend of the girl you thought was flirting with you.

and you will see that hipster,
who one night was so drunk he could barely form sentences (but the next time you see him he will pretend the night never happened)

and the dj whosE advances you rejected one night, will barely acknowledge your presence the next night.

(sometimes you will see several of these people in the SAME night, just as you thought you would never have to see any of them again..)

but all of this is ok. all of this is forgiven. all of it is acceptable. expected even. simply because.
its. BERLIN

where was I from… well my mum, and then my dad. And you see..

my new group of friends at this theatre camp, mostly from the south i’d add, regarded this information with warm interest. And I remember one dark haired blue eyed boy smiling, and saying ‘ aw yeah girl I hear you, its like you’re not black or white, you’re like…..mocha with a bit of cream on the side” and the rest of them smiled and laughed and so did I. the name mocha stuck. These kids also kept referring to me as “child”, which was partly a southern thing, and partly due to the fact I was so much younger than the rest of them. When we said our goodbyes at the end of the week, all cards, and tshirts and whatever else could be signed were adressed to me as “the mochachild” I liked it. I took It back to dc with me.

Years later I seem to recall those I dated liking the name. I remember being addressed as mocha fondly. Then there were all those raves me and my girls went to. We had to buy tickets for the big parties well in advance. We always trusted my friend ann to hold on to these precious tickets before the party happened, and so she made a ritual of illustrating the envelope they were kept in with cartoon renditions of her, me and my friend lauren. These cartoon alter egos of ourselves had nicknames of course, and so a series of illustrations were born of the raver cartoon version of myself -mochachild. I think many of the mix tapes I made then(electronic and hip hop usually) I also labeled “mixed by the mochachild”. When I began making short films my production company was “mochachild productions” (the closing credits always ended with a drumroll and “this has been a mochachild production”). And then myspace came and it was useful once again to have a nickname. And as each online manifestation occurred, flickr, twitter, lastfm or whatever. The mochachild moniker made its face shown again and again.

In the early days of the internet there weren’t so many sara quins online. (Most adding h’s and extra n’s where they didn’t belong}. And then those twin rockers sara and tegan quin arrived. And suddenly googling my name would never bring anyone to me. (When the other sara quin first joined myspace I think I may have messaged her as the only other sara quin, not suprisingly she never responded. My co-workers did find it funny however to find quotes online from excited fans saying things like “OMG I can’t BELIEVE I saw Sara Quin yesterday!!! ) And so I thought it was time to claim my nickname. It was unique, it had been given to me, it was mine. I set about stamping it out on whatever virtual turf I could. . At one point even stupidly using it as my name on an online dating site (meaning that any stranger on the site with even a glimmer of interest could google and find far more info about me elsewhere than i’d ever care to share. This led to some not so funny and fairly intense interactions.. but I digress)

It had become time when people started buying domains they may or may not use, just in case. I thought nothing of it. For some time any online references to Mochachild all referred to me. When it became common to trade websites rather than phone numbers I remember often drily saying, I don’t see the point in having a website, if you want to find out more about me just google mochachild. Eventually this google search also led to three other people. A 29 year old gay boy bear chaser (as in he fancies men that are big and hairy) in trenton new jersey, on a couple bear/chubbie chasing sites. , a girl on some afro hair site, another girl on some afro-american wedding forum. But as I stopped paying attention to the matter, another mochachild was staking her claim on the information superhighway. ..

Sometime last year I realised I was taking the blog more seriously. I thought about buying mochachild.com. I looked it up and saw it was taken… taken? Would the bear chaser find it worthwhile to set up his own site? Or the girl who had asked about natural or permed hair on her wedding? What could it be for? Months passed and it was empty. And then finally the site appeared.
Who was my alter ego? Who would lost friends and exes stumble on when looking for me?
It was a site for hand made cards…

My only consolation to having my moniker “taken” was that there were so many entries online related to me that this christian thirty something mother of three was probably less than enthused about people searching for her company and coming across my music or pictures, or blogs about being queer, or having one big drunken night out after another, in one city after another. I was the queer heathen online other that she never wanted or asked for, or more crucially, failed to search for before spending the money on domains and hosting space only to realise I existed.

And I know she must be a little bit concerned about the fact ,because the last time I googled mochachild there were a whole number of sites she has recently tagged, breathlessly directing attention to her site in any way she can. Meanwhile once again i’ve decided I would like to buy a domain for this blog and all the ideas i’ve had thus far have not inspired excitement from most. Its much harder naming a site than one would think. All ideas I had seem to either have connotations I don’t mean to suggest, or are too long, or just aren’t intriguing enough. Thats why one’s own name is generally the best way forward. So considering i’ve held the nickname since 1993 I think I have a solution. I’m thinking I buy the domain for

www.theRealMochachild.com

Is that just b*tchy? Or amusing? Your comments are most welcome on the matter…