Recommendations of the Editorial team
I haven’t been bored since 1991, at least not for more than a few minutes. The basic feeling is very familiar to me – the emptiness around you, the missing events and experiences, the emptiness in your head. Anyone who grew up in a village in the 70s and 80s probably remembers this: no friends nearby (they always lived in the town after the next, so too far away by bike), no TV before 5:50 p.m., just nothing to do. So after school, on weekends and during holidays, lie around on the bed for hours, stare into space and wonder when life will begin. Oh, wonderful – you think today. Back then it was torture because you couldn’t be sure that it would actually begin. What if it always stays this boring?
Today it has long been proven that boredom is useful for children because it allows their brains to grow better. (To put it very simply – we’re not in the Bio-LK.) But back then I wanted my wealth of experience to grow, I wanted to get out. So in 1991, straight after graduating from high school, I went to England for nine months. “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” claimed Samuel Johnson 1777, and even if it’s a bit too simple, I would have signed it straight away. Johnson also wrote: “Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”
Neil Tennant’s voice floats above this world
If you’re curious, you won’t be bored. There is always something to discover. During the months in what was, for me, the most exciting city of all, “Being Boring,” released on Behavior in 1990, was the perfect soundtrack. Since then, it’s been my favorite Pet Shop Boys song – a band whose irresistible melodies I’ve never been able to resist, even as a teenager wearing a metal habit. Just how Neil Tennant’s voice floats miles above this world!
“When you’re young, you find inspiration/ In anyone who’s ever gone/ And opened up a closing door …”
“When you’re young, you find inspiration/ In anyone who’s ever gone/ And opened up a closing door/ She said, ‘We were never feeling bored/ ‘Cause we were never being boring,’” Tennant sang, and I felt at home. The seemingly endless time that stretches before a 19-year-old is full of possibilities – at least in theory. Of course, Tennant had already moved on: “I never dreamed that I would get to be/ The creature that I always meant to be.”
An adult’s head is always full
This is probably the so-called self-realization – actually a good word, but used in an inflationary way. Even the fact that some loved ones are now missing is bearable as long as the memories and dreams are still there. They also ensure that boring moments – waiting for the train, in the supermarket queue, some hours in the office – no longer feel empty, even without a smartphone. The head of a very adult person, or at least mine, is just so full that something always comes up that I can occupy myself with. Often enough, even at the most inopportune times, something suddenly appears that leaves nothing to be left idle: love, sadness, fear, gratitude. The range of possibilities for feeling doesn’t get smaller the older we get – it’s just that the practical opportunities to live it all out sometimes seem limited.
Many years, even decades later, I was able to return the favor to Neil Tennant a little bit for the joy that the Pet Shop Boys so often gave me in everyday life. He complained on the sidelines of an interview that he often missed the subway in Berlin because he had to dig out change for the ticket machine, so I showed him the BVG app. “You’ve just saved my life!” he exclaimed in a good mood. My pleasure!
