Our today’s Quarantine Stories are told by Eha-Kai Mesipuu, Head of Marketing of Tallinn Music Week’s festival home Nordic Hotel Forum, and Roman Demchenko, fantastic music programme and production head of TMW and Station Narva, who also runs the live music agency Damn.Loud and the Gromxx festival. Read what they are doing, thinking and feeling in isolation time.
Nordic Hotel Forum is TMW’s very first partner since 2009. Words are not enough to express how much we appreciate this long-term cooperation and our partner’s exceptional commitment and effort to constantly offer our guests an even better place to stay. Those who have spent the night at Nordic want to stay there again and again, because there is something special about it – a feeling of home in Tallinn.
Nordic Hotel Forum has also something special to offer for Easter – a delicious holiday pasha! It contains everything good: curd, whipped cream, grated orange and lemon peel, dried apricots, golden raisins, walnuts and, of course, honey from the hotel’s own roof garden. Order home-delivery from Wolt!
Happy Easter!
What are you listening, watching, reading etc?
Eha-Kai: Now that we have taken the work home with us and the homes have become offices, when it is quite difficult to make a difference between a working day and a day off, we have to force ourselves to find at least a moment in the day for ourselves.
It’s really nice to choose a good vinyl record from the shelf, put it on the turntable, lay down for a moment, enjoy the warm spring sun shining from the window and enjoy your favorite music on the record. (Take Hailey Tuck’s “Junk”, for example – no doubt one of my record recommendations for Saturday afternoon.) Or activate the noise cancellation feature in your head for a while and just listen to silence.
The passion for baking, of course, forces me to press the oven button over and over again. Fortunately, all the neighbours are at home and their doorbells work, so it’s possible to surprise them with something sweet contact-free.
Roman: I’ve been listening to quite a few artists who applied for TMW, as we were just compiling a complementary programme for August.
A new release I recommend is Igorrr’s “Spirituality and Distortion”. It has everything – opera, death metal, folk, breakcore, ambient, and pretty much anything else. Phenomenal! Also, good old death metal can always cheer you up, which is particularly important during quarantine – Dying Fetus, Aborted, Cattle Decapitation, Despised Icon, etc.
Also, I’m just tuning in to Amenra’s new documentary “The Flood of Light”. Last week, I watched “Tiger King”, which in its entirety seemed even worse than the current global situation. I also started watching the series Peaky Blinders yesterday, and it looks exciting.
What are you feeling and thinking about in this situation?
Eha-Kai: The soul of any culture lover is certainly most hungry for culture at the moment. Fortunately, it is reaching more and more to homes through various channels and solutions. Of course, the longing to experience the direct meeting with your favourite musicians, actors and art is constantly growing. I am really looking forward to the time when all that will happen again, because there is so much to expect!
Today, I want people to be able to spend time on their own without getting bored with themselves. In order for loneliness not to be a waste of time, but as the time to be with ourselves, we should appreciate it as an opportunity to do something that we really like, an opportunity to think calmly, to listen to and organize our thoughts, or, alternatively, not to think about anything. And, of course, to be able to distinguish between loneliness and aloneness. Now is definitely the time for everyone to dedicate themselves to their loved ones, get to know them better and listen to them. Are there anyone among them whose sense of loneliness we have not noticed?
The current difficult time pushes us to look at the current normality with a completely different look. Many existing habits, actions and attitudes have gained new value in just a few weeks, making us think and re-evaluate our steps.
The present time gives us all the opportunity to really think out of the box (while being locked in boxes), encourages new ideas, without setting boundaries. And we all have the opportunity at the moment to create something extraordinary that will change the lives and attitudes of all of us. Of course, the curiosity about new solutions, society’s views and attitudes in the near future is huge, because the future has already arrived!
Roman: I hope that our new normality will be as close as possible to what we had before the crisis. Which is unlikely to be the case. Also, we’re trying to figure out how we could do our small bit to help Estonia out of this crisis with a couple of clubs in Tallinn. You’ll hear about it shortly.
What kind of future are you dreaming of?
Eha-Kai: I believe that working together in such a complex crisis will help us to shake back the values that have shifted from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and the burden of responsibilities.
I want us to continue to forget to notice, care for and support each other – core values that are important every day.
Roman: The kind of future where you can go to a punk rock show and go crazy collectively.