Kapitel 4: A Little More Mine

A few quiet days gave way to one of those evenings that just kept opening into the next thing. By four in the morning I was still dancing. Five hours later, I finally let other people into this little world I had been building.

von Karl

Finally leaving my desk again

A few days had passed since the weekend. Not uneventful ones, exactly. There was a surprisingly funny little story involving a dance school, I ran into someone I really hadn't planned on seeing again, briefly ended up with Lucy and some of her friends, and spent far too many hours working on this website.

Mostly, though, I was sitting at my desk.
So by Thursday, I was more than ready for someone to drag me away from my computer.

And wonderfully, that someone was Ola.
She had simply texted me something along the lines of:
"Can you guess where i am ?"
Exactly what I needed to get me away from my desk.

We decided to meet at Parc de la Ciutadella, which has quickly become one of my favourite places to just sit around, look at the water and do very little for a while.

Parc de la Ciutadella

I got there before Ola, and while waiting I came across this incredibly talented saxophone player.
Barcelona has a surprisingly alive jazz scene in general. There's even a tiny jazz club close to my apartment that I've been meaning to visit. At some point I'll actually make it there and take you with me.
For now, though, I had the saxophone player.

I think photographing people is slowly becoming one of my favourite parts of having a camera. Landscapes can be beautiful, but people are unpredictable in a way I really love. Sometimes you press the shutter and later think, wow, how did I get that? And sometimes it's more like, how did that happen?

From there, the afternoon became much less structured.

We wandered around, eventually met up with her friend, and at one point briefly got swallowed by a crowd of people carrying torches through the city.

That wasn't really part of the plan.

Neither was staying with Ola for particularly long, because eventually I had to split off and head toward Lucy.

We had finally managed to make an actual plan to see each other.

Waiting for a table

When I got there, Lucy wasn't exactly alone.

There were maybe eight of us, and from what I could tell, a lot of the people there didn't really know each other particularly well either. Lucy had somehow just pulled this whole little group together.

When I arrived, everyone was standing in the middle of the square.

Just standing there.

I joined them, opened my Club-Mate and tried to understand what exactly we were doing.

Side note: I love Club-Mate.
Unfortunately, loving Club-Mate in Barcelona is becoming a very expensive hobby. I think I've spent well over thirty euros on it in the last few weeks alone.

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy....

Eventually I asked why we were all just standing around.

"We're waiting for a table."

I looked around.

There were tables everywhere.

There just wasn't a single free one.

And then I noticed we weren't the only ones.

There were little groups scattered around the square, all doing exactly the same thing. Standing, talking, but clearly keeping one eye on every occupied table around them.

Suddenly the whole place felt slightly predatory.

Everyone was pretending to have a normal evening while secretly waiting for someone else to get up.

And when one table finally became free, there was this tiny moment where everyone noticed at once.

We didn't exactly run.

But let's just say nobody wasted much time.

A few seconds later we had claimed it, squeezed everyone around it, and apparently found the place where we were going to spend the rest of the evening.

We drank, talked about photography, Barcelona, work, people, and whatever else happened to come up. I finally got some proper time with Lucia and her roommate Viviana, and the whole evening had this really comfortable feeling of people slowly getting to know each other around one table.

Somewhere between drinks and conversations, October came up.

There were still two small gaps where I didn't know where I was going to stay. I wasn't particularly stressed about it myself. Mostly because I knew that if I waited long enough, Giulia would eventually fix it for me.

Which would just mean she'd be stressed instead.

Not exactly fair.

So one of my goals that evening was to finally sort it out myself.

And, surprisingly, it was pretty easy. Mateo was already helping me with one of the gaps, and that evening Lucia and Viviana offered me a place for the other one.

Problem solved.

More importantly, I could finally tell Giulia she didn't have to worry about it anymore.

Midnight seemed like a good time to start

It was around midnight when I headed to a club I already knew from the last time I was in Barcelona.

This time I went alone, and from the moment I started dancing, I felt incredibly relaxed.

I wasn't trying to prove anything. I wasn't analysing every movement. I was just being silly with people, laughing in the middle of dances, smiling at strangers and enjoying those little moments where you look at the person in front of you and can tell they're having just as much fun as you are.

Then there was another song.

And somehow another hour was gone.

By the time I finally left, it was around four in the morning.

I walked home tired, sweaty and very happy.

Five hours later, I was awake again.

And then I showed people this

I had spent weeks obsessing over tiny things. How the stories should feel, where the photos belong, how people could interact with them, and how much of myself I actually wanted to put here.


At some point, it had stopped feeling like just another programming project.
It had become a place for my photos, the people I meet, the things I don't want to forget and all the thoughts that somehow don't fit anywhere else.
And that morning I sent it to four people.


Just four.


But suddenly someone other than me could actually walk through this little place I'd been building.
They could see the photos, read the stories and, probably the strangest part, see quite a lot of me.


It was/is so exciting.


A little terrifying.


But mostly exciting.

Four people wasn't a public launch. And i think it will never be realy Public.

Still, that was the first morning Karleidoscope felt real.

And if you're reading this now, I guess it didn't stop at four.