About three years ago in the span of may 2016 to 2017 I had a very big crush on a girl. The same girl of 'By Your Side'. One day she and I cycled to 'De Blaarmeersen' in Ghent. Luna had told me about this amazing little spot she found while walking with her sister. We cycled around the lake and parked our bikes near some trashcan. There was a hillside/forest with some stairs. Climbing them felt like going on a hiking trip in France. The deep green of early summer leaves obscured the sun as we ascended towards the top of the hill. Up there we found a watchtower with three platforms. We climbed to the highest platform and up there was an unseen perspective on the watercity and beyond. You could see the port and all its windmills, St. Peters Square, Ikea in the distance and if you turned your head just right you could look upon a beautiful pasture. The landscape gave a sense of extreme nostalgia and it felt like we were somewhere abroad, somewhere far far away from all our problems. We ate some apples and threw the core below us into the trees, each of us making a wish. Naturally we never told each other the wish, but I believe it might have come true.
(Up on the hill in the South side of the domain is where you can find 'Observatietoren' aka The Watchtower)
We visited the watchtower once again in autumn. In the midst of the cold sunset she took pictures of the warm pink and orange. My arms were wrapped around her shoulder and she told me that the desire and longing were often better than the love itself. To this day I still believe that the timing was just off. At least that's what my heart tells me. I do believe she had many chances to break away from her toxic relationship at the time, but she probably never knew that loving someone is not enough.
The second person I climbed the watchtower with was a good friend of mine, let's call him Johnathan. In the summer of 2016 I got to know him really well and bonded with him throughout the entire last year of college. In October of 2017 we decided to live together in his house. I showed him the view and in turn he showed it to his girlfriend at the time. After a while we felt tensions rising between us in the co-housing. He witheld his feelings about something that happened on a trip to Italy, something very important. I only found out why he wanted me to move out a year later, after he ignored and avoided me. Sometimes you can also have bad break-ups with your best friend.
I often visited it alone and started to write a song about it last year the day of a gig with my other project 'MakiMura'. I had just visited the watchtower and was thinking of the girl I once had a crush on and about those two faithful days, about how she was now studying somewhere else. Somewhere not but here. I experimented with an open D tuning on the third fret, so in the key of F. I always felt the key of F to have something white and bright, which is a perfect reflection of the song 'Sun' as well. I perfected the song's structure in MuDa in the production classes of Diederik De Saedeleer and sung it on the open stages of MUDAZ a few times. The next two persons I took the watchtower were two very good friends. The latter being a girl I had met in the summer of 2019. We went uphill on a sultry summer evening during 'De Gentse Feesten'. Another mate of mine had asked to come nightswimming and naturally I rushed over together with the friend. While climbing the wooden stairs I explained to her what the tower means to me and that I only took important people in my life up to look at that rare stellar view. It's been a while since I've seen the view. Maybe I should climb upwards after the lockdown.
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