Barbara is for falling in love again and again. Jazz singer Gregory Porter admits that his career is built on the ruins of his ex-relationships. Oha!
Barbara: Gregory, on the way to this conversation I heard "Hey Laura" again, my favorite song of yours. And I thought: what a great song about love you wrote there!
Gregory: Thank you that makes me happy.
Barbara: I only have one question: Who is Laura? Do they really exist?
Gregory: Uh … yes. It is real. A Scottish woman I met in New York. We actually had something going on for a while, but that broke up. Ultimately, because … well … I couldn't handle a skirt she always wore.
Barbara: I beg your pardon? A skirt?
Gregory: Exactly.
Barbara: A short skirt?
Gregory: On the contrary. It went down to her ankles. With a Scottish pattern. Brightly colored. It was a skirt that cried out for attention.
Barbara: Okay, but I still don't understand …
Gregory: I was living in Brooklyn at the time and was in a phase of my life where I just needed to be calm. I didn't want to attract attention, but when I walked to the subway with Laura, this skirt that shouted "SEE ME!" Did the opposite. I wanted her to stop attracting him. She thought that was stupid.
Barbara: I understand. This then became a principle in your relationship.
Gregory: Yes. It turned out: I couldn't accept her the way she was. And she neither understood my feelings nor took them into account. And then it just happens that you can fail on a skirt.
Barbara: Do you think she's still wearing it?
Gregory: Wouldn't be surprised. Back then she cried a lot because of me, she said: Nobody ever wanted me to wear anything else. I am what I wear! She was absolutely right about that. Honestly: I'm still sorry today that I was so crappy back then.
Barbara: How long ago was that?
Gregory: Around 15 years.
Barbara: In the song about her you sing that you rang her bell late after a long time.
Gregory: I have not. But years later, I actually used modern means to find out how she was doing. Whether she is married or has children … Thank you, Facebook.
Barbara: I do that every day.
Gregory: What? Check out ex-friends?
Barbara: Yes! Oddly, it somehow calms me down when I know what's going on in their lives. But I couldn't find anything about one of my exs on the Internet, no entry, no picture, nothing at all. That made me totally crazy, in my megalomania I was firmly convinced that he was hiding from me. And then I met him on the street.
Gregory: And?
Barbara: I think he was really hiding from me.
Gregory: Sounds like you're going to be lingering over failed relationships for a long time.
Barbara: A fallacy. When I'm gone, I've completely loosened myself inside. But still I find it exciting how it goes on in the lives of these men.
Gregory: And … what happened next?
Barbara: Well, some became gay after they were with me.
Gregory: Really?
Barbara: Really. I was probably too shocked for her. But I just met a guy I was with at school last week. After 30 years! And I have to say: That was really nice. We are both better versions of ourselves today than we were then.
Gregory: How better?
Barbara: Clearer. More confident. More relaxed. Do you remember how confusing and devastating it was to have a crush on 15 or 19?
Gregory: Clear! And I totally understand what you mean. But on the other hand there are these chemical reactions of love. Confusion and a shake of your own world are also in the program in the mid-30s or late 40s. And I very much hope that when you fall in love with 70, that's still the case. How old were you when you met the man you are married to now?
Barbara: That was in my early thirties, about twelve years ago. And you? When did you meet your wife?
Gregory: Was something like that. 13 years ago, when I was 35. And I think I don't just speak for myself: at this age you have a more solid consciousness than when you were 15 or 19. That helps.
Barbara: Indeed. I am really glad that I met my great love so late in my life. That would never have worked at 20, so I always had the feeling that there was more out there and definitely something better. I tried it out in front of him, I found out what I want – and what not.
Gregory: And what do you not want?
Barbara: I used to look for men who were completely the opposite of me, with whom I had nothing in common. I don't want that anymore since I understood how cool it is when you can look someone in the heart of my husband. I understand everything he says, what he feels … Gregory, now you will be very quiet …
Gregory: Sorry. I'm just thinking about how it started with me and Victoria.
Barbara: Oh yes! Where did you meet
Gregory: In Moscow, she is Russian. I was there on a concert tour. But initially there was no love involved, no big tingling. We were together with other people. But we quickly became good friends.
Barbara: That can be an advantage.
Gregory: Yes. To the extent that love without friendship has no basis. So we had clarified the point beforehand. What we added was that there was a language barrier. Another advantage.
Barbara: Really? How come?
Gregory: Because I wanted to be sure about her feelings and I had to make sure: does she mean it one way or another or in a completely different way? We talked and talked and talked, there was nothing unsaid in the room.
Barbara: In sign language?
Gregory: No no. When I met her, she spoke about 30 words of English. Your first emails were very poetic, the Google translator wasn't nearly as good as it is now. These were not complete, meaningful sentences that came out of it. More Japanese haikus. "The river and the blazing sunlight shine from your forehead," roughly. When she finally spoke good English, she said she just wanted to tell me that she liked to go swimming in the river.
Barbara: This is very funny!
Gregory: But there are actually some intercultural opposites that shape our relationship. For example: I am not allowed to whistle in the house.
Barbara: Yikes Why not?
Gregory: Russian superstition. If you whistle in the house, the Russian believes, you will lose all your money.
Barbara: Really!
Gregory: Victoria's seriousness! And that's not easy professionally: When I think of a tune at home, my first impulse is …
Barbara: … to whistle them. Completely clear.
Gregory: It then becomes acidic and very energetic. I try to make her understand that the opposite is the case: if I whistle a new tune, money will come in later!
Barbara: And?
Gregory: Nothing to do. There is no logic against Russian superstition. But I have also slowly approached these phenomena in our relationship. And that is what I actually want to say: this confirmation of the correctness of what the other person wants to say has slowed the pace. It calmed me and Victoria down. That was good.
Barbara: What I like very much about it right now is that you dragged out the best of a relationship.
Gregory: And this is?
Barbara: The beginning. Approaching each other, falling apart. Today I think I should have slid into my relationships much, much slower to savor this phase, which no couple can repeat.
Gregory: The recipe for that would be to fall in love more often.
Barbara: And I'm for it! It doesn't have to be a man and not sexual at all. But something that gives you butterflies in your stomach and goose bumps.
Gregory: For example?
Barbara: A house, a cat, from my point of view also a man … You don't have to live out everything, but I'm always in love somehow. If only in my own life.
Gregory: There's a song on my new record, "If Love Is Overrated". It is about love not lived out. When you are in love with someone at school who will never find out about doing something with someone at work, where it is often forbidden … My thought was: love does not necessarily need a recipient. The feeling is not devalued by the fact that a love is not returned, it also does not become weaker.
Barbara: An inner love, not an external one.
Gregory: Exactly. And this feeling is valuable, great things can arise from it. Poems, novels, songs, laws can be created on this basis and entire social systems collapse. That's what makes love so powerful. Also and especially the unrequited.
Barbara: The ugly little sister of unrequited love is a broken heart. Do you see any advantages in this too?
Gregory: Absolutely. My career is ultimately based on the melancholy that I have experienced through heartache. How about you?
Barbara: Oh, my heart wasn't broken that often. Only really once. It was me who left him. Afterwards I realized: It was a really big deal. But I was around 20, and as I said earlier …
Gregory: … it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
Barbara: Correct. But it still exists in my life and I google it.
Gregory: Why am I not surprised now?
Barbara: Can we talk about another kind of love?
Gregory: Which?
Barbara: I read that you are a mom child.
Gregory: That's true. I hardly knew my father and my mother died when I was 21. But my love for her is something special in my life.
Barbara: Do you like to tell about it
Gregory: We grew up in Bakersfield, California, in an area where racism was part of everyday life. But she always made it clear to my seven siblings and to me: you are no worse than anyone else in the world. She taught us to go straight through life, and her love was so real, so deep, so unbreakable that I still get that feeling today.
Barbara: That is my firm conviction: if you are loved unconditionally by your mother, and that was and is the same with me, then not much can really happen to you in life. But my father loves me too. It's really sad that you weren't.
Gregory: That is an open wound, until today. But he also gave me something.
Barbara: And what?
Gregory: I was at his funeral a few years ago. There were a lot of people I of course didn't know. And they told me what an incredibly beautiful singing voice my father had.
Barbara: You didn't know that?
Gregory: I had no Idea. He left me nothing, no word, no letter, no picture, nothing at all. He was a stranger. But I often have to think about it today: my voice, for which I am known in large parts of the world today, which gave me a solid income and which has turned my life in a wonderful direction – that is his legacy. In this way I am connected to him forever.
Stephan Bartels accompanied the conversation and afterwards thought of all the girls and women he was in love with without knowing it.
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