Grand River: Between Two Parks
© Maria Louceiro
I met Aimée, aka Grand River, in The Hague ahead of her performance at Rewire Festival.
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Travel delays and logistical issues meant that Aimée was slightly late meeting me. She was in her comfy travelling gear having just arrived in The Hague from Barcelona. A baseball cap poked out from under her hoodie, and her warm smile often poked out from under her baseball cap and glasses.
We walked along a Saturday market as people were taking down there stalls on this bright evening. Trams, bikes and cars filled this busy area. Hofvijver, an urban lake, sparkled under the setting sun.
“This winter for me, I dunno why, passed by so quickly,” said Aimée.
“Why?” I stupidly asked.
“I don't know.”
“You don't know why, but —”
“I don't know why. I was sometimes wondering, Oh, no. Another week passed. . . I also get the feeling that after the pandemic there are so many things going on and so many things to do, that I kept really busy this winter and it was really nice to reconnect with people and go to events and so I guess that really changed my winter.”
“But you're looking forward to the summer, I'd imagine.”
“I am really, yeah.”
“You have Italian blood, don't you?” I asked.
“Yeah, I'm half-Italian,” said Aimée. “Although, I must say, I've been living in Berlin now for eight years and I got used to — I mean, in Italy in summer it's really hot.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Like, super hot. And when I go there now, I'm like, Wow, I forgot how that was. So, I'm getting a bit German.”
I laughed.
“But, no,” Aimée continued, “I love the spring and summer in Berlin. It's really, really beautiful. And also now, in this period, it's so cute because you see all the trees starting to blossom. But also the people, they change.”
“Yes,” I said. “They're less miserable.”
“Yeah, like this. They're just blossoming and reawakening.”
It was hard to discern between the path and the road in this area. We waited to cross the road for longer than necessary. I told Aimée that I don’t trust drivers. Or trams. Or bikes. Or anything that moves. We crossed and walked along a thin path. The placid park Koekamp was on our right. It was remarkably green. The abrasive sounds of EDM edits and screams of people on rides were coming from the temporary amusement park on our left.
“I've been here,” said Aimée, “but so long ago.”
“So, you're half-Dutch, half-Italian?” I tried to confirm.
“Yes.”
“And where did you grow up?”
“I was born in the Netherlands and I lived here for 12 years. Not in this town, but, then I moved to Italy. So, let's say 12 years here and then more or less 18 years in Italy and then I moved to Berlin. I stayed between countries somehow. “
We found ourselves deeper in Koekamp.
“Look.” Aimée pointed at a cluster of red deer and fallow deer entrapped on an island, the other side of a narrow moat in Koekamp. There was flimsy steel fencing erected at the section we passed. “How cute.”
“This is really cute,” I said, “but I dunno, it looks like an underfunded zoo.”
“Yeah. Poor them. They have to listen to this music all the time,” Aimée quipped. “Poor them. That's weird, this contrast.”
“That is very strange.”
“Very strange.”
We looked at them for a moment. One of the deer came up to the fencing and looked right at us, for what seemed like an age. No one has ever won a staring contest with these deer, I thought. They are unflinching. Their eye contact is unwavering. I felt as if they knew way too much about me from this brief and mute interaction.
“I've had a question on my mind,” I said, as we continued walking. “The idea of my and the possessive connotation of my and how we misuse it. When we say my hometown, can you really own the place where you come from, especially when you're thrust outwards because you feel you don't belong there?”
“For me, this is actually a very interesting topic,” said Aimée. “I talk about this sometimes with friends and my mother. I don't really have this sense of belonging. Probably because of the fact that I moved away from the Netherlands when I was 12. Also because my father's Italian and mother is Dutch, so I was already between the two countries at birth. I was with them, moving back and forth from Italy and the Netherlands, all the time. So, I lived in these two countries at the same time and I was talking in Italian with my father, talking in Dutch with my mother and then I moved to Italy, but, I mean, I did not move in a place that really felt like home to me.”
“Were you known as the Dutch kid in school?” I asked.
“Yeah, but still there is not really a place like that for me — I don't have this belonging feeling. A lot of people I know do. They really have this call to go home. . . I don't know where my home is. For me, my home is where I live, which is now Berlin. I call it my home because it's where I feel comfortable. It's where I have my dog, where I have my studio, where I have my friends. So, where I live my life.”
“Yeah.”
“I think this has pros and cons,” said Aimée, “because I don't have this strong connection to a place which is also a bit sad because I don't have this calling to go back and rediscover my roots. But the pro in this is that I think I can adapt very easily in other places. If I moved somewhere else and just created a place for myself to live comfortably and have the possibility to do what I need to do, I would feel home there anyway. Sometimes, I think about that. What's my home? I also don't feel Dutch at all.”
“Oh, really?”
“No, and it's very weird. I have a stronger connection with Italy somehow. Maybe because I lived there for a longer period.”
“And also at a point when you —”
“Yeah, when you connect.”
“— have a stronger memory of it as well.”
“Yes, yes.”
“In your younger years, you don't really have that informed memory of it.”
“Yeah, when you're making all your friends and bond with people. That's true.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
We reached the end of the strip. A motorway was in front of us. A dead end. We turned back on ourselves and begin circling the deer to the other side of the moat.
“You know when you're at home,” Aimée said at one point, “and you're comfortable in your bubble and then you're like, Aw no, I just want to stay home, but then you go and you're happy that you had this communication with people that maybe you don't know. So, there's this connection. I think sometimes we forget that this connection is very important to have. Whether it is with people or with an art expression. I went recently to go see contemporary ballet and it was really beautiful and then I came home and I was happy, you know? So, it changes my mood. I really need that.”
“And are you typically doing these things alone,” I asked, “or do you think it's crucial and essential that you enjoy that moment with someone else?”
“I can enjoy them on my own,” said Aimée. “I mean, I like to do things with my partner and with friends, but I also enjoy doing things on my own. I like the freedom of doing things on my own sometimes because you don't need to organise with anyone. Like you said today, you were on your own so you don't need to coordinate, you don't need to be on time. I like that feeling too.”
“I often feel that a problem with people in Dublin is that there's this paralysis, this inability to move, because people are always trying —”
“— To find their way together.”
“Yeah, exactly. It's always waiting for someone else.”
“And losing time deciding.”
“One, I can't understand it, but I also can't bear it. I completely disagree with the idea of waiting for someone else.”
“Yeah? You don't like to wait?”
“No. I don't like waiting.”
“I made you wait today.”
I laughed. “I didn't mean that. That's ok. That's ok. It was only one hour. When it's one month, six months . . .“
“I hope you did something nice in the meantime.”
“I was just chilling. I'm quite comfortable with my own thoughts, so it was fine.”
“Yeah, that's true. When you're with other people you have less time for your thoughts.”
“Yeah.”
“You with your thoughts,” Aimée pondered. “This is something that I miss sometimes. I mean, it's nice. I love to be with other people but I also need my own moments of silence. Especially when you're travelling with other people. You're all the time together and all the time interacting in the end, somehow. When I travel on my own, I'm way more immersed in my own feelings and my thoughts. You're more confronted with yourself. . . Sometimes, when I'm on the airplane — I had it today, too — I always have the idea of bringing a book and I'm like, Ok, I have this book I really wanna read, but then in the end I spend hours looking outside of the window and just thinking. And then time goes by so fast. It's nice. Because you don't do that at home, right? You don't just sit on the sofa staring at the wall.”
I laughed. “Although there was times when my decrepit, ageing dog would just stare at the wall, and I was kinda jealous.”
Aimée laughed.
“I wish I could get enjoyment out of that, staring at the wall.”
“Yes.”
We slowed down to allow a flock of ducks in front of us to waddle and quack their way across the path. Our pace was corrected and we assumed a dawdle thereafter. People overtook us with what now seemed to be an alarming speed.
“Do you feel you have ownership of yourself,” I asked, “and you know who you are and you have bodily and social autonomy?”
“I'm in the process of trying to be more aware of myself,” said Aimée. “It's a work in progress, I think, until forever, for everyone.”
“Yeah.”
“I think a lot of people think they know who they are, what they want and what they're goals are, or what they want or what they're ideals are or what they stand for. But, then if you really think about it, it's not easy to answer these questions. Because if we don't stop and think and analyse ourselves, everything just flows and it flows and we are unaware and I think it's very important to be aware of what is happening and what we're doing and how we are behaving, how we are.”
“Are you saying self-analysis is important, yeah?” I tried to confirm.
“I think it's very important,” Aimée clapped back.
“But how do you assure that self-analysis doesn't become paralysis? Where you become stuck in who you are and maybe you're shortcomings and what you're not achieving?”
“Well yeah, I think it's about a balance. You need to find this balance, even though it's hard to analyse. . . In the end, time goes by and if we analyse, but then we take action, and we continue to live life in a way that is more aware, you get out of this, this paralysis state. That would be ideal. It's not easy, of course.”
The screams and jeers of people from people on the rides in the amusement park started to dampen on the other side of the moat.
“Do you think in order to know oneself or to know yourself, it's essential to crush the ego,” I said. “But then in crushing the ego, that's recognising and acknowledging that there is no self?”
“Well,” said Aimée, “I think when you get there, when you realise that there is no self — When you come to that point, you are already far with the analyzation, right? Because you must be already aware of that and in an acceptance phase of how you see yourself, right? We build our own world, our own character, our own person, but I think it's interesting to see that, this thing that we build up for ourselves, in the end can be dismantled and then rebuilt because it's just an idea.”
“When do you think was the last time you went through a rebuilding phase in your life?” I asked.
Aimée groaned in thought. “Well, I think not a complete rebuilding, but I would say more of a shifting. When I moved to Berlin, I must say, that was a really important moment in my life where a lot of things changed for me: as a person, workwise, personal-wise, family-wise. A lot of dynamics changed and I changed. I think in life we have these shifting moments and maybe you don't really see them when you are in it, but you see them after.”
“In hindsight, yeah,” I said. “Do you think when you moved to Berlin, you were running away from something or can you even be running away from something when you don't even consider anywhere home?”
“No,” Aimée said. “I don't think I was really running away. Not from a place. I wasn't running away. I wanted closure more with the life that I built for myself there. I didn't like that life anymore. I didn't like that routine anymore. I didn't like the dynamics of that life anymore. So, I decided that I wanted to change and I wanted to shift. I consciously closed some doors. So, it wasn't really running away. It was more deciding that I don't want things to continue like this anymore. I want other things.”
“Is it possible to be able to manipulate or carve out that version of reality that you want, but in the same place geographically that you are in?” I asked. “Was it essential that you left?”
“For me,” Aimée said, “it was essential to leave, yes. Because I was also stuck in some personal situations and housing situations that I didn't want anymore. And, also yes, in some dynamics that were connected to the place itself, so I needed to move away. I mean, now, of course, if I would move back, I would carry with me what I am now.”
We continued dawdling and ended up circling the moat, finishing back by the deer at the steel fence. A connecting passage at the top, by the motorway, had been hidden previously. We needn’t have bothered turning back on ourselves.
Grand River and Sofie Birch’s collaborative EP
Our Circadian is out November 24 via Melantónia.
Listen to “7PM” below.
