Another Vagabond Lost To Love Quotes

“6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
Blurred out lines
from hangovers
to coffee
Another vagabond
lost to love.

4am alone and on my way.
These are my finest moments.
I scrub my skin
to rid me from
you
and I still don’t know why I cried.
It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest.
But then you must have changed your mind
or made a wrong
because why did you
leave?

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days,
and I still don’t know which month it was then
or what day it is now.
I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottles
and this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough because there’s no right way to do this.
There is no right way to do this.

There is no right way to do this.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“... so this is for us.
This is for us who sing, write, dance, act, study, run and love
and this is for doing it even if no one will ever know
because the beauty is in the act of doing it.
Not what it can lead to.
This is for the times I lose myself while writing, singing, playing
and no one is around and they will never know
but I will forever remember
and that shines brighter than any praise or fame or glory I will ever have,
and this is for you who write or play or read or sing
by yourself with the light off and door closed
when the world is asleep and the stars are aligned
and maybe no one will ever hear it
or read your words
or know your thoughts
but it doesn’t make it less glorious.
It makes it ethereal. Mysterious.
Infinite.
For it belongs to you and whatever God or spirit you believe in
and only you can decide how much it meant
and means
and will forever mean
and other people will experience it too
through you.
Through your spirit. Through the way you talk.
Through the way you walk and love and laugh and care
and I never meant to write this long
but what I want to say is:
Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourself
and let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.
Let your very identity be your book.
Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.

So go create. Take photographs in the wood, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountain
where no one will ever hear
and your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar.
Make your life be your art
and you will never be forgotten.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrow
for I am not a poem.
I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspired
but empty and weary
from drinking too much
at all times
and I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speak
for I don’t speak much
at all
and my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too much
or not at all
and never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am not
a poem
but an elegy
at my best
but unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,
but others are not.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“It’s the beating of my heart.
The way I lie awake, playing with shadows slowly climbing up my wall. The gentle moonlight slipping through my window and the sound of a lonely car somewhere far away, where I long to be too, I think. It’s the way I thought my restless wandering was over, that I’d found whatever I thought I had found, or wanted, or needed, and I started to collect my belongings. Build a home. Safe behind the comfort of these four walls and a closed door.
Because as much as I tried or pretended or imagined myself as a part of all the people out there,
I was still the one locking the door every night.
Turning off the phone and blowing out the candles so no one knew I was home.
’cause I was never really well around the expectations of my personality
and I wanted to keep to myself.
and because I haven’t been very impressed lately.
By people,
or places.
Or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I’m learning persistence and the closing of doors, the way the seasons come and go as I keep walking on these roads, back and forth, to find myself in new time zones, new arms with new phrases and new goals. And it hurts to become, hurts to find out about the poverty and gaps, the widow and the leavers. It hurts to accept that it hurts and it hurts to learn how easy it is for people to not need other people. Or how easy it is to need other people but that you can never build a home in someone’s arms because they will let go one day and you must build your own.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I was free with every road as my home. No limitations and no commitments. But then summer passed and winter came and I fell short for safety. I fell for its spell, slowly humming me to sleep, because I was tired and small, too weak to take or handle those opinions and views, attacking me from every angle. Against my art, against my self, against my very way of living. I collected my thoughts, my few possessions and built isolated walls around my values and character. I protected my own definition of beauty and success like a treasure at the bottom of the sea, for no one saw what I saw, or felt the same as I did, and so I wanted to keep to myself.
You hide to protect yourself.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I am running and singing and when it’s raining I’m the only one left on the open street, smiling with my eyes fixed on the sky because it’s cleaning me. I’m the one on the other side of the party, hearing laughter and the emptying of bottles while I peacefully make my way to the river, a lonely road, following the smell of the ocean. I’m the one waking up at 4am to witness the sunrise, where the sky touches the sea, and I hold my elbows, grasping tight to whatever I’ve made of myself.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“There were days when I still put on make up
in case you’d come back,
but I wear the same clothes and shower in the rain
and eat when I can and sleep when I can,
which is rare and not often,
so if you’d see me now
on these streets
where I once imagined walking with you
you’d have a hard time recognising me.
I takes a lot to run away.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“It all takes time and lessons and places, but I’m learning to listen to my restless heart, telling me to “go, go, go!”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Am I making something worth while?
I’m not sure.
I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,
but am I making something worth while?
I’m not sure.

There was a boy last night who I never spoke to because I was too drunk and still shy, but mostly lonely, and I couldn’t find anything lightly to say,
so I simply walked away
but still wondered what he did with his life
because he didn’t even speak to me
or look at me
but still made me wonder who he was
and I walked away asking
Am I making something worth while?
I am not sure.

I am a complicated person with a simple life
and I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“... and I realise the only way to tell the others
is through the way my voice can take these broken words
and turn it into music.
Turn it into poetry.
And I sing to make myself come alive,
but also for you,
because I’d like this to mean something.
To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day
and so now I will tell.
If not for you, then for my own heart,
because it tells me to,
and I'm learning to listen.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Well, at least this is what I told myself every day as I fell asleep with the fire still burning and the moon shining high up in the sky and my head spinning comforting from two bottles of wine, and I smiled with tears in my eyes because it was beautiful and so god damn sad and I did not know how to be one of those without the other.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I was running and deliberately lost my way. The world far off and nothing but my breath and the very next step and it’s like hypnosis. The feeling of conquering my own aliveness with no task but to keep going, making every way the right away and that’s a metaphor for everything.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“You must make love to him like his touch is your salvation.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Life did not impress me and I did not impress life. We were two companions who’d been forced together, and we tried to get a long or coexist but communication failed and I was misunderstood, and misunderstood life; until I found art. Or art found me, which it rather feels like because I never sought it, never wished for it, it just showed up one night when I needed it the most and it communicated in a way I finally understood. It spoke to me, sang to me, danced for me, and for the first time I understood and could make myself understood, and that’s when it all changed.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“No story is worth telling without the twists and turns. Make them count instead.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“They way I walk now
you’d have a hard time recognising me,
on these streets
where I once imagined walking with you.
Hand in hand,
like we always did,
and it never mattered where we were going
because it was all just fine.
I was always fine.
But they rest restlessly in my pockets now,
in a new town,
on these new streets,
and it’s heavy to stay standing
for my body is half the size
when you’re gone
and these buildings are tall and old and beautiful
and I wonder what secrets they hold.
How to stand so proud after so many years
because I’m still young but I feel worn
and I get through the days on too much caffeine and mood altering chemicals
to stay awake long enough to make the poetry come alive.
I fall asleep on the floor with the music still playing
when my neighbour leaves for the office
and I’m jealous.
I wonder what it’s like to go outside and know where to go,
know where you want to end up
and just simply go there.
I’ve been making lists of things I want to do,
where to go
and who to be,
now that you’re gone,
and it’s nice and all,
it’s just …
I’d rather write it with you,
and go there with you.
Be things
with you.

There were days when I still put on make up
in case you’d come back,
but I wear the same clothes and shower in the rain,
eat when I can and sleep when I can,
which is rare and not often,
so if you’d see me now
on these streets
where I once imagined walking with you
you’d have a hard time recognising me.

It takes a lot to run away.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“This world can be quite wonderful once you let yourself be a part of it. It’s on your side, you know?”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I said I liked sunsets
and he said “you should see the sunrise,”
and told me about open fields in Canada, where he’d been. I listened and he talked and my broken heart ached a little lower and not so hard, and I never told him about it, but I think he knew, for by the end of the night he said he liked that I finally smiled and told me to do so more often, and that was just one of many days that didn’t turn out the way I had planned, but just like I needed it to, and that’s where I’d like to live.
So it’s about the endless possibility of every single day.
Be always on your way.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“So I died many times that year.
In the cold, in the storm, on the run or on the drunk for my heart did not want to beat
but kept on beating anyway
and my pain was as real as real can be,
and I tried to learn and deal and run and feel
but nothing really worked.

I built a comfortable home in my sorrow and settled into a quiet living. No sparks or grand gestures, just a simple daily hymn to comfort. The leaves fell off the trees and coloured this city in all kinds of pretty, and some days that was enough to make me smile at least a little bit, within.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I am 23 and I am learning what it means to be an artist, for I am not an artist, because it takes life and a life lived well, to the limit, to see the patterns in storms, but I am 23 and I am learning. I am learning shame and solitude, forgiveness and goodbyes. I’m learning persistence and the closing of doors, the way the seasons come and go as I keep walking on these roads, back and forth, to find myself in new time zones, new arms with new phrases and new goals. And it hurts to become, hurts to find out about the poverty and gaps, the widow and the leavers. It hurts to accept that it hurts and it hurts to learn how easy it is for people to not need other people. Or how easy it is to need other people but that you can never build a home in someone’s arms because they will let go one day, and you must build your own.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I don’t want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“I scrub my skin
to rid me from you
and I still don’t know why I cried.
It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest.
But then you must have changed your mind
or made a wrong
because why did you
leave?”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“You must be a myth that your lover can't grasp
and you must chase the moon like a wolf in the night, as if it will show you something only you can understand. Everything you do is a ritual that can mean something more and you must connect and create bonds with the spirits both outer and inner. Seek the strange and mysterious, otherworldly explanations for yourself and things around. There is always more. Always more.
Nothing is ordinary,
and you must make love to him like his touch is your salvation.
You must dare to love and lose and hear your heart break into a million little pieces, glittering like diamonds in the night.
Don’t run into hiding when the rain hits us like planets shot down to see who wants to survive
the most
for you want to survive
the most
and you must not hide from madness.

You must love and live and write like you're obsessed and possessed. Go mad for what you believe in.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourself and let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story. Let your very identity be your book. Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody. So go create. Take photographs in the woods, run alone in the rain and sing your heart out high up on a mountain where no one will ever hear and your very existence will be the most hypnotising scar. Make your life be your art and you will never be forgotten.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on leaving and arriving

“I turned myself into an artist because then my life would be about creating meaning out of ugliness and that would be my life, and it was noble. It was the beginning of a journey, the creating of the world every single day and I was not bored. I was ecstasy and creation and nothingness turned into melodies and I was dancing with the spirits.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“Being a person who pushes himself to his or her own limits in order to become as great as he or she can possibly be means being a person who is constantly faced with some kind of fear. May it be mental or physical, may you be an athlete or a writer, YOU are facing fear, every single day, by doing something your mind or body never did before. But by overcoming that fear you take one step higher on the ladder, and the goal is to take those steps every single day.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“There is beauty even in the ugliest mess, and it's the artist's job to find it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“There are days when I feel like I’ve seen enough, done enough, felt enough. When I call my wandering days over and slowly accept the quiet life from here on. When the dreams of making waves are a vague memory and the songs I meant to sing feel more like a finished painting, something to just observe and hang on the wall from now on, to those who wish to observe it. But then the night falls and the morning rise and horizons are calling once again and I’m on my way. Forests fresh and pastures new. And most of the time I’m fine with this.
I’m learning to be fine with this.

So maybe that’s what settling into this world means. To simply, and as hard as it is, just settle into your own way of living—your own pace, your own rhythm—and not think too much about it. Just wake up and let your legs wander where they need to wander no matter where that may lead and just simply trust your path. There is a difference between what you want and what you wish to want. What you’d like to do and what you wish you’d like to do. I’m learning to not wish, but just do.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving

“If you can’t do it for yourself, you do it for all the other young souls who need to be shown that things are possible. That they too can do that thing they dream of.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving