Making Space for Ideas

Notes from Berlin Summer 2026

Berlin Summer 2026 has officially come to an end.

I spent almost two months there this summer, and somewhere along the way, I realised I was crossing quite a few things off my unofficial bucket list.

・I did yoga almost every day — sometimes online, sometimes in a studio, sometimes by myself at home.

・I cooked a lot. And shared the cooking and the meal with my roommate a lot.

・bake bread... my roommate did.

・homemade yogurt... my roommate prepared.

・homemade pasta... my roommate made.

・I almost got my oat milk latte art skills back. Almost.

・We picked blackberries and my roommate turned them into jam.

・I found four-leaf clovers.

・I went everywhere on my roommate’s bike.

・I ate ice cream at least four times. Probably more. 🍦

・I played a total of twelve gigs, starting almost immediately after I arrived.

・I went to Bordeaux and Amsterdam.

・I went to KitKat.

・I tried a pole dance class — and had so much fun that I now want to keep doing it.

・And right at the end, I even managed to squeeze in a work trip to Edinburgh.

・I also started building another website and somehow ended up writing more than five articles.

But perhaps the most important thing that happened this summer was much quieter.

Almost every day, I opened Logic and threw in whatever idea had come into my head.

No pressure to finish.

No requirement for it to be good.

Just: Oh, there’s an idea. Let’s put it somewhere.

By the end of the summer, I had around twenty song ideas.

Two of them started to feel like songs that wanted to be played with a band, so I made demos.

And one of them…

I actually finished.

The production. Finished. Done.

ONE WHOLE SONG. 🎉

The purpose was to make space

I did have an assignment this summer: write songs.

And because I wasn’t actually in Berlin for the entire two months, I knew I wanted to be intentional about how I spent the time I had there.

And most days, I simply did the things I wanted to do.

I moved my body.

I made music.

I cooked or ate with people.

I rode a bike.

I travelled.

I played.

I rested.

I drank coffee and tried to make pretty things with milk foam.

The purpose of the summer was not necessarily to become more productive.

It was to create space.

Space in my schedule.

Space in my head.

And space for something unexpected to enter.

I think we often underestimate the importance of space.

We fill our calendars because we want to make the most of our time. We fill our heads with information because we want to know more. We make plans because we want to feel prepared and involved.

And, of course, structure can be helpful.

But sometimes, when everything is already full, there is nowhere for anything new to land.

This summer, I wanted to leave some empty space.

And things started coming into it.

Ideas need somewhere to go

Once the ideas started coming, they kept coming.

That is something I have experienced before, and it is something I find fascinating.

When I am doing things that feel good to me — when I am moving, playing, making, resting, being curious — ideas seem to appear more easily.

And when I actually do something with those ideas, more seem to arrive.

There is a kind of momentum to it.

A flow.

Elizabeth Gilbert writes about this in Big Magic. She has this beautiful idea that ideas are almost like living things, floating around in the world and looking for someone who is willing to bring them into form.

They knock on doors.

And if someone is not ready, or does not open the door, perhaps the idea simply moves on.

I love the image.

Because sometimes it really does feel like that.

You are walking somewhere.

Taking a shower.

Doing yoga.

Making coffee.

And suddenly:

There you are.

An idea.

A melody.

A sentence.

A rhythm.

A feeling.

The question is: what do we do when it arrives?

Do we say, That’s probably stupid?

Do we say, I’ll deal with that later?

Do we say, I don’t have time?

Or do we give it somewhere to go?

This summer, I tried to give the ideas somewhere to go.

Most of the time, that somewhere was simply Logic.

You don’t have to know what you are doing

When I first started my music project, aine wie keine, I had written music but never produced one with DAW. But I had decided that I wanted to shape my own music.

So I started using Logic.

I barely knew how to use it.

I had almost no equipment.

I slowly started building things from zero.

At one point, before some of my equipment had even arrived, I was making music almost entirely with my voice.

Looking back, maybe that is one of the reasons layering voices eventually became such an important part of distinguishing my music.

But at the time, I wasn't thinking about developing a signature sound.

I was just trying things.

I didn’t know where I was going.

And honestly, I still often don’t.

But there was something exciting about that.

So I kept writing.

Not every idea became a song.

Not every song was good.

Some of them were probably terrible.

And that’s fine.

Because I think one of the most important parts of the creative process is allowing ideas to exist before judging them.

Not everything has to become something.

Not every seed becomes a flower.

But if we judge everything before it has the chance to grow, we might never find out what was actually possible.

The five songs that eventually became my first EP took much more than just inspiration.

They took time.

They took work.

They took collaboration.

They took support from other people.

And yes, there was plenty of drama along the way.

But before any of that could happen, there had to be an idea.

And before the idea could become anything, I had to let it exist.

The feeling of creating your own world

There is a particular feeling that comes when I am in a creative flow.

It feels light.

But at the same time, it feels powerful.

I don’t necessarily have a logical reason to feel confident.

I don’t always know what will happen.

I don’t know whether an idea will become a finished song, a performance, a project, or nothing at all.

And yet, when I am in that space, I feel confident.

I feel excited.

I feel like I can create something.

Like I can create my own world.

And maybe that is one of the reasons creativity is so important to me.

It reminds me that I am not only someone who reacts to the world around me.

I can also participate in shaping it.

I can take something invisible — a feeling, an idea, a sound that only exists somewhere inside or around me — and slowly give it form.

A rhythm.

A song.

A conversation.

A community.

A space where something else can happen.

For me, music is one of the clearest and easiest ways to access that feeling.

For someone else, it might be dancing.

Cooking.

Gardening.

Building something.

Writing.

Starting a project.

Creating a space for people to come together.

The form doesn’t matter so much.

What matters, perhaps, is remembering that we can create.

That we can participate.

That we can bring something into the world that did not exist before.

I think that is an incredibly happy feeling.

And maybe it is a feeling we all need a little more of.

Make a little space

This summer reminded me that I don’t always need to push harder.

Sometimes I need to make more space.

Space to move.

Space to play.

Space to be curious.

Space to be bored.

Space to notice what is already trying to get my attention.

And when something arrives, maybe I don’t have to know exactly where it is going.

Maybe I just have to open the door.

Put it somewhere.

Write it down.

Record it.

Sketch it.

Move with it.

See what happens.

And perhaps, once we start giving ideas a place to live, more of them will come.

That is the feeling I want to hold on to.

The feeling that I can create.

That I can shape something.

That there is always another possibility waiting somewhere beyond what I already know.

Wherever I am.

Even in the middle of a concrete jungle.