Header photo: Sebastian Pielles (Press Daniela La Luz)
Ever since we have asked Daniela La Luz to contribute to our podcast series Am Deck, we have followed the development of the Berlin-based artist closely. Whether it was her track “Did You Ever” that wonderfully completed Moodymann’s DJ Kicks mix, the release of her latest LP Counting Days, or the creative activity around label Parallel Berlin (listen to the second release by B.E.F. here).
Asking Daniela La Luz if she’d like to be part of our series Off The Tracks, our editor Sebastian Weiß did not expect her submission: Instead of writing about one of her myriad of passions, she decided to share two very personal and hard misfortunes within her family with us. It’s a very intimate story about how music has given her and her family hope while facing hardships. It’s a perfect example of how music, once admitted to the soul, can become a sort of spirit that will never die.
Last year, I probably would have written about something else, but since the last months were so emotional, I want to share this story with you: On New Year’s Eve 2016, I promised myself to start the year with being busy and escaping the winter through productivity; locking myself in the studio and doing final mix-downs on a lot of tracks that I wanted to be released. So I did and started working. On the 3rd of January, I had a missed call from my father. I wanted to call him back, but since we don’t talk that often, we mostly talk for hours when we do. Since I was in such a good work flow, I decided to call him back the following day. The morning after, I had a missed call from an unknown Munich number. Just when I wanted to call back, my mother was faster and told me that my father was in the intensive care unit in an artificial coma. My dad has been living alone for many years. The hospital informed me that he had collapsed in a cafe and was reanimated on the spot.
The next day, I flew to Munich and started to prepare myself for everything, including the worst possible scenario. When I arrived at the hospital, I got the next shock. There was my dad, intubated between all these machines, his eyes closed. The doctors couldn’t tell me if he would wake up again and if he would have neurological brain damages. The days passed by. Everything felt surreal. The doctors said that they would stop giving him sleep-inducing drugs and nobody could predict how things would evolve.
Stream: The Beatles – I Want To Hold Your Hands (Live, 1964)
A week later he was awake, but not fully conscious yet; it wasn’t possible to have a normal conversation with him. When I entered the room and said hello, he took my hand and started singing, full of enthusiasm, the Beatles song “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. I was stoked! The next days went on like this and he was singing The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. The weeks passed by, he got better and went to rehab. The last week I was in Munich, every day my mom and I wanted to call my grandma in Poland, but when we returned home, it was always late in the evening and we didn’t want to wake her up.
