We still need
to …

I’m founding One Voice because something is missing.

That doesn’t sound particularly impressive as a reason for starting a company.

A market analysis would be preferable. A target audience. A sentence containing the word “scalable.”

I have loneliness.

Not the grand kind of loneliness, with rain against the window and someone staring meaningfully into a cup.

The ordinary kind.

The kind where you do know people. You get messages. You have appointments. You work. You function. And still, on a Tuesday evening, you find yourself standing in the kitchen thinking: I could belong somewhere right now. I just don’t know where.

I want to sing. Not beautifully. That would already be an unnecessary entry requirement. I want to stand in a room with other people, take a breath and attempt the same note. Nothing more. So I do what people do today when they don’t know something. I pick up my phone. I search. Choir near me. Singing tonight. Sing along Cologne. Open choir. Choir without auditions. Choir for people who haven’t known since roughly 1987 whether they are altos or sopranos.

The internet responds with great confidence and surprisingly little help. I find websites from 2014. A choir whose last rehearsal appears to have taken place during the pandemic. PDFs. Facebook pages. Event calendars. Phone numbers. Notices for concerts that happened the day before yesterday.

Somewhere out there, people are singing. A lot, in fact. I just can’t see it. That bothers me. My phone knows where I am. It knows which restaurant 230 meters away is open. It can show me an e-scooter, a dentist, three charging stations and someone who can bring me fried noodles within twelve minutes.

But when I ask: Where can I sing with other people right now? it suddenly becomes philosophical. And that is exactly where One Voice begins.

With a question. Why can I determine my location but not see where people around me are singing together?

I imagine a map. One dot is me. Around me, other dots appear. A choir rehearses on Thursday. There’s a sing-along over there. Male voices are still needed here. Everyone is welcome there. A concert is happening this weekend over there.

I don’t need to know these people. I just need to know they’re there. That is a surprisingly big difference.

Loneliness doesn’t always mean nobody is there. Sometimes all that’s missing are the coordinates.

I write down the first sentence.

Then the second.

Eventually my page contains words like

location,
choir,
event,
profile,
search,
radius.

It already looks pleasantly like work. I like that. I still need to find out whether something like this already exists. We still need to talk to choirs. We still need to figure out who “we” is. We still need to build an app. We still need to do approximately everything.

But on the screen, I can already see that little dot. My location. And people around it.

On this first day, I don’t yet know what One Voice will eventually look like. I only know what it should do. It should turn Somewhere, people are singing into There. Go.

That’s really all.

I sit in front of my computer. One Voice. My map.

It’s still almost empty.

I place dots on it.

Here.

Here.

Here.

I call this founding a company. I call it networking. I talk about visibility, choirs, encounters and how people can find each other more easily. All true. Just not the whole truth. Because while I build an app that is supposed to tell someone: You are here. And the others are there. something inside me starts counting.

Again.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

You leave your own loneliness surprisingly reliably the moment something stops being indifferent to you.

Loneliness is usually described as a lack. Someone is missing. A hand, a voice, a person at the other end of the table who notices that you are quieter than usual today.

That is the obvious form of loneliness.

But there is another.

It doesn’t arise because nobody is there, but because nothing reaches for you anymore. You can be lonely among people, busy, successful, loved. You can answer messages, shop, work, pay bills and slowly disappear into a state in which the world is still happening, but no longer makes any real demand on you.

Psychologically, that is a crucial distinction. Because human beings don’t only need relationships. They need significance. Something has to make a difference.

Whether I show up.

Whether I call.

Whether I water the plant.

Whether I object.

Whether I stay.

Whether I care.

The moment something stops being indifferent to me, a connection forms between me and the world. And that connection can be surprisingly small.

A plant is enough.

A choir.

A dog standing beside the bed at seven in the morning with absolutely no interest in my existential condition because it needs to pee.

That may be one of the underestimated qualities of responsibility: it is an antidote to being completely occupied with yourself. Not always pleasant. But effective. Caring for something calls you out of your own interior.

Perhaps there is also an old philosophical idea in this. Martin Buber distinguishes between a world of I–It and a world of I–Thou. In I–It, the world encounters me as an object: useful, annoying, interesting, boring. In I–Thou, something else happens. I enter into relationship.

The decisive thing is not even whether the other is a human being. What matters is the movement. I stop being the center of my own perception. Suddenly there is something else. And it matters.

Loneliness often produces the opposite movement. It narrows the view. Not out of selfishness, but out of pain. Someone with a toothache does not temporarily develop a particularly vivid interest in world affairs either.

The body reliably pulls attention toward the place that hurts. Psychological pain can do the same. You watch yourself.

Why is nobody writing?

Why do I miss this person?

Why am I not the one being meant?

Why do I feel like this?

When will it stop?

The self becomes a room without windows in which you keep rearranging the furniture. You can have very intelligent thoughts in there. It remains the same room. Something that matters to you punches a window into it. Because care has a direction. It leads away from me. The German word Sorge is more beautiful than its reputation suggests. It does not only mean worry. To care also means: to look after. To pay attention. To take responsibility. To bring something into your field of awareness and say: Your condition concerns me. That is where connection begins. Not only with love. Love is merely its most spectacular form.

That is why we overestimate romantic relationships as a cure for loneliness.

Of course another person can reach us. But if we expect one person to permanently rescue us from our loneliness, we hand them a task larger than any relationship. They are not only supposed to be loved. They are supposed to replace the world for us. Hardly anyone can withstand that.

The opposite movement is more interesting: not asking, Who is interested in me? but at some point noticing again: I am interested in something.

That sounds almost ridiculously small. It isn’t. Because interest is already relationship. The word comes from the Latin interesse: to be in between. To take part. Anyone who is interested is no longer completely sealed off. There is something between me and the world. A thin thread at first. I want to know what happens next.

With this person.

With this tree.

With this project.

With this political situation.

With this sentence.

With a choir that still needs a tenor and apparently considers the future of Western civilization dependent on finding one. Suddenly there is a tomorrow. That is the crucial point.

Loneliness changes not only space but time. It can make the present endless. A lonely evening occasionally has the remarkable ability to last about three and a half weeks. Significance, on the other hand, creates a future. I need to check again tomorrow. I want to know whether it works.

Someone is waiting for my answer. The plant needs water. The text isn’t finished yet. We rehearse on Thursday.

These are not grand philosophical revelations. They are small commitments to the future. And precisely because of that, they can hold a person. Meaning is not a pleasant feeling you have to find inside yourself. Meaning lies in being directed toward something beyond the self:

a task. A person. Something that wants to be done or answered.

That does not mean engagement simply eliminates loneliness. You can also hide in tasks. You can be there for everyone else so you do not have to encounter yourself. You can help, organize, rescue and care until care becomes nothing more than a socially admired form of self-avoidance.

That exists too.

The difference is whether I numb myself through engagement or connect myself through it. Numbing makes me less sensitive. Connection makes me more sensitive. Unfortunately, that is the price.

As soon as something matters to me, it can hurt me. Whoever loves can lose. Whoever commits can be disappointed. Whoever plants a tree can watch it dry out. Whoever trusts people can discover that people are occasionally astonishingly gifted idiots.

Indifference is therefore quite attractive. It is a protection strategy. What I do not care about can hardly disappoint me. But while that may reduce pain, it also reduces life. Because aliveness and vulnerability use the same door. You cannot let in only one of them.

That is why the sentence “I care” is much larger than it sounds.

It means:

I allow something outside myself to affect me.

I acknowledge that I am not closed off.

I can be touched.

And so the opposite of loneliness does not necessarily begin with company. It begins with caring.

A person can sit alone at a table and be deeply connected because someone, something, the world itself matters to them. And another can stand among a hundred people and remain completely lonely because nothing reaches them anymore.

The surprising truth about loneliness is this: We do not leave it only because someone comes to us. We leave it by going somewhere ourselves.

To a person.

To a task.

To a plant.

To an idea.

To something whose well-being suddenly claims a small place in our own life.

And suddenly there is this inconspicuous word:

important.

Something is important. Not everything. That would be overwhelming.

Something is enough.

Because the moment something stops being indifferent to you, you are no longer entirely alone in the world.

You are already in relationship with it.

At some point, people ask themselves:

Who am I when I no longer do my work?

The firefighter wonders who he is when he no longer puts out fires. The woman at the post office counter when she no longer sells stamps. The actress when she no longer acts. The fisherman when he no longer catches fish. Me, presumably, when I no longer produce anything.

We tell our stories through activities.

I am a producer.

I am an actress.

I am a doctor.

I am a mother.

I am a choir director.

I am this.

I do that.

The verb holds the self together with surprising reliability.

It gets harder when the verb disappears.

Then what remains is:

I am.

A grammatically complete sentence that surprisingly few people know what to do with. As a producer, I once work on Wetten, dass..?. Jennifer Aniston is a guest.

She arrives with her manager, is taken to her dressing room and gets ready for the show. At some point, I go in to see her.

She is sitting in front of the makeup mirror, looking at her face.

I say:

“Hello.”

She says:

“Hello.”

Then both of us say approximately nothing for five minutes. Jennifer Aniston looks into the mirror. She does not move.

I only notice that after a few seconds.

She does not tilt her head. She does not run a hand through her hair. She does not smooth her skin, check her profile, lift her chin. None of that small human inventory we perform in front of mirrors the moment we think no one is watching. Her face is completely still.

I wait for something.

A corner of the mouth. A frown. That almost invisible narrowing of the eyes when you discover something about yourself you do not like. Or do like. Any sign that something is happening between the woman and her reflection.

Nothing.

It is a strange sight. A face I know, although I do not know this woman. I probably know this face better than some faces of people I have already had dinner with. I have seen it laugh, cry, doubt, love, be annoyed. I know what Jennifer Aniston looks like when she is being left.

At least I think I do.

Now she is standing before herself and I cannot read anything.

Not even whether she likes what she sees.

She looks for a long time.

So long that I start looking for the thought in her face.

I cannot find one.

And at some point I realize that this is exactly what unsettles me.

To this day I do not know what she sees there. I only know that I am sitting beside a person whose face millions of people know while she herself is simply looking at that face.

Not a famous actress doing particularly famous things. A human being sits in front of a mirror and looks. Nothing more.

Enduring that is harder than you might think. Especially for a producer. Producers are professionally responsible for making sure something happens. Five minutes in which nothing happens usually counts as a technical problem.

Shortly before the show, Thomas Gottschalk comes in to see her.

Back then, he has a standard line for international guests.

More or less, he says:

“Good evening. You don’t know me. My name is Thomas Gottschalk, and I’m the host of this show. I hope you have a wonderful evening. And if I may wish for one thing, it’s this: if we ever meet again somewhere, I’d be happy if you recognized me. My name is Thomas Gottschalk.”

Looking back, I really like this moment. Two of the most famous people in their respective television worlds are sitting in a dressing room, and suddenly it is about something very simple.

Do you recognize me?

Do you know who I am?

Will I still exist for you when this evening is over?

I am still sitting with Jennifer Aniston. She continues to look into the mirror. Eventually I cannot stand the silence anymore. I get up and ask whether she needs anything. Whether there is anything I can do for her. Whether there is anything left to discuss for the show. She looks at me in the mirror.

“Thank you.”

I say:

“Thank you.”

And leave.

I think about those minutes for a long time. About a host asking to be remembered. About an actress silently looking at her own face. And about me, apparently needing to do something immediately whenever a person simply exists.

We ask the question “Who am I?” much more often than we think.

We just disguise it better.

As a profession.

As success.

As fame.

As function.

As a request to be recognized.

We are astonishingly ill-prepared to simply be.

We ask children fairly early: What do you want to be when you grow up? As if they were nothing yet. Later we ask: What do you do? And mean: Who are you?

It is a practical shortcut. But at some point it becomes dangerous. Because things disappear.

Jobs.

Tasks.

Functions.

Health.

Success.

People we cared for.

Suddenly someone can no longer work.

No longer care for someone.

No longer perform.

No longer organize.

No longer remember what happened yesterday.

And then a seemingly philosophical question becomes very concrete:

Who am I now? That is one of the great demands of being human:

Our value has to remain when our function disappears.

A person is more than what they do for others.

More than their productivity.

More than their role.

More than their usefulness.

That sounds self-evident.

Everyday life often behaves differently.

We admire people for what they can do.

We pay them for what they achieve.

We invite them because they are interesting.

We need them because they do something.

And then there is this dangerous little gap: What about a person who currently cannot do anything? What about a person who is simply there? That is why this dressing room has stayed in my mind.

Not because of Jennifer Aniston. Even less because of Thomas Gottschalk. But because of this strange concentration.

One says: Please remember me. The other looks into the mirror. And I sit beside them already searching for a task.

Three different ways of dealing with the same question.

Am I here?

Do I matter?

Will I remain?

That is exactly why singing together moves me so much. Of course, in a choir we are doing something too. We sing. But for a moment, the usual hierarchy of our activities disappears. Nobody cares whether the man next to me ran a corporation yesterday or sold stamps. Nobody cares what title the woman in the second row carries. Bodies stand beside one another. They breathe. They open their mouths. They try the same note.

And then the most important question is no longer:

What do you do?

But:

Are you here?

I think we underestimate how radical that question is. Because “Are you here?” does not ask about achievement. Not status. Not usefulness. Only presence.

Being present.

A human being.

And still, that is not quite enough for me. Simply being there is one thing. Feeling that your being there makes a difference to others is something else.

I’ll come back to that. And perhaps also to my encounter with Nicole Kidman.

I function through images and music.

So I begin with a song.

This is not a particularly structured approach. People who start companies probably begin with boxes. Target groups. Processes. Responsibilities. Maybe even spreadsheets.

I look for a song and imagine a logo to go with it.

Both help me organize the route into my own system.

My song is “Your Song.”

I am sitting on a plane to Cannes for a television market, listening to every version the global internet has to offer. Elton John’s original remains unbeatable.

After that, I especially like Al Jarreau and Marla Glen.

I hear the same words in different voices and eventually wonder whether the song fits at all.

“Your Song.”

Isn’t that far too personal?

Too private?

Too much about one person giving something to another? Exactly the opposite of what One Voice is supposed to become? Should One Voice perhaps be called “Your Song”? Or absolutely not? I think about it for a while until I notice that thinking is no longer getting me anywhere.

So I stop. And feel. The Your Song feeling is beautiful.

But it is intense.

It is longing.

It is that dense pull that happens when one person suddenly becomes more important to another than is sensible.

That is not the feeling I am looking for with One Voice.

One Voice should not be the great longing for one particular person.

It should be this other feeling.

When people are genuinely happy to see one another.

When they open up.

When no one has to be more important than anyone else.

When individual voices become something shared for a moment without anyone disappearing inside it.

The plane glides through the clouds. I often use moments like this for myself and for my connection to myself. Being above. Not connected to the ground.

For a while there is no street, no desk, no task physically pinning you to a place.

Only this strange state between two locations.

There is hardly an easier way to feel the intensity of your own perception than having several kilometers of air suddenly beneath you.

If I were rich, I would offer meditation retreats on long-haul flights. Business class, of course. Madness needs an economic perspective. But I am not rich.

And besides, the idea contradicts itself before I even finish thinking it.

Because what I am looking for with One Voice is the opposite. No exclusive altitude. No people sitting higher than others. I believe in atmosphere. In time spent together.

In those rare moments when status becomes surprisingly unimportant as soon as people actually meet. We are not all the same. But for a moment, we can meet as equals. That is community. Not flying higher and farther. But eventually landing again.

I ask my friend, who is sleeping beside me while I fly through my worlds.

“One Voice or Your Song?”

She answers immediately: “One Voice, of course. Your Song is yours. One Voice is everyone.”

Oh. Right. Of course. It’s that simple.

I really could have asked her before takeoff.

But then I would have missed the journey through twenty versions of one song. And that was beautiful.

Apparently you do not have to avoid every detour just because someone else knows the straight sentence at the end.

The plane touches down. I feel refreshed. And decided.

One Voice.

Onward.

Professionally, I am not particularly interested in perfect people.

People who have everything under control are pleasant. They arrive on time, know their lines, function under pressure and put water bottles back approximately where they found them. For productions, such people are a gift. For stories, less so.

I am interested in the moment when something shifts.

A plan.

A relationship.

A team.

A mood.

And then the question:

What do people do with one another when things get serious?

I produce Jürgen von der Lippe’s 70th birthday show.

Seventy.

For a comedian, that is a difficult age for a television show.

You are supposed to celebrate.

You are supposed to look back.

You are supposed to move people.

But not for too long, because afterward someone has to be funny again.

There are friends.

Colleagues.

Companions from along the way.

Very different artists.

People with shared histories.

People with histories of their own.

People who have known Jürgen for decades.

People who have prepared something for this evening.

People who are themselves used to being the center of attention.

The whole thing is supposed to be big.

Warm.

Funny.

A dignified birthday.

Managing “dignified” and “funny” at the same time is already a task family celebrations have been failing at for centuries.

There is something else, too.

Something inside the company is not right.

Trust and mistrust lie astonishingly close together.

There are old connections.

Loyalties.

Fears.

Things that are said.

And more things that are not.

People watch one another.

They talk to one another and, at the same time, about one another.

Information becomes power.

Closeness becomes suspicion.

Sometimes it feels less like television production and more like a very poorly equipped intelligence service.

I am sitting right in the middle of it.

And I have to endure it.

Because the show still has to be made.

That is one of the strange abilities you develop as a producer:

You can simultaneously know that something is fundamentally wrong and ask whether the next video package is finally ready.

Professionalism, they call it. Or denial with a running order.

Then the recording begins. And it is difficult. Not catastrophic. Catastrophes are easier in television. At least then everyone knows something is going wrong. More difficult are shows where almost everything works and yet no shared breath develops.

One guest works well. The next one too. A story lands. Then it doesn’t. One moment is deeply emotional. The next tries to catch that emotion with a joke and ends up somewhere between punchline and emergency exit.

From the outside, this can look like failure. Anyone who has worked in television for a long time knows an unpleasant rule: the more difficult a show feels during production, the better its ratings can later be. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes we just tell ourselves that so we can sleep at night.

That evening, neither helps me. I sit there and feel: this show does not really hold together.

And then something happens that is not in the running order. An artist we invited begins to hold the show together. She is not the host. She is not responsible. She has not been asked to do it. She is one guest among many. She could do her performance, be friendly, laugh, say goodbye and go home.

Perfectly correct. No one could blame her. But she does something else. She notices what is missing in the room.

It is difficult to describe because it does not look like leadership. She does not take over. She does not push herself forward. She does not correct anyone. She does not seize the wheel.

She places small things. A sentence. A look. A reaction. A punchline exactly where something had become too heavy. Then she lets another moment stand. She does not immediately turn every pain into a joke. But she does not build a monument out of every pain either. She finds a line. Humor. Not as escape. As connection.

I can feel it during the recording. Suddenly there is someone who reads the room. Not only her own appearance. The room. That is something else.

Later, in the edit, I see it even more clearly. Television can be dissected mercilessly in the edit. You see who opened a moment. Who closed it. Who is merely waiting for their own cue. Who listens. Who notices that someone else is falling. And who helps without turning it into a scene.

This artist runs through the show like an invisible thread. Not because she speaks the most. But because, again and again, she connects something that is in danger of falling apart.

In the end, that line plays a major part in making the show work. It stays with me. To this day.

Why does a person do that? Why does someone take responsibility for something that is not their responsibility? She could have stayed elegantly out of it. People are very good at that. We have wonderful sentences for it. Not my job. I’m not responsible for that. That wasn’t agreed. I don’t want to interfere. During this show I even hear the sentence: I’d want to be paid extra for that.

Not all completely unreasonable. And often completely deadly for community.

She does the opposite. She notices: something is missing here. And instead of merely observing that it is missing, she gives it. That fascinates me.

Because there is a form of leadership in this that we talk about far too little. Leadership without office. Without announcement. Without power.

Someone sees a fragile situation and, for a moment, takes responsibility for making sure it does not break. Exactly as far as necessary.

I think these are the people I keep looking for professionally. People who, in a difficult moment, do not first ask: How do I get out of this looking good? But: What does this room need now? Later, I ask the artist why she did it. She cannot remember the show.

I have seen so many different people in front of the camera and I remember the situations very clearly. You can be very friendly and still only have yourself in view. You can be difficult, sharp-edged and exhausting, and in a decisive moment carry something for others. I am interested in the second kind. Because I learned very early to observe rooms. Who is tense? Who withdraws? Who gets loud? What is tipping? What is not being said?

For a long time I consider this a professional skill. Producers have to read moods. That is true. But it is probably older than that. People who know uncertainty often become good observers. Not automatically good people. That would be too nice. But good observers. You notice early when something changes. A voice. A look. A door. Sometimes that ability helps you later in your work. Sometimes it drives you mad. Usually both.

I think about this birthday while thinking about One Voice. Because an app can organize many things. Who. Where. When. How far away. Which voice is needed. Where a rehearsal takes place. That is technology.

But the interesting part begins afterward.

A person enters a room. That cannot be programmed. You can enable an encounter. People themselves have to create community. And that does not always require grand gestures. Often, one person who notices the room is enough.

Something is drifting apart.

Someone is standing outside.

A sentence is missing.

Humor is needed here.

I write something down again today.

Not a feature.

Not a function.

Not a business model.

Only one sentence:

I am not interested in how perfect people are. I am interested in what they do with one another when things get serious.

For an app, this is initially not very useful.

For the question of why I want to build it at all, it is almost exactly right.

I have a weakness for rooms you cannot simply walk into. This is not a particularly charming trait. Some people see a locked door and think: closed. I think: why?

Many years ago, I work as a stage designer on Verdi’s Nabucco.

Hans Kresnik is directing.

Kresnik can enter a room and within minutes make everyone else look as if they borrowed their opinions. He was radical, exhausting, funny, intelligent, sometimes unbearable. Above all, he distrusted any form of decoration unless it could simultaneously be used as an attack.

In our production, the prisoners’ chorus sits in the Hofbräuhaus.

Munich. Beer benches. Male bodies. German gemütlichkeit with an opera assignment.

I create the video installations.

One soloist is supposed to have a projection cast onto her dress. She refuses. There are conversations that quickly stop being conversations. People who otherwise talk about artistic freedom suddenly discover very precise boundaries.

The day before the premiere, we are suspended. The word sounds cleaner than the reality. We are thrown out. Of Nabucco, of all things. At the prisoners’ chorus, of all things.

I could claim I immediately understood the irony. I did not. I am angry. Anger is useful. It gives you the feeling that you still have options. So I stand in front of the Saarland State Theatre and film the sky. Just the sky. I take the footage, edit it onto tape and go to the premiere even though officially I have no business being there anymore.

Shortly before the show, I secretly swap the cassette. Then the sky above the theatre appears over the Hofbräuhaus. For the audience, it is probably an image. For me, it is an insult. If this institution considers our work so unbearable, then at least for one evening it should look at how little separates it from the Hofbräuhaus.

Back then, I consider myself quite brave. That is one of those illusions that looks good for a long time. I often thought of myself as rebellious. Independent. Hard to impress. Someone who does not bend. Today I notice that I stood remarkably often in front of doors I had previously slammed shut myself with great determination. The only problem with my independence was that I very much wanted to belong. I simply did not know how. So I was faster.

From the outside, that looks like conviction. From the inside, it can look very different.

Years later, I am a television producer and come across a real prisoners’ choir. No set this time. No beer benches. No soloist. A prison.

I want to make a film about it. I am interested in this moment: people whose days are regulated down to the smallest detail stand together and create something that only works if they listen to one another. I want in. Of course.

I don’t get in.

That could have warned me.

It didn’t.

At some point, a locked door starts to feel personal.

The choir director I am in contact with is an unconventional man. Years later, during the pandemic, he will register his choir rehearsals as demonstrations so his people can continue singing together outdoors.

I still think that is brilliant.

Not because of the trick.

Because of the idea behind it.

Singing as assembly.

A voice as a public right.

People stand in a public square and say with their bodies: We belong together even though we are not the same.

That is fairly close to politics.

And even closer to a choir.

In prison, the whole thing acquires another sharpness.

Someone is not simply sitting next to another person there.

He is there because something happened.

An act. A sentence. A story that at some point settles over the whole person like an ill-fitting uniform.

And then that very person is suddenly supposed to listen for when someone else breathes.

He has to wait for his entrance.

He has to hold his own note without overpowering the rest.

Basically, a choir demands quite a lot of social behavior for a leisure activity.

Above all, it demands presence.

If someone is missing, they are actually missing.

Not morally.

Acoustically.

I like that.

A choir does not automatically turn someone into a better person. That would be too cheap for me. But it turns a file back into a body. Someone is standing there. With a rib cage. With breath. With a voice that can come too early or too late or exactly right. That is more than a file can do.

I think about rooms like these for a long time. Rooms where people are locked in. Rooms you want to get out of. Rooms you cannot get into.

I know the feeling of a door closing. I know darkness. I know counting. That is enough for today.

Later, I start a choir for people with dementia. At the time, I do not connect these things.

Why would I? A prison is a prison. Dementia is an illness. An opera is an opera. Life stays tidy as long as you keep your experiences in separate drawers.

Experiences rarely cooperate.

One day in the dementia choir, a man sits there searching for words during conversation. His wife helps him. She knows the routine. She waits briefly, then takes over the sentence and places the ending in his hands.

Later we sing. He knows the song. Not just the first line. The whole song.

At one point, his wife gets stuck. He doesn’t. For a few seconds, the structure between them shifts.

No miracle. No cure. No touching television moment with music underneath. Just a man who knows the next line. I see his wife look across at him. And I remember that look. Looks like that interest me.

The roles shift.

A person can lose many things. Their profession. Their security. Their reputation. Their memory. Their place in society. And yet there are situations in which they are not first defined by what is missing. But by what they contribute.

I think that is why choirs won’t leave me alone.

For a few minutes, people standing beside one another become something none of them can create alone.

When I work on One Voice today, I think about these rooms.

About the Hofbräuhaus sky.

About the prison I could not get into.

About the man who knew the next line.

Tomorrow we talk about democracy.

We are sitting in a coach on a closed highway.

Yellow flashing lights ahead of us. Cars behind us. Us in between.

A little farther on, there has been a serious accident. The police have closed the road. No one knows how long it will take.

On the coach is a choir for people with dementia, which I am accompanying that day.

Outside, yellow lights flash.

Inside, people grow restless.

A man straightens up.

“The Russians are coming!”

He is not joking.

I look out of the window. Road maintenance vehicles. Police. Warning lights.

“No,” I say. “Those are the Allies.”

He looks at me.

“They’re getting us out of here.”

He looks back toward the yellow lights.

That is enough for him.

For now.

We wait.

And while we wait, I think about the German Television Awards.

The nominations have been announced. I read names, productions, actresses, actors and think: I do not care who wins.

The people are not indifferent to me. Quite the opposite.

I have known this industry for three decades. I know what individual people can achieve.

An actor can carry a film.

A director can push an idea through against resistance.

A writer can see something no one has seen before.

A producer can spend five years making sure an idea becomes reality at all.

There are people without whom certain works would never have existed.

You do not have to diminish that in order to criticize star culture.

On the contrary.

The mistake only begins when exceptional achievement turns into a false story.

The story of the individual who created everything.

I know sentences like:

“They’re hosting this year. They still need an award.”

“Just mention them. That has to be enough.”

Or:

“We can’t show anything from the program. Otherwise no one will understand why we didn’t give them an award.”

And this one:

“She doesn’t pull anymore.”

A sentence from inventory management.

Four words, and an artist becomes a product with declining demand.

That is what is frightening about star culture.

It elevates people and turns that very elevation into their risk.

Whoever is made visible can experience extraordinary recognition.

Whoever is defined only through visibility becomes dependent on it.

Outside, the lights keep flashing.

“The Russians are coming!”

“Allies.”

“Oh.”

By now, we have a system.

The star is a system too.

A face onto which we project a complex achievement.

That even makes sense.

A face is easier to tell than a hundred names.

A vision often needs a person who represents it.

A film needs decisions.

A shoot needs leadership.

An idea needs someone who says: That way.

Community alone does not create anything.

It can carry.

But it can also slow things down, administer them, talk them to death.

Something new often begins with one person.

One person sees something.

One person wants something.

One person risks something.

One person persists even though everyone else would have stopped long ago.

But even the most determined individual never works in a vacuum.

An actress can play an extraordinary scene.

Someone wrote it.

Someone cast her.

Someone lit it.

Someone built the room.

Someone recorded the sound.

Someone decided in the edit how long her look would remain on screen.

Someone organized the production so that this one moment could happen at all.

That does not diminish her achievement.

It makes it fully visible.

That is the point.

Not: Everyone is equally important.

They are not, in every moment.

Not: Everyone contributes the same.

That is not true either.

But:

Significance is distributed differently without having to become a hierarchy of human worth.

One person can lead.

One person can shine.

One person can be decisive for a work.

And still it remains visible that even great individual achievement needs conditions.

Trust.
Disagreement.
Craft.
Time.
Money.
Patience.
People.

One person. One award. One achievement.

That is how we tell success.

I am tired of that story.

I would not abolish the television awards.

I would rebuild them.

Radically.

There would still be categories.

Audience success.
Commercial success.
Innovation.
Narrative risk.
Craft excellence.
Tradition.
Social impact.

And one category for productions that created something larger than their budget with very little.

Three works are nominated in each category.

And all three teams come.

All of them.

The stage should be full.

Acting. Directing. Writing. Producing. Camera. Sound. Editing. Production design. Costume. Makeup. Unit management. Production assistance.

People whose names we know. And people whose names we never learn.

Each team chooses one person from among them beforehand.

Not automatically the star.

Not demonstratively the most invisible person.

The person the team says to:

You gave this work something that was decisive for us.

It can be the lead actress.

Of course.

It can be the writer. The director. The producer. Someone from makeup. The editor. A production assistant.

The choice does not mean:

You are worth more than we are.

It means:

You contributed something special to this work.

You tell its story today.

And that person gets time.

They do not have to prove anything.

They talk about what made the work special for the team.

They can show a scene.

Bring a film.

Explain what they nearly failed at.

Bring the whole team onto the stage.

Give their time to someone else.

They can say:

The decisive person for this film is standing two rows behind me tonight.

The audience then decides on the work.

Not on the best speech.

Not on the most famous name.

Not on the best self-promotion.

On the film.

Three works.

Three teams.

Three different stories about how something came into being.

And only then does the audience decide.

Of course there would still be a jury.

Out of tradition.

It gets its own award.

It can award that one itself.

No criteria.

No transparency.

No excuses.

A little tradition has to remain.

On the coach, nothing is theoretical anymore.

One person understands the situation differently from me.

Another needs help.

Someone grows restless.

Someone calms him.

Outside, people are working to reopen a road after a serious accident.

We do not know their names.

And here too, no one is equally important in every moment.

One person makes a decision.

One takes responsibility.

One reassures.

One sings.

One waits.

One endures the situation.

This is not romantic community.

It is something more sober.

People depend on one another.

And still, individuals are needed who act.

One does not cancel out the other.

That is exactly where the tension lies.

We like telling stories about the strong individual.

My success.
My career.
My idea.
My achievement.
My name.

And we like telling stories about community just as much, as though togetherness alone automatically produced something.

Both are too simple.

The truth lies in between.

It takes the person who says: That way. And the people without whom no one gets there.

The man behind me sees the yellow light again.

“The Russians are coming!”

I turn around.

“Those are the Allies.”

He nods.

And suddenly this man does not seem confused to me at all.

He sees a threatening situation and searches for a story that helps him understand it.

We all do that.

We tell stories so an overwhelming world acquires some order.

Television does this professionally.

And one of its oldest stories is:

There stands the star.
Look at him.
He won.

It is a simple story.

It is just not complete.

Because sometimes the person standing there really is the person without whom this work would never have existed.

Then they should stand there.

Then they should be celebrated.

But not as proof that everyone else matters less.

As part of a larger truth.

One person stands at the front.
Many stand behind them.
One person saw something.
Many helped make it real.

One person holds the award.
And without the others, they would have nothing in their hands.

I look outside again.

It is still flashing.

Yellow.

The Allies are apparently persistent.

And suddenly One Voice is there again.

I am building a platform for community and realizing how quickly the word itself becomes a claim.

Community is not automatically good.

It has no morality of its own.

It can carry a person and prevent an idea. It can be brave and cowardly. It can send someone to the front and leave them standing there alone.

One Voice therefore must not become an app in which everyone is the same.

We are not.

We can do different things. We want different things.

One person sings first.
Another listens for a while.
One starts a choir.
Another organizes a room.
One has an idea no one had before.
Another recognizes what that idea could become.

Something else matters:

That difference must never become a hierarchy of human worth.

That someone can stand at the front without making everyone else smaller.

That one voice can become audible without forcing another into silence.

That is more demanding than community.

It is interplay.

And with that, I have at least made one entrepreneurial decision for today.

Orange absolutely has to be in the logo.

Not subtly.

It has to blink.

In case the Russians are coming.