Onder Invloed

Yesterday, one of my biggest influences as a writing journalist passed away. Martin Bril was a great writer and columnist; chronicles about everyday happenings were his specialty. Creating something beautiful out of basically nothing, that’s what life is all about, Bril taught me.

He’d write about something everyone else would take for granted; a flower on a old wall in France, a dog that almost got hit by a bus, conversations with someone in a store. Bril almost always found the exact right words to describe an ordinary thing in such a way that it made me want to read the same article ten times over.

I don’t have a lot of big influences when it comes to writing; in the sence that I love everything someone writes, but Bril was surely one of them. He was the reason I got a subscription to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, his books have been my favourite present to give.

About a month ago, strangely enough, I gave away the last book I owned. Now is the time to go out and buy everything the man’s ever written.  If you want a typical article by Bril about music, you should read this recent piece, from the 2nd of April, about Bob Dylan. It’s a classic Bril article if you ask me. General information mixed perfectly with a personal perspective.

I’m a bit of a cinic by nature. Martin Bril on the other hand seemed to me to be the exact opposite. He could be the sharpest critic both on television and on paper, but no matter how cynical he got, there was always a hint of hope or a sense of humour shining through. Now, I’ve mostly been filming over the past year, but hopefully I’ll be writing more next year. If I could become half the writer Martin Bril was, I’d be a very happy man

Martin Bril died on Wednesday, the 22nd of April 2009.

Matthijs van der Ven