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Everything that had happened in the past five years rose like steam from a cup when I played a record, not in the form of thoughts or reasoning, but as moods, openings, space. Some general, others specific. If my memories were stacked in a heap on the back of my life’s trailer, music was the rope that held them together and kept it, my life, in position.
Who are you when you don’t know you exist? Who were you when you didn’t remember that you existed?
When we were together I always left early so that he wouldn’t discover how boring I really was. There was a kind of fever in me, two conflicting emotions, such as on the spring morning when we ditched school and went by moped back to his place and listened to records on the lawn. It was fantastic, yet I had to cut it short, something told me I wasn’t worthy or couldn’t fulfill his expectations.
Oh, this is the song about being sixteen years old and sitting on a bus and thinking about her, the one, not knowing that feelings will slowly, slowly, weaken and fade, that life, that which is now so vast and so all-embracing, will inexorably dwindle and shrink until it is a manageable entity that doesn’t hurt so much, but nor is it as good.
life continued as it had before with its minor developments in one direction or another, all the unforeseen events that fill our lives, some of which lead to a locked door or a deserted room while others might have consequences that only come to fruition many years later.
We don’t live our lives alone, but that doesn’t mean we see those alongside whom we live our lives.
Why didn’t they drink? Why didn’t everyone drink? Alcohol makes everything big, it is a wind blowing through your consciousness, it is crashing waves and swaying forests, and the light it transmits gilds everything you see, even the ugliest and most revolting person becomes attractive in some way, it is as if all objections and all judgments are cast aside in a wide sweep of the hand, in an act of supreme generosity, here everything, and I do mean everything, is beautiful.
The only place it existed was in me. And if I let it stay where it was, there was no problem, it would slowly lose its power and in the end vanish, as sooner or later all the other shameful things I had done had vanished. *
