art: words:
Me Love, You Music
a short story by M
I had been on the road for as long as I can remember. It literally felt like I’d hitchhiked my way
around the world forever. And yet, I still hadn’t come very far. The goal was to travel the globe
without paying a dime. Not even a nickel. Like Siddhartha, I’d mastered the art of functioning
without food, which meant my expenses never exceeded the emptiness of my pockets. All I needed was
the ride.
When I first set out for this journey my goal was none, geographically speaking and in
terms of time. “Undique et semper”, everywhere and always, that was my motto. Emotionally,
however, the destination of my travels was clearly undefined. Clearly, as in, I was definitely
searching for something. Undefined, as in, I had no idea what this something was. There was some
kind of gap inside me. Either a hole that needed to be filled, or perhaps a dream that needed to
be fulfilled. Or maybe it was as simple as having to find une belle fille. Or none of that. Or all
of that. Yes, probably the whole package. At least, that’s what I used to think. But at the time,
since my search was still unsuccesful, I really had no clue.
Hope is not something I would ever lose, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a certain
sense of frustration had started to grow like unwanted weed within the walls of my spiritual womb.
Whispers of doubt began to dangle in the untamed trees of the wild jungle that was my mind. My
swagger had swung from having the confidence of a king to bearing the burden and distress of a
song unsung. How would I free myself, handcuffed by loneliness, who had the key, who could see me,
who would receive me?
Those questions trickled down my spine on a fine, sunny mayday not too long ago, when my
mood was down like the moon and my thumb was up like an alcoholic’s bottle of wine. I stood on the
side of a Georgian highway waiting for some openhearted old car to pick me up when the sun
suddenly broke through the clouds and made my spirits rise. (By the way, we’re speaking of the
Black Sea Georgia right now, not the Ray Charles “Georgia on my Mind” Georgia, even though, oddly
enough, that was actually the tune playing on the noisy radio of the next car that picked me
up)...
At the time of this no sense coincidence, I’d come about halfway through the georgeously
desolate Georgia country. Thanks to a combination of the fact that my numerous years of worldwide
travel had made me a rather gifted learner of foreign languages and that my freeride road trip in
this khachapuri-eating caucasian Eurasian nation was in its ninth year and counting, I’d come to
speak the georgian language quite well, but with a dialect about as brutal as the Siberian Tiger
that I’d encountered in the Iranian Talysh Mountains a few years before.
“Gamarjoba. Rogora khar?” the robust man in the driver’s seat asked as I made myself
comfortable in the back and didn’t fasten the seatbelt that wasn’t there. “Kargad var”, I replied,
I’m fine, thanks.”
“Sheni gacnoba”, he then said, slightly more politely than with the almost grumpy tone of
his opening phrase, probably quickly having realized that I wasn’t a native and therefore
adjusting his way of speaking, which was standard human behaviour, I’d concluded, as it had
occured in every social interaction with a human being that I’d ever had. “Pleased to meet you as
well”, I bounced back and then he didn’t seem to have much more to say and me neither. Instead, I
decided to plunge into my ocean of memories and reminisce about the adventures leading up to my
current situation in Georgia, while listening to Ray and his Georgia.
After Iran, I had spent eighteen years trying to get around and across the fifty-nine
rayons of Azerbaijan and finally managed my way into Armenia thanks to the hospitable nature of a
delightfully frivolous fellow who called himself Mammad Amin. “I am walking my way out
of the land that I love”, he told me as we one day crossed ways on a dusty, rocky road in the
middle of everywhere, “...and perhaps it is the last time that I will ever see it. The time has
come for me to bid farewell to this glorious nation and it would give me great pleasure to show
such a pitiful foreigner like you the beauty of my homeland, which has now been hijacked by the
Soviet bastards and corrupt cowards of the National Army.”
Together we wandered, me and Mammad Amin, on the trails of Azerbaijani territory. As the
educated man that he was, he taught me enough about his country’s history that I could have
written a book about it, and perhaps I would have, had my relationship with the written word not
been as frigid as it was back then. It was only later on, when after a series of unfortunate
events, I would be forced to both double and triple proofread an armenian version of the Bible on
the top of Mount Ararat, that I had learned how to write with an eloquence adequate enough to
write a captivating book about the long centuries of the strife and struggles of the Azerbaijani
people, but at that point, however, the level of knowledge concerning these matters had been
drastically reduced since the majority of the information once passed on to me by my good friend
Mammad had been replaced by other useful but heavily memorydemanding data due to the many eventful
decades that had since passed.
As we shared both laughs and the stories of our lives while travelling by foot, I learned
from Mammad that he was fleeing the country to go into exile. Appearantly, he was one of the
founders of the Azerbaijan Republic and now that the Soviets had pushed for an overtake of power
and thus smashed the freedom fighters with a resounding strike of the hammer and slice of the
sickle, he had no option but to go into exile. “Damn that Stalin”, he repeatedly uttered as we
slowly but surely approached the border to Armenia. “Fifteen years ago I saved his life. Now look
at what he and his so called revolutionary comrades do to my country. Damn him. Damn that Stalin
bastard.”
But when the time came to split ways, the bitterness in his voice was replaced by
unfiltered affection. “Bir kara yüksalan bayraq, bir daha enmaz!” he shouted to me from distance
as we directed our lives in different directions after finally having entered Armenia, and the
phrase in english meaning, “The flag once raised will never fall!”
For one month we had walked together and if it weren’t for the warmth and strength that
came out of this infinitely profound friendship that the two of us developped over the course of
his runaway and my hitchhiking days, I probably would have succumbed to the sorrows and pains
that the horrible experiences from the following eighty years of Bible proofreading in the
Academic Rebels of Armenia foreigner prison camp would come to render me.
But I didn’t cave into the terror of this nasty guerilla of Armenian scholars. I survived,
insanity intact and all, and as a scarred but nonetheless relentlessly despairless creature I
managed to sneak into Georgia on new year’s eve of the year 2000, thanks to the security collapse
at the main central of the georgian border control department, as a consequnce to the Y2K meltdown
that never happened.
Nine years on the roads of Georgia had since then disappeared into the illusion of the past,
before that day when I found myself in the backseat of the rusty but relatively comfortable
Volkswagen wagon that had picked me up, getting some long longed for rest and indulging in both
the soothing rays from the nurturing Georgian sun and the Georgia song sung on the radio by the
silky smooth voice of the blind piano man called Ray.
“Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in the peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you
I said Georgia, oh Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind”
The comfortable silence in the car was abruptly disrupted when the man, who by the way had a
gigantic moustache, decided to introduce himself.“Chemi sakhelia Kakutsa”, he said, “...and what
is your name?”
Returning to reality took me a few seconds as I had almost been hypnotized by the
ambiguity of words in Ray the blind piano man’s love song. “Sorry, what’d you say? Ah, my name,
yes, my name is Love, very nice to meet you Kakutsa.”
“Love? What do you mean? Love as in love, real love, is that really your name?”
“Yes. Or, kind of. Or it’s rather what I am. I am love. But since having a name seems
necessary to get around in this world, that’s also what I’ve started calling myself.”
Kakutsa looked at me as if I were crazy, and that’s also what he bluntly asked me. “Hey
Love, are you crazy, you know, crazy in the head?”
“No, I don’t think so”, I replied and all of a sudden the atmosphere in the rusty folk’s
wagon turned awkward. Kakutsa threw a few suspicious glances at me in the rear view mirror. Even
though this kind of situation, by now, had become everything but unfamiliar to me, I still hadn’t
really figured out how to tackle it. So once again, it was Kakutsa who broke the silence. “Hey
Love, do you like this Georgia song?”
“Sure, it’s very beautiful”, I answered.
“..and hey Love, do you like this Georgia country?”
Somehow, it felt like the conversation was quickly turning into a questioning, which
wasn’t exactly the first time. As I observed Kakutsa, trying to figure out what the thoughts were
that seemed to drip down in his head like polluted raindrops, I was caught by a compelling
sensation that this encounter would soon end up like most of them did. But nevertheless, I had to
give him an answer. “Yes, I like Georgia, it’s very beautiful. But I have been here for so long, a
bit too long, I think.”
“How long have you been here, Love?”
“Nine years and five months.”
“Love, what have you been doing here all this time?”
“I have been travelling. Hitchhiking. Or trying to. It’s not going very well.”
“Why Love, why isn’t going very well?”
“Well, Kakutsa, people seem to not like me very much. I usually get thrown out of the car
only after a few minutes. That’s why it has taken me more than nine years only to get to the
grounds of Kutaisi. It’s still quite far to Russia. And I’m not really sure that it’s something
I’m looking forward to. If it has taken me more than nine years to get halfway through Georgia, I
believe it will take me very much longer to travel through Russia. Unless I will get lucky, of
course...”
“Love, are you sure you are not crazy, you know, crazy in the head?”
“No, I don’t think so. But, I’m not sure. How can I know? What do you think, Kakutsa?”
“Love, I must say, I don’t like people who are crazy in the head. You know, they are
crazy, do crazy things, I don’t like them. I must ask you, Love, why do everyone throw you out of
the car only after a few minutes? Are you dangerous, Love, are you crazy in the head, do you do
crazy things, Love?”
“No, I don’t think I do. I don’t really know why people kick me out. I usually say that I
am love, that my name is Love, and then they usually get very angry at me. I don’t want them to
get angry at me. I want them to love me. Because I love them. You know, it feels very good to
love. Do you like to love, Kakutsa?”
For some reason, this question made Kakutsa very upset. Instead of answering, he
immediately stopped the car and told me to get out. Or rather, yelled it at me. “Get out! Get out,
Love, get out you crazy person!”
So there I was, once again, standing at the side of a georgian highway hoping for someone to pick
me up. Hoping to find whatever it was that I was searching. Something. Someone. I felt alone. I
had felt alone for so long. So alone for so long that I started to wonder if it was perhaps the
destiny of love to get kicked out of cars, yelled at, misunderstood. I couldn’t figure out what it
was about me that the human beings couldn’t accept. I didn’t demand anything. I never forced
anything on anyone. All that I really wanted was to be received, that’s it, nothing else. Just
embrace me, I thought, someone please just embrace me, why can’t you embrace me?
For the next few hours, I sat like that, dwelling over my own misfortune while watching
one car after another pass me by like a cloud depending on the wind to move, looking at the birds
in motion, flapping away at one hundred miles per hour, wishing that someone, just someone, would
one day stop and just stay, right there, with me, the cloud, and follow me as I transformed into
water, ice and steam and was then heaved back up to the heavens again in the shape of a cloud,
without ever having to make a choice, decide, or worry about what will happen next, since all that
there is for a cloud is the now.
The next car that offered me a ride was a shiny, silvercolored cadillac, belonging to an
elderly chinese couple who, as they told me, were driving towards the Black Sea where they would
drown themselves. “Why?” I asked them, deeply confused and higly concerned. “Why not?” they asked
me back. “Don’t you want to live?” I asked them back in return. “Yes we do, but we want to die
even more.”
That was their answer and it took me a while to recover the balance of mind after getting
intellectually punched in the face by their peculiar way of reasoning. “But when you die, you will
no longer be able to experience the great wonders of life. The beauty of sunrise, the joy of
child’s laughter, the adventures of dreaming and mysteries of existing, the euphoria of love and
the love for life itself. All of this, you will lose, so why on earth would you choose away this
greatest gift that you have been given?”
“Well, my dear hitchhiking friend”, the old chinese lady told me as if she was going to
teach me a thing or two, “...when it comes to the sunrise, we’ve already seen enough of them.
Regarding the children, we’ve already had enough of them. Concerning adventures and mysteries,
we’d say drowning ourselves in the black sea is adventurous and mysterious enough, and as for
love, we just don’t buy it anymore. If you haven’t already figured out that love is nothing but a
psychological construction, the work of manipulative magicians, an emotional drug for those
refusing to see reality as it is, I’d say that your way of thinking is childishly naive.”
“My dear shiny chinese Cadillac friends”, I then told them, with eyes full of cry from
having to listen to these sad words, “...you can reason for as long as you want about the
nonexistence of love, but if you just for one second stopped believing in the words of your own
twisted logic and instead just look into each other’s eyes, look into my eyes, can you really tell
me that there is no such thing as love that connects us all to one another?”
“My dear infantile hitchhiking friend, your belief is sweet but false, tempting but
poisonous. No matter how badly you want it to exist, there is no love, it is but an illusion.”
Every word that came out of her mouth was like the slash of a whip on my skin, a dagger in
my heart, a nail on the chalkboard, a fishsoup for breakfast - and I felt a serious allergic
reaction to the foolish nonsense of the humans starting to spread like a virus inside me. “But I
am love”, I silently uttered. “I know I am love. I know that I exist. I am not an illusion. I am
real. I am love...”
My voice was about to disappear into the black hole of unreversable despair, when
something, something deep inside me, kicked me in the butt like a gym teacher and slapped me in
the face like a math teacher, and it worked, I immediately got my senses back. Like Neo, I dodged
the bullets of cynisism and like Aragorn, I fought the swords of nihilism and like Snow White, I
refused to drown in the sea of darkness: “I am love, damn it! I exist, damn it! Why can’t you see
that! Damn it..!”
The old chinese cadillac couple stopped the car and looked at me like were I a freak. “Oh
boy”, the cadillac man said and flipped down his shiny, silver sunglasses, “...I believe our dear
friend is about to flip out.”
“Yes”, lady cadillac continued, “...do you think we should drop him?”
Her husband believed just that, so they did just that. Threw me out in the ditch of the
road like a rotten banana with annoying fruit flies occupying the air around me. “I am love”, I
repeated to my mangled self once more. Then I stopped speaking. I decided not to open my mouth
again until I had found what I was looking for.
Thoughts of giving up my lifelong quest for a place among the human beings began to
scratch the surface of my once hopeful soul. “Why am I not wanted here? Why do they dislike me,
detest me, drop me, ditch me? For decades, centuries, millenia, I have tried to make them like me,
but all I get in return is anger and suspicion. What am I doing wrong, what am I saying wrong?
Everything’s usually okey until I start speaking. That’s when it always gets messed up...”
If it was the dragon of depression that, a few hours earlier, had to be slain, the enemy
now facing me was the mad monster of indifference. Feeling the wrath of pointlessness invade my
arteries and veins, I realized that it was time to focus. It was do or die. No longer did I have a
desire to live forever. All I wanted was to live right now. The concept of infinity constipated
me. The thought of everywhere and always made no sense. The only thing tangible was this moment,
this instant, right here, right now. “It seems like the intellect of humans refuses to accept the
notion of love”, I thought for myself, “...and yet there is something about them, something inside
them, in the core of their being, their hearts, that is unable to deny me. If not, why would they
bother picking me up in the first place? If not, why would they be searching? Why would they try
so hard, feel so much, dream so far?”
At that very instant, something clicked. An insight arrived, a compelling idea entered my
mind. The secret, I figured, must be to somehow explain what I am, but not by speaking. I could
see that the purpose of everyday language was mainly to transmit information, not for the humans
to exchange their deepest emotions. I left this communicative riddle lingering, as a fairly
handsome gentleman came in my direction riding a horse and carriage. “My friend”, he said and
reached out with his hand, “...what are you doing all alone in the middle of nowhere? Pick
yourself up and come have a seat here, next to me. I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I may
not travel very fast, but I promise you, if you put your faith in me I will never leave your side.”
There was something about this character that made me think twice, but since I couldn’t
figure out what it was, I found no reason to resist his generous offer.
“Come here, my friend”, he told me and helped me up on the carriage. “Please, make yourself
comfortable. My horse is old, but strong. Stubborn, but loyal. In fact, she is very much like
myself. I have been around for as long as I can remember, but my age hasn’t made me weak. I have a
strong will, but I also give all that I have to those who share their stories with me. My friend,
would you like to open your heart and tell me what is on your mind? If you do, you will see that I
am like the bridge over troubled water, the steady rock in the sea of sorrow, the light in the
dark of night. Please, you can confide in me, let me alleviate your burden, I am your friend.”
The words that he spoke were those of love and warmth, but I couldn’t recognize myself in
them. He told me to trust him, and yet I felt like doing the opposite. He told me he would lead me
onto the right path, but I sensed devious intentions in his innocent eyes. “Dear sir, I very much
appreciate your kind offer. But as you can probably understand, I need to feel a bit more
aquainted with you before I can openly disclose the story of who I am.”
“Of course, my friend, I understand. Would you perhaps feel more comfortable if I told you
a thing or two about myself?”
“Yes sir, that would be interesting. Who are you, what is your name?”
“Well, my name and who I am are both the same. I am fear, and thus, my name is Fear.”
“It is a pleasure meeting you, dear Fear. In fact, I’ve heard so much about you that I’ve
often wondered if would ever run into each other.”
“Oh, surely you must have seen me before, most people have, but perhaps I haven’t gotten a
chance to introduce myself until now.”
“Actually, no, I’m quite sure that I have never met you until today. But from what I’ve
understood, you are a man of great importance, isn’t that right?”
“You flatter me, my friend. But yes, I can’t deny that my influence in the lives of human
beings is of great magnitude. To be honest with you, I’ve never really understood why people seem
to respect me so much, and frankly, I don’t even think they have either.”
Fear looked me in the eyes and for an instant, he seemed a bit insecure, but then he
smiled again and continued. “I must say that you are the first person that I have ever met who
even dared asking me a question. What is your name, my friend?”
“My name is Love.”
“Love? As in love, real love? That’s odd. Why did your parents name you Love?”
“Well, I don’t really have any parents, I came up with the name myself. You know, I am
love, so I figured it would be a name that would suit me.”
“Love? As in love, real love? Are you love?”
“Yes”, I answered politely, “That’s me.”
“Really? You’re not messing around with me right now, are you?”
“No, seriously. I’m really love, and I’m very glad to m...”
All of a sudden, Fear let go of the harness, leaped up as if the horse had caught fire,
threw himself out of the carriage like a madman and ran into the nearby bushes while repeatedly
screaming: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!!” loud enough for the moles to wake up from
their underground slumber.
The whole episode puzzled me. However, despite all kinds confusion and perplexity, it felt
quite good having my own vehicle after billions of years of transportation dependence. The horse
didn’t seem to mind that it was now working for me instead of Fear. Perhaps partly because I felt
guilty from having taken over his horse and carriage, I decided to name the horse after him. I
also figured it would be a nice way to honour this man of great importance who had ran into the
bushes like a scared rabbit. So there I was, sitting on my carriage, moving forward thanks to
Fear,
The days went by and slowly but surely, me and Fear approached the border to Russia. I no longer
dreaded my journey through the vastness of this enormous country. Sure, it would probably take me
a couple of centuries, but I was in no hurry. I enjoyed my time on the carriage, holding the
harness, dreaming of the day when my innermost desire would be met, because that day would come, I
was sure of it. So it came to no surprise when one day, I saw beautiful belle fille standing on
the side of the road with her thumb up, waiting for someone to give her a ride. Of course, I
offered her a place on the carriage, and of course, she didn’t reply, at least not by speaking.
Instead, she sung.
“Hello, you fool,
I love you,
Can I join your joyride?
Join the joyride..?”
I nodded and she hopped on board. Just looking at her made me feel like I hadn’t felt
since never. She shook my hand, took my heart, stole my mind and blew away my time, and all of
this without saying a single word. Instead, she sung.
Well, who are you?
I really wanna know
Tell me, who are you?
'Cause I really wanna know
Who are you?
Who, who, who, who?
“Well”, I replied,
“...I am love.
And who are you?”
“I am music
I’m melodies and harmonies
Stereo and mono
I’m the radio, the radio
I said I am the music
I’m simply your beats
Tempos and drumrolls
I’m in the radio, the radio”
“Oh. Okey.
Nice to meet you, Music.
May I ask,
What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for love all around me
Looking for love to surround me
The love that I need
To rescue the state of my heart, yeah”
“Alright, cool.
How is it going?”
“I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still havent found what Im looking for
But I still havent found what Im looking for”
“You know, Music,
I think today
is your lucky day.
What do you think?”
“In the room where fortune falls
On a day when chance is all
In the dark of fierce exile
I felt the grace of your smile
Honey, you’re my lucky day
Baby, you’re my lucky day
Well I lost all the other bets I made
Honey, you’re my lucky day”
“Wow Music,
I think this is my lucky day
as well.
I have been waiting for so long
for someone who can see me
for what I really am.
Can you see what I mean?”
“I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright, bright
Sun Shiny day”
“Music,
I don’t think I can explain
how happy you make me.
I love you, Music,
I really love you.
Do you want to be with me?”
”Don't think of yesterday and don't look at the clock
I like to boogie-woogie, uh, uh
It's like ridin' on the wind
And it never goes away
Touches everything I'm in
Got to have it every day”
”Eh, okey...
But what does that mean,
not quite sure
that I understand...”
“Music makes the people come together
Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebels”
“Yeah, exactly!
That’s what I’m talking about,
that’s why I love you.
Music,
I don’t mean to rush you,
but can I ask
will you marry me?”
“I am yours
If you are mine
When time decides
It won't stop for me
When the hawks and vultures
Are circling
I am yours
If you are mine”
“Is that a yes?
Or no?
Or is it maybe?
Please, Music, tell me.”
“I say,
don’t worry about a thing,
cause every little thing
gonna be all right
Singin’ dont worry bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!”
M
2009-05-21
more words from Sweden by Mikis Mazarakis at http://www.wordmworld.net/
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