IT ALL STARTED LIKE THIS

15.07.04

A slap would make the difference. The dizzy mosquito, stuck on the white tile, was looking at me. As if it was challenging me to melt it under my thumb. As if it was found right in front of me only to sacrifice itself for the sake of my anger. I didn’t lose that chance. I approached it slowly, trying to hide my shadow, so as to avoid being understood by that bloodthirsty insect. I stretched out my fingers and punched the wall. The mosquito, dead meat! The stain is still there.

Without really understanding that, I took the CD of TRYPES (=’Holes’: Greek Rock band) from the shelf; I hadn’t listened to that for years (I’m not exaggerating). ‘Life is too small to be sad, baby!’. All right, I got the message. Enough with doubts (for this week, at least). I was healed. I remembered so much; like when I had my hair long to the shoulders, and yet I didn’t even know who were the ‘Who’ or the ‘Jam’. There was so much that I had to discover.

I had really faced a true apocalypse and although I consciously avoided the use of the word ‘revolution’, since all those guys of the same age as mine used to come out with it all the time, I felt that I was treading a tightrope for no reason, just for fun. I thought that daily life was hiding in things that were obscure and deep. I was looking for meaning in everything I did, even in my breathing.

I have never read poetry. I’m not ashamed of saying so. I was just listening to a lot of music. Even in my sleep! (I was sleeping with the radio on.) I delved with pleasure into the melancholy of the thought-provoking lyrics and didn’t even dare to imagine a life without pain (whether physical or mental). I always had a notebook under my pillow. I woke up in the middle of the night and started writing, so as not to miss any word or thought or picture.

I was in the first year of high school (lyceum) back then. My schoolmates asked me to write love lyrics for them, so that they hand those to their girlfriends. I couldn’t refuse to do that, of course. And yet those were the last times I used my talent for a witty reason (I’m speaking of conscious use, at least). Later I woke up to my friends grabbing butterfly kisses and hugs and me looking at them, not because I didn’t have the self-confidence needed to approach the girls but because they all seemed to me kind of goofy. They weren’t. I simply judged them all strictly and if they were just happy they seemed immature to my eyes. This is how inflexible I was.

I was putting on my beloved melancholic songs at full blast and thought that I was coming close to a kind of truth that nobody had discovered before me. I was talking in a vulgar way to my parents when they threatened me that they would throw away all my tapes or that they would send me to the psychiatrist. They even gave me money to have my hair cut. I accepted. You can make your hair grow longer again but you take money once. A year later, I had my beautiful long hair again protect the ideas inside my head. I was ready to fall in love but I didn’t know with whom.

Hiding from my parents, I read Melina’s autobiography, where Melina spoke of love and passion. I was so jealous of that feeling that I wished I could fall head over heels in love one day. Nobody forbade me to love Melina as much as I wanted. And yet I wanted this feeling only for myself. I never spoke to anybody of what I saw happen, whether inside me or in my environment. One day I just couldn’t make it any more. I asked my mother to make photocopies of some of my lyrics. Before that, she decided to give them to a friend of hers, a poetess, to read them, Without asking me.

She hurried to announce me that, according to her friend, I would be a great poet. I was furious with my mother, who showed my poems to everybody. I set a fire and burnt the notebook. I almost burnt down the whole house. Later I wrote a few lines and a song about Melina. I asked Tina (yes, the well-known one) to compose a tune on that. This is how I started looking for a band. I was handing out my poems to every ‘musician’ in the hope that they would help me give life to my songs. What I dreamed of looked a lot like what I accomplished. I looked for people who didn’t know each other and invited them to perform music for me. I sang and played my harmonica. My singing was awful; and so was my playing. That didn’t matter at all. I was pushing my life to the limit. I was living my life the way I wanted. To hell with anybody who would dare say that I was a person with a disability. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. Maybe I could never have the guts to know, if I hadn’t saved so much strength inside me. I used to let it be, as if I had lurked in the belly of some cetacean, waiting for it to wash me up on the beach. Until then I was just having fun. I jumped in a huge bubble and I would still be jumping if the wave hadn’t thrown me on sharp rocks.

I climbed on the rocks like a goat and started screaming. I apologize if my screams cause you headache. I will soon relax. I wait to meet the next beast that will accept to host me in its belly. In the meantime, I will have plenty of time at my disposal in order to think and write.