Doesn’t this word even look good? You can hear the fireworks coming from behind. Or see them in the form of shooting stars — one by one, here and there, six at once — in the dream you had last night. Silence. Deep in the night. Both in the dream and in real life. A sky full of stars. Kinda like the starry night sky you photographed last year from a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The rebellious spirit of life. Takes you to paradise. The universe becomes intimate instead of abstract. In the vastness of it all, you find home.
Mmm, I wish I could capture this scent life has when you open the door and — boom — step onto your balcony, into your garden, into the world. The sun says good morning as it steps onto your balcony, into your garden, into the world as well, and you see each other. The smell, with its sensual undertones, stirs life in every cell. Day after day. Softness that intoxicates. Day after day. Mmm. A day full of electricity in the air. Free of resistance, that is, bambini. Full of all the elements, but ignited by the sun and the wind. Today. A swooshy kind of day. The modern rock’n’roll baby undertone you naturally carry. Softness, yes. And edge.
The People Who Like Twin Peaks Are Party People. What a funny thing to say, right?
It was none other than David Lynch who said it. My heart skipped a beat and opened to receive it. For baby me. Uh-we. I used to watch Twin Peaks from behind the couch in the living room my family watched it from. No one forbade me from watching it — kudos mom and dad, I must have been around eight; but sitting there properly did not feel cozy to me. Something in it was so terrifying that I refused to sleep alone in a room for years, until life eventually transported me into an apartment alone. (Of course it’s better when you’re with someone you like and you’re watching Eddie Murphy interviews with Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and David Letterman.) Something in me, however, was bigger than fear, it seems. I continued to watch. The thrill of feeling that feeling was bigger. Curiosity mixed with mental fascination. The black and white tiles haunted me for a while, they now take me straight back to baby me, and so does the soundtrack. That! My brother and I used to fall asleep to during the years I refused to sleep alone in a room, alternating with the cassette. Some kids. Kudos stars, kudos. I have not rewatched it since. Haven’t seen the sequel either. Am still not a fan of plastic bags — the almost-transparent-but-not-quite plastic zipper bag, remember that? The chills, jees. Different from the chills I instantly got last time I went to the cinema and the sound turned on, but still. Vroom, all over my body. It’s the labyrinth an artist I love takes me through that’s magical to me, that’s one of my all-time pleasures. Uh-huh. Not bad, kid, not bad.
Fanfu*kingtastic.
Also known as larger than life cosmic play.
Or Thelma and Louise you see one Sunday in March. You don’t see a movie, you don’t see a movie, and then you see the movie on the day that feels like written in the stars for you to see it. And so feels the movie. Yup, everything is created with stellar precision for all the people who have manifested to see it. Dreamlike. Symbolic. Instinctive. The kind of day where signs, moods, music, memories, sensations, encounters, sudden emotional waves, and strange timing feel louder than logic.
I was on the phone with my brother, the other day as the sun was setting, when I said: Wait. Hey Siri! Play. Some music started, and my face went through all sorts of expressions as I kept saying Hey Siri! Next. The next song sounded just as much like something that would not play in my house. Next. Next. My brother eventually said: What is that?!. Have no idea, I replied. We were both equally astonished. And then relieved when I finally said: Hey Siri! Stop. And people say songs are just songs…
Fanfu*kingtastic.
Was the music that kept on inserting itself suavely into my life in moments I was completely aware of it, in moments where and when I would definitely pay the right amount of attention to it — even in conversations with people, or during pretty much anything. Doing anything. Being anything. Being anything in the limitless realm of who you are and what you’re here to do. All of a sudden, more Rolling Stones than ever. Not just Pink Floyd — just, haha — but David Gilmour and Roger Waters, individually, too. Tina. Tina Turner coming up even on the radio that happens to be playing from the car of someone stopped by the forest (at the cabin in the mountains) you — one thing leading to another — came into with mom and dad, because dad wanted to collect wild garlic for everyone on the planet, ideally, to eat, the kind that can only be found during this particular time in late April. Where nature is just holding you in its arms and is in alignment with weather that makes you notice the weather all the time. I feel the air in my lungs as I’m saying that. Looking up at the sky, naturally, fully absorbed by the about-to-bloom forest, the horizon disappears, your perspective changes and you see a rainbow in a position you’ve never seen before. You know how, usually, the rainbows you see are kinda nesting on the ground. Well, this one was totally hanging in the sky, through thin clouds and tall, tall trees that were touching it. Mm. It’s the second funny one you see. The first was the round one from the airplane window on Christmas Eve. The Doors, of course. All of them coming up at the same time in your mind — you know the drill, the hair, the moves. The silence you enjoy. Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode was my first concert like that, after all. Went to see them again the next time they were around. In trance. I played their CD so much that it got scratched and I couldn’t listen to it in the car anymore. Stillness that feels like sparkling sophistication, that you don’t know what to expect from, but you know how you feel about it. In it. David Bowie. These days more than ever. I didn’t select this music specifically to play. Wait. Let me check. Nope.
I know it selected me growing up. Rock always takes me straight to the kid in me. Like Felicità or La Vie En Rose, in a very specific way, do. You know Courtin’ Time by Prince? Or Adore? Make it Italian and you’ve got the soundtrack I was taking form on befooore actually taking form. Yup. Stories have been passing by my ears ever since I know myself — about how mom and dad met, this, that — each time a classic one pops up anywhere, anytime. Yesterday, for instance. Glances flying for a second or two. So naturally. I sent out a dare to mom. She’s always loved reading and the idea of her writing her story with dad, herself, does something nice to my brain. I know it’s going to do something nice to her brain, too. I know the story by heart, but the thrill of her feeling the thrill coming out of her own heart firsthand is a thrill to me. Let dad give his notes, too, I added. She smiled — I could feel it, hear it, see it from the other end of the telephone line. Almost shy, she said Aha. It’s safety, it’s love, it’s authenticity, honesty, it’s fun, it’s laughter, tears of all sorts, it’s freedom, chemistry, it’s truth, it’s heart recognition, it’s elegance, it’s speed beyond time and space, it’s the Pacific Ocean depth, it’s everything and a little extra. It’s that unexplainable but undeniable drop of magic that just is. It might imply the biggest surrender of them all, but it is what it ease. Trust. Falling in love, Cristina, it’s called falling in love. Yes, but falling in love day and night, day after day, night after night is… Life? A drop of something pure. Falling in love with life day and night, day after day, night after night.
Just as The Fugees do. Lauryn Hill, obviously. It’s the music I grew up with. The Police. Fleetwood Mac. A whole rock’n’roll baby bunch this time around. It’s like we’re all in a club just having fun. A proper headset does that to one. The style of it takes you a little bit into Star Wars, into the Padmé played by Natalie Portman days. Whole lotta Beatles. Whole Lotta Love. Led Zeppelin. Some club party alright. U2. And then, out of nowhere, Inner City Blues by none other than Marvin Gaye. It amuses you, the way this song found its way in. And let itself in so completely that you’re instantly teleported to a place that has the same rock’n’roll baby name written all over it. M. God, the way It’s No Good comes into your Padmé hairstyle and into your brain… The first one. The second one. You give in, just like you do in the picture from Crete that is now the wallpaper on your phone — when you basically gave in to everything. Born in Chișinău, out of all the places in the world, with the entire world inside of me. The spacecraft has landed. What do you do? Queen. Arctic Monkeys. Some special raw music from the independent republic of Jack Nicholson.
Is there anything more beautiful than falling in love? And staying in love?
It’s a specific moment on a particular day that this live performance plays on tv, at home, for the many-many-many-th time, and it’s at 1:01:01 that I rewind to, on and on again, while being pretty busy with something else. I woke up to this song a couple of days prior. Then different parts of it, at different moments throughout the day, kept inserting themselves. The base. The drums. The lyrics. Together. Separately. That solo at minute 2:18 of the album version alone. The voice alone. Into my head. On and on. Subtly. While doing different things, at different stages of the day. Listened to the song then, too, on repeat. But here we are, hoping the neighbours are not at home. Because by now I rewind all the way to the song before the last one, at minute 56:00 — a classic. So. Hello.
By the time night falls over town (in May), the entire neighbourhood might hear the music coming from the bedroom this time around. The weather is just peachy to open all the floor-to-ceiling windows and let the curtains do their thing. The next day, Sara Perché Ti Amo is blasting on repeat from the neighbours’ bathroom upstairs. All it took was for me to take off the headset for a second. Life says hi.
Ooh, said I to myself at 10:42 on Friday, while taking a bath, after bathing in the sun on the balcony and reading — aka listening to Anaïs Nin’s Fire in my headphones, after breakfast, after yoga, after facetiming mom, who’s sunbathing as well on top of a hotel by the sea during the weekend getaway for dad’s birthday with friends. After writing on the balcony with the sun rising in front of my eyes at what feels like not such a far away distance. 150 million km, nbd. Its light reaches us in about 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Let’s let that sink in. Skin. I know. Feel free to pause for a bit. Take it in. Take it easy. A dove joins our party. At first, it watches us from a place it had found for itself to do it with warmth, saying something on and on, while I continue writing on my phone, the sun continuing to rise, a crow not too far away saying something, too. A brief moment of silence. The dove still here. Looking. I am looking at it, too. Taking a picture while smiling. The bird is posing now. It finds its grounding and gracefully spreads its wings before taking off. I can hear the sound the wings make — it’s that close. The dove is between the sun and me now, and suddenly, in those fractions of seconds, right before my eyes, it turns towards me in flight, spreading its wings. I’m looking at the bird through my own eyes as the lens of my phone does its thing. Calmly, I straighten my back on the lounge chair. We look at each other. And off it flies. Free spirit. The first suitcase of the day rolls across the pavement. A kid is arriving at the music school in the courtyard. Those little suitcases some kids have nowadays instead of backpacks take me straight to the airport every time they make their sound. Ooh. A violin rises up in the air. After waking up at 05:00 on the 15th of the 5th. All the birds in the world start singing an hour before sunrise, fyi. That is, until deep into summer, when at 5:55 a.m. there’s only one seagull in particular ringing the alarm.
Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Every death. Fire and life. Le jeu, Anaïs Nin
Ever since you were a kid, a sort of direction, a vision — from a time when you didn’t know what a vision was — wrapped itself around your heart and brain just like, later in life, the lover holding your legs wrapping around his waist would. A feels-authentic-to-your-every-cell kind of direction, vision, everything. Everywhere, all the time. But! Here comes funny life. It will beat you down, crush your soul — we love you life — and art… Art will always remind you that you have one. People, places and situations appear to your right and to your left throughout it, trying to distract you. And you feel the desire to fully immerse yourself in water. A kind of pressure, yes. We only have one life here to (love, hehe) live. The pressure to never give up on yourself. To always give in — to yourself. You don’t know why a specific song is playing rent-free in your head, but then one day you do. To do the art while pressure keeps pressing in from all angles is the tea. Walking the line, as I later found out, is the name of it. What do you call what turns out to be a magnificent right? Or left. A funny story.
A story of transformation — fun! — that takes us to diamonds: from carbon, through extraordinary pressure and immense patience, surviving conditions most materials never could, travelling from the depths of Earth into sudden, explosive emergence for everyone on the planet, ideally, to see. A special part of nature you can carry with you, on you, at all times. A piece of this planet wrapped around your finger, hanging from your ears, or around your neck, close to your heart. Stardust under pressure. Forming inside other planets across the universe, too. Nice. Wood, however, exists only on Earth. It forms through a particular mix of elements and a very specific chain of events called life.
Giving in takes you high, giving in takes you low. Life is both. You know when something tastes like champagne, and you know when something goes completely awry. Sometimes from the start, at first sight. Other times, time after time, until even overthinking becomes exhausting. It can be anything from swords through your heart to swords through your brain. The heart and the brain are always checking up on each other. You cannot trick either of them, because passion will always tell the truth and — swoosh — pleasure will always slip in. And vice versa. Joy and — boom — passion. Shifting your focus consciously to your passion. Now that is what keeps you on the line. What forces you, subconsciously, back onto the line.
On a December evening, I got the job at the number one music TV station in the country. I had applied on a whim. I liked music. I liked television. I was in my third year of university, having somehow magically survived the first two years of the toughest Math you could find in the country at the time. An answer came almost immediately. Come to the interview. I did. I was hired on the spot by the owner herself. I called my boyfriend to share the excitement and the cool news; was met with friction because of both the excitement and the cool news. More than a fight, really. Where, by the way, he was the only participant of, because I wasn’t deliberating, not even for a fraction of a second, about not taking the job. And! The phone call ended with a threat of a break-up. An ultimatum. I said OK to that, too. But he came back, again and again and again after every break-up. Because when you love hard people who don’t love hard, they will try to break your heart, fu*k the break-up. I stretched myself alright. Learning the difference between a loop that makes you feel like woo and one that subtly does the opposite is quite a ride. They both tell you to don’t stop ‘till you get enough, but enough of what is for you to choose.
I’ve been mastering the art of walking away from train wreck confidently ever since. If you know you know. Reverence intervenes.
Aries will never leave you for someone else. They leave only for their peace, sanity, or when they can’t trust you anymore. And it’s precisely at the moment of commitment that the universe steps in and applauds. Swooshes you onto some spacecraft. Sit down. Be quiet. Have faith. And that is the hardest thing for an Aries to do, because we kinda need to fly this spacecraft ourselves. The universe laughs and continues: Aren’t the surroundings something? It’s in times of war and destruction that we create and fall in love. The cosmos itself emerges from chaos, after all, according to the Greek mythology.
The only thing that comes to my mind — the one thing I kinda always think about — is: what was I thinking when I gave that pair of trousers away? Jees. To find a pair of red trousers — you even had the hems altered ever so slightly to make them even more them — made from 100% cotton you genuinely enjoy, fitting you better than your favourite sweater while, basically, saving the world is not that easy. But hey. Apparently, somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, I knew that the pair of red trousers I really wanted was the one I hadn’t yet fully conjured in my imagination. Hm. But I knew they were somewhere in this world. Just as I am here. Stripped.
The music television was my first-ever gig that I got on my own and the stories coming through it, oh là là, no wonder the last two years of university my life felt full in a way I couldn’t describe to anyone. Not even myself. To me, being inside my world was so natural that I thought everyone was doing it. This thrill of every day. Not so much what university years inside the actual university must have been like for my peers, though. Too cool for school or something, they must have thought, as I was notified to find myself a partner for an exam we were supposed to take in pairs. At the same time, there was another peer in particular, from another class, who was singled out by his peers just as I was by mine. We were only present in university when it was mandatory because we were both already working in places we wanted to be. So we formed this group of two that nailed the exam people would normally prepare for. We enjoyed it and enjoyed each other. That’s when we became friends and would go on dancing many, many years together, as fun childhood friends do. Anyway. I enjoyed the work itself at the TV station, living the life full of dancing, the long, long nights in my private life, the family I’d been growing up in, everything on the same stage, all the time. I was nineteen and into the second year of my second — already — serious relationship. My take on age has always been “When I was your age” bro idgaf. On life: their perception of me is not my responsibility. My truth is. Isn’t not being true to yourself the biggest risk not to take?
I love what Jim Carrey said in a Charlie Rose interview: The safe road is gonna pay off, there are many payoffs there, but I can’t be there and have my soul be on a completely different track. It’s always worth risking.
No wonder the subtitle of Chapter Two — named HI! — in my first book is: In The End, It’s All About Passion. In The Beginning, Too.
And it’s tricky because when you have a passion in your life — which, newsflash, everyone is born with on this planet — and passion becomes more passions, and somehow your whole world revolves around them just as the Earth does around the sun, there will be people, places and situations trying to sweep off your attention. Inflict shame on you. Guilt and all the fuzzy feelings. It’s alright, however, you learn a lot about how important your attention is. And there will be people, places and situations that you will give your undivided attention to (or not), but always feel in your heart the devotion towards your passion. Fill your people, places and situations with your world back. Yup. Passion. The walking the line thing? I think it’s passion. Or is it that drop of something pure?
Imagine a square, black picture. The starry night sky you’re lucky to have taken forever inside of you kinda black. Tiny, indistinguishable dots shimmer across it. Stars… You can see from trillions of kilometres away?! And then there’s a blue drop cosmically spread throughout the black. On your phone. The blue is dark, it gets lighter here and there, you can’t tell, it feels like deep water. Feels like a lot. Lots. It’s the half of Earth we hardly ever hear or talk about. Everything is everything kind of thing. It’s a planet. Exactly. This drop. Ball. It’s the earth we’re living on. Casually. It’s the half of the third planet orbiting the Sun. It’s mostly water. Water so deep that, in the Pacific Ocean (that covers more than 30% of the earth, nbd) it reaches a place called Challenger Deep — nearly 11 kilometres below the surface. Pressure: more than 1,000 times the atmospheric pressure at Earth’s surface. Temperature: typically just a few degrees above freezing. Sunlight: none, perpetual darkness. It almost feels like a planet of its own. Within this planet. On this half of the planet we hardly even think about. The picture from NASA popped up in front of my eyes. I screenshot it, of course, but then went to the picture in the Photos app. In instant wonder — completely merged, all of a sudden, with a particular energy you sometimes slip into and let drive, fly you. Destination unknown. Until you stop hearing anything else. Point Nemo, officially called the oceanic pole of inaccessibility. Absurdly far from any land. So far that the nearest humans are not on Earth’s surface at all, but astronauts aboard the International Space Station passing overhead. Funny. I mean Roger. Now. Let go. Go. Deeper than Mount Everest (8,848 m, nbd) itself would go. In the mirror. Go. Let go. Let’s go.
Still on the bottom of the deepest ocean while the whole world is watching. Still. Yes. Sometimes. And sometimes. Having a ball. On the dance floor. Now. In the vastness of it all, there, of all places, is where you bump into each other. Effortlessly. De bulles fines. The bottom of the deepest ocean or on top of the world. Between the stars. Same. I bet the creatures we know nothing about at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and the ones on top of the world would not agree, but who knows? We are here, being moved into each other’s orbit by something larger than ordinary timing, talking about it, so — who knows? Refined effervescence.
Fanf*ckingtastic.
Interesting names and circumstances these points on Earth — and beyond it — represent. Point Nemo. I know, Nemo the movie comes to mind. The Challenger Deep. The deepest point in the ocean is almost as far below sea level as commercial airplanes fly above it. And even today, fewer people have visited Challenger Deep than have walked on the Moon. The Sun is out of discussion anyway. Doing its thing, always shining its light. Also, the space between stars is vastly larger than the space between planets. Hm. And what about the belly with a little baby inside of it that resembles our planet? The friend who had just given birth to a baby girl, actually, texted me how the French respond to a sneeze. For the first sneeze, it’s À tes souhaits. For the second sneeze, it changes to À tes amours. Aw.
There’s a rare and special kind of romantic bond that’s incredibly powerful and positive. This unique connection can help you and a partner bring out the best in each other. By choosing to be together, you two are deciding to align with your personal destinies. Your souls are traveling the same direction, and by teaming up you’re activating each other’s greatest potential. This energy can jolt you out of ruts and propel you toward your destiny. Is what I screenshot God knows when, as well.
My second concert like that was The Chemical Brothers. Still one of the ones I enjoyed most.
Isn’t being sucked into complete disarmed mode one of the best feelings ever? Almost unnoticeably, yet it’s all you feel. Something even finer than chills. Just as uncontrollable. You are irrevocably pulled into it, head to toe, you don’t know when it happened, but you are. In it. You have no time to think about it. You are you. Just are. You and that one person this electricity connects you to. None of you cares about anyone around, you look like you do because you do, but in this moment, when chemistry hits cosmic level, the attraction is undeniable and it’s one of those things you can’t touch, but it certainly fills your every cell and every molecule in the room. Space. Sexy and hidden, yet fully and completely out in the open at the same time. The power of laughter from the heart comes to mind. And something Jack Nicholson once said: With acting, you have to use what you know and what you don’t know. The mystery is half the job.
I know that whenever I’ve come into contact with status in any way, my brain — whether it knew status was part of the picture or not — has always searched for the heart in anything and anyone, whether related to art or not. My heart has always asked it to. It’s all natural when they’re in sync. I caught, a couple of times, the thought coming out from someone else’s mind: The audacity! (The ease coming out of someone else’s heart, too.) And that’s okay. People do that with anything. Fame just happens to be one of those things. The expression of the thought is the same regardless of the form it takes — especially when truth is simply cruisin’ around.
…And something Al Pacino said in an interview with Barbara Walters. Because nemo means no one in Latin. Being no one, in space, seems like a pretty good place to start and Al Pacino did an Al Pacino thing and put it beautifully. It’s a relative thing. Fame. It works on different people differently. And what happened was interesting. How it worked on me. I didn’t talk the way I usually talk and I realized people were receptive to me. And I hadn’t earned it. I had done nothing to earn their laughs, or their interest, or anything. And it felt kind of cool, you know, just to sit there and not have to earn it. And I think that’s a trap you can fall into, with fame. Because life is people, it’s being with people, it’s interchanging with people. That’s what life is. And when you’re famous, sometimes, that part of you can get cut off and I’ll tel you how. Because you don’t employ the stuff in you that makes you what you are. Because you don’t have to. And so I found myself I fell victim to that a little bit, but I’m aware of it.
Marion Cotillard puts a pin in the whole spin: The moment I feel my ego trying to protect me in a scene is the moment I know I need to go further.
Merge baby with rock’n’roll and you’re set up for life.
Whiney Houston singing I‘m Your Baby Tonight in your ears on repeat is rock’n’roll baby. And All The Man That I Need — the studio version or live, depending on where you’re at. Another spacecraft has landed. Look to your right when the song begins. Or left. Whitney is singing. I’ve been listening to the song for a while now, in my car, on drives through the city most of the times. It’s the long drives outside of it when you actually turn your Apple Music on. Seeing the cover of Whitney: The Greatest Hits peeking out from the passenger-side door pocket makes me happy, too. The CD I’ve had since I was a teenager is scratched, but some songs survived. All The Man That I Need is one of them, and I go straight to it. It slips in and plays flawlessly every time. I keep it on a loop.
Rewind.
Rewind.
It keeps me focused while letting me stay fully present in the driving, flying of it all.
In the darkness of the ocean, where visibility is limited, sound becomes identity that doesn’t need justification. Truth. You don’t just hear it — you feel it. A deep note passes through your body, and for a moment, you’re no longer just listening. You are part of the ocean’s resonance. Part of Dave Gahan’s words and laughter at the end of Home (live in Barcelona, from the Tour of the Universe), of the applause, of thousands of people singing at once, Martin Gore’s From my first breaaaaaath. Focused and open at once. Alive. An unshakeable feeling that is now part of your DNA. There’s a particular frequency the songs of whales carry that can travel for tens, sometimes hundreds, of kilometres through the ocean, using water as a nearly perfect medium for sound transmission. And we are still very far from the Earth’s centre, 6,371 km below the surface. Or the darkest void in space.
Shirley MacLaine. Freja Beha Erichsen. Rock’n’roll baby forever. Cher. Kylie Minogue. Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly in Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette. Ayo Edebiri and Jeremy Allen White. Julia Roberts. So many magical beings. Beyond the eight billion names we’d have to spend our time saying. Beyond beyond, as Patti Smith would say.
It’s the rock’n’roll baby in 7/11 that just might be my favorite Beyoncé video. Drunk In Love is right there next to it. Mm. On repeat. Imagine! For a while, it was one of the anthems of the club I loved dancing in. That mystical voice at the beginning. No. Those thrilling sounds at the beginning. Put that in a room full of people dying to dance. But cut it right after the first glimpse of ahahahaaa — the voice. Another song. Song. Song. Rock for most of the night, blending with every other genre until they became one, because who the f cares about genres when the club is on fire? The fun was real when the fun was real. It was in the hands of a pretty fly DJ, so. Whenever, on a special occasion, Hey Boy Hey Girl hit the speakers, vroom — off into space we went. I know I did.
Oh, and XO.
You know how sometimes the clouds just don’t move, as if to portray an impromptu grandiose piece of art? Not bad, life. Not bad. Little birds fly high up. A little lower, seagulls spread their wings farther. And, suddenly, nothing but the sky again. Painted up there for the whole world to see. Thunder? You just heard thunder? Somewhere far away, that’s what it felt like. The wind has just made its appearance, and the scent nature has is a synonym for intoxicates. Craw raw. Raw raw. Mm, the air. The newness of it all. Happening all of the time. Ideal temperature in the beginning of June. A short bird song. A trill. The blueness of the blue, blue sky peeking through more and more, whole minutes at a time, from beneath the clouds. Sun still tucked in. You can see its reflection glowing in the brightest clouds. Another big bird, pretty far away. You can almost sense its flight. It flows. And a girl is vocalizing in the pink music school right there in your courtyard. One late afternoon.
The Rock’n’Roll Baby playlist was born during all this, and now it will remind me, who knows when, of this precise moment I am writing about. Aerosmith, Prodigy (what to do), Come Undone and the Rock’n’Roll Baby playlist merges into the Chilling In The Bedroom Driving Flying Same playlist, Marlon Brando, and slips into the playlist of life. My life.
It’s one thing to want to live heaven on earth and quite another to have someone, one way or another, unconsciously and sometimes through projection, try to convince you that life is hell.
The stars know how I feel about bees and honey. So, obviously, when I heard the Uber driver’s idea the other day — that bees actually live in a prison and that, ultimately, after lots of talking about bees, so do we as human beings living on Earth — the light bulb switched on instantly, and here I am. The stars know how I feel about life, too. It sounded so farfetched to me, but go figure, as far as we know, there are no planets where fear — and, therefore, hatred and violence — exist. His Have a wonderful day! as I was opening the door to go home gave me hope, though. His smile did, too.
I’ve been to places in this world where an Uber was out of the question altogether. One particular driver, taking us from a magnificent traditional Balinese hotel to the airport in a minivan at sunrise, told me — as everyone else in the van drifted back to sleep while the sky slowly transformed from dark blue to deep purple and then into all the colors before the big show — in such a sweet tone, stories about the life he and his family were living. His every idea had encrypted in it a gentle curiosity woven together with a genuine love for life. I love seeing people shine. It felt so calm. A new dawn. Literally and metaphorically. When the unseen dances with the seen. Followed by a new dusk, wherever on this planet you are.
At the core, no matter our religion, culture, gender, or the color of our skin, hair, or eyes, what unites us all is that special something every human being on this Earth carries inside out. Conventionally known as love. And as love is anything but conventional, off the wall is what we all are at the core, at the end of the day. From the beginning of time until this very moment we are here together in.
Turning fear into honesty is the drill.
School is officially over, the kids are all dressed up, and the cheering carries everyone into another season, for a little while. Peace. Sounds just as fanfu*kingtastic.
When nights electrify from the inside out. When the loudest thunder (after thunder, after thunder) invades the space from within, you cannot but wake up every time it starts. A moment of silence. The crack. Coming from some other dimension. You know what follows. A brief moment of silence… And then the whole sky unleashes into the loudest play where the curtain never falls. Right outside your bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows, where the curtain is, in fact, the dancer. Complete surrender. Freedom. Enter chaos. The incredible lightning fills the entire sky, flashing again and again throughout the night, softened by the calming sound of summer rain. The wind. The air. Pause. Pause. The most spectacular show nature keeps putting on for us. Out there everywhere just as much as inside here, sans arrêt.