By Lida Prypchan
Let’s look at three sources of knowledge: books, people and songs. The first source tells us that reality is superior to imagination, theory is superior to practice, emotion superior to thought and passion superior to sweet tranquility. People teach us to realize that they are not tunnel promising, “Get to know me” and there is no other choice but to collapse exhausted before the door at the end, where there’s a sign saying, “Caution, danger zone.” People teach us a lesson in patience: that we need to watch, listen and remain silent. Remaining silent is difficult, but something we learn with time. It is not lack of spontaneity, but caution. In fact I have known very few spontaneous people. Can it be that the ultimate expression of spontaneity is aggressiveness: Sincerity is an inopportune act of aggression, a double-edged sword: a sincere person is called “confrontational” and branded as such unless he learns to tell the truth with a sweet expression on his face, or makes a joke out of it. In actual fact, a sincere person is admired, even envied. He inspires envy because to remain quiet as most people tend to do, is very easy – telling the plain truth is extremely difficult. Very few people like to go against the tide, to be rejected; not everyone can take it. One should be comfortable with solitude. People who fear confrontation, and who are afraid to start up an argument or be criticized, or to have an opinion different from everyone else’s, make me laugh.
It must be sad to pass unnoticed, without leaving one’s mark – to be like a chair tucked away in a corner.
Songs, the third source of knowledge, teach us about love – they are the bible of love. Not today’s lyrics – they lack passion! They are simply manifestations of desire, with no depth of feeling. Forty or fifty years ago people would fall in love and sing about it: songs about love, women and beauty. There were songs about everything a man or a woman was capable of doing to have their loved one at their side. Sex was talked about indirectly – not like today, when it’s often talked about quite brashly. The aura of mystery has been fading little by little.
Now, we’re just thirteen years from the year two thousand, and could you sing Felipe Pirela’s “El Retrato de Mama” [the Picture of Mama] to your mother? I know it by heart, but I wouldn’t dare sing it to mine… she’d never forgive me! I once gave her a set of earthenware bowls for a present and she dismissed them with the remark, “Here we are just thirteen years from the year two thousand – and you’re about to send me back to the Stone Age!”
