Saturday, May 13, 2006

Frank Sinatra - If You Go Away


Lyrics (J.Brel, R.McKuen)
[Recorded February 20, 1969, Hollywood]


If you go away on this summer day,
Then you might as well take the sun away;
All the birds that flew in the summer sky,
When our love was new and our hearts were high;
When the day was young and the night was long,
And the moon stood still for the night bird's song.

If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

But if you stay, I'll make you a day
Like no day has been, or will be again;
We'll sail the sun, we'll ride on the rain,
We'll talk to the trees and worship the wind.
Then if you go, I'll understand,
Leave me just enough love to fill up my hand,
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

If you go, as I know you will, you must tell the world to stop
turning
Till you return again, if you ever do, for what good is love
without loving you,
Can I tell you now, as you turn to go, I'll be dying slowly till
the next hello,
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

But if you stay, I'll make you a night
Like no night has been, or will be again.
I'll sail on your smile, I'll ride on your touch,
I'll talk to your eyes that I love so much.
But if you go, go, I won't cry,
Though the good is gone from the word goodbye,
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

If you go away, as I know you must,
There'll be nothing left in the world to trust,
Just an empty room, full of empty space,
Like the empty look I see on your face.

I'd have been the shadow of your shadow
If I thought it might have kept me by your side.
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.

Miscellany

Better use this motivation to put a couple of other things into writing as well. This post will be a bit like a news bulletin.

** A couple of months ago I was watching TV and there was this program on, called Worlds Funniest Animals or something like that. In it, they told the story of a swan in America. Apparently, the poor animal has fallen in love with an inanimate swan, which is simply a pedal boat with the shape of a swan. The things is almost 5 times bigger than the animal but because it looks absolutely like a very beautiful swan, he fell in love with it all the same. They show him following the boat everywhere on the lake and the shore. But then the management decides to take the boat away to put in storage. And he first waits by it near the trailer it's put on and then when the trailer pulls away, he starts running after it, crying this awful wail like sound. According to the carers in the park, he stopped eating and cried constantly after the boat swan was taken away.

I don't know if this is a made up or a genuine story but the footage was heart-wrnching. You feel both sorry and amazed at the love of a simple swan. It's even possible to draw a similar line for human romances; especially for a certin kind, the one-sided love. You love this person and him/her starts to grow in your eyes, he/she becomes something mythical. Although, all the while, the person is completely unaware of your affections, it doesn't bother you. Just seeing them, being near them, talking to them makes you happy.

Maybe the swan knew he won't ever be able to get anything back from his most darling love.

** One other thing I saw in the press a while back reads like this: " Faulty satnav system directs drivers to a cliff drop at the village of Crackpot." This is both a hilarious and unsettling piece of news. Hilarious because I'd like to see the face of the £30,000 Lexus driver when his precious car tried to kill him. But this is also unsettling because it just shows how much control of our life we have surrendered into the hands of electronic machines without thinking about the masters of these mechanical slaves and what'd happen if these masters became hostile one day.

** Lastly, a small anecdote. I was on a train to London. There was this skinny,young guy, wearing his trousers in that annoying fashion, looking all business and hip. So this guy gets up and goes to the loo, living his bag on the seat next to his. Then this Spanish/Mexican couple comes up the aisle, looks around, sees the seat empty, takes the bag up, squeezes it into the overhead storage and promptly nestles into the seats without batting an eyelid. They are cooing to each other in Spanish when the 'hip' guy comes back. He looks around first, probably thinking he is in the wrong wagon or that he passed his seat. Anyways at last he realises that his seat has been overtaken. But what does he do? Does he politely informs the couple that they are sitting in his seat? NO. Does he pick his bag and sit onto the empty seat behind, shaking his seat? NO. HE PICKS HIS BAG UP, APOLOGIZING ALL THE TIME TO THE COUPLE AND GOES TO THE OTHER WAGON. How spineless can you be? I was completely amazed by both the shamelessness of the couple but more by the disgusting meekness of the hip guy.

End.

Who is the real stranger?

I have tons of stuff to write about but they all look trivial in my mind's eye compared to a revelation I come to today.

As a legal alien in a foreign country, the biggest continuing problem of mine was loneliness. I have for varying reasons failed to make lasting friends or more intimate acquaintances during my time here. Of course I know people, people know me, once in a while we get together, speak about non-offending things and go our homes. I also had single-serving friends as Tyler names them - met in a dinner, cocktail, conference, party, but never saw them again. Back in the home country I had/have the best of friends; I laughed, cried, danced, drunk, ate, drunk, talked and talked with them. They are absolutely great and I'm grateful that they are my friends. Anyway, so coming from that to the current situation was like suddenly losing the ground under your feet. But today I realised that maybe I'm actually not alone in my loneliness.

Today I learnt that the husband of a couple I'm friends with has been cheating on his wife and the wife opens this secret, crying over the phone, to a person she has only been knowing for 3 years, who is now in another country. What's extraordinary about this? This couple has been living in London for 20 years. How alone and desperate you must be that you don't have a single person in the city you live in to discuss such an important issue with? I felt genuinely sorry for her - but not pity, I think showing pity is a very patronizing behaviour. I felt sorry because she is a sweet, intelligent, hard-working woman and doesn't deserve this (who does?).

Anyways then I realised that I know some other awkward examples. There are these two guys who are my time-to-time friends. They share a very nice house together. They both have been living in London for 7-8 years. Both is very bright, well-educated and nice guys. I'm not sure of all the details but I believe one of them made a bogus marriage to stay in this country and the other's marriage became a bogus one after the wife moved back to the home country after 6 months. OK both of them still have friends and they go out and have a good time but it seems there is a core in them suffering from the same lonely feeling. (Maybe I'm just trying to console myself*sigh*)



It's like you never stop being an alien. You change your skin, change your hair, your clothes, your voice but you can't change inside. You read the same books, you listen to same songs, watch the same things, laugh at the same jokes, feel bad about the same things as the people around you. But maybe these 'people around', the locals, doesn't want you to forget you're an alien by constantly referring to the country you came from in their conversations with you; sometimes subtly sometimes bluntly. Maybe they fear that if the aliens stop being alien, they'll feel alienated in their own country. So they try to keep you uneasy; even the most well meaning, most friendly of them.
Or maybe I am just a social cripple, lacking both the skills and the drive to meet people.

As an author says: "Who is the real stranger-the person who lives in a country but knows he/she belongs to another or the person who is not only a stranger in his/her own country but also who doesn't have another place to belong?"