MICHAEL JACKSON: “I’ll Be There”

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved in return”.
Happy For Ever.

CARLA BRUNI: "La Possibilité d'une Île"

Would it be a coincidence if the first song you play randomly from your MP3-player is written in the language of the place where you just arrived at that very moment? The place is called Mauritius and the language is French. The mystical lyrics are a poetic welcome note to this tropical holiday island, a cultural melting pot where also English and Creole is commonly spoken.

I always get some joy from having the chance to converse in a language I have been studying before. As a child, you can’t foresee any of those situations in your life where that language knowledge will effectively be used. You struggle with vocabulary lists and always seem to forget that third category of exceptions on one or another grammatical rule. You don't realize yet that a language is a drawer in a cabinet, which you can open any time at your convenience, and pull out what you thought you no longer had. You may not find every piece you ever put in, but it should be sufficient to get dressed and move around.

MADONNA: "La Isla Bonita"

Mauritius

YIRUMA: "River Flows In You"

Even if you don't have a voice, you can still sing. Perfection is not of this world, and conviction matters more than anything else. We can rise above expectations, like seagulls above rough seas. They float in the sky and cry like babies hungry for food. There’s the strongest bond in loneliness and a walk on a deserted winter beach will clear your mind like frost kills the most persistent bug. A countless number of people each doing something else and yet so many doing the same at the same time, somewhere. So many afraid to die, and therefore they never start living. We are haunted by our own fears, invisible like the winds that whistle unheard songs over the sand. We set footprints and follow others. There are things we learn along the way, and things we never will. How to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius, for instance. Or miles to kilometers. Only approximately, in the region, somewhere about. But proximity is good enough at times. Exactness offers false security; it’s merely a religion like any other. There’s no esthetics in mathematical graphs; there’s no beauty in chemical formulas. Nostalgic fools like me capture the world in pictures, rather than videos. We describe history in moments, rather than timelines. We write stories and poems, not shopping lists or software.

Look back upon your life with the belief that there’s always something to look forward to. A foreign language you want to master. A love to love forever. Music you had never discovered before. Yurima, for instance. He came to me unexpectedly. With satin hands, he poured this mesmerizing melody, in the utmost elegant and gracious way, devoted like a sommelier to his favorite red wine. I taste his music with the ears of a blind man. We are never too old to learn. I savour life with the eagerness of a teenager who believes life will start at 20. And yet I hold my share of wisdom between my teeth the way an old man in a rocking chair bites his pipe as he watches the sun set from a forgotten porch in a Tennessee village. Do you need to go somewhere to know how it’s like? Do you have to fall before you know how to stand?