I do not understand it but I know it is there.
I believed in it, first. I believed in it when he told me of it, even though I had not experienced it. It was one of the things I dreamed of sharing with him. I could see it in my mind, how it would be. Dressed in our finest jeans, washed and pressed of course, out of his red car we would climb, pause at the bottom of the steps to the Opera House and look up at the way before us. I would take a deep and shaky breath, holding back, my feet suddenly unwilling to move forward. He would look back for me, questioning why I was not shoulder to shoulder beside him, and see the hesitation on my face. He would smile, in reassurance, that sunshine of his reaching all the way to his eyes, illuminating his face, as he reached for my hand, covering mine with his, squeezing gently to make me glance at him and see that there was nothing to fear. He'd done this many times before. I would smile back and we'd take that first step of ascension together.
And then what he had said would be confirmed in me.
The music would touch that deepest part of me, so that no matter that I did not know the words or the melody or the story. The music would wind its way into my being, weaving its way into the essence of who I am, bringing to me such feeling as I had never known before and I would find myself overcome with emotion, responding in tears at the incredible beauty that I did not know could exist, awakening to some passion I had never known before, at once both joyous to have found it and saddened in the knowing that it must surely end, as all things do sooner or later.
How I wanted that dream to be true!
But it was not to be, life had other twists for my heart.
And I thought I might never know this about music.
Then I heard this song.
I know a bit of Spanish, but not enough to grasp the words immediately, except for "si" and "no", those were clear enough. But that mattered not. I watched the video, that is so, but it was not in the seeing that I understood. Without knowing the language, without knowing the words, without knowing the meaning, just by listening to the music of the voices, I understood.
And I cried.
For the beauty, for the anguish, for the pain, for the loss, for the fleetingness of love, for the moving away from the dream that once held a heart, for the sheer devastation pouring forth.....
.....and all of that I heard in the music.
Not in person, and not with him, yet nevertheless I had experienced how music could touch my soul, with such a profound power that it left me raw and ragged and begging for a mercy that would not come, breathless in its consummation of all of me, leaving me weak and helpless, shattered and sobbing.
So perhaps that was how it was meant to be, his part merely to be the warning of me about it, when it happened, and not my strong tower standing beside me as it raped me of my emotions and laid me bare for all the world to see.
I was alone when it happened.
Perhaps fitting.
There are two times in life when we are truly and honestly alone, the moment we are born, and the moment we die.
This moment seemed like the third. I was born and I died in the exact same moment.
I sat at the computer for several moments after the song ended just staring at the screen, having neither the ability nor the will to speak or move. (I was breathing only because that was involuntary)
I was unaware of the passage of time and that hardly mattered anyway. Except for the conscious thought that I knew what had just happened and I wanted to somehow commemorate and preserve it, the rest of awareness had no meaning to me.
Finally I remember taking a very deep breath, the kind that emminates from deep within, and cleanses you all the way through, as you exhale. I remember three awarenesses:
1. How incredibly beautiful that was.
2. How I had neither the words nor the mind to write of it and do it justice, but knowing one day I would try.
3. How sad I was to know I would never share having had this experience with he who taught me of it, told me what to look for, urged me to find it. How sorrowful I was to have lost that right to do that, regardless of fault or blame or reason of how. I wanted to run to him and tell him all about it. And I knew I never would.
I knew it long ago, but I experienced the tearing of it now fresh, as I looked up the words that I had not understood. I knew what I had lost. And I knew why it was this song that shook me to my core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLcfAnN2QgY
El Perdedor....performed by Enrique Inglesias and Marco Antonio Solis
V1:
Que más quieres de mí
Si he pasado esta prueba de tu amor
Y no tengo el valor
De escapar para siempre del dolor
Demasiado pedir
Que sigamos en esta hipocresía
Cuanto tiempo más podré vivir
En la misma mentira
C1:
No… no vayas presumiendo no
Que me has robado el corazón
Y no me queda nada más
Si… Prefiero ser el perdedor
Que te lo ha dado todo
Y no le queda nada más
No me queda nada más
V2:
Ya no puedo seguir
Resistiendo esa extraña sensación
Que me hiela la piel
Como invierno fuera de estación
Tu mirada y la mía
Ignorándose en una lejanía
Todo pierde el sentido
Y es mejor el vacío que el olvido
Bridge:
Yo prefiero dejarte partir
Que ser tu prisionero
Y no vayas por ahí diciendo ser
La dueña de mis sentimientos
C2:
No… no vayas presumiendo no
Que me has robado el corazón
Y no me queda nada más
Si… Prefiero ser el perdedor
Que te lo ha dado todo
Y no le queda nada más
C3:
No… no vayas presumiendo no
Que me has robado el corazón
Y no me queda nada más
Si… Prefiero ser un perdedor
Que te lo ha dado todo
Y no le queda nada más
No me queda nada más
END:
Que más quieres de mí
Si he pasado esa prueba de tu amor
The Loser
What more do you want from me
When the past is proof of your love
And I don’t have the courage
To escape from the pain forever
It’s too much of me to ask
For us to continue in this hypocrisy
How much longer will I be able to live
In the same lie
When the past is proof of your love
And I don’t have the courage
To escape from the pain forever
It’s too much of me to ask
For us to continue in this hypocrisy
How much longer will I be able to live
In the same lie
No, don’t go around bragging, no
That you’ve stolen my heart
And I have nothing more [to give]
Yes, I’d rather be the loser
The one who has given you everything
And I have nothing more [to give]
I have nothing more [to give]…
That you’ve stolen my heart
And I have nothing more [to give]
Yes, I’d rather be the loser
The one who has given you everything
And I have nothing more [to give]
I have nothing more [to give]…
I can no longer continue
Resisting that strange sensation
It chills [over] my skin
Like the winter out of season
Your gaze and my gaze
Ignoring each other in the distance
All has become meaningless
And emptiness is better than forgetting
Resisting that strange sensation
It chills [over] my skin
Like the winter out of season
Your gaze and my gaze
Ignoring each other in the distance
All has become meaningless
And emptiness is better than forgetting
I prefer to let you go
Than to be your prisoner
And don’t go around
Claiming to be the mistress of my emotions
Than to be your prisoner
And don’t go around
Claiming to be the mistress of my emotions
What more do you want from me
When the past is proof of your love
When the past is proof of your love
