Nigel carefully jumped from the wooden crate. I had already gone off it a while ago, scanning through the area to report any missed targets. There were none; there never were any, with Nigel. He yielded his revolver with such proficiency that one could believe him to be a police officer, a secret service agent or hell, even an assassin. Truth was, Nigel was none of that. Nigel was a musician.

“All gone, sir,” I reported. Nigel smiled, showing his multitude of broken and rotten teeth. We resumed our walk, amidst the corpses. The musician reloaded his weapon. “Now, lad, let’s go over it again,” he said in his British accent. “Why is the world in as bad a shape as it is?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well what had happened. The end of mankind. The apocalypse. Something like it.

There were three steps, three events that led to the infection and later on, the destruction of our species. As we skipped from debris to debris, making our way in what used to be the sacred ground of actresses and actors everywhere, I started reciting what Nigel had taught me, the night he had found my terrified self sitting in a crate, madly speaking to myself. “First came Napster. Peer-to-peer networks existed but none had received as much publicity. Napster came and transferred the mp3s. Kazaa took care of the business when Napster died. The are the first officially known carriers of the virus.”

Nigel coughed, spraying blood everywhere. The way we saw it, it was lung cancer. My mentor had not long to live. He wiped his chin. “Yea but not quite. You’re forgetting the important part. Napster was the carrier but what exactly was carried? You’ve got to mention it first.” I nodded and continued, this time from the start. “Music companies wanted to find a new way to control the market. Mp3s were starting to damper on their profit margin and so they thought of using this new file format and hide subtle brainwashing messages, urging the consumer to stop listening to mp3s and instead purchase albums. Not all files were corrupted this way; only the popular labels. Napster and Kazaa were carriers. Companies implicated in this procedure wanted the survival of these peer-to-peer programs. This is why, until the very end, similar programs were born when others died. Those companies made sure that peer-to-peer would never die, until no one was left to download music on the Internet. That was the first step to the end of mankind.”

We approached what used to be a richer part of the city or at the very least seemed so, judging from the style of the residences, some almost intact, that laid left and right. One of the brainless rose and moaned, “hit me baby, one more tiiiiiiiimmeeeee,” in a hoarse tone. Nigel rose his revolver and shot once. The brainless fell stiffly. “Resume,” he whispered.

I cleared my voice. “The second step appeared with portable mp3 players. Companies, now unsure of the future of portable music, continued to input their messages into the files they leaked over peer-to-peer programs but took a great interest in the development of mp3 players. Some labels dropped their scheme and embraced the portable business. They input their own brainwashing signals, encouraging the listeners to purchase players and download music. A giant name in the computer world decided to create their own mp3 player. Apple created the iPod. The war between the pro-mp3 and the anti-mp3 companies escalated until Apple created a behemoth of a program, thus permitting the end of mankind.

“This was the third event. iTunes. The iPod, already a great success, was further enhanced by the mp3-purchasing program. Most songs were laced with pro-mp3 propaganda and subliminal messages. It went on a broad scale. It changed the world. Only, there was a problem.

“A user could store many gigabytes of music on their player. Calculate, in general, that hundreds of songs were stored per user. Let’s assume that half of these had pro-mp3 messages. The other half would have anti-mp3 messages. This resulted in a rapid subconscious confusion, gradually damaging the brain. Some users would go on excessive album purchases then feel obsessive guilt over their actions. Some users would download most everything and then feel guilt, as well. Self-respect and self-confidence hit a new low. Audiophiles caved in. Depressions, obsessions, nervous breakdowns. People went mad. This is the third event, where music listeners stopped being human and started being “consumer zombies”. Brainless beings. Stores were vandalized, pro-mp3 activists fighting anti-mp3 activists. People killing one another because of preference of music labels. Categorization of music genres taken to an extreme. Punks and Goths fighting with rotting brains. Pop princesses chasing survivors to the tune of the last Idol winner. The end of mankind.”

We walked in silence for a while. I sighed. Music had never really interested me – I was more into books – and so I had become of the survivors. Nigel had found me in that crate, after I had to beat some brainless with his own arm; limb he had himself torn off while humming the latest Linkin Park beat. There were a handful or survivors in every city – sadly, most of them were older people, who had no idea what mp3s were in the first place – and we made sure to inform them and explain what had to be done. There was no cure. The only way to stop the infection was to destroy the carriers. The mad audiophiles. The only question I had in mind, at the moment, was our trajectory.

Nigel must have read my mind. He coughed again, spitting more blood. “Now, you know that not all musicians are bad. Most of us had no idea of what was going on.” I did not want to hurt Nigel’s feelings by expressing that his fall from musical grace in the seventies might have to do with him not being a part of the musical apocalypse. I nodded and he continued, holding his stomach with his free hand. “There are some people, I believe, who knew of this and tried to stop it. I believe those fellow musicians might be alive. If they are alive, they had a much longer time to prepare themselves. They might have an easier answer to the problem. At the very least, they might have provisions, medication. I would sure like a few painkillers.” We continued our walk, starring at the burned letters on the hill flanking us. They used to represent perfection. Now they were nothing.

“The most fervent warriors of that era moved here, at one point or another. I have their address. Always hated the band but from what I gather, they might be the only ones alive in here, apart from us.” Nigel went into a coughing frenzy. He was losing too much blood. To be honest, I wasn’t sure he would survive the city. I took his arm and lifted him up a bit, so as to make the walk easier. “The drummer,” he added, “is an arsehole. Worse little shit I’ve ever met. But he’s a tough little bugger.” We arrived to a sturdy marbled house. Guitars were being played, inside. “Where are we? Who are we going to meet?” I asked. Nigel smiled, broken teeth and all. “My, my! Don’t you know? We’ll meet the four horsemen of this musical apocalypse!” He coughed. The blood was black. “We’re going to visit Metallica.”

Plea to an unflinching refusal in which a man holds on to crumbs of a lost interest.

A feverish night took me to my bed where I wanted to lay and pretend I was dead, when in the silence of the city, mingled with electronics, came a buzz, deemed to my health, anticlimatic. Still, I survived the temptation to let it to rest and came to search for the noise of interest when my eyes fell deadly on a frantic bee wishing to escape my castle of sheets. The broom swished faster than your sight could tell and the bee did whisper her final farewell as I rid myself of the noisy thing and resumed my attempt at feverish sleeping.

The mind still quivering from the benign onslaught, working itself through my maladied thoughts began the process of remembrance, of memories in dire need of penance. So harsh was the moment and all the while intense, they would be overwhelming, I could take credence, lest I spill out loud the memories so keen, where once was I the bee, she the broom-swishing queen.

So much done over so little a thing.

It came to be that two souls met by the summer eve. Bursting from a net of mechanic activities, and laid eyes on each other, though the truth might be better. Truth in which the man knew the the girl before their first meeting, by the sights of a friend lost to warring, between two cities of equal tenure in which this one man’s soul took physical pleasure and so he will not utter, lest we think of him less but by everyone’s mind he has done for the best. And all the while, with the friend feasting, the manly soul kept collecting bits of thoughts, odes and ideas of this womanly soul from the town of Carnalia. Though the main topic he shared was his friend’s odd fortune, inside but burned a fire most impromptu. It defied all logic and the soul man’s taste yet in remained, reaffirmed with haste each time he heard of the friend’s adventures and each time he fell on her pictured stature.

The soul chose his words as he would his weapons, once the friend made of both cities a desertion and took his chance at this confused blockade of feelings felt for Carnalia betrayed and off he went, without much thought that for the target his notion would be hard bought.

What to do but pretend that one meets as a friend, be it that she refuses to be read in any way resembling of the paramour fled? The man took solace in exchanging kind words, at each other, to soothe their hearts of previous hazards and tempted to slowly integrate his plan; to make her his and he, her man. Slightly, delicately, he pushed further, day after day, his efforts stronger, till alas she could take no choice but to heed his voice and proclaim at once that she found no joy in pursuing friends of amorous deserters, having done so once but to much terror.

The man was heartbroken yet still relentless and took a step further in his fiery quest, to salvage her from chaos and bring her to calm; to ease her sorrows, to give her his arms to cry on, rely on and use as a balm. Her friendship strong and her desire to be helped kept her close, though the passion not fed and she promised him more visits, though in the sane; not with the affective notions that were told in vain, and he accepted, though only to see her more and grew frustrated by the bolt-locked door of her heart and the cure to his illness; the potion to quench the fire of his chest. So they appointed dates and she never shown her image, leaving the soul man to a nasty mental wreckage in which he started to think himself the tin soldier and her the ballerina who toyed him and quite the dazzler so that anger grew where the passion stayed and confusing thoughts had started to raise.

The ships sunk, jewel mined and condemned-watching days were gone and she left him to his devotion, paying no heed to his passionate cries, lending no ear to his mournful sighs, fearing for her life what she mistook for danger; his need of her growing all but deeper.

Friends were shocked and lamented his choice, swearing at one that he should rejoice; for he escaped intact Carnalia’s folly, which almost took hers, his age-old ally. They shouted to the heavens that he should be appeased, that more fishes were found in the skies, let alone the seas and took his pain to a secret level where no one but his mind should ever revel.

Eons then passed and the souls once more crossed, on the net of wires that the continent tossed and she bellowed to one and all that no love was to be found in her glorious hall. She dared exclaim that her life was naught and by the morrow her body would stop and the man screamed, though only to himself, no addressing her but stating her distress that should she ignore his lasting passions, may death come to all who wish such notion.

The law came knocking but so much later, addressing him but as a neighbor; saying, “lo and behold! We have in possession, a piece of advice to give your passion! Refrain from crying to the high heavens, your suggestions of dying, to the crying sirens! Though nothing can be done to keep you under duress, let it be sure that your arrest would mean to us but a world of good, would you not stop wishing death to souls, which might be confused, yea almost as you, about Life’s amours and loss of them, too”.

He took heed for he is no madman; the truth is, he had no sentiment for the soul to be dead. A feverish mind, yea, like his recent kind, brought him anger and resentment where love should have kept strong but for the wavering of her own songs.

He kept low and barely uttered a word, though he often thought about the girl whom so enraptured his grieving days as to brand her voice to his living ways and he let his friends boast of her wrongdoings and came to echo their nasty saying but locked deep in his fortified soul was the girl in red, in black, in gold, for whom all world’ pastries crumbled. For whom his being belonged. He knew he had to keep this silent, for fear of lawful arrestment, for fear of misunderstood notions, for fear of adding to the privileges he has already lost. Speaking more meant losing trust, which barely held but by the crust of her delectable diatribes and thus, to the law he would ever abide, to deny his love and to have it die, yet he knew well that this part was lie.

Let the friends amuse themselves over such a silly tale; let them mock him, his love, his forbidden wail. Her kindness he needs, her madness he craves and this love shall he one day take to the grave, uncaring for the tribulations, regretting his confused actions, pleading for retribution.

And I lay there on my cot, thinking again. My voice echoes this man, shares the same refrain. There lives a queen for whom the broom swishes valiantly; at the world of bees, in which I take party. And though I mean no harm, it is what she perceives; for the love I bear comes in the form of a sting. So painful, yet so full of mercy. For a better future, for lives to be conceived, I lament the crumbs I so shamelessly deceived, of a woman once strong and whose eyes relieved, all the sorrows of my mind, my self-inflicted maladies.

Captor of images, senate vocalist, woman of two countries, I only wish to exclaim that I make no apologies but to you, my dear, who so well captured my heart as to leave it crushed, since ever the start of your devotion to refuse the sharing of such a passion.

I am sorry.

Though it is hard to conceive, let alone believe, not many eyes will ever compare to yours. You are wrong for me and for all the men, yet I cannot help but to yours, remain.

Tough I never was; though I never will.

Tough I acted the part, I never meant you ill.

I love you.

** Laisser les choses qui ne sont pas en votre contrôle hors des choses qui peuvent vous affecter... **

Je pense que c'est le secret du bonheur...

Au nombre de limitations que «l'extérieur» peut nous imposer si l'on s'en fait l'esclave, ça vaut la peine de travailler cet aspect de soi.

Il faut réduire l'égo au silence. Cet espèce de conscience dans nos têtes qui ne s'harmonise pas avec notre vraie vibration et qui s'abreuve à des sources comme la peur, la jalousie, la honte, le bien parraître. Cette partie de nous pour qui tout devient une menace. Cet égo qui pense devoir se victimiser de tout se qui se passe dans le grand bol de la vie dans lequel nous bagnons incontestablement. La seule chose sur quoi vous pouvez avoir du contrôle est vous. La seule chose qui doit avoir le contrôle sur vous, est vous.
Laissez à la terre ce qui appartient à la terre...

J'ai 3 amies. C'est mes 3 nymphes, mes trois coup de vent, 3 flocons.
Entre 2 parties, je m'ennuie de mes 3 pitounes.
Quand je les vois, tout d'un coup, l'énergie revient: je vie plus, je vie mieux.
Entre les Mendalas, les gâteaux choux-fleur au chocolat et les discussions sur le pourquoi du comment, je découvre qui elles sont.
Chaque rencontre apporte son lot de surprises et de joie.

C'est mes 3 amies :-)

make way
needles have wax to kiss
tenured ears to envelop
sway

quiver me happy, woofer
seasons pass and love of bass has yet to dwindle
pulse

all are watching
but who is listening?
blink

Listening To: Jamaican Funk