This is an idea I have been fleshing out. If you like it, please comment. Thank for coming to my blog
They are unable to read this unfortunate grandiloquence in their illiteracy. And I am
unable to hear these words read aloud in my angry silence. Do they comprehend my
music? Probably not, but if someone could translate these pithy epithets; like I could
translate these notes into music. Maybe in their squalor they could cognate the cutaneous
joy I felt writing about the valor and the integrity of these tone poems.
Imagine me, Bedrich Smetana, father of Bohemian music, with a weak mind, racked
with insanity. If I could communicate my compassion with a few good words, a few
notes and a few coins. These denizens revenged by some quirk of nature with skin so
dark like my mind in moments of melancholy. If I could make my last few months
worthwhile, it would be a benevolent venture.
I am powerless to write music any more, even with my move to Sweden and back, I
have failed to compose like Mozart and attain the technique of Litzt. They have
christened me the father of Bohemian Music. Yes, I have compiled much and
accomplished even more but to die in ignominious defeat with voices telling me to sleep
and to rise in the morning, to eat and to defecate. I am not who I was. – But I wonder
about the Dalit people – the untouchables marked by their dark skin at the lowest of the
caste system of the Indian Subcontinent
Who are they? Have they a culture? A Literature? Music. They must. How can a human
not sing and dance? Can they not smile and laugh and celebrate? Can they not they feel
pain and suffer at the cry of a lament: The basics of life? Like the poverty of food and
shelter. Like the poverty of my deafness screaming in the labyrinths of my ears. I have
bathed in riches but now I drown in the emptiness of silence. Is there one thing I can do
to redeem myself?
Feed the hungry. Feed the hunger of my disparity of mind. I wrote songs of strength
and Nationalism now I waste away in the same vacuum of these people. Do they not have
a sense of Brotherhood, maybe not Nationalism. Pervasive oppression lies forth only
individuals torn from the womb of community. There are many people who are so poor
in our country The Roma are so despised and oppressed.
But I need to look beyond my country’s glorious boundaries to the south to give me
perspective of absolute poverty of life as my life has poverty of mind, yet I have a heart. I
do have a heart if not a soul ravaged by mental distraction and distress. But still a heart
remains. I can’t hear the power of my music but I can hear my imploding mind. If could
only correspond through a translator who could read my words to the illiterate people.
How can we treat people so decrepitly? So mean with prejudice when we are all born
into the world and buried in the same brown soil? Perhaps the soil I will be buried in
would be brown or rich black humus while they will be burned and tossed to the wind:
Must they have such a clean end to an insufferable existence?
Before my madness takes my last breathe away. Me, the father of Bohemia music. Ha!
I am just a madman like any other. Unable to hear what I have composed even though my
finest tone poems were composed when all I could feel were the vibrations.
There are so many poor people in the world. May be some poor man would have
danced to my song when I was composing at my best. I must go beyond my mind,
beyond my glorious county to an ordinary poor man marked a Dalit and hope he learns
from my love of life and the joy of music. And I hope he learns that the wealthy die in the
same darkness. Educated yet ignorant of the painful agony of death. And hopefully
Providence will be good to the both of us. Yes, Providence.
Maybe with the money his son can transcend the darkness of poverty after I transcend
this life and my deafness are buried. All the pomp and circumstance of a Bohemian dance
won’t bring back my sweet four-year-old daughter or my beloved Katherine. All I can
offer in the remainder of my life is money. But I am impoverished in this insane asylum
as that man with the dark skin and dark eyes.
My means for benevolence is random but the last beating of my heart will be direct and
I am determined to be a donator of the remainder of my dying heart and soul.
I pray he is prudent with the money and his son even more. Death is cheap. A future
for a son is worth a fortune. I hope he doesn’t cheat me in his desperation. For my life is
so short. Let the untouchable one be touched by my coin so his son will touch another.
I must go for my water therapy. I hope it helps. Anything that soothes this mental
anguish will suffice.
Let one finger of my hand touch the hand of the man whose son will learn to sing of a
better day. And let his family and brethrens be rich and know of this last coin of song.
And this will be the last tone poem I shall compose before I surrender to this insanity
I hope you enjoyed reading ?
kindly upvote and comment for me to know if I should continue or not.