Resolution
I am looking out over the familiar view from my Ladbroke
Grove window. In the foreground the library, in the distance Trellic Tower
providing the iconic skyline of my Notting
Hill. I will leave in a little over a week. Soon my feet will once more touch the soil of my beloved
Africa.
I am listening to ‘Buena vista Social Club’ for the first
time since 2005. This music is forever linked to this view and this my London
flat in my mind. It was the soundtrack
to my impossible love affair during the hot summer of 2005: a passionate,
overwhelming but ultimately doomed affair which I misunderstood for love. At
Christmas time 2005 when I left for Mali with my 8 friends nothing remained
except pain and a wish to go far, far away...
Before leaving for our holiday I wrote in my diary:
‘It is Christmas Eve 2005, nearly 6 in the morning. I will go to Africa on
Boxing Day. Maybe I won’t come back. Something will happen in Africa ,
I think- something which will change, or end my life. ‘
I was right. Something did happen in Africa. I found a
totally new life which lay there, waiting for me to discover it.
If you ever read this, You, my impossible love of 2005, please
know that it was all necessary and good. If it had not been for you I would
never have left to discover my new life. Therefore I am eternally grateful to
you, and I can listen to 'El Carretero' and ‘Candela’ now with nothing but love and happiness in my heart although as I am writing this my
face is wet with tears of amazement over the indescribable beauty of the divine twists
and turns of life.
posted by toubab at 4:19 PM
8 Comments:
Such is life, says he sententiously. A brick wall magically parts; all things pass, and usually for the better. Though few people are as adaptable and open to adventure as you; and none has greater will power to achieve the seemingly impossible.
This is what reading Steinbeck does for me but you give me licence. See you in a couple of hours' time in the old haunt!
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Over my way, David made the comment, about Shostakovich, "What an unquenchable genius for self-renewal." The same clearly applies to you!
I'm sure you know that what became the Buena Vista Social Club album came about because Malians Djelimady Tounkara and Bassekou Kouyate were meant to go to Cuba to record with Ry Cooder and Cuban musicians. They couldn't get visas so Ry made the Cuban music album instead, and the rest as they say is history.
How amazing Howard! I didn't know that. The Cuban music is very suitable to Mali of course- and there is a fabulous African interpretion of this sort of music by AFRICANDO, a fluid group of musicians of West Africa.But you know that of course!
No I haven't come across Africando but I will check them out. There is more on Nick Gold's work with both Cuban and Malian musicians here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11812789
Beautiful story.
Beautiful story.
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