As far back as I can recall, I've always sought the answers to some important questions : what defines friendship? what is love? (if your answer to that is 'baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more', then you, sir and/or madam have already won.)
The latter is a question whose answer, I find, will always elude me. It was so paramount in my mind when I was younger, that well into adulthood I thought that love could fix anything. It could fix everything. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account any number of ancillary virtues that were crucial for that to work - trust, respect, sacrifice, etc.
I always thought that love itself, by itself, could overcome all obstacles. A lesson I learned in pain, both to myself and others.
As for the former, I was struck at a very early age by an event that would shape my definition of friendship. When I was about six or so, there was a cartoon that anthropomorphized the characters from Dumas's 'The Three Musketeers'- here it was called 'Dartacão' and elsewhere, like in english speaking countries, it was styled 'Dogtanian'. This was an important moment in my life, for it would take me on a path where I would devour the adventures of D'Artagnan - 'The Three Musketeers', 'Twenty years after', and 'Ten years later' - and at such an early age began to further my love for books and reading. But concurrently with this ran the cartoon proper, and I ate it up religiously. It does not only boast one of the catchiest theme songs of all time, but during that very intro a message was relayed to us, the spectator beyond that fourth wall.
'This series based in Alexandre Dumas's novel 'The Three Musketeers', through its joyous protagonists, seeks to laud two virtues that ought never be forgotten : Honour and Friendship'
If my memory isn't playing any tricks on me, this was the very same year where I started going to school for my first grade. Upon reading these words, it became imprinted in me just how important friendship should be. And really, when you hold it up to such a high standard, is it any wonder I truly didn't have (m)any friend at all? It's true. Oh, I got along with people, I got along with people alright. Mostly in a semi-perfunctory way, but I got along with people. And if I'm honest - what friends I had never lasted from one school year to the other... maybe our interests, which may not have been that in common to begin with, caused a wedge between us. Maybe I just didn't feel any lingering friendship at all.
Sometime in the late 80's I met this guy who would be my closest friend for a number of years. He'll pop up in more detail one of these days. But to cut a long story short, we had a friendship that was highly competitive - there was a lot of upsmanship between us, and as usual, I couldn't pass muster. To be fair, the only time I did get an advantage over him, I ended up in the relationship that would one day bring my son Ian to the world; and the events that led to that relationship existing in the first place meant an end to our friendship. It saddens me still, in a way, because I wouldn't have acted the same way, if our roles were reversed. Ah well, who has time to ponder on things that happened a quarter century ago? Oh yeah, the eternal overthinker.
In truth, this competitive kind of friendship was not new to me, though I never sought them. They just sort of happened. It would be like who's got the most G.I. Joes or Transformers, or comic books, or whatever. There really wasn't much beyond that, and bar this kid who I was friend with flashing me his pubes once - super gross - there wasn't any kind of intimacy at all, none of us knew anything about each other's lives, we only trod that common ground which briefly united us.
All this would change sometime in the 90's. I'd first meet a guy - Paulo - with whom I sensed a kinship, and we bonded quickly. First it was the music we listened to, then it was our desire to have a band of our own - which we did, to comical results - and eventually we hung around with each other a lot outside of school, my first tentative steps into the going out at night thing were with him. A year or so later, I'd changed school, but kept in touch with him nonetheless. In this new school I'd meet a bunch of people whose presence I enjoyed, some I would've called friends back then, others I came to know as trusted, true and good friends for nearly thirty years now.
It's at this juncture that pieces start to fall into place. One of those lasting friendships is to Sérgio, a fellow traveler of the road less traveled, a brother in arms as we journeyed far beyond the shores of night, past the gates of horn and ivory, and into this bond we forged.
I have told him so many times over these past twenty-something years that in him I see the man I should've been - the man who, when waves crash upon him like unto a cliff, does not yield and rather rises and grows strong. The man who learns and grows and studies, and has in him the worlds that beget worlds, life, joy and love all around him. I could not be any prouder of him; and this he knows.
There are moments that could never be driven away from my memory, not even if Mnemosyne herself chiseled at my brain. And so many of these moments seem to happen in the same place - the house where he lived back then, a place so firmly etched in me that I would sooner forget myself than it.
He had a stereo that lacked only a CD player, and we listened to CDs on the system via his Amiga CD-32, making him the only person I've ever known who owned this oddity of a console. That stereo, unfortunately, no longer exists, and I know he regrets not having it still.
Many times we'd do these sessions right there in his living room, where we'd play whatever was new. My CD collecting was starting to run rampant at the time, and very often I'd bring some atrocity I'd bought thinking that I'd found a masterpiece. Sometimes, though, we'd listen to what Sérgio had bought, his investments in CDs much more prudent than mine own. I remember some things he played for us that to this day I dare not listen to again - I'm looking at you In the Woods and Katatonia. I'm fairly sure that Sérgio has no particular interest in listening to some of my worst finds, bands like Deinonychus (why??) or Lord Belial or Hecate Enthroned.
Sometimes there'd be things that we listened to intently. That's how we came to appreciate The 3rd and the Mortal, and Kari's and Ann-Mari's voices and ways of singing, poles apart from each other.
There was also the time when he played me Elend's then lastest opus - a band we got to know from Paulo, who had bought their album 'Les Ténèbres du Dehors' and introduced the band to us. I wasn't, I confess, that impressed with that effort : it seemed to me that there was altogether too much going on in the record, I didn't think it made for a very cohesive work, and it soon fell out of mind.
'Weeping Nights', though, was something else. Classical instruments and music only, gone are the dissonant guitars. No male vocals either, only dueling sopranos.
The almost title track - 'Weeping Night' is a powerful, moving, tour de force that still touches me to this day. The album features songs by Henry Purcell, as well as some reworked songs from the previous album.
As with so many others that I listened to on that cherished abode, a part of me lingers there still, sat down on the ghost of a sofa, my soul brimming with absolute joy.
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