But I’m praying…

Pontaillac, July 1985

If I close my eyes by touching the glossy paper on the wall, I can feel the leather of your dress. I guess the shadow of a smile that passes over your lips and my universe fills with the words that are yours.

I am Happy
That I have you
Even though you’re not here now

They are all elsewhere and they have the right to live your songs ; but me, I’m only fourteen.
New Wave parties on Friday nights are not safe for a young girl like me.
Colin is not too resistant to parents who refuse to let me go. At the breakfast table, outside; while the tall pines glazed with the sun sway over our heads , he tells me about drugs , sex and alcohol, all those things that seem to be the dangerous price of good music. Maybe he wants to experiment them , after all, without having me around.

The big white tablecloth spread out in the July light then shines like an impassable border between him and me.

– It’s gonna be so long, before i can enjoy it all.
– Not that much, remember what I told you about this Music section in La Rochelle.
– But it’s still that damn classical guitar, and I can’t stand music theory lessons anymore.
– I understand, but look, you can avoid Cordouan High School, with dad teaching there … Believe me, work ; there’s no other way, study, work, work, work.

Nothing of this beautiful summer, neither the glorious sparkle of the sea, nor the deep chords of Shake The Disease which sometimes come up from the street at night; none of this seems to have been done for me.
There’s before me an endless ocean of nights like this one, where Colin is dancing a few kilometers away, where I’m sitting on the floor in my room, in the shade of shutters, my walkman on my ears, trying to unravel the secrets of adult life by listening to Martin’s words about the worries of love and the thrills of bliss, so hard to reach, but sometimes …

A dizziness of truth suddenly stretches in a melodic line. By dint of listening , during these long lonely hours, something is revealed, a light, even furtive, of pure emotion.

All the things I detest, I will almost like

I know now , unlike what we were told at church, that nothing is really given; and especially not this arbitrary grace which separates the happy from the others.  All is a question of listening.
I’ll wait; impatiently sometimes, I know it well; because I have to wait, because I am too young. But I am not alone. The comforting words I always yearn for, when I leave ( too quickly ) the dinner’s table ; they are not misleading.

Girl of sixteen, whole life ahead of her

They tell a true story, and for me it is not over; it will continue, as long as this pencil somewhere in England keeps writing.
I am lucky.