Chapter 6

“Heavy cloud, no rain”.

That’s a song. I discovered it in the box and it is perfect for today. Menacing weather. Wind blowing. It is not wild as in that other old song—you know it for sure, the one by Nina Simone, “Wild is the wind”—, though. I wish it was, but it’s just this constant ocean wind that announces the rain is about to fall. So:

I bottom Pat’s raincoat up to the neck.

Headset on my ears.

Hood on, too.

“I talk to the wind” sounds already on my head, along with the echoes of the music of the cassettes I found in a box, by the container.

With this weather, even seagulls are out of sight.

No Sally Queen around either.

It would be a tragedy to miss Sally.

She is like the rain, like the wind.

Inevitable.

Some people say that rain is a sad thing, something related remotely to an earthquake or a natural disaster in their minds, I guess. Dunno, like acid falling on their heads. Well, it’s not the same for me. Every time I see a raindrop falling, I feel the opposite.

I gotta get out.

Get out?

No, no, it’s not just like that.

I feel more like a newborn Lady Godiva on a horseback, no matter how many Peeping Toms you can find along the way. Yeah, “Don’t stop me now”, by Queen.

‘A part of your process. I can see you are doing alright there, if you can transform rain into such a powerful calling’, on Ms Theparist’s words.

As for Avner, he says he’s only happy when it rains. He might be sarcastic, ‘cause I have never seen him out on a rainy day. He says it’s a famous song when he was my age, back in the nineties. Something to do with garbage, but who knows.

Hope I will find that song on a tape, somewhere.

Which leads my train of thought —sometimes it can be messy and I would like to apologize in hindsight— to the music I am about to play. Expect nothing fancy or sophisticated: I am using an old walkman that I found by the refuse container; whose batteries, by the way, are costing me a fortune.

Now let me turn the cassette around.

Want to listen to the B side.

There’s an inscription in the tiny sticker that says Songs for Rainy Days #2. Someone drew a tiny cloud with raindrops below. It is a lovely drawing, made carefully and by a steady and skillful hand. In fact, every single tape has its own. Songs for Sunny Mornings #1 and #3 have a smiling sun and are full with sad, slow songs and I keep wondering who made them all.

I really think whoever did the recording is a genius. After all, anyone would link sunny days to uplifting, cheerful songs, uh? Well, not him or her. Besides, who would record a tape based on the concept of Sea Music? Or Songs for Shoe-Tying? I mean, come on. I love the shoe-tying thing, because on side A you can find just short tunes, like “Our Prayer”, by The Beach Boys, or “Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon” or “Welcome to The Working Week”, all of them suggesting days of the week or the perspective of doing something right after a short task like tying your shoes. Imagine, in the box I found by the container there were more than one hundred cassettes —which means that the owner taped them long time ago—, each one of them dedicated to a different task in everyday life. Songs for Hanging Out Clothes. Yeah, that too. Music for Reading Utopia Books. For Removing Autumn Leaves at the Yard. Whose crazy mind could dedicate music to As I Wait for the Train to London? I love when it gets to the ELO song —obvious one, I know— or, again to “Cheap Day Return”, by Jethro Tull or “Don’t Stop Believing” and you can see a shoe in the small label and an asterisk on the set-list saying that this song can be also found on Songs for Observing People in the Park. I have come to love whoever recorded these wonderful cassettes, doesn’t matter if he is a thief or a killer.

So I have discovered some fucking amazing tunes. I could cry every time Kurt Cobain sings ‘Everything’s my fault/ I’ll take all the blame/ Aqua sea foam shame/ Sunburn freezer burn…’ and he ends with ‘All and all is all we are’ on and on and on until the song dies in “All Apologies”. And when that other guy with the royalty name says ‘A skinny man died of a big disease with a little name/ By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same’ in a song called “Sign O’ The Times”. Or that other tune where a castaway throws a bottle away in his island and after a long time the tide brings ‘a hundred million bottles’ to the shore. Avner says this “Message in a bottle” is about people finding solace and comfort in the fact that they are going through the same thing together, but I don’t know. All I can say is that I decided not to talk again because of the message I own as a person, deep inside my soul. And I really think that, if you pay close attention to the lyrics, you would do the same as I do.

But listen, I love this walkman. Guess you can consider it kind of a vintage thing, but for me it’s more like a time machine. Two reels giving way to a tape where the sound is recorded. Or is it printed? It’s an amazing thing, somehow. The music is there, physically, on a narrow plastic film. You press play and then it goes through this wire up to the headset. How is it done? And the tape… how long is it? Whenever I want to rewind it, I put a pencil through the tape reel and turn and turn and turn and I wonder… how far would it go if —let’s say— Sergeant Pepper’s tape is released? Would it reach the other side of Main Street? Would it be long enough to wrap someone’s heart? Would I find myself on year 1967 when I reach the other end of the tape? Would I see my face on the album cover, by Poe’s or Gandhi’s or Dylan’s or Marilyn Monroe’s or all the other famous guys?

To say that I was struck by the finding of the box would be putting it mildly. It is intriguing how Northgate can surprise you by sending exactly what you need at the moment you need it. I can’t remember how it was in my other life, before the incident, but here music has made the difference. It came to me when I didn’t have words inside my head, right after my brain surgery. I was staring at old Pat like a dumb puppet, you know, I could see he was moving his lips and, actually, I knew for a fact he was talking. But I couldn’t understand, as if my brain couldn’t process the language. And then, God bless him, old Pat got to the crazy idea of putting on one of his old records.  And there it was. Graceland, by Paul Simon. I still remember that moment, when I understood clearly the ‘Who am I to blow against the wind?’. Somehow, after a while, the cassette box appeared. Sent by an angel?

And this is how the words came back to me. Well, it was not so fast. For a while it only worked with lyrics in music. “Heart of gold” made a big difference. But after some time my brain got to understand the non-musical phrases and, after that, the basic intonations and all the stuff involved in communication.

As a result, I seem to be stuck into music. I can’t help it. Every time I go outside or whenever I am doing simple everyday tasks, you know: I tie my shoes and I plug my headset on. ‘Songs for Shoe-Tying’. I go outside on bad weather: Songs for Rainy Days #2. And here it goes: “Don’t stop me now”.

I love that song.

Science has spoken: it is the happiest tune ever. I bet Avner is puzzled every time he sees me dancing at Pat’s backyard or all along Main Street —picture this: me with my headphones dancing on my own.

Oh, god, Freddie’s lyrics.

And sometimes it’s with my walkman —which used to belong to Avner, by the way—, but some other times I can’t help it and I play it loud at an old equipment. Poor Avner. Not what I call a pleasant experience for him, I guess, being a person which values silence and quietness above all things.

I think he enjoys it somehow, though. One day I caught a sight of him doing strange movements while he pretended he was reading at Pat’s backyard too, face to the ocean. Imagine: Freddie Mercury at the top of his supernatural voice singing Don’t stop me / Don’t stop me / Don’t stop me / Uh / Uh / Uh and we crossed eyes through the open window, Avner and me, and I had to pretend that I hadn’t seen him and so did he, diving back into the waters of his profound sea of reading. But I secretly know he was dancing to himself. He would never admit it, but that was the moment when I realised that he can dance.

And that’s the reason why, among other things, I think he is so intriguing. I mean, come on, how come a weirdo like him dances like that? Yes, that’s the way Avner dances. Lives. Thinks. Does things or whatever. I like to see him as a secret person, too.

So Freddie’s astonishing timbre is with me now in my earphones and I take a look at both sides of Main Street and I walk through the road, trying to make clear that I am on the brink of running —not dancing, God, I wish I could dance without making a fool of me—, even though no car is to be seen. I want to feel the wind and the rain and the life pouring down on me.

‘Cause I’m having a good time.’

Hungry for life, hungry for everything.

Here in Northgate.

Part of the process.

‘So don’t stop me now.’

The song’s over and I come back to planet Earth.

I look around.

I think I might have danced.

Yeah, maybe I have.

A La La Land thing.

And, of course, I am suddenly hungry.

© Enrique Armenteros Caballero, 2025

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