The Joy of Singing

My friend was a writer.  May be she still is, I am not sure.  What I know is that she is my friend and she is a physician and she is a world citizen.  Her name is Z.Sh.

One day, back in the high school days in Isfahan, when getting accepted to a high ranked university in a very reputable major was the dream of any high school kid, especially the ones attending NODET or competing with it, after finishing reading her most recent handwritten publication under the blanket using a flash light, I asked her why she wrote.  She responded that everyone had only one life to live, but by making characters in her stories she got the chance to live many different lives.

And oh yeah!  I wanted to live that girl's life in Z.Sh.'s last hand-written publication!  I think we all did.  That character was an aspiring dreaming unchained girl.  She was living in Tehran at a relative's place, she had this romantic boy friend but got to learn about the neighbor's older son/nephew, who got to tutor her, the one who seemed to be ignoring her all along. I remember a description in the novel that explained once he chose to eat a grape vine when she was at his place because it took a long time to finish it as a sign of being ignorant toward her; but indeed he was madly in love with her.  And if I recall it correctly she got accepted to a good school in the end which is the minor detail in the whole book.  Such sweet chick flick. I remember imagining a couple of the scenes in the book that I later sketched.  Nothing fancy but I enjoyed doing it.

Ah what would I give to live those nights again, despite all the confusions and all the unknowns and all the stress for not knowing if the desired future would ever be.

Driving home today I was listening to Ebi, The Story of Love (ghesseye eshgh), like I did this morning and yesterday and the night before that.  I basked in it all, in the tone, in the words, in the meanings, in the screaming desires: "... The story of your love is in my voice again
A drunken night is awaiting me again
There is no more than one breath between the two of us
What restlessness is in my nights again"

Indeed there is joy in singing when you relate to it; either by feeling it is being sung to you or by feeling that the song is your words.  It is as if you are living many different lives, as Z. joon might have said.