The title “Remember me” is a conscious homage to one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard – “The Trapeze swinger“, by Iron and Wine.
Here’s the same by Gregory Alan Isokov, because why not?
I ask of you nothing you cannot give,
And even those I want not.
Sitting under the starless July sky,
The air arid and smelling of riverbanks gone dry
I only hope that you remember me.
On the Tuesday mornings you wake up,
The sky somewhere between a mellow yellow and the lazy orange of dying embers,
The mornings you lie in bed a little longer than necessary;
The mornings where you skip breakfast even though you had the time.
The mornings that you never picture giving way to nights, but do anyway.
I have thought of death in every way imaginable,
And even of the worlds that lie in wait beyond it.
An endless void of empty darkness; a harrowing nightmare you refuse to wake up from;
The screaming, burning walls of hell deep-rooted in religion;
And even the worst of them all – being born into this world again.
Sometimes, I think I think more of death than of life.
The little voice in my head tells me that is true of everyone in this world.
You see, the living very rarely think of life and the dead more rarely so.
One does not think of the sea while one is busy tying to stay afloat,
Or maybe it is simply that one should not.
I only hope that you remember me,
Not as I want to be remembered but rather as who I really was.
A tangled mess of messes
A labyrinth of hopes both eternal and false, dreams both crushed and realized
Neither genius nor clinker, just alive and angry.
I wish I could ask of you. I wish I could beg of you.
Of all the things one could beg for, love shouldn’t be one of them.
And what is remembrance if not love made everlasting?
Between the glass of lukewarm water in the middle of the night and the scalding second cup of morning coffee,
I can only hope you remember me.
If all of life is an act of letting go,
Then death is simply the final slackening of the grip.
Would it be the hardest thing to do? Should it be the easiest?
I know not, and for all it is worth, I care not
For I shall know no ruin, as long as you remember me.
There are days when you wake up with the words already echoing through your skull and they refuse to let anything be done until they are written down. And those days pass anyway, because you are afraid of reading them and your procrastination is all-conquering.
And the next day, and the next after that, and for the following month or two, not a moment passes when you do not think of them. They wait, and they wait some more, until one morning you have the courage to finally acknowledge them. Here they are. Here they have always been.
Gone Quiet 