To...

We’re on a road, travelling at our own speed, creating our own footprints. The scenery flashes by, frame by frame, like a stretched painting of colours and sounds. The painting goes back to where we started like memories woven into tapestry. Names and faces on the way like portraits, telephone numbers, e-mails and yellow coloured letters and wrinkled photographs, like leaves fallen on the ground.

We met a few junctures, crossroads to reflect, to check the roadmap of our lives. We say goodbye to old friends and make new ones. We choose our new travelling companions, new shoes or vehicles. We consulted our planned routes and old decisions, while new ideas and dreams nestled in our hearts. The first steps have always been scary, no matter how clear the view, on the new path with the new shoes on and new companions.

We still run ahead with the scenery flashing by, leaving our footprints as legacy behind, our children by the hand, their children running ahead. The sounds and echoes behind us like photo albums, films, birthday cards, older and older memories. We leave behind.

And then we stop. We let go, to leave it to our children. The road ahead…




I’m pretty much at the end of their lives. What a strange thing to say. Nothing I want to be true and I hope that definitive end lies ahead quite a bit further. They both seem very healthy, active, energetic even. Neither of them seems to have slowed down. Though, you can’t deny most of their lives lie behind them. It still frightens me.

A lot of thoughts about how much longer they might go on, or when it ends, have crossed my mind. I’m not looking forward to the day the news comes. I’m definitely not looking forward to the day my chances of seeing them live have faded. Not even for that concert I might attend, but just to be able to hear from them on a regular basis is comforting.

Even though Simon & Garfunkel have only been prominently in my life for the last few weeks, their deaths would still feel as if someone’s hacking away at my youth. I am lucky I’m sharing a world with two men who helped deciding what the 60’s would sound like echoing straight into my times. It feels like the last remnants of splendour spilling out of the 60’s. I did not live through them, but I am living through the echoes.

If I ever meet them I would like to shake their hands, I would send them ahead to the rest of their lives. I would tell them to take the last chance to discover who else they are. I would tell them I would give back the times we’ve taken from them, if I only could. As long as we can keep the music. I would tell them to go enjoy the rest of their lives, with their families and friends. To ignore us, because they’ve given more than we deserved. If someone owes anyone anything, it’s us owing them the time to rediscover their identity apart from what they’re known for. I wish them good luck on that last journey.

And last but not least: Thank you very much. You won’t be forgotten in a hurry.

Anyway, those thoughts made me write the first half of this post.