The video description of a biography written in memoir style of a courageous young deaf man, the compilations of notes, journal entries and essays, as well as my observations of a person I felt the personification of beautiful. Of the ability to create light from darkness, joy from pain. For more details, description and an excerpt, please visit its page on GLBT Bookshelf, Silence, and for a great review of the work at The LL Book Review.
I first heard the song “Midnight” by Minako Obata, when it was the end theme of an episode of the anime, “Black Lagoon.” I was riveted in place, and found it unforgettable, just like G.Y.S. The acapella arrangement is lovely, haunting, with a bittersweet sadness that also reminds me of him. He couldn’t have heard it, but he could have felt it.
As I wrote in more detail in my previous author’s note: “He lived most of his life in or near Berlin in Germany. Whether by train, bus or foot sometimes when I am wandering through the countryside or city, through the many parks or shopping arcades filled with people and I happen to see a tall, slim person with long reddish hair: I have a little pain inside me.
It stops me in place because I think of him. If the person is moving away from me, sometimes I wish it were him somehow, still alive, still touchable in the physical sense. I want to imagine he is alive and loved by someone even if it is not myself, he, my special phantom of the city. It is hard to accept sometimes that so vibrant a soul is now gone from this world, but I believe I will see him again one day.”
This photo used in my video is one I took at Scharmützelsee, where he also used to walk, as I still do as often as possible. Other photo journals I’ve made in Germany can be found in this entry on Songs of the Universal Vagabond.
Lyrics:
“Someday I want to run away
To the world of midnight
Where the darkness fill the air
Where it’s icy cold
Where nobody has a name
Where living is not a game
There, I can hide my broken heart
Dying to survive
There, no one can see me cry
The tears of my lonely soul
I’ll find peace of mind
In the dark and cold world of midnight.”
Red Haircrow Review 