imagining "Bystander" as a poetic dialogue
totally fanfiction and exposé of my own brain rot, thank you very much :) continuing a small series from here and here
here I also have an issue with the translation of the title, loiter staring at the characters and stay with the most fundamental combination of “the one who” + “beside/ from the side” + “look/watch”
the image that comes to my mind when I read this, is the kaleidoscope of photos of dd and gg on stage in 2019, and the question I have is “the one beside who looks at what?” or “at whom?”
but I’ll just leave it at that, and return to the lyrics and poetic dialogue. the lyrics are italicised, my fanfiction interpretation commentary is indented
the quietly flowing river, that seems to have never had any colour
I often touch my head with my hand and when I do it, I go to the river of memories (EiL)
…which memories, dear heart? do they fade with time?
as in “walking through the coffee shop”, the beautiful past is a blur?
the river waits for the sun to shine
when your sun is with you, you ever-looking-from-the-side-sunflower, do the memories regain colour and become alive again?
the tires are rubbing heavily in the night, and the cars that drive past are those of strangers
two tired and lonely insomniacs and often night shift workers far away from each other, I feel ya
I often look and listen (intentionally) and want to reach out and touch a handful of sea water to see its dream colour
does your beautiful dream thousands of miles away feel like the sea, boundless, enormously powerful and full of life?
is that the sea in the “Ideal Life” painting?
I also look and listen and imagine myself in your role. What is it that drives you now to pursue it?
this line I take absolutely literally. as a person who has known the experience of a long-term long-distance relationship, this is a very natural question, when you can’t just call and ask “what is on your mind now?” and you often don’t have enough time for a really good long talk that would allow to reach deep and find words for the most important existential questions and the emerging answers
I am passing through this world, the one beside who looks, embracing all the joys, sorrows and sparkles of life
(here, this is a firefly for you. It is a little happiness I collected along the way) (LtS)
but it is my life, and if you ever think I regret my choices (like the worry in “If I Were Young” song), see, I don’t, I embrace all of what comes with my choices
listening to the sound of the plucked feathers that is telling me that the sky is too big to be conquered by wings
oh what an image. somebody catches the migratory birds, happy swallows and lonely swan geese, or the not lonely committed couples of swan geese, and plucks out their feathers so loudly that it can be heard
what unfriendly powers would do it in such a way?..
my mind offers a paraphrase from Enya’s “Memory of Trees”: you can’t be free, you can’t fly
but I don’t let it make me sad
I don’t give up or succumb to despair
giving the big tree I received to the desert
what big tree? I am thinking here about the money tree and the giftedness; money to charity, giftedness to the public, in service to those who are in need of beauty and inspiration
leaving the umbrella and walking out into the heavy rain
this gives me the flashback of that scene in The Untamed, and that moment in one of the interviews: “when you lift your face up and just stop breathing” — sometime you just need this space to cry freely, unselfconsciously, releasing whatever has been pent up -
what holds me up is feeling deep down inside that the earth and you are happy
wherever you are, I hope you are happy (LtS)
Don’t ask me what I am looking for.
I don’t need to choose.
I don’t need any specific outcome.
I told you already, I accept all my choices and their consequences. Life doesn’t have to fit into any of my expectations. See, youth does not preclude wisdom. -
Look, here is a withered leaf.
Countless lonely nights drifting away like withered leaves. (LtS)
and here is another one -
I am waiting constantly for the four seasons to pass and for the leaves to return to the branch.
-
As long as we can trust each other, then this winter will be over.
Even if spring makes us wait. It's okay. Don't cry.
When the time to meet comes at last, all the good things will regrow on the branches and the winter will be over. (LtS)
Although now this leaf is withered,
yes, we are often apart for long time -
I can’t imagine another galaxy,
I am also deeply in love with a lonely star, there is no other -
but I believe in another me in time and space,
where eventually my future will meet my past.
we do hope so, too! the beautiful past of togetherness will meet the beautiful future of togetherness -
Come closer and feel the majesty of life.
No need for any specific outcome.
Don’t ask me what I am looking for.
Don’t ask me what I am looking for.
Let's live our life in silence.
when I was watching the performance in real time, I happened to come online exactly at the moment when he was singing these lines, first having closed his face with his hands, - no, he is not looking at anyone at the audience now, the intended audience is not there in that hall at that moment — then reaching out with shaking hands at “come closer and feel the majesty of life”.
may you have the life you want to live in silence, and not in the noise
which reminds me of
Too much time wasted, too many things to face
Too much of what does not matter,
too many instances of being unable to distinguish the truth
Too much noise and too many problems,
who's the one who is always by your side? (from Eason Chan's "Let Me Stay By Your Side")
in my cpn mind, this song is about acknowledging the hardships of the existing situation and still persisting in love and hope
now, knowing that he couldn’t choose to let go of either set of lyrics and wanted to sing both, I can appreciate why even more
fake, fanfiction, cpn, brain rot, whatever, I am taking responsibility for not assuming this is in any way true. just my wild imagination
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