All language subtitles for Song of Avignon 1998

Today I realized that
I'm 40 and that an immense emptiness

surrounds me and my soul.

I have come to this.
It is here that my life

had led me to. I am in thick darkness.
Often I feel like I'm sinking.

I reach for air and I feel today
that the only way out, my only hope,

is to submerge perhaps
into this blackness completely,

like into a coma,

not to run away from it,
not to stare into it,

but to embrace it and thus go
beyond it with or without perhaps.

The pain is stronger than ever.
I have seen bits of lost paradises

and I know that I will be hopelessly
trying to return even if it hurts.

The deeper I swing into
the regions of nothingness,

the further I am
thrown back into myself,

each time more and
more frightening depths below me,

until my very
being becomes dizzy.

There are brief glimpses of
clear sky, like falling out of a tree,

so I have some idea where I am going,
but there is still too much clarity

and straight order of things. I am getting
always the same number somehow.

So I vomit out broken bits

of words and syntax
of the countries I’ve passed through,

broken limbs of slaughtered houses,
geographies.

My heart is poisoned, my brain
left in shreds of horror and sadness.

I never let you down, world,
but you did lousy things to me.

This feeling of going nowhere,
of being stuck,

the feeling of Dante’s first strophe, as
he's afraid of the next step, next stage.

As long as I don’t sum up myself,
stay on the surface, I don’t have

to move forward. I don’t have to make
painful and terrible decisions, choices,

where to go and how.

Because deeper there are terrible decisions
to make, terrible steps to take.

It is at 40 that we die,
those who did not die at 20.

It is at 40 that we betray ourselves,
our bodies, our souls,

by either staying on the surface

or by going further,
but true easiest decisions,

retarding, throwing our souls back
by thousands of incarnations.

But I have come close to the end now,
it’s the question:

will I make it or will I not.

My life has become too
painful and I keep asking myself:

what am I doing
to get out of where I am?

What am I doing with my life?

It took me long to realize
that it’s love that distinguishes man

from stones, trees, rain,
and that we can lose our love

and that love grows through loving,
yes, I have been so completely lost,

so truly lost.

There were times I wanted to change the
world. I wanted to take a gun and

shoot my way through Western Civilization.
Now I want to leave others alone.

they have their terrible fates to go. Now
I want to shoot my own way through myself,

into the thick night of myself. Thus
I change my course, my love going inwards.

Thus I am jumping
into my own darkness.

There must be something,
somehow, I feel, very soon,

something that should give me some sign
to move one or another direction.

I must be very open and watchful now,

completely open. I know its coming.
I am walking like a somnambulist

waiting for a secret signal,

ready to go one or another way,
listening into this huge white silence

for the weakest sign or call.

And I sit here alone
and far from you and it is night

and I am reflecting on everything

all around me and I am thinking of you.

I saw it in your eyes, in your
love, you too are swinging towards

the depths of your own being
in longer and longer circles.

I saw happiness and
pain in your eyes

and reflections of the
paradises lost and regained

and lost again, and the terrible loneliness
and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this.

And I think about you,
like two lonely space pilots

in outer cold space, as I sit here

this late-night alone
and I think about all this

and about you and for a brief moment,
I don’t know for how long we meet.

somewhere between the words, dreams,
images, space between the words perhaps

and I am happy.

As I look into the cold endless space
passing, without sound, without speed,

a metal blue endless distance
between us, but I know you are there.

I can feel your heartbeat, my love.