<\/p>\n
Don’t Know Thyself<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Playing the guitar, Dave heard:\u00a0 \u201cLook at this \u2013 books, music \u2013 are you going to do anything with your life?\u00a0 Or what?\u201d<\/p>\n His father left the room, slamming the door.<\/p>\n The ocean from Dave\u2019s window was blue, beach white, silence filled by cars\u2019 languid drones.<\/p>\n Dave played his guitar, the music\u2019s purity matching nature\u2019s hues.<\/p>\n He recorded what he had just written.\u00a0 He played back the recording.\u00a0 Vindication felt like regeneration.<\/p>\n A bone-white seagull fluttered across a porcelain tablet of cobalt.\u00a0 The hues symbolised limits.\u00a0 The white could not have been whiter; the sky could not have been bluer.\u00a0 Dave pursued these limits.\u00a0 But people believed he was \u201cdoing nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n He saw himself playing in a concert venue.\u00a0 Then he thought: Stop day-dreaming. \u00a0Think about the next note.<\/p>\n He imagined different instruments as mathematical formulas counterpointed in layers as solid as sea blue.<\/p>\n And he imagined voices.\u00a0 Sometimes he sang at parties, strangers saying: \u201cHey \u2013 you\u2019ve got a nice voice.\u201d<\/p>\n He took the tapes he had recorded to a friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 The friend listened and said: \u201cIt\u2019s got a hypnotic splendour.\u201d<\/p>\n The friend\u2019s green eyes and white hair reminded Dave of a sea against a shore.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks,\u201d Dave said.<\/p>\n The friend\u2019s cheeks were reddish.\u00a0 Red, green and white, on the friend’s face, produced an image of vibrant sincerity.<\/p>\n The friend\u2019s girlfriend stopped in the middle of the room and said: \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s Dave,\u201d the friend said.<\/p>\n \u201cHuh!\u201d the girlfriend replied.\u00a0 \u201cNo way!\u201d<\/p>\n Regina\u2019s green, arrogant eyes got more arrogant when she looked at Dave.\u00a0 Dave was \u201can unemployed bum.\u201d<\/p>\n Green, Dave noted, magnifies arrogance.<\/p>\n Dave\u2019s friend took the tapes to a friend who knew a famous disk jockey.\u00a0 The disk jockey listened and asked: \u201cWho is this guy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAn unemployed bum,\u201d Dave\u2019s friend joked.<\/p>\n \u201cThey usually are,\u201d the disk jockey said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019d like to see him play.\u201d<\/p>\n So he did.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to push this,\u201d the disk jockey told Dave.<\/p>\n The disk jockey\u2019s sideburns, stopping just above the chin, bothered Dave on first sighting.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re so dark-brown,\u201d Dave said later, \u201con a face so white that this contrast only emphasised to me how consciously musical they are \u2013 like furry clich\u00e9s.\u00a0 But he\u2019s a good guy.\u00a0 He loves music so much that he can\u2019t resist showing it in every way.\u201d<\/p>\n The disk jockey played Dave\u2019s music on the radio.\u00a0 The radio station got so many enquiries that record companies fought to get Dave\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n Regina started smiling when she saw Dave.\u00a0 He now wasn\u2019t \u201can unemployed bum,\u201d but a talented artist.\u00a0 Talent recognition can affect memory.\u00a0 Regina\u2019s smile made Dave feel uneasy.\u00a0 She was now telling people how well she knew Dave.\u00a0 She and Dave \u201ccouldn\u2019t have been closer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe once told me,\u201d Dave told the disk jockey, \u201cwith those green eyes of hers so full of superior, disdainful certainty, how disappointed my father must have been with me.\u201d<\/p>\n The day Dave\u2019s first CD got released he was in a restaurant with his family; his father showed the CD to a waiter, saying: \u201cHe\u2019s my son.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, please,\u201d Dave said.<\/p>\n Dave\u2019s father told a journalist: \u201cMy son has got a unique talent.\u201d\u00a0 Regina said: \u201cIt was obvious he was different.\u201d<\/p>\n Dave\u2019s next song\u2019s chorus went: \u201cDon\u2019t know thyself.\u00a0 Self-analysis impedes survival.\u201d<\/p>\n It became his biggest hit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kim Farleigh<\/strong> has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Iraq and Palestine. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. 60 of his stories have been accepted by 54 different magazines.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Don’t Know Thyself Playing the guitar, Dave heard:\u00a0 \u201cLook at this \u2013 books, music \u2013 are you going to do anything with your life?\u00a0 Or what?\u201d His father left the room, slamming the door. The ocean from Dave\u2019s window was blue, beach white, silence filled by cars\u2019 languid drones. Dave played his guitar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3136"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3138,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3136\/revisions\/3138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}