Matse remained solidly drunk for three days after our evening in Orange. The girl who was reading A Dead Man in Deptford kept blinking in and out of my head. To be honest, it was not because I found her that special; intriguing, appealing, yes, but not so fucking special. It was rather because I was startled how hard Matse took her rejection.
Matse was not a shy one, or a romantic one by any means; he knew he was also not particularly handsome, but he compensated with brains and courage, and of course with a mouse head plastinated with a most exquisite skill. He chatted up twenty girls a day, ten gave him the elbow, ten gave him their numbers, nothing to kill or die for. But from this one, for a minute, he had wanted something different. He had wanted her to understand him, to see him - bravado, mouse and all - for what he was, and like him. He wanted to talk Timbuktu to her more than he wanted her number.
Talking Timbuktu is, of course, an album by Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder, a style that can be described as desert blues. It can also be a style of talking.
I remember one night, shortly after me and my best friend arrived in Germany. It was summer and we sat by the river (Neckar; flows right through our town) with a bottle of wine deep into the night, watched flat cargo ships from France and the Netherlands chug along on the silent water. Our talk wound and wound, words murmurous with longing, two emigrant underdogs getting plastered at the gates of free Europe. Every town we had yet to see a king's city in the desert. When your yearning has brought you a step short of where you want to be, that's when you talk Timbuktu.
I did not expect to see the girl with the book again, but I wanted to know what it had been about her that had triggered Timbuktu.
Matse was not a shy one, or a romantic one by any means; he knew he was also not particularly handsome, but he compensated with brains and courage, and of course with a mouse head plastinated with a most exquisite skill. He chatted up twenty girls a day, ten gave him the elbow, ten gave him their numbers, nothing to kill or die for. But from this one, for a minute, he had wanted something different. He had wanted her to understand him, to see him - bravado, mouse and all - for what he was, and like him. He wanted to talk Timbuktu to her more than he wanted her number.
Talking Timbuktu is, of course, an album by Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder, a style that can be described as desert blues. It can also be a style of talking.
I remember one night, shortly after me and my best friend arrived in Germany. It was summer and we sat by the river (Neckar; flows right through our town) with a bottle of wine deep into the night, watched flat cargo ships from France and the Netherlands chug along on the silent water. Our talk wound and wound, words murmurous with longing, two emigrant underdogs getting plastered at the gates of free Europe. Every town we had yet to see a king's city in the desert. When your yearning has brought you a step short of where you want to be, that's when you talk Timbuktu.
I did not expect to see the girl with the book again, but I wanted to know what it had been about her that had triggered Timbuktu.
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