I don’t remember in my life (ever) to put something like task or goal to achieve.
My life for me was always like a boat in a slow river.
I came out from poor family: my father was musician in an army orchestra and my mother was second cook in a School for a high level communist activists.
When I had to go to hi school, my father asked me would I like to study music.
“Yes – I said – but I already placed my documents for the chemistry school.”
It was July and I did never touch any musical instrument except my father’s clarinet, helping him to clean it.
“Let’s try – he said – you have more than two months.
In two months I had to learn clarinet and make my audition program.
I started the same day, and there was no doubt in me that I’ll be musician.
On the audition day all the candidates were separated in groups and were given place to “warm up” their instruments.
All the clarinet players around me sounded virtuoso.
My musical technique was the lowest.
I took out my clarinet, put my notes before me, and started to play one of the pieces, prepared for the audition.
About ten seconds later I noticed that it is only me that is playing in the room.
I stopped and looked around.
The guys were listening my music.
One of them came closer and asked me:
How do you take out that brilliant sound from your clarinet? – he took my clarinet in his hands – What mouthpiece do you use?
It was nothing special.
The guy looked at my notes and winked at me:
You are not going to play this for the audition?
That was probably played by him few years ago.
I smiled at him and just picked up my shoulders in sigh that this is one of my pieces.
“Since when do you play clarinet?” – he got me of course.
My answer couldn’t be more than “Two months” – I answered.
“You are in” – he pat me on the shoulder.
I was in.
At age fifteen I was cadet in Hi Military Musical School, and I got out of Bulgarian army some sixteen years later.
That was the most difficult period in my life.
Sixteen years without freedom.
All that years I had to stay under the commandment of people very often with much lower intelligence I could imagine there is in the world.
Yes, but it was my great training in the humility.
Obviously I wasn’t that meek if I had to go trough all that years.
And I know that I wasn’t.
The very first semester I entered in a fight with a guy that was humiliating a friend of mine.
I broke up bully’s nose, and in the very same moment a colonel enter in the class room and I was given three days in the cell.
“Why!?” – I asked him.
“Five days in the cell!” – was the answer.
“But why!? You don’t know…” – I wanted to say “the story”.
“Ten days in the cell” – he cut me of.
“I’ll go for twenty days, but it is not my fault” – I was furious, and I shouted at the colonel.
“Twenty days in the cell, without explanation” – and he left the room.
I can talk about the time in the cadet school for days and days.
I want to share with you guys, a story that only now bring some sense to me.
I was teasing around a friend of mine, and we were joking and friendly fighting in the class room.
My friend made a kick pretending that he’s gonna kick me in the testicles and… he did it.
Suddenly a silence covered me up.
In the next moment I crouched, put my head between my legs, and a sound of hundred waterfalls came from my veins in my ears.
I knew I’ll pass out, and I was observing the moment.
There was no fear in me.
The pain disappeared in the falls of my blood and I was silent explorer in this knew experience.
The waterfalls evaporated in the next few seconds and pitch-black silence came on to me.
There was nothing but black silent space and my mind in it trying to figure out, how the connection with the world was broken.
I knew that this is the moment of me being unconscious but I was consciously observing it.
Well… there was nothing to observe, because it was dark, and nothing to hear because it was silence, and nothing to feel, because my body wasn’t there, but I Was existing and aware of my existence.
I knew that the connection is only temporarily cut off, and sooner or later I’ll go back in the class room.
Suddenly the light came back and I found my self crouching with my head between my legs.
Later I asked my friend how long I was like that.
That was about five minutes, and they did not touch me, because they thought that I’m just killing the pain.
Only then I realized that there was no sign from the pain.
I wasn’t great student.
In Bulgaria the marks are from 2(two) to 6(six) with 6 – excellent and 2 – does not pass
My marks was around 4.5 and 5
I don’t remember reading school books. Well, may be few times I did get close to them, but I was doing my studding in the class, listening to the teachers.
The problem was that even listening to them, they always use to make me remarks for floating out of the window.
In some way the teachers were right.
From most of the class hours I remembered only the beginning and the end of the presented lesson material.
The rest I don’t remember passing through my ears, but somehow I knew.
My favorite lady teacher use to tell me very often that it is much easier to listen than to study from the books.
“But this is what am I doing” – I always answered.
Until one day the sound of my name pulled me back in the class room, interrupting my “floating”, to answer the question:
“What did I just say?”
I couldn’t know that. But I didn’t stress at all.
I did not even try to recall that moment in which she said something, because there was no such a moment for me.
I open my mouth and surprisingly even for me, her last sentence flew out of my mouth, touched her beautiful lips and arched them in the smile that I loved so much.
