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“Etsi nomizoune oloi,” he says, and Dimitris translates it to ‘everyone always thinks they’re good’.
I bet they do.
“Sing together,” Yiannis says, and, before I have time to overthink it, I’m nodding yes.
Everyone arounds us falls silent while I try to tune the guitar while keeping my head down and my face concealed by my cap. Now that must look attractive.
But for once, it feels nice to not be concerned with how I look. I just want to lose myself in the music, to feel nothing except for the notes and the words flowing through me. Yiannis shows me the music sheet for an REM song cover.
He sits on the floor next to me, guitar at the ready, and we allow the buzz of the conversation all around us to wash over us as we tune our strings together. Yiannis leans his ear down to his guitar, all concentration, and his hair falls over his ear and it’s like I’m looking at myself a few years ago. It hits me with so much force how much my life has changed. I’ve participated in every second of that change, willingly, but right now… It feels as if the only truth in my life is music. Other than that, I don’t know what I’ve become.
No, I know what I’ve become. I just don’tlikeit.
“Song ok?” Yiannis asks.
It’s more than ok. I grin up at him and his face freezes. Oh, crap, did he recognize me? I bend down quickly.
“I’ll do my best,” I reply.
He plays the opening chords. There’s no microphone, no stage, literally no space between me and the person seating next to me. Nothing to hide behind.
The first line flows out of my lips in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice, and as I go into the higher note, I turn up the volume—this is the note where my voice always takes off. I close my eyes and abandon myself to the music, my hands finding their way on the strings on their own. I let the music carry me along.
The lyrics stop and I improvise a melody to accompany Yiannis. I steal a sideways look at him. He’s concentrating so hard he’s sweating. He’s pushed his hair behind his ears and he’s biting his lip, looking flushed. Anxious. Why? And then I realize what’s happening.
There’s complete and utter silence around us.
No one, and I mean no one is talking. I lift my head, and I see people struggling to turn around and look at my face, their shoulders pushing against each other. From a tiny door in the back, more people are spilling in, piling against each other, trying to find enough space to stand on. Behind them, beyond the terrace, doors keep opening, apartments lighting up, as the students start waking each other up to come listen to Yiannis and me sing. The door of the attic is open now, and it’s blocked by people standing in the doorway, listening, swaying along.
I look down again, ignoring the people gathering from all over the neighborhood, and start the second verse.
It talks about being on stage. About being broken. About losing.
I close my eyes and give myself up to the emotion of the song, trying to disappear. It happens, as it always does, after the first word floats out of my lips. I am no long Isaiah, messed up idol, adored by many, hated by even more, completely empty inside. I am the music, I am the vibration of my voice, I am the chords in my throat. I am the rhythm of the song. I am the highs and the lows, I am every emotion that exists in the world, as I sing about losing my religion.
Freedom.
I drink it in as the music flows from me, no, not from me, through me, like a man dying of thirst. At the end, I hold a high note longer than expected, and the crowd holds its breath. I know what usually comes when I do this in a concert, but here I’ve no idea what they’ll do. For all I know, they might get bored of listening to the same note for so long and get back to talking.
No such thing. After I pass the threshold of the first ten seconds, they begin to murmur and, as if coming out of a trance, they start screaming. Not whooping or applauding. Full-on screaming in the middle of the night, at the top of this hill in Corfu, with dark buildings where Greek people are sleeping quietly all around us. But these students scream as if we’re in a sold-out stadium, where you scream until the veins in your throat pop out just so you’ll be heard. But in this tiny place… the screaming is too much. The glass on the window begins to shudder.
I bring the pitch down to a minor note. I don’t need to breathe yet, but I’m preparing for the finale.
They go crazy. I’ve never seen anything like that.
The students seated next to Yiannis and me, they’re standing up, upending a chair, four pillows and two glasses, and lift their hands in the air, shouting Greek things to me, as they laugh and grow red around the cheeks. Behind them, the terrace next door is rapidly getting filled with people.
I sing my last note, and I realize I’m laughing too. Not just smiling, full-on laughing. I finish and I gulp in air filled with smoke and applause, and I finally allow myself to take a proper look around, to all these people who have inexplicably appeared here to be my impromptu audience.
The ground drops from under my feet.
The Elliot sisters chat room
Eden: He hates me.
*message deleted*
sixteen
