The Singer

There was once born into this world a great singer. His songs were bright, and had the ability to cheer up even the lowest of people. For half of the year he sang in his hometown, spreading love and gladness amongst his friends and family, but his family was not well off. His father died when he was a young boy, and his mother was sick and couldn’t continue work, and so for the other half of the year he would wander across the countryside, singing songs in every village and town he passed through for money. His singing was so good, listeners would often throw valuable coins and sometimes even jewelry before him, and it was from this that his family sustained.

In his eighteenth year, as he arrived home from his annual tour, just a month before the great Holiday of Giving, he found that a new family had moved in just one door down from his own. They were very kind: A very generous, cheerful old man, whose wife was just as splendid, two sons who worked the fields with much vigor, and, most importantly, a beautiful young daughter, innocent while wise beyond her years.

Immediately, the young singer fell in love with the daughter from down the street. After tending to the needs of his family, he would walk with her, speaking with her on every subject. They spoke of art, history, and love in a way that made the singer so full of beautiful notes he had not before recognized. Entirely new melodies filled his chest and lyrics that had never been conceived now resided in his heart. Like steam, the pressure of this new emotion rose upward and condensed in his eyes, causing him to cry tears of joy.

Thoughts of the daughter and the emotion that he felt for her consumed him, and soon he thought of nothing else. Once he had finished his taking care of the house, and when his beloved was preoccupied, the singer would meditate on his feelings underneath the pipal tree near the river. And the more he did this, the more the thoughts consumed him, and the more and more beautiful songs he wrote, the less he seemed attached to the thoughts of every day life.

He would walk through town carelessly, indeed, mindlessly, singing new songs of the beautiful girl who had turned his thinking inward and allowed him transgression from this world. Others took no mind, but rather enjoyed his singing. “Let him sing,” they would say, “for his singing is wonderful, and his words are sublime. To see one so in love is a marvelous thing.”
Then, when the Holiday of Giving came, the singer was not present in the town square for the grand exchange. Nobody knew where he could be, and everyone was quite worried, for he always sang sweet songs of family and kinship. The daughter fled from the town square in tears, feeling betrayed that he who had written so many songs for her was no place to be found. She fled to the river, where her tears could flow freely, drowned out by the powerful rush of the great stream. It was there, under the pipal tree, that she found her beloved, basking gleefully at the stream.

“The stream is so beautiful,” he began. “There are so many colors reflected in its water. The green of the trees, the blue of the sky, the yellow of the sun. No color is absent. And yet, when I see this stream, all I can think of is you, and how you are all-encompassing for me, much like this water encompasses all life.”

This only made the young girl cry more, and she retaliated.

“How can you say such beautiful things when you’ve forgotten me on the Holiday of Giving? How can you claim such love and amazement of beauty when you fail to recognize me on the one day on the calendar devoted to showing love? Are you shameless?”

Instantly, the smile on the face of the great lyricist contorted into a look of extreme pain, as if he had been impaled in the heart by an arrow.

“My love, I have done you a great injustice. Out of my total love for you, I have forgotten my surroundings, and thus the transience of the holiday has passed me over. But I ask you not to judge me poorly for it, for it was a mistake of great proportions. I could apologize to you a million times, kiss you a thousand times more, and write you the most beautiful song that the world has ever heard if you would be but willing to forgive me for my error.”

His beloved was moved by this statement, and allowed him another chance, but as soon as he came back into phase with the members of his village, he found his muse distant. His songs were not beautiful any longer and were scarcely original. His zest and fervor were lost, and every day he continually went through the motions as everyone else did.

When it came time to wander and sing the following year, he departed solemnly from his beloved and his family. His songs were no longer gorgeous, and as a result he scarcely made enough to survive on during his expedition. When he returned home with empty pouches, he found his home empty as well. Quickly, word came that his mother perished soon after he left and that his beloved moved, leaving only a letter to him, which apologized for leaving, but stated that to be with a singer who couldn’t sing was unbearable, like living through the winter with a cold furnace.

With this in his mind, he began once again to sing beautiful melodies, though they were not as happy as they’d once been. Passers-by would comment on the beauty of the song and the melancholy of the lyrics, but never would they drop coins so that the singer could eat. And as he withered away and his songs grew more and more severe, so did the people avert their eyes while opening their ears to the sorrow of the human condition. Once or twice he was sure he had seen his beloved passing, but that only made his songs even more sorrowful. “The world is cold,” he exclaimed, “but the human condition is colder. For the world is spinning in constant motion, and like the river, it will never freeze, but mankind is still and cyclical, like a lake, and is prone to freezing over.” When he perished, it was weeks before his body was handled, and when it was, a proper burial was not given. He was just placed in the ground with the wish from those in attendance that, within the crust of the earth, he could thaw out from his deep freeze.