Beyond the Lights

Can you hear me, Sigi?  I’m talking to you, you know.  Of course I’ve never been good at personal speeches, so you can expect this one to be short and to the point.  It isn’t like I have all that much to say, anyway.  I just…I don’t know.  Maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age.
You’re laughing now, I can tell. 
I know, I know, I sound pathetic, and I should stick to my own area of expertise rather than meddling with yours.  Well you know what, Sigi?  The only one who’s listening to this – if anyone – is you, so I am perfectly free to sound as pathetic as I want.  I can say whatever I want as well.  You’re probably blocking your ears right now from sheer horror, but I don’t care.  We never agreed on what makes a speech anyway.  You always said it was a good logical discussion, and I used to think that it’s the heart words that count.  Isn’t that an irony?  I was never all that great at letting out the heart words.  That was the reason, I thought, that I wasn’t cut out to speak.  You, on the other hand…words always seemed to just roll off your tongue.  I used to envy the ease with which you won a crowd.  You didn’t have to prepare, either.  You just opened your mouth with whatever was on your mind and that reminded you of a story, which somehow mingled with the theme in so stunning a conclusion that Benjy Bartlet refused to believe me when I told him you were ad-libbing the entire time. 
I never seem to get things right. 
Good old Benjy…he had no idea how close he was to guessing the truth.
And me…you fooled me well and truly Sigi – congratulations.  If I was your audience, you held me captivated for years.  Do you know how often I swore on your genius?  Of course not.  You were up at the podium, always in the spotlight.  I was the guy in the back of the room, beaming at my clever friend who had pulled off a brilliant presentation yet again.  Who planned that presentation, I wonder?  Was it you, Sigi, as I naively assumed for years and years?  Or was it that old writer who called last week…that writer who threatened to sue…the writer who was scheduled to bring you to court tomorrow.
What’s wrong with me?  I would ask you ‘why’, but I know you hate ‘why’ questions.  Confound it all, why do I care what you like?  What’s stopping me from asking?  Here goes, Sigi…why, why, why?  I don’t understand you, I never did, please just explain why you feared that writer.  What was so threatening about him?  He was only an old man with an imagination.  Who knows?  He was probably out of his mind.  Who in his right mind would dare accuse the greatest orator in the country of plagiarism?  You could have easily won that trial…couldn’t you?  All you needed to do was hire a lawyer and tell the truth…I think.  I’ve never been to court, but that’s what the books say.
Heaven help me, Sigi, I’m crying now.  Real, true crying, nothing showy about it.  You want proof?  My nose is running: I’m groping around for that tissue box I keep under the table, but I can’t see it through the blur in my eyes.  No, I don’t need glasses.  They’re tears, Sigi; you wouldn’t know about those.  I know, I know, the number-one rule of speaking is never to lose control in front of your audience, but it’s far too late for that.  Oh I know, you never lost control…not once, in at least five years.  And you know why?  I finally figured it out this morning, when they called me…the police…they called me today, did you know?  And some woman on the other end of the line wanted me to explain to them why you did it…can you believe that?  Someone asked me for an explanation.  About something you did!  And faced with the one opportunity I will probably ever have to justify it all… I said I didn’t know you.  Don’t look at me like that.  There was nothing else for me to say.  The person I knew was not the real you… it was just an image…but I think now I’m beginning to understand. 
You never lost control because you never spoke from the heart.  You have charisma, my friend, and great stage presence.  That’s what won your audience.  Of course, that’s something you could never comprehend and will never appreciate.  You thought it was the content…the material…that’s why you did it.  And you were the successful one, so I suppose I would never have won that argument either. 
You’re very good at arguing, Sigi…at defending yourself.  I still think you could have won that trial somehow, but I guess you disagreed.  You didn’t stick around to see, anyway.  You took the fastest route out of here, with one pill too many from the medicine cabinet.  I wonder whether you knew that doing what you did was as good as screaming, “I’m guilty!” in the middle of a live press conference.  The world knows now, Sigi.  You made it that way.
I told you before that I never seem to get things right.  About you at least, I was terribly naïve; it was Benjy who accidentally guessed a bit of the truth… and I see now why you disliked Benjy.  But there was one thing you got wrong, Sigi.  I can see your skeptical expression even now, where I sit at the table, but you can’t talk over me to silence me by force, so this one time you’re just going to have to live with my take on things.  First of all, let’s face it: you ran away.  You ran from the court, and from scandal, and humiliation; from yourself, your heart…and me…You didn’t believe things could ever be good again if they weren’t good your way… so you ran.  But people change, Sigi.  Hearts change, times change, we can pick up and move on if we have the guts to do it.
Can you hear me, Sigi?  I’m talking to you, you know.  I, the closed one…I’m talking heart words now; words as real as that aching lump that’s making it so hard to get them out of my throat.  You forced this on me.  You proved that people can change when you betrayed me and went where I can’t follow.  Now I’m going to have to move on.  I can’t stick around where you left me…waiting for…for something. 
It’s hard, you know.  It isn’t easy to move when you want so much to pretend that things can be as they were.  But listen to me now.  I’m talking to you, aren’t I?  I’m opening up a bit…letting out the heart words so they won’t stay locked inside. 
You can’t fool me again, Sigi, you’re giving me that skeptical look.  You’re telling me to get real.  I can almost hear it.  “Look around,” you’d say.  “Alright, you’re talking heart words, but who are you talking to?”  Don’t worry, friend of mine.  I know you’re gone, and I know that it looks like I’m talking to the walls…
And you know what, Sigi?  You might think that’s small, but it’s a start.