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Authors: Evans Light
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off. You’ve been working yourself to death with that book.”
Gerard remembered the previous evening, and an excited expression lit up on his face.
“Something happened yesterday at the bookstore, before the party,” he said.
She shot him a quizzical look.
He searched for the right words as he settled into the seat beside her, but came up empty.
“I don’t know, something…I feel…clear, different.” He blew the steam from the top of his coffee and took a sip before continuing.
“I read something at the bookstore that inspired me, I think it was a song – it changed me somehow, I don’t know exactly. Now that I’m trying to explain it to you, it sounds, well, pretty stupid.”
Gerard shook his head and covered his face with his hands.
She laughed, relieved, and hugged him. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, she was surprised by the dark look of resolution she saw there.
“I will finish my book,” he said, “and it will change the world.”
Gerard wrote like a man on a mission from God from that day forward, determined to see his project through to the end, to keep his eye on the prize. The energy that had entered him in the book store, reading strange words out loud on a rainy afternoon, hadn’t subsided.
Neither had the words Maazo Maazo. They reverberated inside his skull continuously, a rhythm to his work, his walk - everything he did was to the soundtrack of Maazo Maazo, Maazo Maazo . He put the new vitality it gave him to good use. He would finally vanquish the novel he had been carrying inside him all these years.
He would finish it, once and for all.
Gerard found himself drawn to the keyboard at his writing desk like a moth to flame, typing for hours at a time. Sonia was happy to see him finally buckling down and making his book a reality - at least at first.
As the deadline drew ever nearer, writing became something more than his dream job: it transformed into an outright obsession. Whenever his fingers touched the keyboard he would fall into a trance, as if intoxicated. He waved away dinners offered by his wife. His children’s pleas for attention were ignored.
He wrote like a man possessed. Sonia began to worry.
Gerard worried, too. The charge he got from the words “ Maazo Maazo” echoing inside his head was no longer comforting. The repetition was relentless; the pace of the incessant mantra grew faster, more urgent, with each passing day the tone became more sinister. He feared the manic pressure of it might at any moment cause his head to explode in a spray of gray and red.
He had to make it stop.
As the days rolled by he realized that he didn’t even know what his fingers were typing anymore. He no longer cared whether he finished his book or not; all that mattered to him now was to make those infernal words stop .
The only relief he could find was to write. Whenever his fingers touched the keyboard, the sound in his head would die away, leaving him with the sweet silence in his mind he so desperately craved; but it lasted only for as long as his fingers could type.
Everyone that knew Gerard thought he was a man extremely determined to finish writing a book. They were wrong.
He was writing to save his life.
Sonia had never seen her husband so passionate about anything before, but she suspected he might be losing touch with reality. She dealt with his obsessive typing as best she could, but the late night typing marathons and his deteriorating personal hygiene were beginning to take their toll, on both of them – and their relationship. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
Two days before his deadline, Gerard sat down at his desk in the study and quickly fell into the sweet embrace of silence that only came when his fingers danced across the letters. He woke up several hours later, surprised to find himself in bed, with no recollection of how he had come to be there.
He pushed his pillow aside and squinted at the alarm clock through the darkness; it
Gerard remembered the previous evening, and an excited expression lit up on his face.
“Something happened yesterday at the bookstore, before the party,” he said.
She shot him a quizzical look.
He searched for the right words as he settled into the seat beside her, but came up empty.
“I don’t know, something…I feel…clear, different.” He blew the steam from the top of his coffee and took a sip before continuing.
“I read something at the bookstore that inspired me, I think it was a song – it changed me somehow, I don’t know exactly. Now that I’m trying to explain it to you, it sounds, well, pretty stupid.”
Gerard shook his head and covered his face with his hands.
She laughed, relieved, and hugged him. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, she was surprised by the dark look of resolution she saw there.
“I will finish my book,” he said, “and it will change the world.”
Gerard wrote like a man on a mission from God from that day forward, determined to see his project through to the end, to keep his eye on the prize. The energy that had entered him in the book store, reading strange words out loud on a rainy afternoon, hadn’t subsided.
Neither had the words Maazo Maazo. They reverberated inside his skull continuously, a rhythm to his work, his walk - everything he did was to the soundtrack of Maazo Maazo, Maazo Maazo . He put the new vitality it gave him to good use. He would finally vanquish the novel he had been carrying inside him all these years.
He would finish it, once and for all.
Gerard found himself drawn to the keyboard at his writing desk like a moth to flame, typing for hours at a time. Sonia was happy to see him finally buckling down and making his book a reality - at least at first.
As the deadline drew ever nearer, writing became something more than his dream job: it transformed into an outright obsession. Whenever his fingers touched the keyboard he would fall into a trance, as if intoxicated. He waved away dinners offered by his wife. His children’s pleas for attention were ignored.
He wrote like a man possessed. Sonia began to worry.
Gerard worried, too. The charge he got from the words “ Maazo Maazo” echoing inside his head was no longer comforting. The repetition was relentless; the pace of the incessant mantra grew faster, more urgent, with each passing day the tone became more sinister. He feared the manic pressure of it might at any moment cause his head to explode in a spray of gray and red.
He had to make it stop.
As the days rolled by he realized that he didn’t even know what his fingers were typing anymore. He no longer cared whether he finished his book or not; all that mattered to him now was to make those infernal words stop .
The only relief he could find was to write. Whenever his fingers touched the keyboard, the sound in his head would die away, leaving him with the sweet silence in his mind he so desperately craved; but it lasted only for as long as his fingers could type.
Everyone that knew Gerard thought he was a man extremely determined to finish writing a book. They were wrong.
He was writing to save his life.
Sonia had never seen her husband so passionate about anything before, but she suspected he might be losing touch with reality. She dealt with his obsessive typing as best she could, but the late night typing marathons and his deteriorating personal hygiene were beginning to take their toll, on both of them – and their relationship. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
Two days before his deadline, Gerard sat down at his desk in the study and quickly fell into the sweet embrace of silence that only came when his fingers danced across the letters. He woke up several hours later, surprised to find himself in bed, with no recollection of how he had come to be there.
He pushed his pillow aside and squinted at the alarm clock through the darkness; it
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