Curriculum Vitae

This is not a story, or is it? | Fiction | Fresh Soup

For the past several months, I’ve been writing songs for Arkadi Duchin, a major Israeli singer and musician. Since Arkadi has been writing songs for a long time, and I’m a newbie, my efforts get a lot of criticism. The most common one is: “Why can’t you write songs the way you write stories?” This week’s piece, “Curriculum Vitae,” is my attempt to write a song the way I write a story. It’s not exactly a song, and it’s definitely not a story, but it’s something in between. In life, the middle is the dullest, flattest part. But in art? That’s always the most interesting place to look at: the middle, the ambiguous territory, the in-between space.

Image by Hannelore Foerster / Stringer

Sometimes you meet someone and you think, “Hey, she might be nice to talk to.” And sometimes you talk to this person and you say to yourself, “Wow, it could be fun to touch him.” And sometimes you just casually touch her shoulder, or his arm, and you think, “I bet it would be nice to kiss her.” And sometimes when you’re kissing that person, you can’t stop thinking about how amazing it could be to make a baby with them.

And sometimes, that person agrees. And there you are.

They call it life.

They say it's pretty awesome.

The middle part feels good.

The end is always fatal.

They call it life.

Translated by Jessica Cohen