In the 1950 animated film Cinderella the title character is singing: ‘if you keep on believing the dream that you wish will come true.’ Sometimes the trick is to let it go, and sometimes it is to make sure you keep your eyes open because your dream may take on a slightly different shape. As a child I was fascinated by another Disney classic, the 1992 Aladdin – particularly the scene where Aladdin and Jasmine go on a magic carpet ride around the world. This December my soulsister and I met for lunch at my favourite little Italian place in central Moscow, and on our way back we accidentally dropped into GUM to soak up its lovely and characteristic New Year atmosphere. When we were just about to go, we spotted a merry-go-round with hot-air balloons at the New Year fair in Red Square and decided to take a ride. Only after we went down did I realise it was it, my long anticipated magic carpet ride. There was the GUM balcony, the Kremlin stars, the flight in a balloon basket with a special person next to me…
Speaking of Red Square, it featured in a 1981 song called ‘Lidia a Mosca’, which we heard over our Italian lunch earlier. The somewhat cheesy lyrics reminded me of Chris de Burgh’s ‘midnight in Moscow’ from his 1984 song ‘Moonlight and Vodka’. Indeed, curious ideas tend to form when borders are forced upon us. Speaking of songs and looking back on the year gone by, I can’t help recalling the beautiful and uplifting ‘Notti Magiche’. It was originally written for the 1990 FIFA World Cup, held in Italy, and last July they put it on at London Wembley after the Italian team beat the English at their home stadium in the dramatic final of Euro 2020, which took place in the summer of 2021 because of the pandemic. I thought that playing the song was a graceful way to accept defeat and pay tribute to the new champions, who were delighted to hear it and started to sing along in a characteristic hearty way.
Thinking and almost literally feeling how time starts to fly by faster and faster towards the end of the year, I thought of a line from a poem by Alexander Blok the other day: ‘My train is flying like a gypsy song.’ The poem is somehow in line with an idea expressed in Iris Murdoch’s novel Under the Net: ‘What is urgent is not urgent forever but only ephemerally.’ I agree, but only up to a point, for at a time when it feels like a lot is changing in me and for me, some of the essential things stay the same and only become clearer – like my childhood memories and dreams. If I refer to Abba’s beautiful and timely song Happy New Year, it doesn’t seem to me now ‘that the dreams we had before are all dead, nothing more than confetti on the floor’. However, it does look like ‘now’s (almost) the time for us to say, Happy New Year!’ So let’s keep on going anyway. No, keep firing on all cylinders.
30/12/2021
/Photo by my soulsister/