The Siren Song

I have heard the sirens sing. I have heard the sirens sing. I have heard the sirens sing. Escuché el canto de las sirenas. I am trembling. I have been trembling a long time. It doesn’t stop. I think it’s done, and it comes back. The story is over. The World Cup is over. I elect not to elect the fear and loathing, but I have heard the sirens sing. It’s different now. But nothing will remove the sound of their voices, the touch of their skin. I have heard the sirens sing. I heard the melody, the melody men don’t come back from. I have heard the sirens sing. I write this, and I hear hammers outside my window, and traffic, people working, moving, living. They are not at peace. Neither am I. I sought peace. I sought it, but I have heard the sirens sing. Few of us men have heard the sirens sing. We know the sound, the music, the overpowering beauty. When I first heard the melody—it’s never over. It doesn’t end.

You think it’s gone, and then you hear the sound of her laugh, as if she was right here. It carries within itself melody. I try, I really do, to seek a better life, and I have found it. But they call to me. There is only daily respite. The melody stays. It can never be drowned out. You just have to live with the sound. It’s in the most deep echelons of the soul. I don’t wish I never heard them sing, or that I did. It became as it became. I was warned beforehand by God not to listen, but I didn’t come across the song of the sirens. I looked for it. The World Cup—it has lost all meaning. The writing hasn’t. The enterprise, there it goes, and the fame is coming. The money—I can smell it. And God is with me. He is. I seek Him every day, and He protects me, but I can hear the sound of the voice of the sirens. It remains: weeping willows, snowy cabins, love, pain, hatred, God, nature, loneliness, angels, miracles.

They say there is a certain look men have when they have seen hell, something in the eyeball, when they have seen… There is another mark in the soul: the siren song. Greater purpose and its price. I have been in communion with Angels and Demons. They have reached inside of my soul. Through my own actions, they had to intervene—the angels—for I would have thrown myself overboard at the call of a demon. Is it a woman? Is it the pain, or the success? Both parts of the same coin. There is a coin. I am observing it. Golden, heaven, and large, marking my escape. But there is no escape. There never was. There is just daily respite from a sound I should’ve never heard, a price to have to pay. I had to heave for years. I am in communion with the angels. I see their signs. I receive their mandates. It’s the price of the siren song. The World—it’s never enough. It will never be enough.

I heard them in the rocks, with their tails and their upturned breasts. They beckoned, and I looked upon their lips as they opened. I could have closed my eyes and plugged my ears, but it was beautiful. It was horrible. It was beautiful. And the first siren opened her mouth, and I contemplated the first secret note. It told of a weeping willow, a warm climate, muses, destiny—the destiny I accepted when I heard that first note. It’s a deal I never should’ve taken, a deal with the Devil. The angelic, demonic voices beckoned. I wanted to step inside their voices, to be another note in the melody, and so I became the siren song. They looked at me. Green and blue eyes. Red lips. Long hair. It didn’t matter. They were, you know, beautiful, but it was never about the sirens. It was always about me, their song, which they sung so well.

The hammer continues to hammer, and the golden coin shines. The price to pay for the siren song—but not the coin. What came after the coin. The looks, the stares. The adventure was over. The song had finished. The sirens were gone, and I was left there standing on the rock. My ears tingling, forever tingling. Tingling to hear again. Tingling to never hear again. Tingling to relive the sound, a sound gifted in hell, never to be heard again. But always heard. Weeping willows, weep for me. In the Georgia swamps, I heard the siren song, and it took me everywhere as it burned my soul. There is a price to pay. I have paid it. You—you are reading this after, but it has been revealed. I know now. My dreams, the song—I’m still listening to it.

So I light up another cigarette. It’s 11 a.m., and I have already smoked a pack and a half because it came back to me: the drunk laugh, the blue eyes, the snow, the ice-cold river. I sought them. Why did I sought them? What did I expect? Greatness, sure. It comes with it. But at what cost? A golden coin? Fame. Fame is reserved for those that have heard the Siren song. World Cup players—sure, they play. They’re good, but they haven’t. I hope they never hear the song. It resounds. It strings at my fingers as I try to find the notes, to replay, to relive, to go back. That look, the siren look—it’s a singular look. There is nothing there. It’s all been there, and people want to hear the tale of the siren song. They long for it, so I must explain its melody, and the price is fame.

Circle, college, second time around, Mexico City. People didn’t like me. They could tell something had happened. It was happening—the melody in my ears. I thought if I waited long enough, I could make it depart. It never will. That’s not how it works. Those were never the rules! I looked for them, the sirens, in college. Estonian women. Luisa del Prado, the most beautiful woman alive. But she doesn’t sing. She doesn’t have a voice. I looked for the sirens, but it’s not about the way they look. It’s the voice, the laugh, the siren song.

The World Cup is over, and the book—it was really over a chapter ago. But I sat here in my apartment, business built, movie in production, documentary in production, fame at the drop of a pin, and it doesn’t matter. I smoke again because I hear the laugh. The laugh of the sirens. A laugh that smells of dirt, and horses, and frogs, and humidity, and unclean toilet bowls, but also of sweat after sex, red hair peaches, and marijuana edibles. The next book, the third one. The first one was for God and me, the second one for the world, the third one—what happens when the siren song is finally told, and people listen to it? When they understand what it was like. When they hear about a sick, beautiful laugh. I can still hear the music. It’s always there, in the back of my mind. And I smoke another cigarette. The smoke fills my lungs, into my soul. It stops it for a second, just a second, and the melody returns, stronger, purer, truthful.

Non-sirens don’t understand what it is to be in the search for a siren, but they come once, and if you survived, thank GOD that you heard, and you live to tell. Most don’t. They hear, and they die, or they enter a catatonic state in search for sirens, traversing the oceans, building ships, although they know they will never find them again. The sirens. They search to the end of the earths, through World Cups, through movies, through glory, through suffering, through humiliation. Trembling, trembling, trembling. I hear the song. Drown it away, God. Never drown it away, God. Let it stay forever. It is my siren song. It is my siren song. It is my siren song. Es mi canto de las sirenas, for which I earned my golden coin.

I light up another cigarette. The voice… the voice… Let it go… let it stay. The voice… the voice… The lips parting open, and heaven and hell coming together. The world, the story. It all. It all. It all. It all. I light another cigarette. I light another cigarette. Sing. Don’t sing. Stop singing. Never stop singing. Sing in my ear as I burn, but don’t stop singing. The song, the most beautiful song. The laugh, the blonde Georgia laugh, the laugh that is never gone. The siren song.