ЯдYad

I remember riding a marshrutka from Novodachnaya. I was about 22 — the age when it seems you already know everything and will never learn anything new.

Especially when it came to music.

I had already played the Offspring to death, played Metallica and Sepultura to death, Sum 41 had managed to jump onto the last car — that was it, my musical skeleton had set, nothing to add and nothing to take away.

And then this song comes on the radio (back then it was probably still Ultra). All the way home I memorize scraps of the words so I can find it on the internet later (there was no mobile internet yet).

The whole of The Black Parade is the apex of everything good music can be. There are plenty of albums by other artists with better songs on them, but I don’t know a single one where ALL the songs are this good and the whole album holds you from start to finish. (It’s one of the five albums I own on vinyl. I don’t really have anything to play it on, but I keep it as a token.)

I started “translating” The Sharpest Lives — that very song from the marshrutka — about five years ago, and finished it just the other day. In quotes because it is, of course, not a translation, just a feeling run through myself and distilled in another language.

A shot to remember!