Cygnus Rock Band - Walking Through The Forest of Life (reloaded, reconsidered)

I knew it would happen.

Deep inside I had this feeling for the whole time that sooner or later it would happen, but to be honest to you, dear Reader, I had no faith in it. What is more, as ridiculous and painful as it sounds, there was a time when I didn't even want it to happen. I was fighting it with all my might. I pushed it away by force, even by aggression. By denying myself. I wrote the entire story of it in a previous blogpost but at that point all I could

all I wanted to?...

achieve was that I understood the importance of this song on Revival, but I couldn't

didn't want to?...

well, yes... I guess there was this factor as well, even though I didn't want to confess it at all

(and it's still very hard to confess)

get any deeper then.

Deep inside I was a bit bitter and sad that there's this little Cygnus-song with such a great importance, but still I don't want to can't get a breakthrough. Well, of course I came up with an explanation to myself (which I refuse to write here, for obvious reasons) and I'll be honest, dear Reader, I tried to just let it go. Really. I thought, why bother, it just won't happen, this might be that one song that will not touch me after all, oh well. Cygnus has 5 albums, 50 songs, I'm in love with 49, there should be that certain exception that stands beside the rule.

But still it didn't let me have a rest. It bothered me. Caused me smaller or even bigger pain. Sometimes the pain was so high that I caused pain to others

which I will never forgive to myself

and oddly I couldn't even find the reason why it is so. I couldn't even put it into words and it ended up with me being mad at myself, and this led to a vicious circle, in which this song was the victim.

And that's how it was going on for a long long long time.

Dear Reader, I don't know what happened. I will be very honest to you, I have no idea. It all happened out of the blue. Unexpected. No gods or goddesses were invoked, no prayers were said, I didn't even think about anything like that.

It was February 16th. A bit more than a week ago. A freezing, unhappy Sunday night somewhere in Eastern Europe, around midnight, -9°C, with a lonely walker among the concrete residential blocks and the totally deserted main road of the town. I was already heading home from my usual night walk, I already saw the traffic lights from which it's just a jump to the old Factory Quarter, where I live. And as I was walking downwards the main road, something hit me. Very gently, very softly, all I could feel was that I slowly got filled up with a feeling which I still can't really describe. It was warm, nurturing, very gentle, very bright. It was like liquid life. I have never experienced it ever in my life. Ever. 

Apologies, dear Reader, for the clumsy and vague words. I can't explain it to myself either. It just happened. Perhaps one day I will find an explanation, but it may happen that it remains without it. It's not the explanation that matters here after all.

And again that certain little, well-known voice started to tingle inside of me, around my heart.

Again I don't know how it all happened. I just did it.

I took out my phone and I switched the music player to "Walking Through The Forest of Life", set it to "on repeat" and jumped into the unknown.

And I was there, agan, in front of the song, just like I was earlier. Naked. Full of fresh, bleeding, raw wounds and even my old ones tore up again. I was in tears, laying on the ground, while the song was sitting in front of me with its sun-kissed skin, bright eyes and wide smile, quietly playing an aethereal instrument. I wanted to get close to it, hoping that it would at least allow me to touch its feet. Still I was too weak and my wounds were too much in pain to be able to stand up and walk. Finally I gathered my remaining strength, crawled to it and touched its foot. The tears on my face mingled up with my blood and the dirt of the ground. I felt miserable, awful, ugly, but most of all I felt ashamed. Deeply, horribly ashamed. 

In fact I was ready for everything. To get judged. To get denied of love. To get expelled. To get executed even.

And to tell you the truth, dear Reader, I was sure that I would deserved it. I wouldn't have had a single word, I'd have accepted it all right there.

Instead the song looked at me and just said "Finally!". Then it reached out for me, raised me up into its lap and held me tight.

"But I don't deserve it", I whispered in tears. "Look at me... I'm full of wounds... pain... dirt... look at all the pain I caused you... look at me... who am I if not someone toxic who doesn't deserve love, and especially your love?", but the song gently put its hand on my mouth.

"Don't talk like that", it said, while with its other hand it gently touched my wounds. Some healed right there, some stopped bleeding, some spitted painful and seemingly toxic waste out of themselves, but the song just wept them away and just kept touching them, caressing them until they calmed down.

"I caused them all to myself", I said. 

The song nodded. "I know." 

Then it held my chin in its palm and gently raised it so it could look into my eyes.

"Never block your own love."

This hit me.

This simple, short sentence the song whispered to me, with its bright eyes looking at me with all the love, caring, gentleness and quiet strength pulled out the poison-fang from me. It was that poison-fang that was so deep inside of me, that I couldn't see it, couldn't find it and couldn't give it a proper name. It was that which flooded poison into me in a way I didn't even notice and made me walk the worst possible path. It kept rotting in me and I couldn't find it, because I myself created it. 

Never block your own love...

I grabbed the song's hand.

"I want to stay with you forever... please, don't let me go... please..."

"I haven't let you go from the first moment you got to know me", it answered.

I was shocked. 

"You?... Was it then you for the whole time?... The reason why I couldn't just step over you, forget you, get rid of you, skip you and let you go?... You kept holding me for the whole time?..."

The song smiled and nodded a little. I burst into tears. "But why?... Why? Especially after all the evil and toxic I did to you?... "

The song just gently put its hand on my mouth again. Or maybe it was its lips. I don't know anymore. But then it smiled at me and I noticed a tiny globe in its hand. 

"Take it", it said.

The moment I took it to my hand, I found myself inside of it.

I was laying on a ground with soft moss, with grass and trees around me. The sky was bright and the sunrays slowly palpated along my skin and my wounds, drying up my tears.

I was naked, but I knew that this is the place where I can be naked. I knew that this is the place where I can hide away, in this little universe this song created for me. With the moss, the trees, the sky, the sunrays, the grass, the small creek, and all the creatures in the distant forest that just appeared in front of my eyes. And as I was laying there, slowly gathering back my strength to be able to get up, I felt that I wasn't alone.

It was a beautiful, divine creature I have never seen yet.

It was the Deer God.

I felt His presence, His mighty power, but most of all, His love. The joy and life He gave to this small universe with His divine touch. His heartbeats in every sunray, His gentle, caring touch in every little moss leaf, every grass and every tree. And I knew that this little universe He created and this song so gently, so lovingly gave to my hand is my hiding place. This place where I can be naked and I don't need any clothes, where nobody sees me or finds me. A place made from love, beauty, life and hope. Where the god, my God, my Deer God protects me.

I have been listening to this song on loop as well as the entire Revival album again and again ever since, dear Reader. Ever since I learned this gentle but deep lesson this song had for me, I look at this album with a completely different view than I used to. Yes, I did love it, but you know well what kind of reservations I had from the first time I gave a listen to it. They are gone. Once and for all. And believe it or not, dear Reader, I'm the happiest person on this planet that finally I can enjoy this beautiful album from the very first second of Uprisa to the very last, fading-out beats of The Legend of Thor without skipping, without bitterness or the feeling of renunciation. I hold this entire album tight to myself and I never ever want to let it go, ever. I'm in love with it, with every single note of it.

Tolkien's book, The Silmarillion comes to my mind about this song and this entire experience. When Ilúvatar sang His songs to the ainu, He hid many things in these songs the ainu discovered only much later, and these were all beautiful which they could never even imagine. This is how I feel now. 

I never thought, I could never even imagine that I would find an entire universe inside a song, which I still keep discovering. I never thought I would find my home inside of it. I would never ever thought in my life that from a song - and from a Cygnus song! - such a beautiful, mighty divinity will appear to me.

Being a simple human, I don't possess the ability to express my gratitude for all this. Not only for this experience I described now, but for that long, very painful path I eventually managed to walk until the end, with all the lessons, all the healing and with this endless love I received.

And I want it to be with me forever.