Nocturne #44 – Black Hole in the Archive
While archiving my nocturnes, I found a gap - entry #20 is missing. Not just unpublished, but vanished. A technical glitch? Or did I write something too close to the bone, something the words themselves refused to form?
It makes me laugh that I’m my only reader… But still, I thought recently, maybe I should refine and “polish” these nocturnes a bit, but finally decided – let’s not change anything in them, let them remain as unchanged and messy with their grammatical errors, I’ll just add “#” before the numbers. #18 – Where I write about how rubbish my writings are, asking not to pay attention and waste time on them, that it’s just self-therapy to help myself. #19 – I write some nonsense about a little hedgehog we noticed in the park, and I got so deep in thought that I portrayed God as the most interesting audio engineer, musician, artist, and designer. #20 – not found – Oops…
I look at the numbering and realize something very strange is happening here. Only then did I understand – Nocturne #20 doesn’t exist. Neither before nor after. Not among the published ones, not in drafts, not in personal notes, not in any cloud, not in the pocket notebook lying on the speaker. Nowhere. Is it a technical error? As if the cloud swallowed it. In short, it turns out… something is missing.
The first emotion was surprise. The second – doubt. Did I miss it? Maybe I saved it and put it in some folder? Or maybe, more realistically – I wrote it and didn’t publish it? Okay, I went back in my thoughts and arrived at that night. I remembered the atmosphere, the smell, and the feeling when I definitely recall writing something. I remember… it seems… there was something that weighed terribly heavy on my heart. I recalled the clicking of the keyboard, the melody of some track, fragmented thoughts… But I don’t remember the text. Nothing. Maybe I didn’t even write it?
And yet, I’m sure I was supposed to write something. Something that no one was supposed to read. It was the nocturne that was probably closest to my existence, my discoveries, and my art. So close that even the words got scared. They didn’t obey.
I thought, maybe that was my greatest courage – not revealing what was most important. Or maybe this is my little coquetry – pretending I don’t know where #20 is. Nocturne #20 is now an erased space in my archive. A strange black hole between #19 and #21. And reading each of them is a reminder of its disappearance.
I’m sure of one thing: that something which wasn’t published – was probably necessary.
Okay, okay, it really was a technical error that led to the creation of this nocturne (if nothing else, this error at least gave me an idea). And let’s assume there was something I wrote and intentionally didn’t publish. It’s only in my head, which will only remain with me, and no one will ever really know who I am…