My wife was next to me when I was drawing Ghédalia Tazartès’ portrait yesterday night, and she pointed out that what I wrote in the drawing was not totally true; that things didn’t happen exactly like I say. She is absolutely right. Many times (most of the times), I make arrangements with reality to make it fit my purpose or, more trivially, the space I have at my disposal on the page. But this time, i have a complete account of how things really happened, in the form of an email exchange I had with Firas, a good friend and a music lover. It started with the first email i sent him when I received Tazartès’ newsletter announcing the 60% off on his complete discography:
I then forwarded a wrong email to him, followed by the right one:
His answer was laconic:
I understood later on that he thought the whole first message was not meant for him (indeed i didn’t bother starting my initial email by hi firas or any other form of introduction).
The second day i woke up and saw this email from Firas:
And here’s the rest of the story:
The second morning i got a download link:
I immediately started my methodical listening – my method in these cases is always the same: put one album in my music library and listen to it twice, then another album and listen twice, etc. until they are all in. then listen to the whole 17 albums in a row once and take notes (namely mark the tracks i would like to find back easily with the awful little heart that is proposed by the application). Then deal with the albums like the rest of the albums in the library.
Two days later (yesterday), while listening to the fourth album of the collection for the second time, I received this from firas:
He agreed.
Thank you Firas.
And so long Ghédalia.
PS: I am of course quite embarrassed by some parts of this email conversation (and I am not mentioning the blacked passages). I mostly feel guilty to not have paid the artist this extra 45 euros. But then again, I am probably feeling bad partly because Ghédalia Tazartès passed away, and partly because I made the story public.
My only way to pay him back now is to continue listening to his music as if nothing of all that ever happened.