Old Man Singing
Preface
Old Man Singing is a piece of Player Created Fiction written by Herko Kerghans as one of his many Children's Tales. Originally published in the EVE-online forums [1].
Old Man Singing
“…[one of the most prominent being] Athan Droux from Luminaire. The images of the ghost towns of Caldari Prime (…) and both Caldari and Old Earth legends have a deep influence in his work (…) [Mr. Droux’s] masterpiece depicts like perhaps no other example of modern art…”
Quoted from Jasmine Doreau, “The Caldari-Gallente conflict in modern Gallente art”, YR104, UoC Editions.
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So hat man es für tot befunden Es wird verscharrt in nassem Sand mit einer Spieluhr in der Hand
Ancient song from Mother Earth.
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-Look the painting from here, cheri… what do you see?
-Looks like… looks like a burned cemetery, mama? With the tombstones all broken and burned… and with the sea behind it, far away…
-And if you stand closer?
-Like… uh… they are not tombstones? Rather like… like strange buildings with a lot of angles? All ruined and broken… is that right mama? And the sky… full of stars!
-Very well my dear.
-But why so… Why are the buildings full of angles, and all broken?
-This used to be a Caldari city, cheri. Remember your history lessons? We were friends, once... but our people wanted to share all the stars with all the people, while the Caldari wanted all the stars for themselves.
Greed made them blind. See the sea, behind the broken buildings? Some of our people lived in their planet in cities under the water… in their blindness they attacked those cities, and drowned everybody there.
The drowning made us blind in turn, and we repaid water with fire. Instead of gently rocking the cradle to soothe the crying baby, we burned the cradle to ashes, with the baby inside. A sad story not yet finished… can you read the name of the painting?
-O-old... Old Man Seng… Sing? Old Man Singing. Odd… there is nobody in the painting… Where is the old man mama?
-You have to see below the surface, cheri. On the surface, the city looks like a cemetery because cemeteries are the cities of the dead… and this is a dead city as you can see.
But below the surface, it is a tribute to old legends from Old Earth… You see, there is a very, very old poem about a little old man who felt sad and lonely. So sad and lonely he felt, that he laid still until his heart could no longer be heard.
The people thought he was dead… so they buried him. Next winter, when the snow covered the tombstones and the wind was blowing its coldest, they could hear a sad song coming from the cemetery. They opened the grave and found the little old man’s heart had turned into a music box.
The Caldari love the cold winds and call them “the old men’s voices”… people that go to their burned cities in winter say that whenever the wind blows among the buildings, you can hear an old man singing a sad song… like the little old man singing among the tombstones in the poem.
-Uou! Maybe… maybe he feels all alone among the graves and is calling for his family to visit him?
-Perhaps, my dear… perhaps he sings under the sky to remind us that there are enough stars for all to share… who knows? Close your eyes to see beneath the surface, and try to listen to the old song yourself.