Sometimes a story comes out of a song.
And so this one came, many years ago ...
I invite you to click play and read
The whistle of the blades of the mills hid a song. Composer Kerry Livgren knew this and waited patiently to pluck the notes from his guitar that would decipher the murmur of the wind. That sound that had been chasing around many parts of the world, from where it would extract a heavenly music until now enclosed under inscrutable chords.
Initially it may have been a fantasy or a madness, but Kerry already firmly believed in the delusion that had led him to doggedly pursue the tune of Aeolus.
He had begun his wandering trip visiting Africa, he understood that in the Sahara the swirls of sand blinded and tore the skin, however they assured him that it was there where the roar of the wind could be clearly heard in all its magnitude.
Lost in the middle of the desert, Kerry spent several days with Antoine de Saint Exupery, another crazy old man who spent the cold nights of the Sahara writing the adventures of a young prince. The nocturnal sandstorms helped the French pilot to concentrate on his work, however Kerry Livgren could not extract from that strong wind not a single note for his guitar.
He continued his madness in search of the dreaded South Pole wind, realizing that the whistle of Antarctica could stab the skin while its cold mantle numbed the muscles. Without deep thought, he embarked with the adventurer Admunsen, whose diary reflects the journey through the ice lands of Antarctica, until he placed the Norwegian flag at just XNUMX degrees south latitude.
At this point, the pops of the Pole's freezing blizzards might showcase the music Kerry was looking for, but the strings on her guitar would freeze and her fingers would go numb, making it impossible for her to even tune her instrument.
Without losing hope, he chose a distant point in the opposite hemisphere, the great city of Chicago, where he had read that one of the most constant winds that Western civilization knows was blowing. He discovered with satisfaction how the currents sifted between the concrete towers, buzzing until they shrunk the inhabitants of the great city.
Kerry would sit on any bench in the Oak Park suburbs where she met Ernest Hemingway, a sullen writer, great fond of overfeeding breadcrumbs to pigeons. The man of letters was very interested in his idea of extracting music from the wind with the guitar, many times he asked him rhetorically: "For whom do the bell tolls?" And he answered himself: "By the wind, friend, for nothing or anyone else."
One morning, after desperately searching for new notes, Kerry decided to leave Chicago. He blamed his failure on the noise pollution of the city, which hindered the full hearing of a dying wind and violated by incomprehensible gusts cut by the skyscrapers.
From the great American city, Kerry Livgren traveled with Hemingway in the direction of Spain. They said goodbye in Pamplona, as the writer decided to stay in the capital of Navarra to visit the Sanfermines for the first time.
Kerry continued further south, where he was told that the guitars had already sounded years ago to the whim of the wind. He walked through various places until he discovered how in La Mancha the mills used the wind to benefit from their primary mechanism.
At that very moment he sensed that he was in front of the best example of what he was looking for. He could face the wind like a windmill, making him see that he was surrendering to the invading force of its blow and then using that energy to his own advantage. Without a doubt he should do the same, let his hands be new blades that move the strings of his guitar.
At last the simplicity of the matter seemed to reveal itself. The purpose of his search would be fulfilled by showing himself absent, naked of his conscience, standing inert like the white mills and letting his fingers slide between the strings, tuned in wait for the aeolian message.
After his journey through half the world, at that moment Kerry was under the sun of La Mancha, leaning his back on the whitewashed wall of a mill, wanting to be part of that same construction. He was beginning to feel the gusty breath that pushed the wooden frames, making them rotate and rotate with its cyclical shadow that lengthened with the passage of new vain hours.
Suddenly, the sound of hooves betrayed the gallop of a wild horse. Kerry Livgren snapped out of her trance and stood up. He saw a horseman riding briskly toward the mill where he was. The sunlight made the armor of that horseman shine, revealing him as a knight advancing with the cry of "non fullades, cowards and vile creatures, that only one knight is the one who attacks you."
When that knight with the spear at the ready lunged incomprehensibly against the mill, the whistling of the blades turned into a thunderous crack that ended up throwing the knight's spear, as if it were an arrow.
Kerry Livgren sensed that this summer heat was not entirely healthy, it must melt the brains; in no other way could the scene he just witnessed be understood.
With no time to react, Kerry glimpsed another person approaching the crash site, a native man riding ridiculously on the back of an evening primrose mount. Both man and animal were snorting loudly.
Once he had reached the fatal point of the fall, Kerry guessed from the manner of treating the injured man that this second man was offering him some kind of servitude.
The apparent servant introduced himself as Sancho Panza, and later limited himself to shrugging his shoulders to Kerry, who continued to stare at the scene with his mouth open and without leaving his faithful guitar.
The two of them placed the ramshackle-armored Lord in the shade, removed his rusty helmet, and gave him a drink of water. While that individual with the wrinkled face, yellowish beard and lost eyes still could not speak a word, Sancho Panza reprimanded him for facing a mill, thinking that he was challenging a giant.
They discovered that the accident had not been serious when Don Quixote returned to speaking to justify his attitude with bizarre arguments, appealing to a mutation of the giants in mills to undermine his glory as a knight.
Luckily, that madman's horse had not fled, nor did he have the strength to do so. In addition to its erratic movements due to the shock of the blow, the nag showed at first glance its worrying thinness, in tune with the appearance of its owner.
Sancho Panza helped Don Quixote onto his mount, who immediately complained of the weight with a snort. Finally both undertook a new journey without ceasing to teach the knight to his vassal.
The noisy event had raised a brownish dust. Composer Kerry Livgren smiled, watching the dust particles rise to the beat of the mill blades. In the middle of the new scene, he parted his lips and assured in a low voice: "All we are is dust in the wind."
Then the famous composer picked up his guitar and, with the temperance of his fingers moved by the wind, began to hum the first chords of a song in English. With an immense joy that gushed out at each note, he screamed and screamed: "dust in the wind ... all we are is dust in the wind."