I arrived in front of Sasha and Jochen’s building. I took the lift up to the seventh floor, where Sasha opened the door with the sun in her smile.
In the lift, I took a selfie with a branch of pastel-colored flowers. They smelled beautiful.
We hadn’t seen each other since Venice, when we had lived together for four days, in a house Sasha had rented – such a special house, right in the heart of Cannaregio.
Whenever we meet, we have the feeling that the sun is somehow warming us. Perhaps that is the greatest value of our relationship: this almost solar positioning of our bodies, our hearts, toward one another.
It was already quite late when I arrived, and we were both tired, we kissed goodnight and wished each other sweet dreams – and even sweeter reality.
I love Sasha and Jochen’s home. It always gives me that feeling of coming home, especially at night, with the warm orange light hanging above the kitchen island.
I went to my guest room, lied in bed and closed my eyes.
and then, suddenly, I heard a beautiful sound, coming from somewhere far away, almost like an echo. It was Jochen, playing upstairs. The melody and sound of piano could barely make its way through the walls and down into the guest room where I was lying.
I picked up my phone, made a voice message and wrote Jochen a WhatsApp message:
I slept so well, so peacefully.
In the morning, Sasha was already waiting for me in the living room, making tea and preparing breakfast. She was peeling a pomegranate when I came up from the guest room and entered the living room I love so much, filled with light and a kind of quiet serenity.
as she peeled the pomegranate, sitting at the kitchen island, as if at a bar, on high stools, we talked about the piece ” in C” of hers I had seen the night before. The feeling, the state of hypnosis it had put me in, was still holding me.
Every time I experience one of her pieces, I have the same feeling: she draws me into a dimension of her own, one that feels strangely close to me – fragrant, poetic, warm, calming, tender, sunlit. Just like Sasha herself / Sasha Sunshine.
Yesterday, her company performed Terry Riley’s In C.
Sasha took out the score and explained the whole concept of the work to me. And then she gave me the score.
“You know, this can also be sung. Here, I have a copy for you. Try it.” So I received another precious post-birthday gift from my Sunshine Sasha.
