And such music out of me comes ringing high...

[syncategorematic]

I was born a useless bugger, like the Ginger Man I’d run,
And however daddy struggled, with me nothing could be done –
Out comes what’s bred in bone, try to change it, try in vain,
And in me it keeps on growing, crawling out against the grain.
All the family kept trying, but no peace with me they know:
Out on the laundry line like a tightrope I would go.
With the stagelights I was drumming in my dreaming every night,
And I knew the time was coming when my name will be in lights.

And such music out of me comes ringing high,
And the merry gears whirl and hum,
And like crazy swallows skyward winging fly,
In the air the hats and bonnets come.
And the laughter chimes above the streets of town,
And when I hear for me the encores go,
To the street like to the stage I’m coming down:
I’m an artist, I can’t live without this show!
I’m an artist, I can’t live without this show!

Like a merry-go-round, childhood rolled by untold,
Some big business some have founded, others simply growing bald.
Like some starlings in migration, our fates parted from that yard.
They say I gotta have foundation, growing up and growing hard.
But when muses come enthralling, you cannot grow old and gray:
At my birth the stage was calling, and on stage I’ll die someday.
I don’t need another route, all I’ve wanted has come true:
Up the curtain, I come out and begin my show anew!

And such music out of me comes ringing high,
And the merry gears whirl and hum,
And like crazy swallows skyward winging fly,
In the air the hats and bonnets come.
And the laughter chimes above the streets of town,
And when I hear for me the encores go,
To the street like to the stage I’m coming down:
I’m an artist, I can’t live without this show!
I’m an artist, I can’t live without this show!
- Mikhail Kochetkov

I thought of this song last night, and as I translated it today (a fairly free translation), it made me cry.

There seem to be no videos on YouTube of Kochetkov singing this particular song (he is a bard and a film actor as well). An arrangement performed, I understand, by the actor Efim Shifrin is here, including the refrains and the second verse:


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