Alright, Mses Sikora – welcome to story time with your host, Kinga-Blažena.
Team Mácha’s star couple came to the office today: so photogenic, so personable. Frída and Lien. They asked if they could speak to Franta, but Franta was in a meeting with some Profitability Monitor types from HQ.
‘Oh … then could we see Eva?’
Eva was in the same meeting, and Valérie was off sick. ‘We’ll just talk to the other one, then,’ Lien said. I told them that Pavlína was still finding her feet here and would probably have to consult one of her superiors on anything they discussed with her anyway, so they might as well have this chat with me. They didn’t want to, but they knew better than to openly refuse. It’s been like this ever since they fully clocked that I’m only nice to them when they’re making themselves useful. I probably didn’t mention this at the time (as always, a lot of other things were going on) but Frída and Lien’s courtship process was playlist-intensive. Those playlists are far and away the most shared content on Team Mácha’s website these days. Not that F& L were happy for that content to be posted in the first place. For all their head-turning looks, theirs is an intensely introverted union.No, Lien told me,nonono, that level of show and tell was never part of the deal. Frída was whining too,Thoseplaylistsarejustforus,howdidyouevenfindoutaboutthem, blah blah blah. They gave me no choice but to show them some ruthlessness. There were, after all, all sorts of other communications between Frída and Lien that I had discovered and would have no problem spamming their family and friends with. Once they understood their options, they chose common sense. So there’s a Polaroid-style photo of Frída alongside her blend of slow jams, sonatas, arias and concertos, and a rose-tinted snap of Lien to go with her choices – classic rock, noise pop and loads of jazz: big band, bebop, fusion and so on. Just look at those faces, valiant in their vulnerability. This is how people with the ability to forge strong and healthy bonds look. But they aren’t the only ones. The first song on Lien’s playlist for Frída is ‘It Could Happen to You’. Awwww. We recommend that listeners work their way through the playlists alternating Frída’s picks with Lien’s, and in the comments section underneath, romance junkies write about starting to listen with scepticism, then slowly dropping their guard as the pieces tease and then continue each other. Maybe six songs in – three of Frída’s selections plus three of Lien’s – these wistful eavesdroppers start claiming to hear a harmony that seeps in through the cracks left in centuries and geographies. The Song, the fated Song of Lien and Frída. Amen; this is exactly what’s needed to make Team Mácha seem like healers instead of the sticking-plaster merchants we actually are. Too many see being liked or loved as some kind of character reference:Oh,Xseemstoenjoyspendingtimewithme,soIcan’tbetoomuchofamess.So-and-soseemshappytoofficiallymakeitknownthatwe’resleepingtogetheron a long-term basis – they’d avoid doing this if I was that bad.
Hilarious. Most of us actuallyare that bad.
Kinga-C and/or Kinga-E, before you come at me, I’m not ignoring the fact that we come with pleasant characteristics built in too. I just haven’t encountered any traits that make up for the tribal mindset, the faddishness, the miserly attention span, the dishonesty whenever honesty matters most, the deep stores of ineffectual empathy, etc. New clients tell me about their hopes of coming across the kind of person they’d be willing to change their ways for, and I’m just like … LOL. That’s quite the hope. You’re calling on affiliation to alter your very nature? You want the so-called love of another person to accomplish a task that religion, military dictatorships, representative democracy and every system in between hasn’t managed to do? A matchmaker has only one attainable goal: steering an individual away from enablers of their specific toxic traits and towards another individual with whom quiet coexistence is possible. Getting people spoused up is a damage-limitation exercise from start to finish. Aim any higher than that and you stray into stupidities.
Back to our star couple, Frída and Lien: they resigned as Team Mácha ambassadors today. They started off with a rehearsed revelation: Frída had discovered Lien’s infidelity. Lien couldn’t apologise enough for the heartache she’d caused, but wasn’t really trying to find a way forward that involved staying together. Lien admitted to having a lot to learn about ending a relationship with maturity. Frída nodded, then they shared a hug and wished each other the best. Our former star couple are good liars, resolute. They showed no nerves at all whilst playing sinner and pardoner, but they must not have had that much faith in each other’s fibbing skills, because as soon as I made casual mention of the (non-existent) lie detect- or test they’d need to pass before discharge from promotional duties, truths emerged.
Frída and Lien don’t really like each other.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You dislike each other?’
‘No …’ Lien said.
They just … feel nothing for each other. I asked them to clarify. ‘You’ve been pretending to care about each other? Since when, and to what end?’
‘Not pretending,’ Frída said. ‘We had all the feelings. We just didn’t notice that they weren’t for each other.’
‘OK. If anyone asks, we’re just going to say you drifted apart, then.’
‘Perfect,’ said Lien. ‘Can we … leave now?’
‘In a minute. First I’d like to try to understand if this is something you can work through. With our support, of course.’
A terrified glance flashed between them – a glance that said: Sakra!She’sgoingtomakeusstaytogetheruntilshedies.She’sgottobeatleastfifteenyearsolderthanus,though,soatleastthere’sthat.
We went on talking until we met in the middle. I’d thought they were trying to tell me that they’d been idealising each other and had hit a wall with that, but that wasn’t it. Their connection was forged on an absence of contradiction. And that was a non-connection, really – they were stimulated by the same sounds, but remained so entirely separate, each relating to the sounds on her own, that these stimuli couldn’t even be thought of as a bridge between the two of them, let alone felt as one. People like to act as if love is agreeing on a lot of little things and hate is disagreeing on a few big things, or some version thereof. Excuse me … I’m so sorry – believe it or not, this faithful correspondent of yours truly does grieve for our species – but no. These supposed harmonies and dissonances are a weak excuse for emoting all over each other. ‘Moonlight Serenade’ is playing, and Lien listens – it’s more than listening, she hears, she and the notes are one, it’s as if Glenn Miller and his band have got all their gear set up in the space where her lungs were and she’s breathing out the breeze from their clarinets. ‘Moonlight Serenade’ plays for Frída, and poor Frída gets carried away as well. Lien stuffed all her ‘Moonlight Serenade’-related emotions into an envelope and addressed it to Frída (crossing out the name of the person that very same envelope was previously addressed to) – Frída sent her own sentiment-stuffed envelope to Lien, and somehow the tens, or hundreds, of crossed-out names on these envelopes weren’t visible to the latest recipients. Now that they’ve both seen the light, they don’t want to discuss it. Their sheepishness was plain to see. I asked if they’d like be rematched, or if there was any other way Team Mácha could assist.
Lien: ‘No, that’s OK, I think I’m just going to focus on work from now on.’
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