Sweet Sixteen

“ Gave my heart an engagement ring
She took everything
Everything I gave her,
Oh sweet sixteen

I’ll do anything
For my sweet sixteen
And I’ll do anything
For little run away child “

[Billy Idol :- Sweet Sixteen (released 1988)]

Forget Whitney Houston’s soapy ballads, disgorge those melodramatic lyrics of Air Supply. Billy Idol’s Sweet Sixteen is the most beautiful love-ballad ever. They say the hardest rockers sing the most mellifluous ballads. How true it is for Sweet Sixteen. It has Billy Idol, the rebel-yell himself - strutting himself in all his manly glory; leather clad, curled writhing lips, lined brow so rapture in thought; images of flatulence- hard, pain, edgy ; fulminating in his rasp voice – a pathos of unrequited love and umbrage soul. Oh, how I miss the soul of the 80s.

But Sweet Sixteen is made more so poignant because it is all true and real. A song inspired by a true account. A tale of romance, tears and life in all its traverse and zeal; yet so macabre; mortifying; a rankle to the heart and soul.

The chronicle begins with felicity, in the early 20th century, in the forlorn countryside of Latvia. It is an image of frontispiece; a picturesque of calm, tranquil, zephyr. Edward Leedskalnin, the lead protagonist, was then age 26. He is happy, for he is engaged to be married. To his one and only love, Agnes Scuffs. She was then only 16. Edward affectionally refers to Agnes as his sweet sixteen. He was utterly devoted to her, and he look forward to the marriage; an ameliorate life with his subject of adore. It would be hard to prognosticate the unfolding events.

Agnes cancelled the wedding just one day before the ceremony. She left. A wicked abject decision that would leave Edward crippled in heart and soul. Edward is a hopeless romantic; passionate, sentimental. But he is no antagonist, for he reacted nobly. Edward refused to be a subject of abjure. He left Latvia, and he left his sweet sixteen; but carried with him all his love, in all its splendor intact ; and his sorrows, tears and melancholy.

The dejected but staid Edward rooted himself to faraway Homestead, Florida. Homestead would serve as his furtive; his lonely, destitute, solitary confine. There he led a quixotic utopian life. It was there that he spent the rest of his life creating a monument to his lost love - to his sweet sixteen. The next 30 years was spent carving and sculpting over 1,100 tons of coral rocks, turning it into a castle; his Taj Mahal; as a testimony of his prodigious profound love to his sweet sixteen.

Coral Castle, as it is known today, is Edward’s capitulation to his desolate soul, a physical manifestation of undying devotion to a callous lover. Coral Castle is a palace, a citadel, a mansion, a keep, a stronghold, a house, … and his home. A megalithic fortress of coral rocks. Love moves a man. For Edward Leedskalnin, it all so true. A man of only 5 feet in height, and weighing a mere 100 pounds. He toiled all day and night to lift and maneuver blocks of megalithic stones to create this magnificent edifice.

Edward never married. He died in 1951, at age 64. Still pinning for his sweet sixteen.

Do view :-
http://www.coralcastle.com
http://www.crystalinks.com/coralcastle.html