- - - - - - - - -

a r t

- - - - - - - - -

A glittering curtain of scarlet brocade drapes around the stool as you ease down onto it, letting the trail of your cloak fall around the stout black quadruped and hide it completely. You sigh and let your spine relax into a curved heap, shaking your fingers out of the gold-threaded sleeves that hide the white of your hands and the rings that ornate your razor-sharp knuckles. Perhaps there is a reason why all pianists let a silence endure before they play, but you aren’t familiar with it- you don’t want to play like everyone else. You can’t resist to the temptation of letting your piano speak, hear its echoing, solitary voice trickle from that large black casing that holds imprisoned an entire well of sounds and nuances that are just there, just a key away, and that very knowledge takes away your breath before you even start playing. You are shy before this great instrument, though you can’t possibly let its voice remain wrapped up and gagged by those treacherous chords that lay neatly in a row, somewhere in its cavernous bowels. Waiting for your command to set loose their savage captive.

You swing down a finger and hit a key, harder than you expected, but just hard enough to satisfy you. It shatters the lovely silence that had just started to gather around, and you make your audience jump in surprise- some you can clearly hear are not very pleased with this introduction. But you don’t care. They come if they want to come- it’s up to them to endure your music. You couldn’t possibly care less about what they think.

You listen to the sweet delicacy of the echo, listening to it as it pounces from wall to wall, dulled a little more each time and becoming tamer and tamer as it circles around the place, before slumping to the floor at your feet and curling up, as docile as a cat and purring quietly in content. You have tamed the beast. Now it’s time to teach it one more dance.

You wait till those pointy ears have flicked in your direction to tell you that you have permission to start, and you lift your hand to the glinting row of keys. The left hand strikes hard, mercilessly dragging from that shining black belly a silken rumbling bass, whilst the five fingers of the right hand scuttle down the keys in a rainstorm of stinging notes, stabbing at the air and electrifying even you as you lean over your keyboard, eyes downcast and lips parted in absolute concentration. Your lengths of creped hair sway around your tragically beautiful face, stroking the white faces of each key in a revering manner and getting tangled in your dancing fingers as they clamber up and down the keys in a long dark wretched melody of biting snow and fading kisses and white roses stained red. Your left arm heaves as you bring the bass up, up, pressing down on the keys and slipping slightly as you draw from the piano’s quivering chords a heartbreaking ring of notes that seem to transpierce your very heart, and your lip catches between your teeth as your eyelids flutter to a close and your thighs draw together, spine straightening as a jolt of something tingles up the entire length of your back. Your head tilts back, long hair cascading down and brushing the edge of the hidden piano stool, and you absorb each note that you play with sensuous egoism, playing this melody with the strings of your own soul and dangerously letting it show as your hands flip and caress and twirl over the keys, over each other, fingers entwining for the briefest of moments as the melody ascends to the strength and poetry of a violent wind ripping apart the branches of a frail cherry tree, each high note symbolizing a pale blossom spiraling up uncontrollably to the high heavens, each twanging chord a snapping wooden arm, each dissonance a wooden vertebrae breaking to pieces on the wind-swiped forest floor. Then suddenly your hands both come crashing down on an improvised chord, and it seems as though several little bugs have come to settle into the beauty of the tree falling to its ruin at last- a few notes here or there that should not have been. But then you grit your teeth and stumble to your feet blindly, heaving your arms down and letting your forearms crash onto the keys simultaneously to make a cacophony of echoing chords that make no sense, that hold no deep meaning, save the one that nobody but you can see. The horrid sounds merge and mingle until there is one great brutal mass of hellish notes hanging in the air like some massive knot of noises, and… you pant. Your shoulders shake. You let the piano’s shriek fade from the air like excess ink draining from a spoilt canvas, whilst feeling the tears dripping from your chin, but unaware of the paths they carve down your cheek with their icy descent. Your eyes are fixed on the floor that you cannot see in the shadow of your bulky companion, and then with no particular warning you let yourself fall heavily back onto the stool and let your fingers climb breathlessly, effortlessly up from the lowest bass note to the highest little knock of sound, listening intently as the stretch of beautiful sound seems to paint over the black memory of that horrid, messy outburst. You let your fingers play of their own accord, and you don’t care to see who has left the place and who has stayed, enrapt in this thing they might deign to call music. Art. Creation. You don’t know.

You just…simply… play. The inert bodies of what you left behind with your last heartwrenching melody seem to stir with a spark of life, a spark of hope, as you steadily breath over each of their blue mouths and rub their sightless eyes with the tips of your long, graceful fingers. The harmony seems to clench at your lungs as you watch a body reel upwards, pulling itself into a standing position almost as grotesquely as a wooden puppet- you playfully yank at a string and it quirks forward, dragged into a funny tap-dance as your fingers bounce on the keys and rebound, as though they were sleek birds with lustrous silver feathers hopping weightlessly from note to note.

Then, just as you make the rest of the bodies stir to life and sit up gradually, just as you pull all their strings together and make them join hands in a childish ring and start to dance around and around, the wind seems to pick up again. It blows softly at first, just a distant menace, something that they are unafraid of as it lifts light strands of their hair and makes the hems of their grass-stained dresses billow. Then, a sudden screech of wind almost tears away their very faces, and they all drop to the floor and cower as the treacherous wind grows suddenly, deceitfully calm. But they know what to expect. They quietly sob together as they hear the nearby trees creaking ominously, and then your fingers twiddle on two or three notes as you play with a few strings in order to make two of the puppets hold hands in their last few moments. You pity them as they helplessly weep, huddled together at the wind’s fatal mercy.

Your fingers leap from the two notes you had been twiddling with, and you leave your puppets in a dreadful suspense- they listen, trembling, to the reverberation of those two notes, the sound carried to their inexistent ears by some compassionate voice. They lift their heads questioningly- dare they question their fate?- when the silence lasts a little longer than expected.

Your chin is on your collarbone, soft strands of hair veiling one side of your face and tickling your throat. You’re making choices, making up your mind. Would you be merciful? Would you call back your vicious blood hounds from this huddling bunch of defenseless souls?

Hm. You thought so.

You hear the fragile bones in your wrists crack as you slowly lift your hands to the keys again, unaware that you’ve once again fallen into that bad habit of holding your breath while you play. And then you’re awaking the beast, whispering into its ear with a silent, satiny voice, both arms reaching far left to draw from the piano’s pitch black throat a deep purr- and before you know it, the wind has come rushing back and your arm is flailing out to reach the other extremity and your arms are coming together in one magnificent clash, hands like great white spiders as they crawl up and down each slippery row of keys- you summon an icy cascade of frozen rain with each flurry of high notes and drag the wind across the dresses of your hapless puppets with each bass arpeggio, your tongue flicking out to moisten your chapped lips as you slap a headless chord into existence, severing the strings of one puppet’s life- another, and another, and another…

Until they are all bodiless things again, strewn across the ground like scattered pieces of an unfinished puzzle. And you, you leave them there- riding up to tickle the highest pitches of the piano, you mime the cackling of the wind and flick down to finish your tale with a black note, a black reverberation.

Darkness.

It’s the age after the dust of all creation has been blown away.

And you revel in it.