Seventeen measures. The most I could make of the new piece before it fell away. It was an arpeggio bridge over the river Kwai, a panicked jumble of a dream state. An orphaned motif. It felt like the plaster walls, the hole in the earth muffling me, couldn’t support the music. Stagnant warmth, dusty shafts of sun, and a breaking fever took my hands away from the keyboard. I rose for the kitchen and heated a pan of French onion soup. I smoked a once-a-year menthol cigarette and absorbed the unsteadiness. It was the stage of early afternoon that shimmered with endless incarceration; I knew if I didn’t return to the piano I’d have to answer to the judge of heavy sunlight. If this arrangement couldn’t evoke a shiver I’d be stuck with another wasted tinkering, and the piano would mock my sickly, dying form and wait for a more dutiful lover. I steadied after the beef stock and took on a waltz from Liszt. It was the antidote for a Mahler afternoon, I thought. The Liebestraum fell from my hands slowly and chased away the mocking dust in the living room. I was astonished how effectively an A flat bracket could shatter afternoon turmoil. Franz took me away from my soup and cigarette, my tight back, my leaking bathroom sink, and, as I furthered the dream of love I was wormholed into a Vienna hedge maze of bougainvillea, manzanilla, creeper and Doric columns. Aching braided maidens peered over their shoulders with languishing eyes. The sun served a dusk and pointed me through the piece as these mental contrivances, artful portraits of unattainable tranquility, tried to derail my execution. I built up speed. With near maudlin commitment my transition scales played trough to the plateau and I was safe within the eye of the Liszt hurricane. Nothing compared to the fragile comfort of existing inside the dead center of a masterpiece. I could practically play inside his mind and tap into his losses and discoveries. The moment can be as fleeting as a breath, but the exaltation of sharing the purpose of the composer’s arrangement is and remains a high unlike all others. I bruised the keyboard when I hungrily arrived at the insistent summit in E major and, while briefly inside the womb of ecstasy, the wink of contemplation of all things, I left the ground a good inch. The abeyance of physical law was the backdrop to a flicker; my ass left the bench and I flew off the mantle—I was Franz’s Astronaut. In the post-coital haze of the resolution my timeline wandered off and I envisioned the approving, restoring divination, a subtle smile from the most beautiful girl in my long ago ninth grade history class. When I played well enough she would always make an appearance and wink at the effort. This was my way out of a dismal afternoon. A series of meaty thuds shook my door. It was my neighbor’s kid. He needed a jump for his station wagon. I collected myself and drove my car up the gravel lane to the neighbor’s lot. The boy’s father came out of his studio with a bottle of distilled water and a bottle of vinegar. He shook his head. “I see my son’s bothered you for help,” he said. “He just can’t wait a few more minutes for me to get him into town.” I turned my engine and saw the boy’s eyes light up as his wagon ignited through cables. As the charge took effect my neighbor asked me if I was taking piano lessons. I told him I was returning to piano after a long hiatus. He nodded and said, “It sounds nice.” I waved them goodbye and drove back to my cabin, starting again on the keys with a slower piece from Badalamenti. I laughed. “Nice,” was a good word. A calm word. It was bound to the term of belonging. “Nice” was a life preserver—a destroyer of desperate afternoons. I played into the early curl of evening, pardoned by my surroundings, relishing the skill of survival.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:18:50 +0000
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