Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Musical Tuesday

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3 comments:

  1. Behind the curtain I find a baby grand, that is what that is right? A stage light gives it a happy glow. I am so out of the loop when it comes to music. I can't tell a trombone from a trumpet or a piccolo from a pickle. My musically enhanced family took all the musical genes and left me with nothing. Nada. Zilch.

    I am one talentless son of a gun.

    But, here, on this stage, in this new place where I can do things I've never thought possible, could I play? I flew to this very spot, a cut on my right ear from a theater chandelier throbbing proof. I climbed the outside of a building, no ivy, no bulging biceps, I simply willed myself up the freaking wall. Oh, I shouldn't forget, I can change my size.

    I thought Alice was cool when I was little. She could pop a pill and go up, go down. Of course, she almost drowned, so I clearly have the best of the Wonderlands.

    I walked up to the piano and bent over the keys, keeping my feet planted a feet away from the bench. Despite my physical hesitation, I have every intention of playing this damn thing. My feet release their grip on the floor and I swing them around bench and continue to stare at the keys.

    What should I play? Zart? Liszt? I've heard their music thousands of times, when I go to bed, when I wake up, when I take a crap. My entire family lives in the music room, all day long.

    I close my eyes, let my fingers find their spots (I at least mastered that, by the time I was twelve), and...

    "Hot cross buns... dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun… hot cross buns," dammit, I can sound the words out, but my fingers fumble across the spread.

    All my hopes and dreams come crashing down, I can't play music. Not here in this Wonderland, not ever. I hate Alice. I hate music. I hate my life.

    I stand up, kick the bench, and turn around.

    "It's a harpsichord," the voice freezes my body mid-turn.

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  2. And this treasure we call the Fatal Harp, ah-ha. That's a bit of a pun. Most mortals don't know that the Fates were perhaps more musically talented than their half-sisters, the Muses.

    The reason we associate Muses with music and Fates with fatalities is that when a Muse breaks a string, no one dies. Or vice versa.

    This particular piano was created in a fit of pique after two years of patient building was ruined by the death of an entire town. Each of these lifelines is gilded and protected, so as to never break. Believe it or not, before this 'harp,' there were no immortals.

    On a related note, if you play chopsticks on the Fatal Harp, every single Olympian gets palpitations.

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  3. They must hate the Chinese as much as my parents.

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