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When I am crunched for time, I often re-post one of my short stories instead of writing a new article. This is what I am doing this month. I need more time to put the finishing touches on my novel, Ultimate Justice, a historical, suspense thriller, and prepare it for submission to an agent (very time-consuming). You can see what it's about by clicking on "My Books" at the top of this page, and then scroll down.
I hope you enjoy the below story – especially you music lovers.
When I am crunched for time, I often re-post one of my short stories instead of writing a new article. This is what I am doing this month. I need more time to put the finishing touches on my novel, Ultimate Justice, a historical, suspense thriller, and prepare it for submission to an agent (very time-consuming). You can see what it's about by clicking on "My Books" at the top of this page, and then scroll down.
I hope you enjoy the below story – especially you music lovers.
This true story won
First Place in the 2002 “Write on the Sound
Literary Contest.”
REFLECTIONS IN COUNTERPOINT
The rigid legs of the wooden chair screeched against the classroom floor as Mrs. Waterbury, my high school piano teacher, shoved it out from behind her desk. She stood up and stepped around in front, adjusting the coiled knot of smoky-gray hair that rested at the nape of her neck.
"Play middle C," she said.
It was my turn at the piano that day and I
dutifully plunked the key down. The harsh, twangy tone sounded from beneath the
mahogany instrument’s half-opened lid.
"No," she said. "Play it, not
murder it!" She rushed over and slid onto the oblong bench beside me. I
ducked my head to hide my stricken look.
She raised her finger, poising it dramatically
above the keyboard. Slowly, it floated downward until the ball of her finger
pressed into the ivory key. The heel of her hand dipped down to the left,
circled and came up in an arc to the right. The warm, vibrant “C” resonated
throughout the room as her finger slowly pivoted up and away from the key with
a graceful flourish.
“Few,” she said, sliding off the bench, “know
how to play C."
The knot in my stomach tightened. My hope of
becoming a concert pianist was dashed. Nevertheless, what she said next opened
a whole new world for me.
“Remember, class,” she added, stepping back
behind her desk. “’C’ means, see.
When combined with other notes and enhanced by instruments, you will see something you never saw before.
To illustrate this, she had us listen to
Prokoviev’s Peter and the Wolf.
My dull, gray existence expanded into brilliancy as I found myself delightfully
skipping along with Peter into the grassy meadow, cringing when French horns
warned of the wolf’s presence and lamenting when the dirge-like oboe portrayed
the sad end of the duck. When Peter lowered the lasso around the wolf’s tail I
cheered and jubilantly marched off with the cast of characters in the finale’s
triumphant procession.
Next, we listened to Smetana’s Moldau. I found myself
buoyantly swept up into the rolling boil of the river’s current. Whirling atop
the swells and surges, I glided in glittering gurgles of pure joy, hugging
slopes and hillsides and passing village festivals along green-wooded, Bohemian
banks.
“Now,” Mrs. Waterbury concluded, “you have seen
what the composers intended you to see. But the real magic of music comes when
you see beyond that—when it touches an emotional chord deep inside you and
causes you to see your own life.
At age fourteen, she rather lost me on that; but
I honestly tried. I listened to Debussy’s Clair
de Lune, which only made me long for a
peaceful, serene life—away from the despair of my abusive living conditions and miserable
sense of worthlessness. Sousa’s bold and precise metronomic marches made me
wish that my life could be punctuated with that kind of strength and
significance.
Try as I did, I could see nothing about my life in any of the
music. While Peter and the
Wolf was enjoyable, Debussy
and Sousa’s music only made me yearn for something that I didn’t have. To find
a musical composition that truly reflected the distressing realities of my life
would require finding one that was even more dissonant and clashing than
Khatchaturian’s Sabre Dance! Yet,
who would want to listen to something like that?
Then, Mrs. Waterbury had the class listen to one
of Bach's fugues.
In open-mouthed astonishment I listened to
chaotic counterpoints fighting against each other, its tangles of kaleidoscopic
notes viciously slamming into the helpless melody. Bach fit! It exactly matched
my life!
But as much as I identified with all that
cacophony, there was one drawback. What was the point of all that perpetual,
directionless struggling? Was there any end in sight? Or was Bach, like myself,
powerless to control his own music? Unfortunately, the school bell rang before the
piece ended.
“See you on Monday,” Mrs. Waterbury called,
pushing the stop button on the recorder.
I walked out of the classroom, intrigued. I felt
some kind of enigmatic bond to Bach and knew that I had to hear the end. Maybe
at the conclusion of the composition something would predict who would win—the
relentless, hard-hitting counterpoints, or the helpless melody. I dashed to the
school library, checked out the recording and rushed home.
Alone in my bedroom I shoved it into the tape
deck and flipped the switch. Pleasant notes lilted singly, one by one, through
the silence of my room—but not for long. Furious counterpoints charged in with
window-rattling intensity. I grabbed a ruler as a baton and began orchestrating
all the incomprehensible notes of his composition.
In mighty sweeps and flourishes, I kept pace
with the quarrelsome notes that rushed in to overwhelm the poor, struggling
melody—a melody that simply wanted to sing its own song.
I continued my frenzied conducting, hoping that
by the end the fugue-like jumble would somehow unscramble into a meaningful
structure. Then, as Mrs. Waterbury promised, I
would "see" something
about my life—some definitive design that would reveal the why of everything
and show that the melody could survive despite the opposition.
My baton whipped back and forth, up and down,
following the helter-skelter race of turbulent notes that swirled about me. The
crescendos and dynamics of my tangled life rose and plunged as the unrelenting
counterpoints hurled my hopeless existence out of control.
As my life intertwined with that of Bach’s
fugue, the thunderous, incongruous notes began to shift into a surprising
synthesis of unity and diversity and I found myself delighting in the effusive
experience.
Then, something unexpected happened. In a
strange sense of soul-awakening harmonies, the counterpoints began to sidle
alongside the original melody and yield to the same rhythmic pace. The notes, moving into
a purposeful pattern, fused into a connective continuity and melded into
a dynamic and unified composition. No longer were they fighting against each
other, but riding upon a resplendent continuum!
But it was the conclusion that totally overwhelmed me. Bach ended his piece, not in a
conglomeration of conflicting melodies still fighting against each other, but
with a slow, deliberate and grand momentous coming-together of harmonizing
chords. All the scattered and diverse melodies were no longer at odds with each
other, but met together with full purpose and meaning.
I quivered
with anticipation as the final, impassioned chords came together in
synchronic and thunderous tones like the doxology of a heavenly choir. In one
majestic Amen, they burst
open the door to my soul, flooding my heart with an indefinable, but resonating
assurance. Then, all was still.
In the
flow of silence that followed, like the interpretive hush of a period
at the end of a sentence, the final, impassioned note punctuated the full
meaning of my schizophrenic existence, revealing design, purpose and a promise
of ultimate fulfillment.
I sank onto the
edge of my bed.
"Wow,"
I whispered, “Now I see—I can survive the counterpoints! Whatever
lay ahead of me—even if chaotic and discordant—like Bach I can orchestrate the
whole wondrous composition of my life to a harmonizing end."
With a shout, I
instinctively leaped to my feet.
"Bravo!"
COMMENTS (use the comment box further below)
COMMENTS (use the comment box further below)
Caryl McAdoo:
Janis, well done! Being a lover of music, I thoroughly enjoyed your story! Bravo! Thak you for sharing! (Nov. 5, 2014)
Janis, well done! Being a lover of music, I thoroughly enjoyed your story! Bravo! Thak you for sharing! (Nov. 5, 2014)
Bernie Jensen:
I think I
remember this story. Thoroughly enjoyed it again. You have a
marvelous literary ability, a gifting from above, and you use it well. Have a good day
and keep writing. (Nov. 8, 2014)
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2 comments:
did my post post? it says, sign in when I click publish, then it doesn't appear and I don't know if it's going to be there twice. BUT better twice than not at all, right? I said:
Janis, well done! Being a lover of music, I thoroughly enjoyed your story! Bravo!
I'm adding: Thank you for sharing! :)
Caryl, Yes it is there. However, I've never been able to make the comments appear on the page. The only thing that is there is that it says "1 comment," then anyone interested has to click on it and then they'll see your message. I have looked all over the technical instructions for my blog and can't figure out how to make the comment show. Nevertheless, thank you. Actually, I think what I'll do is type it in on the page.
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