Musical Necromancy
15 August 2006 00:32![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skonen_bladesWe’re wrapped up in it. Dwindling flowers of notes still hang in the air from that doomed man’s violin. A heart the size of a cabbage, they said, and a brain the size of a pea. No one knew where this idiot got his talent but the church claimed it was from God. To hear him play made most atheists become agnostic. To watch him play was almost like watching pornography.
It was obscene the way he ripped those notes out of the violin only to caress it seconds later and with it, the audience. He was a man captivated. It was like the violin played him and us with it. It was as if a door opened to us from a world of pure music that never stopped and we got to hear a little bit before the recital ended and the door closed. There was never a doubt after listening to him that he was a conduit. A normal human could never play like that. A normal human had not the hours in a lifetime to practice that much.
And this fool, this dimwitted savant, was only seventeen with a life expectancy of twelve. Every note was stolen from time and every concert borrowed from Death. Every concerto was his last.
When he stopped playing, his eyes opened, glassy and serene and vacant. A thin line of drool spilled down from his rubbery guileless smile. Stubby legs and monkey arms. Already balding. An Alastair Sym of a teenager. This chosen messenger of the divine. He could not talk. He wet himself at every show. He could not play with a symphony because no one knew what he would play.
Sometimes it would be an original composition that always hit its target and left the audience libidinous or melancholy. Sometimes something classic from Mozart would skitter out of the wooden box or something feral from the gypsies. He added new twitches and touches here and there and improved or revolutionized the emotional point of each piece.
Devil or angel, none could tell. He was profitable and mystical. He died before twenty. None of his music survived him. It was as transient and ephemeral as his life. His ugliness begat him no portraits. We only have accounts of those who saw him. They’re written in diaries whose authors struggle to capture in words what cannot be captured. To write that music down would have been to blaspheme it. Another player would only butcher it.
He haunts the dreams of great grandchildren of the nobles and paupers that saw him play. He is the fiddleman. He gives to the children heated dreams of talking violins that scream when touched. He comes from the closet of the gifted in the night and chides them into becoming talented possessed waystations for the music. His music warped into the very dna of each listener and he carries on.
He carries on.
This musical necromancy continues. They number in the hundreds and they are here and there throughout the world. Some kill themselves. Some join symphony after symphony and are always kicked out. Some are alone and play by themselves in squalor. Some can’t stop hearing the music and have gone crazy.
He carries on.
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It was obscene the way he ripped those notes out of the violin only to caress it seconds later and with it, the audience. He was a man captivated. It was like the violin played him and us with it. It was as if a door opened to us from a world of pure music that never stopped and we got to hear a little bit before the recital ended and the door closed. There was never a doubt after listening to him that he was a conduit. A normal human could never play like that. A normal human had not the hours in a lifetime to practice that much.
And this fool, this dimwitted savant, was only seventeen with a life expectancy of twelve. Every note was stolen from time and every concert borrowed from Death. Every concerto was his last.
When he stopped playing, his eyes opened, glassy and serene and vacant. A thin line of drool spilled down from his rubbery guileless smile. Stubby legs and monkey arms. Already balding. An Alastair Sym of a teenager. This chosen messenger of the divine. He could not talk. He wet himself at every show. He could not play with a symphony because no one knew what he would play.
Sometimes it would be an original composition that always hit its target and left the audience libidinous or melancholy. Sometimes something classic from Mozart would skitter out of the wooden box or something feral from the gypsies. He added new twitches and touches here and there and improved or revolutionized the emotional point of each piece.
Devil or angel, none could tell. He was profitable and mystical. He died before twenty. None of his music survived him. It was as transient and ephemeral as his life. His ugliness begat him no portraits. We only have accounts of those who saw him. They’re written in diaries whose authors struggle to capture in words what cannot be captured. To write that music down would have been to blaspheme it. Another player would only butcher it.
He haunts the dreams of great grandchildren of the nobles and paupers that saw him play. He is the fiddleman. He gives to the children heated dreams of talking violins that scream when touched. He comes from the closet of the gifted in the night and chides them into becoming talented possessed waystations for the music. His music warped into the very dna of each listener and he carries on.
He carries on.
This musical necromancy continues. They number in the hundreds and they are here and there throughout the world. Some kill themselves. Some join symphony after symphony and are always kicked out. Some are alone and play by themselves in squalor. Some can’t stop hearing the music and have gone crazy.
He carries on.
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Date: 15 Aug 2006 07:34 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Aug 2006 07:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 Aug 2006 07:37 (UTC)