Silent Keys

The other night you had a dream. You dreamt that you woke up deaf. You couldn’t hear music anymore. You couldn’t play music. All you could do was stare at the keys as you pounded out old, familiar patterns and automatically pushed up, down, up, down on the damper but no matter how hard or loud or long you played, nothing would release the music trapped inside the piano.

It was a nightmare, in fact.

You longed to be blind instead. At least if you were blind you could listen to Bono, sitting in your ear, telling you to walk on and be strong, the same way he always had when something went wrong. You would be able to close your eyes and pretend that if you opened them you could see. The moon would illuminate the darkness in your head as you listened to Clair de Lune; you would cry along with Chopin’s saddest étude and feel lucky, as always. It would be good for you; you would learn to play by ear properly at last.

But you were not blind. You were deaf. Trapped in the nightmare, you wanted to die, because it didn’t feel like you were living properly, without music. Sight was torture because you saw everyone else playing music, fiddling with the radio, whistling along to a tune, and every part of you tensed as you tried to hear it. But you couldn’t. There was no pretending because in the life before, hearing was like the blood running through your veins. And all you could look forward to were years and years of silence, because you were young and deafness is apparently not fatal. Not even degenerative.

You felt like Beethoven, trying so valiantly to conduct his orchestra, so much more of a genius than anyone in the audience ever would be, but at a disadvantage to every single person there.

You did wake up. And you could hear. But now you are perpetually terrified that you will lose your ears. You make bargains with God, and you ask Him, if He has to take away one or the other, please let it be your eyes. You feel even more absent from your friends. They don’t understand music. For them, music is something one can use or create; they don’t understand that the notes have always been there, that you are merely unlocking a door and freeing them, that in truth the music is using you and bewitching you. You are disgusted, incredulous when they say they don’t listen to music much; you try to understand and to tell yourself that everyone is different and what does it matter if they prefer mountain-climbing to Mendelssohn. You hate the way they look so unaware when you talk about good acoustics and how they come away from Andrew Lloyd Webber saying there was too much singing. Yes, you know you are being irrational, snobbish, unfair. And you don’t care. Instead you worry incessantly.

But even through all of this, you are aware of a dim understanding that should you lose all you are afraid of, music could never quite desert you. Music is in everything.


------------
Hopefully that worked. Hope you enjoyed it! I hope the photos came out!