newtheoryoldlove:

            Untitled (as of Oct. 19) © via my CW Class

            If anyone reads this, I have only one request—this concept presented to me as a vision of a song, then as a film, then as a writing piece; and all I regret is that the reader can’t feel the sounds, the piano, the way they could in a film—so, if you could, please keep the attached audio file (Owls. Shadows. Tears. by Epik High) playing while you read this; I don’t know how good the writing is, but I have been told that it’s better with the music. Thank you.

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            A cold stream of wind flew through the window-panes; irony that it was the calm in the storm of his small square room, and to think, he might never have known what to do with it.

            Strike a note.

            Her fingers played with resignation, but started again off the high notes, trying to force her mind into the next measure with a kick, as if rolling a car off a steep hill—

            The obstacles were too great. Falling motions. His arms reached for the back of his head, face contorted in defeat, an empty mug on top of inspirationally useless literature textbooks. He ran his hands through his hair again and winced, streams of consciousness interrupted every time by a—

            High note, again, not as high as before, but desperation does so much to a person; her fingers hit the heavy white keys deliberately, as if just one more mistake would—

            Collision, striking him like a baseball pitched straight into his skull. The lights seemed to come on, then. Rough hands pulled the taught skin on his face and rubbed his eyes in slow motion. Manuscripts. Spotlights. Writing on the walls. But the words around him suffocated and squeezed, the room itself seemed to close in, and his hands reached for the round, black keys, this time with eyes closed. Gibberish. Random letters. Sounds. Low sounds.

            High sounds, back to the start, as if another try would make it work, no matter the dust that lifted off the walls or the abandoned scales on the stands; no, she would have to try, even as her frail left hand returned to the deep tones of—

            High pitched tearing. He pulled the paper with its scramble of letters clear across the top of the typewriter, and it landed on his bed beside him, an incomplete piece lying on—

            Her gentle hand tore a tissue from the box and covered her sneeze—then, a pitiful cry, just one, like a sigh and a sob and a quiet little cough, and the piano seemed to play on its own, patterns of falling notes perpetually falling. And who was she, anyway? Not Brahms or Chopin, just an impassioned city student with striking black hair and too weak resolve. She wished the notes to be somber and deep, but they lacked masculinity; they needed chaos, but lacked randomness. There was no organic form, no, the sounds were trapped inside—

            His brown messenger bag, his off-white trench coat and belt, layers of scarf and sweater. Enough of this. Large and black-rimmed glasses went on his eyes, wallet in the back pocket, bracelets that his little sister had fashioned from mahogany wood the day before she fell from the—

            Streams of wind on the beckoning balcony of her lonesome apartment, yes, she needed it now, the wind to wipe the dust and—

            Writing off his walls.

            He threw some papers and pens into the bag, notebooks and sketches and crumpled, post-marked letters, and—

            A stoic black cardigan, dark cherry heels. She folded her clothes methodically while the piano still rang in her ears, accompanied by the maddening tick of the clock on the wall. You have no idea where you’re going, do you? Her mother had said that with narrowed eyes, and she, in response, had internally flinched at—

            High notes. The bridge was the one long stretch that connected the apartments to New Teoria. He walked briskly, taking in the breeze he had deprived himself for so long, then turned on 40th and 5th. Stubble. He reached for his jaw—two millimeters, perhaps two weeks? Or perhaps—

            Nineteen days since she had bothered to eat outside, call her cousin, meet a friend. Her skin seemed to pale even more in the white, cloudy light of the outdoors, she had turned to the very dust on her walls, or to the ivory keys that she needed so much, or to—

            The coffee shop would do, yes. He didn’t slow as he reached the door, only leaning in to push it open, and as he did, a loose piece of the haphazardly packed paper fell from his—

            Wet concrete. She walked carelessly now, reveling in the sights of the city, of things she had forgotten. The brick-and-wood stores greeted her again, and she ambled towards the coffee shop, pausing only to observe a torn and abandoned piece of paper left on the ground. People leave things around all the time, you never know if it was something important that will be missed—

            But, no, it was just a scramble of frustrated type, better not to—

            No? She paused. Clearly a coincidence, and yet… the only letters that presented were letters of the musical scale. She counted the As’ and the G’s, the F’s and the B’s, walking into the shop with fixed eyes, trusting her feet to lead her right.

            This is no good, I’m seeing notes everywhere.

            He settled himself into a chair, removed his notebook, and began. There was a couple with children on the diagonally opposite table, hot chocolate of course, espresso for the mother—or, the elderly businessmen on the left… but no, he felt nothing with them either, no words. Confused fingers fumbled between the three pens—an old joke, as if picking up a different one would create a different story or a different tone, a unique sort of octave, or—

            Her eyes flashed upwards, giving the room a cursory glance. There was a piano in the back that she always played, but now, she wasn’t sure.

            She took a breath.

            High notes.

            Carefully she sat down at the keys, eyes closed, and the quaint coffee shop seemed more silent than ever—but the silence beckoned, and the rest was only meant to last for one measure, before the sound would have to break—

            Open his eyes with dread. His sluggish sleep was swept into oblivion, replaced instead with a fear of his own awe, of fulfillment and reminiscence and loss. The sound was unlike—

            Anything, now, she would do anything to hear more, and as her fingers reached the end of the typed up notes, she knew exactly where the melody needed to go. High notes falling swiftly and crawling up slowly, but always retiring to haunting and trance-like repetitions of lows; playing around a melancholy with subdued trebles and soul-tearing vibrations.

            He didn’t even have to think.

            The pen wrote on its own, no longer impeded by the directionless possibilities of his mind, no, it belonged to her now, her with her both clenched and cathartic expression, her with her ever-slanted eyes, her with her poise—focused, desperate, lost, found.

            Low notes.

            The melody was all hers now. No voices could interfere, not the words of her mother before the divorce, not the marital screams of her neighboring residents (so unlike her with her exile of an apartment) and definitely not her spiteful professor of music-theory, looking down at her lack of true creativity; not now, because she—

            High notes.

            His scribbles hung on the border of illegibility as he wrote of her in the moment, and a character began to grow; the story spawned from sound and shot up through personality and chaos to form in petals of concrete identity, and it was perfect, it would never be more perfect, it would never be—

            Strike a key.

            Keys weary with the taps of relentless fingers, eleven-fifteen at night, lines filled with what used to be their missing information, and full mugs and clean, spotless walls, and beautiful notes that rang with contentment.