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Madison Scott-Clary 2020-10-16 23:05:13 -07:00
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<p>My dad played the saxophone through me.</p>
<p>My transition into owning myself was through the oboe.</p>
<p>Me coming into my own was through voice. After all, the oboe was rented, was it not? It was another thing that tied me to my parents, and I was hitting adolescence when one most acutely feels such things. My voice was my own and literally no one could take that from me.</p>
<p>And it was all luck, or synchronicity, or perhaps some subtle machination I don&rsquo;t yet understand, that got me into choir.</p>
<p>The freshman choir was suffering in numbers, and so I found myself roped in during my sole remaining free period my first year in high school. Roving bands of students were sent through the halls to loop in the hapless enjoying their lunches. Fourth period, they promised, would become our favorite for a much different reason than it had been before. Choir, you see, was a source of joy.</p>
<p>And it was, too. Choral music, I found, coils around you when you&rsquo;re buried in the midst of it in a way that instrumental music never did for me. It was easier to enter into a state wherein I was lost in whatever a flow state is while singing than it ever was while playing an instrument.</p>
<p>I have thoughts, I have thoughts&hellip;</p>
<p>But, later.</p>
<p>I was roped into music in a way I had never quite experienced before. I was roped in so completely that large swaths of my studies outside of choir suffered. I could focus on math, or I could focus on choir. I could focus on Latin, or I could focus on choir. I could bring the two together even, could I not? <em>Horatius villam habet, i-ae-i-ae-o. Et in villam&hellip;</em></p>
<p>It came so much easier to me than did any other subject, too. I could dive into choir unlike Latin or history or biology. I could dive into it and be completely subsumed. <em>He would be riding on the subway or writing formulas on the blackboard or having a meal or (as now) sitting and talking to someone across a table, and it would envelop him like a soundless tsunami</em>, yes? I would be sitting in my chair, folder tucked down alongside it, and I would be holding my music, and my chin would be far, far too high up in the air &mdash; a fact I would not learn until later &mdash; and it would envelop me like a soundless tsunami. It would wash over and through me. I would be hollowed out and reverberating like a pipe.</p>
<p>It was work, I do not mean to minimize that. I would scribble notes in the music, and stammer, and get sick, and never, ever drink enough water. I would have bad days. I would hate my conductors. I would refuse to practice. I would plug my ears. I would blast <em>Alamaailman Vasarat</em> rather than listen to choir music. I would curse the alarm waking me up for the before-school sectionals.</p>
<p>But it always came so very, very easy to me.</p>
</article>
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<p>Page generated on 2020-10-13</p>
<p>Page generated on 2020-10-16</p>
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<li class="done2"> <a href="office-supplies.html">I just love office supplies</a></li>
<li class="done2"> <a href="why-sax.html">Why am I playing saxophone?</a></li>
<li class="done2"> <a href="oboes.html">Oboes and ownership over one&rsquo;s own life</a></li>
<li class="done1"> <a href="choir.html">Wow omigosh choir</a></li>
<li class="done2"> <a href="choir.html">Wow omigosh choir</a></li>
<li class="done0"> <a href="sibelius.html">And then my dad bought me Sibelius</a></li>
<li class="done0"> <a href="music-ed.html">Music education is a cop-out</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Development<ul>
<li class="done0"> <a href="walking-while-composing.html">At some point I started walking while composing</a></li>
<li class="done0"> <a href="magic-in-music.html">It was at that point that I started to recognize the power of music</a></li>
<li class="done1"> <a href="magic-in-music.html">It was at that point that I started to recognize the power of music</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Recapitulation</li>
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</ul>
</article>
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<p>Page generated on 2020-10-13</p>
<p>Page generated on 2020-10-16</p>
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<h1>Zk | magic-in-music</h1>
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<p>There was a sort of succulent quality to the air, as though, were I to bite down on it, it would all come bursting forth at once. Dribble down my chin. Stain my shirt. It would be sweet, almost saccharine. It would beg for a pinch of salt to quell all that sweetness.</p>
<p>I didn&rsquo;t know whether or not I&rsquo;d be able to stomach it, honestly. I was dizzy. I was apart from myself. Above, and beside. I was looking down at myself. Were I to do so, to bite into time itself, I would surely overflow.</p>
<p><em>Was</em> overflowing, I realized. Was bending forward at the waist where I was sitting. Those black choir chairs were comfortable, but made you sit up straight, so I couldn&rsquo;t slouch. I was bending forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and then bowing my head, bowing further.</p>
<p>I was overflowing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. We weren&rsquo;t singing, the basses, we were watching the altos rehears a part, so it wasn&rsquo;t too far out of the ordinary for me to be hunched over, breathing shallow, watching myself from above.</p>
<p>I was overflowing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Hunched over, breathing shallow, and watching from a few feet up, a few feet to the right, so that I could see my shirt tear even as I felt it against my back. I was so thin, then. So thin.</p>
<p>I was overflowing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I watched my shirt tear, and my skin follow. I watched it split along my spine and peel back. It was bloodless, but not painless. The feeling of those wings, newborn and weak, slipping from the wound was raw.</p>
<p>I was overflowing, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I watched the wings stretch and extend from the wound on my back. &ldquo;Aha,&rdquo; I thought. &ldquo;This is it. This is finally it. It&rsquo;s finally happening. I am becoming something greater, and here I am, so unprepared!&rdquo;</p>
<p>I was overflowing, though, not transforming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The growth did not stop at wings. An eye. A beak. The graceful curve of a head. Plumage.</p>
<p>&ldquo;No, this isn&rsquo;t it.&rdquo; I panicked, and could think of nothing else but to apologize. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry. I&rsquo;m so sorry.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The bird cocked its head as it climbed free of my back and perched on my shoulder. It cared not for apologies. Why would it?</p>
<p>Another pair of wings followed.</p>
<p>Another.</p>
<p>Another.</p>
<p>My hands were buried in my hair, I could see - barely - through the forest of pencil-thin legs crowding my shoulders, my neck, my head. Their weight had forced my shoulders down until my head was nearly between my knees.</p>
<p>We were singing now, and I was silent. How could I sing, when all I could do was beg silently for forgiveness? How could I sing with the weight of a dozen crows slowly crushing me into my seat? How could I sing when I was overflowing? There was nothing I could do to stop it</p>
<p>Chaos. The director stopped the choir, and as one, the flock lifted off. The weight was lifted off my back. The cacophony filled the air. I was borne up through the air by the birds. The birds were splitting, multiplying, avian mitosis. I was borne up, up. Up.</p>
<p>I was told afterward that my body stumbled, unthinking along the row and toward the double doors, that the director had sneered, &ldquo;It sure would be nice if we had all our singers here today.&rdquo; I was told that folks defended me, saying I was sick, I was pale, I was feverish.</p>
<p>I don&rsquo;t know, I wasn&rsquo;t there. I was above the Flatirons. I was beyond terror. I was beyond joy. I was beyond sensation, beyond any emotion except for that bottomless, black guilt. Sticky. Tar-like. Bitter. The flock numbered in the thousands, and still we flew up.</p>
<p>The blue of the sky became white, blinded, became black, and I was sitting in the hallway. I was with my body again. I was sobbing. A teacher stared. Students gave me a wide berth.</p>
<p>I cleaned myself up. I went back to choir. What else could I do?</p>
<p>A bird had plucked something from me. Something precious. Something unknowable. Something important and integral. Something hard. Something emerald and glassy. Before the white of the sky overtook me, I saw it in its beak.</p>
<p>The caw it gave as my vision left me and my ears filled with static was&hellip;triumphant? No, not quite. Triumph implies that the birds could do anything but succeed. In that sound was inevitability.</p>
<p>After school, Ash and I tramped through the &lsquo;mini-forest&rsquo; and, impelled by something of the avian within, I collected five sticks.</p>
<p>They had to be as straight as possible.</p>
<p>They had to be balanced as close to the middle as possible.</p>
<p>They had to be the same length without me breaking them.</p>
<p>They had to have been from different trees.</p>
<p>They had to have fallen more than a year prior.</p>
<p>When I got home, I lay them in a row, asked my question, and, one by one, broke them in half.</p>
<p>What had I lost?</p>
<p>Why does memory stain me with that black, tarry guilt?</p>
<p>I had forgotten about the birds until recently, but every time I feel that ecstasy &mdash; that ekstasis &mdash; I am pitch. I am tar. I am sticky with apology. I am the living embodiment of &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry&rdquo;.</p>
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