The music first claimed me in November of 2006. It gripped my soul, at once ending and renewing everything in my life, pounding through my mind like a symphony orchestra sustaining a dissonant chord that echoed through every atom of my being. The intensity caused a physical pain in my skull, a reverberation that still lingers even now, in each letter of each word that finds its way through the deafening music that is my constant companion.
Yet there was a time when I knew silence, when life was filled with words rather than sounds. I studied English for three years in college, relishing the contemporary prose of southern authors such as Cormac McCarthy, Harry Crews, and Larry Brown. There I discovered the concept of the grotesque; the strength it possessed, its ability to throw open new windows of perception. And I was happy. Everything felt right.
I met Denise in one of my introductory Spanish classes. Neither of us had any real interest in the subject other than passing it for a gen ed requirement, and before long we began studying together. The music changes when I think back to memories of those first days together; it becomes subdued, lessened, as if the conductor of my soul’s personal symphony knows what she meant to me. It becomes almost bearable, if only for a short while, as long as I clearly picture her face and smile.
I remember how often I used to wish for the years to pass, for college to end. She’d always respond in the same way.
“Savor it, hon.”
“Come on.” I sighed. “All I want is to start my life.”
She smacked my shoulder. “And what do you call this? Everyone always wants to start their life. Well, here’s the news, it’s been going on for awhile now.”
“You know what I mean.”
Denise stepped up against me and pressed her lips against mine, teasingly. “I know. But, like I said, enjoy what you’ve got.”
On the night the music arrived, we’d been out to see the movie Stranger than Fiction. It was her second time seeing it, but I can’t say it left any great impression on me. Then again, I hadn’t exactly been paying close attention. Afterwards, we went back to my apartment and sat around for awhile watching television. I remember her chapstick smelled like strawberries, and I kept leaning over to kiss the top of her head while Whose Line played through reruns. I still find it strange that everything about the night comes back into focus so clearly. I can almost see the way the light reflected off her glasses and glittered in speckles across her purple sweater.
“Do you really have to leave?” I asked her.
She nodded, only half paying attention. “Have to be up for an exam in my 8am class.”
“What class?”
“Economics.”
I kissed her cheek. “You could skip that.”
She half laughed. “I’m already close to failing, hon.”
“I’m sure you already studied for hours. You’ll be fine.” I squeezed her tight against me.
Denise pushed away, but gently. “Not if I sleep in like I always do when I’m here.”
I knew I’d lost, and she got up to grab her jacket when the next set of commercials came on. So I did the only thing possible and began to pout.
“Not going to work,” she taunted and came back over. “Besides, I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch.” She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss. She even tasted like strawberries. “Eleven, alright?”
“I guess I’ll be up by then.”
“What will you ever do if you get a class that starts before noon?”
“Skip. A lot.”
~*~
I sat up most of the night listening to music after failing to fall asleep several times. The procrastination of assignments was building steadily as the semester came to a close, and my research papers haunted my dreams. To relax I tried re-reading a bit of McCarthy’s The Road while listening to some classical music. I remember one of Lizst’s etudes, La Campanella came up as my music shuffled through random as I was beginning to drift off again.
Trapped between sleep and wakefulness, my mind shifted to images of avalanches of gray snow cascading down the side of a steep mountain. All I could do was stare up as the powdery stuff came tumbling down, my legs weighted down by snow already settled around my legs. Just as I was about to be consumed, the music blared out a long, loud trill of notes at the top of the piano’s register. Groggily I got up from my bed and pressed the power button on the computer, sending it through its shutdown process. I vaguely remember crawling back into bed, not bothering to get under the covers before I finally fell into true sleep.
In my dreams I witnessed the same avalanche again, but this time I was soaring high above it. The sun was warm on my face as I hovered so far above the ground, and distantly I could hear the sound of a piano trilling in its upper register, some unknown pianist pounding powerfully on the keys, racing back and forth across the instrument’s range. The melody grew louder, hammering discordant notes through my mind, sending me spiraling downward toward the icy peaks.
The pitch grew in intensity, my eardrums reverberating painfully with the sound. And then I woke. The sound still surrounded me, the same high trill of notes, growing ever louder. Clasping my hands to my ears, I slid out of bed and stumbled over to my computer desk, desperately pressing the power button on my speakers. The tiny display light went off, but the music continued. I had to wonder if I was still dreaming, surrounded as I was by the harsh dissonance. The pain was almost unimaginable, and so I lurched over to the wall and pounded on it with my fists.
“Turn it down!” I screamed, and the music grew even louder, covering my voice.
I started thinking of what to do next, wondering if this was something that warranted contacting the police. And as I tried focusing, the music dimmed slightly and changed key. Fragments of a Chopin etude I’d known well as a child spun through my mind, but it was distorted, repeating itself constantly. As my attention centered on the music again, it grew even louder, powerful bass notes sending shudders through my limbs.
Dear god, I realized. It was in my head. Could I still be asleep? By then I’d woken enough to be aware of my surroundings once again. There was no dreamlike haze and I suddenly grew very afraid. Strings entered the ensemble playing in my mind, piercing violins, horridly out of tune and shrieking their highest pitches. Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on silence, and for a short while the music faded again, but refused to vanish. I tried fastening my mind on a hundred different things, but I always slipped back into the music again.
For the rest of the night, I couldn’t sleep despite how tired I felt. There were times when peaceful melodies began and repeated ceaselessly, but none of it was comforting. All of the sounds were distorted and metallic. I wondered if I was losing my mind, but I still felt sane, whatever that might mean.
~*~
“What do you mean you hear music?” Denise asked.
“It never stops. The same fragments keep running through my mind.” Even as we sat at lunch, I was harassed by a melody that sounded so familiar yet refused to be named. I’d found that conversation helped banish the noise along with focusing my concentration elsewhere, but the music was always there, like some radio station that kept playing in the background everywhere I went.
“That sounds a bit strange.” Denise kept throwing me odd glances as she ate her sandwich.
“It’s driving me crazy.”
“So you mean you’ve got some song stuck in your head?”
I dropped my head into my hands and leaned against the table. “No. Not like that.” I’d skipped all my classes that day and hadn’t bothered showering. No doubt she thought I was either insane or joking. “It won’t end.” I looked up into her eyes. “You’re the psych major. Tell me what to do.”
“Hon, I’d love to, but you’re not making much sense. You probably just need sleep.”
“Denise, if I’m already insane then this is going to drive me there before the day’s out.”
She looked sympathetic, and I don’t even know what I expected of her, whether I expected her to simply reach across the table and tell me it would be alright, or if she’d tell me I’d obviously lost my mind. “Go get some sleep, hon. You’ll feel better.”
Frustrated and tired, I got up from the table and walked outside without saying another word. The music surged once again, somehow incorporating the harsh sounds of car engines echoing off the streets. The effect of the noise was almost claustrophobic, giving me a sensation of being trapped in a very small room with a stereo system raging at full volume. I stood frozen there for several minutes, terrified of moving; terrified that I wouldn’t be able to move, until it became too much to stand. I fled to the nearest building, our Fine Arts center.
The walls were covered with student paintings, many of them scenic landscapes and it seemed as though each painting I glanced altered the music in subtle ways. It was a curious effect, as when I stared at a portrait of a summer scene alongside a lake, the music became richer, filled with bass notes and long slow rhythms. Yet when I glanced a snowy forest landscape, strings howled in my mind like great gusts of wind. Echoes of a long forgotten Chopin nocturne surfaced in my mind upon the sight of a nighttime cityscape portrait.
Though I was still thoroughly terrified and exhausted, a strange curiosity fell upon me. I found myself wandering downstairs to the basement where some of the practice rooms were located. Stepping inside one, I was face to face with the instrument that started the nightmarish symphonies in my mind. Sitting astride the bench, I let my fingers hover above the piano’s ivory keys. With my thumb, I played middle C quietly, but the effect sent spasms through my entire body.
As soon as the tone sounded, I felt as though I could see the note suspended in air in front of me. Each of the overtones spread before my vision like a line extending upward from the sunken key. And it came into tune. Dissonance was replaced with a warm sound, the music shaping itself around middle C into a wondrous open chord.
When I was a child, I’d suffered through piano lessons, though I never really took to the instrument. The basics of scales came back to me, but little else resurfaced. So I played a simple triad chord with my right hand. Again the sensation was almost visual as the three tones spoke, revealing a complex mesh of tones hanging in front of me. Then it truly began. Strings and winds sounded in my mind against the simple chord. They sang to me in such a melodius manner that I forgot the pains of my earlier addiction. For easily a half hour I sat in front of the piano, playing simple scales and chords, yet to my ears they were grand symphonies of possibilities. Harmonies and counter-melodies I’d never imagined sprang through my ears, surrounding me in a music that was at once familiar and hauntingly strange.
~*~
Over the next weeks, the rest of my life seemed to vanish beyond the boundaries of my newfound music. Classes no longer mattered, and every day I found myself locked away in one of the practice rooms in the basement of the Fine Arts center. Surrounded by everchanging patterns of sound, I lost track of all time. For all I knew, I might have been playing the same chord repeatedly, but each time a different melody flowed through the notes of the overtones. A new possibility revealed itself and I was constantly in awe of what I heard. Days must have passed in this reverie before I ever even dreamed of trying to capture the sounds of what I heard.
Entire symphonies would play for my own enjoyment and terror found its way to me again when I feared that it could leave me as suddenly as it had come. My nights were spent in front of my computer with a notation program constantly opened. At first it seemed impossible to recreate the intricacies that I would hear and try to capture in memory, but over time it slowly began to come together. Whenever I pressed the playback button, the music I’d managed to set down correctly managed to draw out the symphonies as they had been, and I could change wrong pitches and found myself capable of slowly fleshing out the harmonies of these strange illusory songs.
Yet whenever I stepped away from the piano or the composition tool, the world became discordant again. My own breathing triggered rasping noises that sounded like mutilated cellos. Stepping outside near the road was a constantly painful experience, and so I would hurry back and forth from my apartment, trying to isolate myself as quickly as possible. One day, Denise confronted me with the reality of what my life had become.
“Are you alright, hon?” She caught me on the way out of the Fine Arts center. Her voice triggered a brilliant half diminished seventh chord that led into a fantastically sad prelude.
“I’m feeling a bit better.” It was hard to speak while keeping the music in my mind.
“I’ve barely seen you in a week.”
“I’m sorry, Denise. I’ve just been so busy.” I wanted to tell her how spectacular it felt to be surrounded as I was by such beautiful sounds, but the right words refused to surface.
“Honey, I’m really worried.”
I couldn’t help laughing a bit at that. “Don’t go worrying. God, I feel better than I have in ages.”
“Have you gone to any of your classes?”
I wanted to explain how pointless classes were. How none of it mattered when such beauty was constantly filling my life. The quivering in her voice sent a harsh spasm of noise resounding through my head, though, and I couldn’t help backing away slightly.
“What’s wrong?” She asked, sending another wave of pain through my skull.
“Stop talking,” I replied, wanting for nothing than the pain to end.
“Stop talking?” Her voice was ever increasing in pitch and I could see that tears were beginning to fill her eyes.
“It hurts,” I tried to explain. I just wanted her to understand, but before I could say anything more, she was turning around and headed for the door.
I chased after her briefly, but when I came to the door, the noise from outside assaulted me to such a degree that I fell backwards into the foyer and scrambled backwards away from the door. No part of me wanted to leave the situation as it stood, but there was no way I could face the music waiting outside.
So I retreated into my lair.
The music was different now. It was no less beautiful, but there was a tortured, sad theme interwoven with all of it. In fact, it became even more beautiful, bringing me to tears several times throughout the afternoon.
That evening I attempted to call Denise, but before she even could pick up the ringing tone of the phone sent waves of pain through my chest.
~*~
“You need to get help,” Denise insisted.
“Help for what?”
“Whatever the hell is going on inside your mind!”
This was the latest attempt at conversation we’d managed. Each time she rose her voice, terrible pain flooded my mind.
I rose my hand up to quiet her. “Please, Denise, not so loud.”
“What’s happened to you?” She was starting to cry again. I didn’t think I could handle the sound of her sobs again. Each one felt like a blow to the stomach and left me struggling to breathe.
“I don’t know, but it’s been wonderful.”
“Wonderful? How can you call it wonderful? You have to be failing all of your classes, and I haven’t seen you for days at a time.”
Clutching the bridge of my nose, I could only reply, “None of that matters.”
Her voice suddenly became quiet, granting some relief. “None of that matters?” She stood there, staring at me, tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. “Fine,” she whispered.
She turned away and stormed out of my apartment, slamming the door behind her forcefully enough to literally knock me backwards onto the couch. Anger raged through my body as I fought to bring the cacophonous music into check once again. Yet now the anger released a new kind of music. Powerful and percussive, I raced to my computer to traps the strange rhythmic pattern while it lingered.
~*~
Weeks passed, and I spent almost every waking moment sitting in front of a computer or the piano. Food became strictly a necessity and I found myself ordering pizza often or stocking the freezer strictly with microwavable food. The music consumed me, bathing me in an intensity that had never before been present in my life. Christmas break I spent huddled in the apartment, dodging calls from my family, making whatever excuses possible to avoid talking for very long.
It’s a strange fact that I didn’t realize I’d lost Denise until February arrived. Failing to register for any spring courses, I’d no doubt been removed from the university roster, and time really possessed very little meaning. I’d captured countless shortened pieces already, but I was nearing completion of my first longer composition. It was a four movement symphony, a progression of moods and each time I listened to the gradually thickening theme, I saw images played out before my eyes.
In one of them I saw Denise. Her face was streaked with tears, and I found that her voice wordlessly sounded through the music itself. The violins traced a descending movement that captured her hair, and the clarinets and flutes captured the details of her eyes, spinning their melody into the shape of her irises. The brass instruments drew a smooth, mellow outline of her face and features, and the cellos and bass completed the image, portraying her warm, full lips. As I finished the movement, I realized I was crying as well. I realized then what I’d lost, and that the music that took me to such heights drew so powerfully upon her image.
From then onward, I find every melody I write reflects upon her, or of some moment we spent together. Even braving the phone, she no longer answers, and I can find no way to contact her. Each moment of my days becomes bittersweet as I continue piecing together my grand composition. Sorrow has become the most prominent theme, infecting previously uplifting phrases. When I finally finished, the music remained, but it faded into the distance as though my grand purpose had been completed.
Listening the results, I think that all my sorrow found its release through each note, and now it has all been said. The sense of loss still remains, but all the sounds I hear are based upon minor and diminished triads. The day I finished my creation, I burned a simple recording onto a CD. The electronic instruments hardly do it justice, but I at least still hear the magic within.
As I walked to Denise’s apartment, the music on the disc played through my mind one last time. It left me in tears as I reached her door, and I felt like it would be impossible to face her looking as I did. Instead, I took a piece of notebook paper I’d ripped from my binder and scrawled a short message. Then I wrapped the CD in the paper and carefully slid it into her mail slot.
The walk home was oddly silent, despite still constantly hearing the music in the background. Instead of the cars and people, though, I heard the wind, a great flute in my mind, pierced with sweet snatches of melodic birdsong. A new melody began playing in my mind, building out of the depths of minor tonality, striving toward the upper limits of pitch. It surged with life, and hope, and left me smiling with tears in my eyes. I hoped it was a sign, and thought back to the note I’d left Denise. I hoped she understood, but I knew her well enough to believe that she would.
Despite it all, I smiled, and the music cradled me.
For you, Denise. My Muse.
