Songs From the Creaky Chair
Aug. 30th, 2013 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brian_campo in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
birthright_rpgIn a back corner of the UNLV student union, a baby grand sat unused and ever so slightly out of tune. In a display of misguided generosity, a housekeeper had set a basket of artificial ferns on it, lending an imitation of life. The fronds of that were dust-laden, too. Brian sat on the bench, which swayed under his weight, and lifted the cover to reveal the keys: white tinged yellow, black gone dull. He liked to tinker with it on Fridays when everyone left for the weekend. Nobody cared; in his jeans and ratty Mondale-Ferraro ‘84 t-shirt, he looked as much like a student as the next guy.
This instrument provided his only access to a full-sized piano. He enjoyed the chance to stretch his fingers and reach for notes at the far ends of the register. When he was alone at the piano, he thought a lot about being a kid, about learning to play. He remembered the monotony of practicing basic chords and scales, the certainty that he would never be taught anything more exciting than Little Brown Jug, and how his Supreme Ultimate Goal was the Peanuts theme song. Later, the pride of his first “grown-up song”, Beethoven’s Bagatelle in A Minor, Op. 59, and the thrill of figuring out that he didn’t have to wait for sheet music – he could make up songs. And so “Brian’s Brains in D Minor” was born.
Over the years, he had written many more, some for the Fraying Nerves, some for himself. The most recent was called, predictably, “Hands Gone Ape-Shit.” He hunched his shoulders and picked out the melody.
[Thread: Open to Julianna]
This instrument provided his only access to a full-sized piano. He enjoyed the chance to stretch his fingers and reach for notes at the far ends of the register. When he was alone at the piano, he thought a lot about being a kid, about learning to play. He remembered the monotony of practicing basic chords and scales, the certainty that he would never be taught anything more exciting than Little Brown Jug, and how his Supreme Ultimate Goal was the Peanuts theme song. Later, the pride of his first “grown-up song”, Beethoven’s Bagatelle in A Minor, Op. 59, and the thrill of figuring out that he didn’t have to wait for sheet music – he could make up songs. And so “Brian’s Brains in D Minor” was born.
Over the years, he had written many more, some for the Fraying Nerves, some for himself. The most recent was called, predictably, “Hands Gone Ape-Shit.” He hunched his shoulders and picked out the melody.
[Thread: Open to Julianna]
no subject
on 2013-09-01 05:34 am (UTC)"‘Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta’," he said, quoting a favorite passage from the Aeneid. "I took a few years of Latin in high school,” he said. “I must have thought it made me look deep or something.” He scratched the stubble on his cheek. “Nothing deep about getting a D plus.”
*If I cannot move Heaven, I shall bend Hell.
no subject
on 2013-09-01 05:51 am (UTC)"Sometimes it's easier to bend hell," Julianna said. "If it's easier to get there than it is to heaven, the place must be a lot more flexible." She looked down at her ringless hands, steepled her fingers beneath her chin.
"Don't fancy yourself a scholar, then?" she inquired. "The classroom isn't for everyone by any means, but even I've heard of the 'school of life'." And there her thoughts went, drifting towards Devin again. She roped them in, then tried to pin them in place.
"If you don't have a profession, do you at least perform your music in public?"
no subject
on 2013-09-01 06:19 am (UTC)He heard a door open and shut as an office across the lobby closed down for the weekend. A woman in heels hurried to the door, as if afraid she might get roped into another phone call.
“I know a couple of people who take classes in the Art department.”
no subject
on 2013-09-01 06:46 am (UTC)The click-clack of heels faded into silence as the door leading outside swung shut, and Julianna picked up her water bottle to drain a third of the contents. She was going to light a fire under that realtor when she got back to her suite, weekend hours be damned. It was past time she had her own lodgings again.
"I wish you good luck with your composition, Brian. It seems as if you've already worked very hard on it."
no subject
on 2013-09-01 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2013-09-01 07:18 am (UTC)The world needed beauty to make it bearable, after all.