andave's place

I'm entering this short story in the local fair:

The Maestro
Since the first time she had listened to his music, she had loved it passionately. The Maestro became her hero, and she scrimped and saved to buy all things related to the score. At the music shop, she met a man who struck up a conversation with her. Seeing the discs in her hands, he told her he was a violinist in The Maestro’s orchestra. She begged him to introduce her to the Maestro as another violinist, but he refused, only bending enough to let her copy his sheet music. The two had become firm friends after that, visiting or calling once a week.
Then he called her, asking if she wanted to replace him. His mother two states away was ill. She knew the material; would she be willing? Tomorrow at nine in the morning at the symphony hall.
Grabbing her violin, she practiced until late at night.
The moment her alarm rang she was up. Her excited hands could hardly pull on her formal clothes. Her violin went into its case, polished and tuned with care.
She went downstairs, calling friendly greeting to the regulars who visited the store that her parents managed. Her car waited outside.
She was going to play for The Maestro!
She found the symphony hall easily, having passed it many times and daydreaming about what it was like inside. Trepidation arose as she mounted the steps. What if she wasn’t good enough? It had been a year since she played with an orchestra. The only thing she knew with confidence was that she could play the music.
Then it hit her. She had a three-minute solo. In front of the Maestro. She would be first violin!
But she knew the music. The thought comforted her as she seated herself in her friends’ chair.
To her surprise, all the musicians came and introduced themselves to her. Evidently the first violin had told them about her. She didn’t know if that made her more or less nervous, especially if the Maestro knew.
Her nerves were keyed up to fever pitch as the Maestro ascended the conductor’s box. He nodded at her genially, remarking that the original first violin had assured them of her prowess. Blushing, she answered that it was an honor to work with her favorite composer.
And so it began.
The Maestro tapped the stand with his baton. On cue, the strings began. The music rose to greet the lofty ceiling of the symphony hall. She let herself sink into the thundering music, her fingers playing the piece from vivid memory, drifting into the tides of the music as they surged and receded. So many pictures of heroes, of brave deeds, of lords and ladies flashed in her mind. The music thrummed in her veins as she played her solo, exalted and exhilarated by the purity and grandeur of the music.
It didn’t take long for the piece to finish. She looked at the Maestro, breathless. He was smiling.
“You’ll do quite well here, I think.”

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This is a separate story, of sorts, that I wrote recently. In it I wanted to evoke pictures, vivid imagery. I hope I did.

Swallowing the World
Snatches of lonesome saxophones. Chords struck aimlessly on a piano. Snippets of melody sound through closed doors as I walk, my footsteps reverberating through the deserted hallway. I stop at the door – only my classroom, but so much more besides. At my push, the doors open to reveal my professor, his dear old grey head nodding welcomingly. Taking my arm, he wordlessly escorts me to the seat in the exact middle of the front row.
I don’t know why he offered to play for me, but he did, that day. He sat down at the piano and started playing. As I watched him, I couldn’t help feeling that I didn’t matter, that nothing mattered to him as he played. Me, the room, the school, the world. Only he and his music echoing its solitary notes, a man and a piano on top of an empty world.
His music wafted round the world with that first crystalline note, sounding elegantly in the silence unmarred by words. It claimed the room first before spilling into the hall beyond, yet his continued virtuosity pushed it beyond mere sound limited by the rules of nature. It flowed onward, whispering through all the corridors and rooms of the school, growing in a primal ascent to crash out of the school with a sudden high note sounding clarion in the hush, the note of victory after battle. Soon the street, the surrounding areas, the city, even, rang with his melody, coming now in wild array from his unstoppable playing. The city was unable to contain the bleeding melody; it escaped from its confines, engulfing the continent in its inescapable embrace. Finally it reached the sea, lingering lovingly on the sand for moments before seeping into the sea and spreading wildfire round the earth and sending the leaves scattering before its thundering sound carried by the wind. The wind carried it to the sky, and yet it still reached onward, swallowing the sun and moon until the music held dominion over them and made them rise and set in measured rhythm. Day followed night, night followed day, until like the whelming flood the music dominated time and stopped it.
Only when it controlled all did the discordant note of stagnancy enter its dire note of warning into the melody, into the air. Even the unearthly music wasn’t allowed to last forever. Life reclaimed itself, pushing out the elegant sobriety of the music until all that was left was one single high note, dying away into the minutes before being swallowed up by the sudden hubbub of car horns, dog barks, cat yowls, flowerpots crash, and all the chaotic din of
Life.