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Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Virginia
Gender: Female
Posts: 16
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Composing
Gregory Horne sat at his piano in the commonly mono-chromatic studio situated neatly in the corner of his den. It was an unusual position – his back and dainty shoulders stiff, his head bent at his slender neck, his long fingers tapping over the keys, and one lanky leg tucked under his ass as a prop.
The English professor felt like a flamingo in the position; like the ones he had seen on that long trip to South Africa his Sophie had begged him to go on. She had marveled at their beauty, the ivory feathers lending slowly to a soft shade of pink, ever deepening to the hot hue that Sophie loved best. He, in his sullen, cynical nature, thought they looked ridiculous – birds trying dumbly to dance, undulating their heads and balancing on that one, thin stilt. Still, he had pretended mock adoration for his beautiful wife, reveling in her joy. Her smile looked as if it could break her face wide open it was so large, and with a poet’s weakness, he crumbled under it. He fell into that smile, ignoring the mosquitoes buzzing greedily at the back of his neck as he sweated, his body surrendering to the African heat.
Dwelling on flamingos, Sophie’s smile, and the hot African sun, his thin fingers struck a chord, his eyes squeezing shut in hope. A reverberation of the soul? A slight tremor in his brain?
The chord echoed through-out the small room, bouncing off the walls and finding their places deep at the ear drum where they could be whittled away at and examined.
He felt the pressure of the various instruments gleaming at him – groovy electric guitars that found refuge there, a classical stand-up bass that towered behind him, a sultry saxophone sitting untouched in the corner, and a persistent cello beside the door. They were whispering to him - one melodious string of voices saying, “You can do this Greg. You’ve got it Greg.”
He pulled his gangly fingers away.
No, that wasn’t right.
Even at the age of forty-one, he still felt like an insecure teenager here at the piano – back to that ginger-headed kid with the long hair and band t-shirts, rebelling quietly while hiding his poetry and lyrics in his closet at night. The piano broke down everything he had learned of music theory. Hell, it broke down everything he had learned about Art. It made him seventeen again, fumbling with the bra clasps on his blue-lollipop headed girlfriend, that unmistakable perfume of pot-smoke filling his nostrils as his punk-rock queen clumsily thrust her hips into his raging hard-on. She had a perfectly vintage face, and he had watched in wonder as it lost its composure, the lips parting and her eyes closing as she gave-way to a sigh. They were royalty with one another, breathing heavily and moaning as they clung awkwardly – so in love.
Greg's fingers trickled away along the ivory keys, imagining the ivory skin stretching over her sharp spine. His breathing hitched. His chest rose and fell heavily as he bit down gently on his lower lip.
No, not her.
Seventeen. Seventeen. That was the age his brother Joseph died. That was probably the hardest three weeks in his life. Joseph in that hospital bed, his shaggy blonde head shaved to reveal a long line of stitches at the skull. Greg’s mother crying, sobbing as the doctor told them…
His fingers mechanically jerked away from the keys. That was to be saved for another day – for his cello.
Feeling lost and forlorn, he sat back for a moment. There was a tickling in the arch of the foot planted neatly under his ass, and he frowned. Numb. Great.
Composing was just absolutely thrilling.
Gregory Horne stood, stretched, and slowly mozied his way around the studio, wondering why he even chose such composing as a pass time. It would have been much easier to go up to his study adjacent to his bedroom, sit at his neat desk, turn on his perfect computer, and let words take him away for a few hours. He even had a stack of papers that hadn’t been touched, and his students were expecting them back any day now. What would he tell them?
Still, something held him in the studio.
His two Westies stood at their gate at the bottom of the stairs, and he listened to them whine. They were his only company left in the house since his divorce, and their cries made him feel all the more desolate. The house felt empty – too large for the only noise there to be his breathing and the two whining fur-faces at the gate.
“Baxter, Mazie, it’s alright. I’ll be up in a minute.”
Greg sounded much older than he wished to be. His lanky body stood in the doorway, bent slightly in frustration as his eyes surveyed the hallway leading to the stairs. He felt like his mind was bent as well, buckling under almost tectonic pressure. If he remembered anything from Geology, the mind would fracture and slip – never crumble. There’d just be another San Andres in the gray matter somewhere for his inner child to skip and jump over.
The professor had felt this way before some-where. Back in his mind he searched, heaving a sigh as the Westies shoved their tiny faces through the fence, all too excited to catch even this slight glimpse of their master. His mind-fingers groped, shoving past unexpected thoughts, carefully traveling down specific roads, pulling away the long grasses of memories, and dragging through the mud with sweat in his eyes.
Something was forming behind his closed lids.
Sweat in his eyes – the tropical heat smothering him – his shirt sticking to him as he walked. The Westies peaking at him through their barrier – dark little faces with wide foreheads and full lips peaking at their new teacher behind a broken fence.
Suddenly, Gregory Horne had a revelation.
New Guinea. He had forgotten New Guinea.
He shuddered for a moment, turned to walk to his piano, paused, and began walking again.
New Guinea.
He felt a pulse in his fingers as he sat down at the piano, his mind crowded with the Papuan language. Hard constantans, strange rolls of the tongue, and vowels slipping between, making it art.
How could he have forgotten New Guinea?
Stretching his fingers out slowly over the keys, his eyes slid half shut as the pulse made its way up his arms, slowly working its greedy way up into his neck, and finally finding refuge in his brain.
He felt the sun on his face and the nervous anticipation in his stomach as his fingers pressed the first chord. They had all been nervous – five fresh-faced young adults who had all joined the Peace Corp straight out of college. They were armed only with their BA’s, idealism, and what little bit of training they had in the six week process before they got shipped out. They were immunized and healthy, bright and conditioned. But they were never ready.
Working his way through major chords and juxtaposed rhythms, Greg remembered the school. It sat in shambles deep within the humid jungle, looking wounded by the harsh environment. The walk there was torturous; it was two miles of a thin trail that winded in and out of the New Guinea tropics. He would watch Angie as they huffed it together – see the sweat rolling off her neck and down between her small breasts. With her alternatively shaved head and strong, slender frame, she looked like a warrior. They both were warriors to him, crossing into separate lives to teach in a remote, New Guinea world.
Falling into the music, Gregory Horne forgot his notepad, forgot his pen, forgot his studio, and dumped himself into a bed – a slender bed with coarse sheets in a suffocating hut.
Malaria.
Greg remembered the odd tingling sensation on his skin and the way the arthralgia had set in. Angie had held his hand, talking him through hours of severe shivering as he yelled for Joseph. The days were foggy and feverish - the world moving in steamy shadows across the thatched ceiling and through Angie’s face.
A tall, dark man towered at the base of his bed at times, chanting low into the long hours of the night. His voice would swell and crash on Greg’s ears, pulling him into feverish dreams and visions where he would find himself – his soul - over and over again. Gregory Horne would marvel at this creature of a man through half-lidded eyes and swear in his mind that he was Death.
Greg’s heart-rate quickened as his fingers worked through triplets and a crescendo, pulling himself to his own fermata.
New Guinea.
The remote village. The impoverished population. The knowledge-thirsty children.
Something uncontrollable was swelling inside of Greg. How many more villages? How many more impoverished populations? How many more children starving for the almighty education?
Gregory Horne suddenly saw the world, in its vast proportions. He saw it turning on its axis; the trillions of faces staring up at him from every remote corner; every life winding in and out of each other, each affecting the other in some subtle way that was either planned by fate or random power of humanity. He blatantly felt the weight of it on his chest, shoving him onto his back and leaving him vulnerable. He finally pulled himself from the tiny microcosm that was his life to see the big picture, and Gregory Horne, for the first time in his life, felt very small.
Greg pulled himself away from the piano slowly, breathing roughly as he tried desperately to grasp onto the unusually plain studio around him. Nothing held him, so he sat staring at the black and ivory keys gleaming at him, holding to himself and New Guinea.
He realized he forgotten to write down a single note – that he had been composing himself.
This, above all other things, made Gregory Horne smile.
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