Symphony Upon Deaf Ears

By Nina Winemiller

David stood, his violin in one hand and his bow in the other. At any moment, the curtains would open, rushing the stagnant backstage air over him. He was told it was a full house, but he could never be sure until he saw them packed-in, just past the bright lights.

The backstage reeked of dust, drifting down from the rafters. Many of the floorboards shifted when tread upon, and the curtain still used the weights system as opposed to the more modern hydraulics. It was not the most logical of places to perform, but there was sentimental value throughout. From its age-darkened burgundy curtains to its greying green room, all of it evoked memories. Among the most vivid, the subtle shift of bone beneath soft skin weighed down and bent to time; the slow pump of exalted blood-turned-rosin on an old man’s heartstrings.

It was an old theatre, turned symphony hall for just this one night, just as it had many years ago for that old man, when David had also played. Even then, the dusty mural on the ceiling had seemed to rival the Sistine; its flaking pastel portraying scenes of fantasy and flight, more than able to capture the wide-eyes of a youth. No doubt the forever-still dancers and angels were familiar to all, and to some over-used, but they remained assured in their long-lost beauty.

This night, he was supposedly playing a set of his most highly regarded pieces; the audience expected this. It was why they came, after all, to this decrepit place, to hear all of the most standard of David Hargreave’s songs in his very last performance for the professional stage.

The last piece that he played would be completely unknown, completely unexpected, and perfectly woven into the set; no pause or expression to reveal its identity until the audience had already been captured by it.

David had this song in his head since the day he realized what music truly was, the first time he had picked up his most prized possessions, at the time, covered in dust and rosin. Tonight, he would share it at last, and retire at long last and at what seemed such a young age from the light of his life. He couldn’t take it anymore.

He couldn’t take the fact that the people he gave all his love to only applauded at the end. That his life was dedicated to this thing of which he had only the simplest knowledge. That all he felt upon the stage and let loose into the music, he could not even hear. All those feelings had been building inside him; he wanted to know the music as the audience knew it. He couldn’t. It was impossible, only an ever-dimming dream for him. The closest he could get was the ringing in his fingertips, the palpable bubbling up of these things that were leading towards tonight.

This would be the climax of his life, that moment when the sound stopped, but the vibrations of noise continued on for just that extra second in the palm of his hands. That moment, it would be his alone and was only a curtain pull away. He was ready to release his burdens. he would be standing upon this stage. Even more surprising, was how much and how little time had passed since he first found the violin.

For the majority of his life, he had been called a phenomenon, a 20th century Beethoven, a “prodigy despite the odds.” People were full of the belief that he played his music for their sakes, for their enjoyment; that he expressed himself for their benefit, to beat some manner of odds stacked against him.

By his own admission, David’s reasons were much more selfish than that. He picked up that violin because he was satisfying a curiosity. He played it into the night because he was intrigued. He had to. He had no choice in the matter. In the same way that one cannot live without air, he could not live without the movement of his arm carrying the bow along the lines, stringing together his own personal symphony of sounds that caused the indescribable feeling in him, a feeling no words could ensnare, even though he could not hear it.

There were times when he raged, when pouring life onto those four strings would bring no justice. When he pulsed and tore at his useless ears until they bled and stained his hands. At those times, David thought of throwing it all away, smashing his violin into the floor, snapping his bow. He came close, but every time he picked them up and made as if to thrust them to the floor, he realized that he could only ever hold them in a way poised to play.

He was imprisoned by the very things that gave him freedom. Things that allowed him to float on air, gave him the feeling in his hands that urged him on, and the music in his head that would never cease.

David remembered the cool morning air, and the sun shining through the windows and causing the surface of the ocean waves to reflect its gold. The cold marble chilled his young bare feet as he approached his grandfather’s violin case. The rosewood display encased fourteen violins of notable quality, from renowned Stradivarius to the tonal del Gesu. How young he was, everything in the memory seemed larger than life; colors were brighter, the furnishings and the violins towered over him. He could not recall where he had found the last violin, or whether he had pulled it from the display himself, but he did remember the feeling of it in his hands, which he relived every day. He remembered the sticky rosin dust coating his hands, floating in the sunlit windows. But the sheen of the polished wood could still be seen beneath the residue: a bright white-gold against dark mahogany brown. It was unforgettable and fleeting all at once.

At that time, he had not known what to do with it, this precious thing. He had seen his grandfather play, the old decrepit man suddenly filled with vigor and youth. He would stand straighter, cane placed aside in favor of wood and horsehair; the lines on his face would, for the duration of a single piece, no longer appear so deep. It was this that planted the seed in David’s mind, whose vines pulled him into the room overlooking the shore to pluck the thin wire strings suspended over rich wood, vines that pulled upon his wrists like puppet strings. His hands had met that sound.

It had been such a long and arduous road. He would have never thought, twenty years ago, that

For his grandfather, the sound was met through the ears; sound was fleeting, as well as the youth brought forth by it. David has always regretted never knowing his grandfather’s voice. He could only recall memories of his grandfather: an old man, rich and young at heart who was always hiding a smile. He and his grandfather rarely spoke in words; David, unwilling to stretch his under-used and underdeveloped voice, and his grandfather rarely needing to exchange words in order to speak. It made the rare exchange of words more memorable in David’s mind. Still tuning his grandfather’s instrument – now hisbehind the stage, he recalled the words given to him just before his first performance in this same theatre.

“Both of us are painters of a sort, David. A painter paints his pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.” The old man looked at him, his expression open but undecipherable to David, who was only focusing on the movement of his grandfather’s lips waiting to catch the added words, she did not speak. She was still, long enough for David to realize what he had done without thinking, but then she placed her hand on his, encouraging him not to pull away. From then on, when she stood mere feet away from him singing as she tuned her cello, he could feel the sound of her voice. It was then he learned the truth that lay in the running gag of all string musicians: the most skilled cello players could only ever be women. When he signed this to his grandfather, the old man could not hide his fond laughter, and then relayed the only thing upon which he and David ever disagreed. “One day, you should tell Clara this; she wants only to sing, it seems, like too many other young girls.” But the sound in his hands which reawakened with her every word would not let him ever wish to remove her voice from his life.

“Sometimes even despite silence.” He then gently took the instrument shared between them and plucked the strings. “Perfectly in tune, as always,” he had said, and then walked to his seat in the house.

Most of the sounds that had comprised David’s life had entered through his hands. His first voice was no exception. Perhaps he had felt other voices, but none as recognizable as hers. It was the only other sound that called to his fingertips. The words he read off her lips he could not bring to the surface, he could only recall the same urge, the same curiosity, that bade him pluck on thin wire string; unknowingly, he had placed his fingertips over the side of her neck, softly.

All too soon, despite the silent plea in his hands, her voice was gone and all he retained was the memory in his hands. Throughout his life, he found himself remembering it once more, though fading. He only had the words he read off her lips, not even her own:

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

She was Clara, another one of his grandfather’s pupils. She did not startle, but had David looked at her eyes, he would have seen plainly the words

For years after she left, David considered himself in limbo. He could not remember much, only his hands becoming calloused from playing and faces changing colors under bright lights. He could not remember breathing, eating, or sleeping. It seemed like a dream. He did not notice when all the facets of his life became dull; when two disheartened souls released their son to the life he was not prepared for, when flames engulfed his sanctuary over the water and he could only save what was already clutched in his hand, and when he was the only one left standing below the willow trees in May above his buried mentor. Only he, the violin, and the bow.

And then, after years, seeing graffiti on a head stone, he awoke free from his dream ready to restart.

“Repeat after me: I am free.”

The moments between David and true freedom were dwindling as he began to apply rosin to the hairs of his bow in order to play for the full house. He remembered the first time that he sold out every seat in a symphony house, learning there had even been a scramble for tickets. It surprised him to learn that he didn’t care much. He would have played even to a house of empty seats. He didn’t care whether or not people liked him or his music, or if he sold out every house he ever played for. All he cared for was the scent of rosin dust left in the air, sticking the sound in his hands, and the ringing he felt throughout his entire self. He played simply for the sake of hoping to quench that undeniable thirst inside himself. It commanded him to play, so he could do nothing, aside from obey.

The years he had spent in a trance were erased. He could no longer deny himself what he wanted, what he needed; it just so happened to be what everyone else wanted of him. They wanted emotion, they wanted youth, they wanted to be renewed. They wanted music, and that was something David could give.

lights to haze euphorically. David had ducked into a small bar, never to see the fairy lights that flew that night. There were a few patrons scattered around small tables clutching both bottles and the safe haven of the roof over their heads. A few more entered, also with the intent of waiting out the rain. The bar glowed with cheap neon, washing out the light upon the faces of the colorful bottles and pale patrons. David sat near the door, not keen on staying longer than he had to.

Then the blue curtains, which he at first mistook for a poorly painted wall, opened slowly, jolting harshly where they scraped the ceiling. A figure walked out. A dim spotlight flickered to life, revealing her.

David’s eyes lit up. How little she’d changed, and how beautiful she still looked. She seemed despondent; it was only when she began to sing that she glanced up over the room. Pangs of sadness hit him, making each attempt to draw in air more futile than the last. He could not hear her.

He left the bar just as the rain slowed to a stop and continued into the chill night. The experience brought forth a new piece, which, riding on airwaves he hoped would be heard; he dared wish that her own song would reach her ears.

He continued to play on stages in front of them, but never for them. He played for himself, as he would breathe for himself. To stop would be the end of him. He had come to terms with the fact that it couldn’t last forever.

One night, after a performance, he was walking home to the empty flat he called his own. It began to rain, drenching the city and causing its

Even then, pouring the nights into notes, he could not escape the hollow feeling deep within himself. The music had changed. He had changed. She had not.

All these things had led to this moment. This very moment where he stood in position to play, and he was trembling in anticipation. The curtains had not opened. He wondered how thick the curtains were, but smiled the thought away. The decorum of the art, no matter how revolutionary, was to appreciate the audience more than the art itself. At least to put up the front of doing so, he would not begin to play until the proper moment.

He could not help but feel adverse to such thought. In time, the audience would forget him, and his music would be forgotten. Not to him. Never to him. It was always indented in his hands, never to leave. Even in death, he could picture the tips of his skeletal fingers engraved with sound. Others, the audience, those who praised him, could hear sound and noise. He could feel it, just as he could suddenly feel the rush of air from the grand curtains pulling away smoothly to each side of the stage.

As he never before was, he was nervous. This was the end. Not of him, not of music, but of searching.

He had found his new reason to live balanced on the strings of a violin, to share all he could in his music this one last time. He recalled the words he read off her shaking lips:

“You keep saying that you are selfish. ‘But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places.’ Or so says H.A. Overstreet. But I’ve learned to stop believing in the men of quotes. Quotes keep telling me it should hurt to breathe at small moments like this, but I guess not all that I’ve been hearing is true. Seeing you again, I can’t help but breathe a little easier.” need to see the strings, to hear what those in the seats were hearing. He had long ago memorized the songs that lay deep in his bones, but as always, every renewed reverberation was felt.

The recollection died away with the applause and he once more raised his instrument.

His first notes rang true, flowing through the proscenium like warm syrup given wings, the notes given new life.

The set began and ended, conveying the shores of his grandfather’s house, the old man’s smile when he lifted the bow in a familiar grip, a woman’s hands over cello strings, her voice just beyond sound’s reach, wet leaves sticking to vandalized gravestones, and an unknowable song unheard by pale faces…

As of that undistinguishable moment, when he weaved together the last familiar notes into the unknown, a man’s life was being supported by the dexterity of a wooden bow. David began to be heard, to be known by countless strangers.

His first airy gasp of the world echoed deep in the scrape of his bow across the strings. Rosin dust floated from past memories to stain the stage. The lips spoke words he never could hear and moved with the movement of his arm. Clara’s voice echoed towards the audience through David’s hand. The same white-gold shine off the dark wood of the violin was shown by the slightest tilt of the instrument. Those dreamy, euphoric years of shallow life relayed through the honest tones of the minor key.

David began to play. His eyes closed; he had no

Though his heart beat and he selfishly took air into his lungs, he did not breathe. He did not breathe until he reached his reason for doing so: the overture, the change into the major key. It awoke like lightning in his hands and the pulses barely felt in his fingertips ran through the current of his life. His essence became song.

The audience was hushed, enraptured by the flowing song, disturbed by the truth released in staccato rhythm. His song was poetry on air; it was the sound of a thousand emotions gaining freedom. His notes wove themselves into the air, hanging themselves on what silence they could find. And with their realization, there was only music remaining.

Music, as with life, was indescribable in all its purity.

Something came over David as he played, the very same realization that had startled him all those years ago:

Music was all he ever had to give, and though he could never hear it, music was being made.