1 minute read
Orchestral Experiment
Sami Silk
In a lab of brass, woodwind, strings, percussion, I stand apart, the conductor and composer of this orchestral experiment.
Advertisement
There’s the creak of a printer spitting out consent forms And the chchch chhhhhh of a clacking keyboard as I sift through gaps in raw data.
These mundane tasks surround me with echoes, A drum steadily beating out crisp quarter notes in 4/4.
From beyond the glass box that holds the audience above The pit of my little observation room;
A swishhh of book pages turning Or the muted thud of a fingertip tapping on a kindle.
Placed carefully atop the bridges of audience noses, My glasses lay like fantastical masks at a masquerade ball.
A silent symphony of crracks and brrrings and rummbbles Oozes out from the almost sealed door of my observational pit
And in return, the faint ringing of a hummm Slithers towards my computer, Crying for its mother–
But the cameras inside those masquerade masks Are still delicately balanced on a grad student’s nose.
Suddenly–
The timer goes off Me, waving my hands with passionate madness
As I conduct this xylophone to decrescendo.
With the echoing pound pound pound of a standing ovation, The audience beams proudly as the curtains of this experiment close.
