Ode to an Orchestra Obscured

The concert is a time to stop and think, third row center C. My muse, my mizzen mast, cracks the rust off from above.

The conductor is drinking stratospheric air; a shining breath of freshness from Olympus and the rest.

I would write this ode for him alone - a focal point for sure, but my problem runs much deeper.  I am in love with an entire orchestra, whose story I yearn to know. Each player a dedicated life of practice and disposition, each a bag of presents, tricks and tips.

The conductor is of agile build, a shock of hair, and sweeping gestures demanding unseen witnesses to rise up and pay attention. A genius, I will give him that, not worn upon the sleeve or spoken to a mirror. It is in the light of piercing eyes, one as called then chosen. Enough of that. I’m glad for a wooden bar to brace a treacherous fall from grace. His wooden bar, it blocks my view, accepted for its safety, lest rising  up upon his toes he steps back into the void.

Last night’s concert - I could write about them all. But one must choose a single instrument. I choose wind and brass and key and string!

As for strings, the blackened box was full, sitting grandly in the foreground, performing surgery on my open heart. A keyboard surgeon, a pair of hands, an arc in smooth curved motion with ebb and flow, easing up and down. There, a note, a stroboscopic sleight of hand. Each one, an evening out, a beginning, middle and an end.

Yet even in perfection there was a problem, that not pianist,  nor conductor, nor orchestra could stand. The problem was the piano that I looked upon - like one would look up to a mountain knowing there was nothing I could do.

It was in freefall overhead, dropped from a skyscraper after being lugged up endless stairs. Descending like an anvil, whistling in freefall, as I walked unknowingly on the sidewalk of ailse C, carrying flowers to honor one musician, then another, and then finally them all. Not knowing that in a fleeting moment, I would hear that sound.

Gazing upward I got to know the belly of that piano like a prisoner doing time. Marking off the days, I could see the milking of its pedals, not the twinkling of its strings, not its long wrapped copper notes, nor its trebles strung in threes. I could not consider the infamy of its even-tempered tuning, the low notes flat, the high notes sharp - let the fretless understand.

By this massive ruse in ivory my orchestral view was blocked, choked from light, a plant on the jungle floor doomed by rules I did not make to die in desolation. You ask, "What was it pray tell you wanted to see?" Deep breath. It was the bridge, the bow, whether near or far, whether dinner or dessert, a salad or a feast. The scoot, the slide, the brawn, the bangs, the beard, the chin, the pad. The chrome, the brass, the wood, the grain, the warp, the weft the weave. The letters, the luthier, the make, the model. The hope, the skill, the miss!

But I could see! A constellation of creatures, each with six legs! The back legs sets of four, then slats of wood then two thick ones dark with wider feet, some fronts were striped forms. Four were always still and thin, two were always moving. Nourishment perhaps?

I vote for fewer legs, but alas I have no vote. I can only offer a petition. Strike that. I am a creator of the most demanding kind! Foisting tyranny on the innocent on long-furled scrolls, untied at a moment's notice! No prisoners of war, no hostages begging for mercy, just an ode to an orchestra obscured.