Write a Riff

This is a collection of short excerpts that line up together from my working novel "Gloomy Eyes" It is about a high school musical prodigy by the name of Maralee. In the novel she tries to come to terms with music, emotion people and how they can all fit together. Throughout the beginning, we see her oddly refined Cynicism. It seems impenetrable. Like she's immune to simple plights of ehr high school life. But underneath, the pieces are perhaps far too scattered to ever be put back together.

~~~

I walked to the printer. Picking up all 50 pages. Every chord, cadence, melody, harmony to perfection now. It’s a very distinctive thrill, holding the key to something so strangely intangible like music in my hands. The thrill of creating. The only thing that seems to hold any color or substance in this world. There is so much struggle in this life, to leave marks. This is the thought that rests on my mind as I read page after page about Bach and Betoven, Mozart and Brahms, all these people, prodigies, madmen and geniuses alike. Now remembered through their discoveries and insane exploits. They changed music as we know it, their names, repeated, in testament to this. Handel, Holst, Mahler, Hayden, I could name them forever. 

It’s odd. People like, Mozart in particular. He was a circus act in his time. A child prodigy, a novelty. He died drunk, poor and alone. In the street. One of the greatest minds of the millennium, tossed aside like trash. Only then did they see. He was truly a genius. Now his etudes, his doodles are in lesson books. His sketches in high schools and masterpieces in opera houses and symphonies. His grave, so adorned.

I glanced at the composer  busts on my book shelf. Lined up chronologically. So often I think about death. Not the pain, or the urgency, but the long part. The remembering part. Names carried along in whispers, gravestones, books and records. Stories and photographs, remnants. Footprints.

“Übrig.” I murmured after picking up my german dictionary. “Something left behind, a remnant.” All that’s ever left.

Inevitably I’ll come to think about what I’ll leave behind. But that soon becomes irrelevant, considering the insane advances of technology. Most likely what I leave behind wont even be physical. Electronic money, possessions, energy signatures. If you look at the fact that when I was born CDs and multi functional computers were a miracle. Where will we be, where will I be, in my field of work?

~~~~

The longest part of death, the forever part of death. Weighing on the shoulder of the road. Right in front of me. Police, ambulances and firetrucks, all screaming for me to leave, but I still saw the body. The ended life. No matter the things I  could tell my self to distract me, my mind zips to the darkness.

That person had a family. Loved ones, a job, hobbies, loves and passions. All gone now. The simple unavoidable fact that the blood could be my blood, or anyone’s blood. Perhaps attachment, just doesn't payout in the end. The stuff of gossip, worries. All left behind, after just a few intersections.

I soon found the hotel. A sign, and lots of smiling faces. I signed in, got a name tag, and slid effortlessly into the bubbling cloud if ignorance.