Midnight Brahms

and other stories

As I lay in bed, a four-year-old boy waiting for sleep to come, I often stared at the shadows of the kitchen lights dancing on my ceiling, twisting and bowing through the crack under my door. They did not dance alone. My father was on the piano practicing Brahms, and though I could not see him, as I watched the ballet above I could picture him, struggling through a tight melody and flying across a quick riff as his hands trotted imperfectly across their black and white stage. All the while the light bent and the shadows leapt until the final chord was struck. The lights disappeared, the shadows settled, and sleep washed over me.

Basking in my childhood ignorance, I crammed an enormous piece of chocolate cake into my chubby little self on my sister’s fourth birthday. On that day no towers fell for me, instead I was rushed home from kindergarten to celebrate life, my sister’s life, not to mourn those who had died. Years later, the towers were history, not memory, when I sat down in my favorite, forest green armchair with my family as the sun dimmed. Together, we immersed ourselves in the film of a wirewalker who alone dared ascend to dangerous serenity as he crossed from one tower to another. While the film softly played its tune, I ascended with him, above the crowds, living on the faith of one strand of wire, and two buildings I could not remember.

The succession of shots and misses dulled me as my sister’s soccer game had no perceivable end . . . No matter, I never had much patience for soccer I think, comforting myself in Thomas Hardy’s descriptive drama, ignoring the horns and cheers around me. The breeze rustled the chain link fence, a regrettable backrest. Just as Hardy insightfully notes that “nature was too strong for art,” a ripple ran through the crowd as the air rushed into the lungs of all around me. I let the wind bind the bent covers together and turned toward the oncoming corner kick. The ball darted artfully toward the goal, and my lungs too filled in earnest uneasiness.

Only recently have I started to understand the underlying meaning of these experiences. When I joyfully discover the Brahms piece on my iPod, I realize where my taste for Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, and Philip Glass has come from, an exhausted little boy huddling under his sheets. In viewing Philippe Petit make his unrepeatable crossing, I understand the symbolism of the towers at a personal level, and I, too, begin to mourn the meaning of this unequivocal sadness. Mulling over Hardy’s statement, I reminisce on my visits to Degas, Picasso, and Matisse, pondering the influence of human nature and whether it is the governing factor in the vision of these composers of color. These events lend perspective, not only to help me understand myself, but to understand music, literature, art, and history. Though simple memories, on further recollection I see what these events taught me, that we do not live in a singular world, we live in a world marked by exhausted grace, fragile brilliance, and everlasting sadness.

We all walk imperfectly across a black and white stage, we dare ascend to dangerous serenity, and our lungs fill in earnest uneasiness as we grasp at greatness, reaching for something that only shines through in certain moments. My passions, my wisdom, and my beliefs all culminate in this quest for the human ideal, and my love for music, literature, art, and history are but steps towards this end, an end I have been drawn to for as long as I can remember and an end that continues to draw me now. It is this quest that defines me, a quest that began so many years ago as the lights and shadows harmoniously spun while my eyes slowly edged towards darkness.