Spaces In-Between

Ode to an Artist

Jenny could not sleep. The silk scarf wrapped around her head threatened to come undone as she wrestled with unconsciousness to subdue it and make it her own. She could not balance, in her mind, the cost of living. A latte cost more than a gallon of gasoline, which cost almost as much as a gallon of milk, which could keep a child fed in the third world for four or five days. Why was everything so expensive?

Really, she shouldn’t complain. Her great aunt had left her a house in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Most people her age were struggling to make rent with their roommates, cramped in small apartments. She had the adult’s house, but not the adult’s income, in that nebulous period between receiving her degree and receiving her first steady paycheck.

The furnishings in the house had belonged to her aunt too, remnants of another woman’s life. Jenny could not bring herself to go through all the things, fearing that once she’d removed them the place would feel hollow, like a discarded cocoon. Instead, she’d simply moved in on top of them. Her many music books collected like fallen leaves on every available surface.

She gave up the hunt for sleep and rose, padding into the living room. One of those music books cost three lattes, an hour of driving, or half a month of food for the underprivileged. And that was just the mainstream stuff. If she wanted any rarer compositions, of higher quality and caliber to fill her fingers with ecstasy, it might cost several hours of driving, a week’s groceries, or a few months of food for a child. What did making music matter in the face of all that cost?

Jenny stared at the piano in the living room. She didn’t want to think about how much that cost her aunt, especially not when compared to how much she could get for it, selling used. She had decided that whatever money it could make her was nothing compared to the value it brought her, even sitting there untouched. Children had blankets or books. Adults had clothes, cars, and habits. Jenny had a pianoforte; the one sang thing that kept her grounded. Not that she’d sat at its bench recently, unsure where she should spend her time during this awkward post-graduation season. Without the demanding schedule of classes all over the city, she’d holed up in her new home, looking for a way to fund this voyage into the rest of her life.

Somehow the piano was less intimidating then, at night in the shadowed living room, than during the day. She felt she could look at it, like a nameless face in a crowded club, without fear of being seen, of anyone looking back. Jenny had known for years that she was unlike most people, carrying her heart on the outside of her chest. It sat there, in the living room, quiet. No melody playing in her head. Her hands and limbs were going numb.

How long did it take to learn a song? To practice it, polish it, and make it perfect?

How long did it take her to compose a new work?

How much could an artist hope to make in an era of music streaming platforms? Well, she knew a little of that math; if a song of hers was streamed by 1,250 people one time, she could afford a gallon of milk. Too expensive. Making music cost too much.

Jenny turned away from the stillness, the lack of pulse, lacing up her shoes and stepping out the door. She ran the streets, and her feet found their rhythm, a steady beat, pounded out between rubber and tar, a metronome of flesh and bone. It escalated through her body, her breath leaving in cold, wet puffs. The telephone wires bowed above like staffs on a page. Her mind drained, and as the darkness dissolved the predawn bloomed. The birds began their preludes.

They perched on wires, a D-flat there, A-sharp there, a long low C, and where the gaps remained her mind filled in where she knew the notes ought to be. A melody emerged, and took over her senses. She ran on and on as the composition took shape, formed itself, and then she ran home and sat before the keys, to see if she might stir her heart to beat. Fingers the shade of sparrow’s wings danced and perched on bars like branches. Note by note she began to hear what the birds have always known.

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