waiting

[Note: This takes place in a one-hallway building containing only musical practice and lesson rooms, on both sides of the hall. Windows are at the ends.]

I sit in a hallway, waiting for the door to open. Waiting, just softly waiting. There’s a whisper of a breeze going from one end to the other, not waiting. When it’s not there, I see no one else.

In the room two doors down from the one I’m waiting for, a piano shouts badly, learning a piece too quickly, snagging on every third beat, repeats the line. It is out of tune with the wind. Meanwhile a violin marches in place up a scale — a different one from the piano — and comes down the harmonic. They are not competing with each other, or with the wind, who secretly knows it is winning, anyway.

The piano begins a new baseline, except it’s a different piano singing. The second time through I notice a baritone voice mimicking it. The others persist. All of these come to me at roughly the same volume, roughly the same tempo, creating a maddening slowing down of my thoughts. I stare at the wall across from me as the light from the windows on both ends blinds me. Tunnel vision. A door opens and I try to blink into focus, but the violin marches de-de-de-de-da-da-da-da as the first piano, showing no signs of improvement, catches on that same bright chord. I turn my head and see that it was the wrong door.

Onwards the baritone chants, onward his accompanist plays. Upwards the violin stomps, the piano chord snags, downward, onward, all with that secret pale blue breeze scuttling through. I realize I’ve been numb to all vision but a peephole for some time now. Must keep track of myself, but then the violin starts harmonizing with the baritone, and I lose it again.

Sharp clashing yellow, the color of dandelions, emanates from the first piano, catching, tearing, tearing the fabric, tries a new angle. Mellow brown and blue scales stomp along from behind, parallel black and mint rumbles from the far room. Now they’ve switched places and the violin snags from brown to sharp red, a clang from the yellow, and it clashes and swirls and purple starts bleeding from a haze above me as I grasp for the yellow, striving against the greens and the reds.

Click.

Silence.

Silence as the door opens.

All noise has switched to color and blinded me, and there is a sudden silence. Lost.

Gone.

A struggle, and I fight back to the click, the click, the door clicking open, my door, the door for me, the door, so now I can play and triumph and fail and glow.