pattern disruption
I met you in the winter on my third day of Vivaldi’s Summer. I tend to find ways in my mind to disrupt ordinary patterns; like the dreary push that a cold New York City day in January might bestow upon a soul. Summer helped that. Vivaldi usually solves most of my problems.
I was writing when we met. I told you I was on my second drink that day, when it was really my fifth. You sat next to me at the bar and asked what I was listening to. People aren’t abrupt like that anymore. They don’t just sit next to you in public places and ask what your headphones are playing. I actually found your query a quite personal question.
Your boldness made me blush.
“Vivaldi.”
“Do you play the violin?”
“No.”
You took sheet music out of your bag and told me about how you play piano. I didn’t tell you that I used to take lessons, or how Liebestraum has been more consistent in my life than any lover ever attempted.
Such frivolous detail hardly seemed significant.
So like I was saying, these violins had been waking me up during the night for days. Days on top of the weeks and years I dreamt of you.
We didn’t talk about this the day we met.
To the picture of a starry sky. An aurora borealis photo. Maybe a moon sculpture, of sorts.
And while strings moaned in pitches and places I don’t know how to reach, we read piano music and talked about Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Piano Sonata No. 4 in C major, movement 1.
You rolled cigarettes with a precision that made me feel foreignly safe. Because back then I wasn’t safe and you weren’t precise, but we convinced enough people otherwise to briefly build a life.
I walked on air around you and your thoughts became alive inside of my heart. We started around that place. We ended somewhere entirely different.