RIP Story: October 8th, 2024

It hurt in her head all the time. Even sat in front of the keys of her favorite place, the pain was there. Her fingers move in every direction all at once making music that transported audiences to the past, the future or maybe their own imaginary land. She didn’t care. She was happy they wanted to listen; it allowed her to sit at the keys and keep watching. She looked for a cure all her life. When she was young it was her parents who did a terrible job of explaining to the doctors. When she was old enough, the doctors didn’t know how to listen.

It was a friend in school who asked her what she saw when she played. “I see shapes of different colors and they are at war with one another,” she answered. Her friend asked how long she had seen her music that way and she had always seen something when she was playing. The first time she played a piece from memory was the first time she saw colors. Her parents thought her teacher had unlocked something but she was looking for the next change in what she saw when she played. It was a distraction. It was the next best thing to a solution that felt like it would never come.

She got her first job out of music school, and it was everything she could have wanted. It gave her a bench to play in and it gave her time to find what she was looking for. When she played, the audience faded into darkness and colors filled the room. What was once well-defined colors and shapes in school had become a canvas of blended colors and shapes based on what she was reading at the time. There was anger and struggle in the colors, but nature was the struggle for surviving to the next day.

As the music came out of her hands and through the piano; she walked through this colorful struggle feeling like she was walking toward a cure. She didn’t know if the cure was close, but the cure was out there. She kept going, hoping the explosions of orange and yellow would fade behind her to reveal calm waters. Waters she would not find this day, but the audience had been taken down their own river of peace and wonder.

She would not find a cure this day. And she probably would not find it tomorrow, but she kept looking because it was out there and as long as she played, she could travel in this world of color and exploration. The struggle and anger did not bother her. It would be left behind in this place when she was done.

She slept that night thinking about what to read next and wondered what it would look like in her next performance. Her last though before falling asleep was the sound of the audience giving her a standing ovation. Something that had happened before, but this time was the first time she remembered hearing them as she stood and took her bow.

Thanks for reading, see you tomorrow.

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