We were standing outside, so silent.
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Do you remember when we were silent, together, and it was good? Right. Silence was always uncomfortable before you, as if sound needed to permeate and then resonate.
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And then you said, or I said, or someone said, that words are just words and actions speak far louder and say much more. But now all I am is words. And, together, the two of us…we are only words back and forth. Or just back. Or just forth.
I suppose one of us was wrong.
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And the snow was falling as snow tends to do in winter, in northern Michigan. And there was sound, beautiful, mesmerizing sound, and none of us knew where it was coming from. We were drunk, a bit lost—but aren’t we all more than a bit lost?—but we all heard the music.
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I would write you a song if I could play an instrument, but I’ve never been good at the arts. I paint only in black and white and compose music only with sharps and flats. Still, I’d write you a song, and I’d play it for you, and maybe, someday, you’d listen and take something from the music.
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And you’d understand.
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And the song played on and on. A piano—no other instrument, melancholy and made for winter. The notes fell with the snow, landing softly and resounding, resounding, resounding.
I looked around, into their eyes, my people now, who all stumbled out of the bar, and tears welled in every pair of eyes, slid down cheeks to be frozen in two or three minutes.
We stood outside without coats, but we weren’t cold. The music warmed us.
Some of us, even the few who don’t like music—I’ll never understand that—stood transfixed, staring into a night lit only by snow and a moon muted behind clouds. We stood there and listened and really didn’t understand what was happening, or why.
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Don’t be surprised that I thought of you. This should never surprise you. The strangest things remind me of you. I wake up at night with you in my mind and I don’t know why. Or, I know why, but I don’t understand it.
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And when the music finally stopped, we wandered back inside without a word, and inside we sat in silence for most of the night. Words, it seemed, would ruin everything. Sound—sound other than the music—was unfitting, improper and even ruinous.
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I still don’t know where the music came from. From someone’s hotel room or car, perhaps. Or maybe the music just existed, and that’s all. Maybe we were meant to hear it. All of us, so lost, finding solace only in music and drunkenness, but drunkenness is no cure, just a world of mirrors that only crack, and music can be everything.
--
And so, I think, I will write you a song. An instrument, and knowledge, and from those two I will eventually be capable. Maybe by Iowa, or Nevada, or New Mexico. At some point there will be music.
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