Zigeunerweisen

When my bow slashes the keynote of the piece, the last autumn leaf dislocates itself from the mystifying and lonely branch as it waves a stern goodbye. The sky is blue, the colour palette sap green with cinnamon brown.

I saw the autumn leaf departs in my peripheral vision, or rather, did I feel it? Either way, I was too fixated on the strings scraping away at my skin. Daydreams of awe at these sheep guts and their talents at blossoming such somnambulist songs. The winter wind blows ever so close, hot and cold at the same time. In this dance of crescendo and diminuendo I fall even deeper into the land of make-believe.

She used to begin every piece with an endearing smile and a lecture-esque story. A tale of her twists and turns, her endless nights developing the motor necessary to impress her mother who was too busy being anything but a mother. That felt like lifetimes ago, a kid I still was. Who's to say I'm not still one, now?

She would look out the window, just like what I'm doing now, and perform to a stage: the skies, azure or dawn or pale or gleam; the clouds, trailing or freckled or tame or thunderous; the audience; the pedestrians or the lovebirds or the derelicts; all of them but entranced.

Just like her, I began this piece with a story of my own. What I lack in profundity I make up in fervor:

"Mother, I counted. I counted and I've spent hours perfecting my craft. I've perfected the Allegro, the one section you know I detest. Well, late bloomer as I may be, I still wish for the winter in your heart to spring anew with this piece."

At this point, the last autumn leaf has traveled 2 feet from its home. Everything else is frozen in the cold sigh of sunless snows to come. Every flutter of wings and pumps of blood were hushed by the Princess of Ice herself. Right now, it's only me and mother, Zigeunerweisen, and the last autumn leaf.

🎼 Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs, Spanish: Aires gitanos), Op. 20, is a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by the Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate.

Mother was born in the cold Canadian summer of 1947. It was right after the time the cold from Northeastern Siberia blanketed the Northern Canadian hemisphere with more cold than we bargained for. 5 years is the longest she's stayed in a single city without permanently relocating. The furthest was Bali, Indonesia. A far cry from the cold. Her nomadic itineraries stem from her mother, a maestro of orchestral violin pieces. The sweet surrender of mother's childhood then breeds the same vigor for opera matched only by none.

I'm preceeded by a lineage of devilishly talented virtuoso violinists. Two of them to be precise, yet enough to render the elder's achievements a mere blot in the history book. I am faced with the riddle of which predecessor to live up to. Procuring a mental discipline fierce enough to stand atop mother and grandmother's shoulders is a thought I giggle at. I'd sooner blame mother for marrying a policeman, a tone-deaf vigilante.

"There's just no time for excuses."

Said mother, bearing more chides behind the sentence.

Colleagues and acquaintances alike would declare in a resounding scoff, "Procrastination leads nowhere." Well, dear Misters and Misers who'd broke blood and sweat to achieve the zenith of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: Have you broken blood and sweat and tears and flesh and spirit to do one thing, and you're never, and I quote, "Good enough"? Have you then borne the suffocating sting echoing from your neck when you realize that such a defeating assessment came from thine own Mother, despite being the very person whose shirts were splattered with my own blood, sweat, tears, and flesh?

Have you then borne the same suffocating worship for the same shadow who's been burying insufficiencies into your psyche? Have you ever wanted to see just one more smile off of the one you baptized with the title, "Dictator"? Have you ever loved your own oppressor? Has that oppressor been your own mother?

The Spanish refers to them as gitanos. They have the tendency to not stay at one place too long. Itinerate and usually referred to derogatorily, they've not gathered an appealing remark. I hence wonder, what does someone with such petulant standards find charming about them, moreover, pigeonhole herself as one?

"I find their penchant for migration befitting of a performer such as us."

Us.

I always find that unwilling compartmentalization exhausting, for I am in no shape to be calling myself a performer of any degree. I think she knew that. I just didn't know if that's meant as a compliment or a slight. Or perhaps a tame compliment turned into slight.

"That Sarasate though, he didn't quite know what that Zigeunerweisen truly meant. The music he drew inspiration from didn't actually come from the gitanos. It was a product of the Hungarian folk music. Yet, it became, arguably, his magnum opus. Funny how his fascination with the wrong race in and of itself can contribute into making this piece so marvellous."

Despite the misidentification, mother carved this musical arrangement into her bones. She loved it more than any other sound. I wondered if she knew the bad practice Sarasate conducted, demeaning the original melody creator from the people he stole from. I'd say it's semantics, though.

"I want you to play it too."

It was a simple sentence. Not too many compound clauses nor unnecessary conjunctions nor vague diction nor in-concise structuring–not like this sentence. Simple as it may have been, It was anything but.

Years I've spent perfecting an 'adequate' imitation of the piece. Now I sit in front of mother, after half a decade apart, prompted merely by an aunt's worried hunch about mother's thinning health. I wonder if she still recognizes me behind that strangling tubings designed to maintain life. I wonder if she still recognizes herself behind that insatiable ego. I've shed enough tears on the plane ride here. She's chosen Pamplona, Spain to be her final dwelling. A testament to her love for Pablo de Sarasate right to the very end.

Zigeunerweisen can be divided into four sections; performed in one movement.

It begins with Moderato, where I'm at right now, **a slow burn levitating the audience unto the realm of the Kingdom come. A fleeting Kingdom for a fleeing crown, mind you. My fingers dance a slow waltz whilst prepping for the Lento, the second section, where it's inundated with roaming and technically-taxing whirls. Moderato is my mother's kismetic care when I was but a toddler; Seeds of her accentuating expectations have just started bearing fruit. This was peace and quiet, heart and soul not yet tarnished. I operate the strings like it was my own veins, my blood pumps through every vibratos and staccatos. And with every pulse, the last autumn leaf waltz along in a turbulent chime as it makes it halfway through the sky before it becomes ground.

Mother's gaze seems to be slowly hypnotizing itself to the sound. She's starting to open her eyes.

Please tell me I'm wrong. That my bow movements are too proud or too condescending. Use your metaphors and vague adjectives! Yell at me and give me your disappointed eyes you so generously bestow upon my fifteen years of toils and sorrows. I'd rather have an endless repository of your curses over you leaving me!

Her lips, weak as can be, flutter signs of speech I can't make out.

I strengthen my grip of the bow as I enter Lento. What sounded peacefully majestic now horns itself into cavalier tap-dancing, an embodiment of the colour scarlet intertwined with sombre blue. Flying spiccatos and ricocheting bowings were the bane of my existence. The last autumn leaf oscillates a frantic heartbeat, accompanying with it the memories of my strifes, when I first coined her as "the dictator". Lento, oh you sweet childhood o'mine. To me you never existed, for the banal hijinks I'd endured had stayed the same throughout adulthood, where I can finally see the reeling truth.

Just like my eyes were opened, hers are starting to as well.

That's it mother! Fight that horde of somnolent eye restrains! See me! Hear me! Talk to me... Appoint me to the detention corner for failing to rid of my flat tones. Anything!

The leaf floats on a wave of oxygen and many other modicums of the atmosphere as I begin Un poco più lento.Everything other than the leaf, me, mother, and Zigeunerweisen are still frozen in time. Lethargic as mother might be, she's slowly turning her gaze towards me. Perhaps it's my elongated sways that knock the wind to her skin. Perhaps it's the melancholy melody of the third section of the piece. Perhaps it's my loud tears I made covenant with myself not to shed.

It's me, mother! It's me! Can you hear my thoughts clearly? I'm here, mother! It's you! It's Zigeunerweisen. A hymn to your ways of being a nomadic grasshopper. Let me be your leaf now, mother. I'm playing Zigeunerweisen!

My tear drops and splashes on the floor. The leaf follows suit, touching the height of the tall gate enveloping the hospital grounds. My heart begins to stumble over the thought of the Allegro. The final section I so dread is now not a mere threat. I scour for more breath than my lungs can handle. I keep rummaging for thoughts that can keep me alive and going to play Allegro. My eyes closed, my grips sore from holding for life.

Allegro.

Suddenly, everything that was frozen in time starts ticking. They move along with me, with mother, with the last autumn leaf, with Zigeunerweisen. The last autumn leaf triumphantly caresses the concrete. Microscopic scrapes of dust follow suit.

I open my eyes to see another teardrop.

This, time it's mother's. She shed a tear before I'd begun my Allegro, and closed her eyes to the coldness of time. Her breath has reached a cadence. She's gone.

Mother?

What does one do at such a moment? Should I halt, throw my violin, and cry rivers? Should I suck up the bereavement and keep at it? Before I knew it, I'd already finished Allegro. I'd finished Zigeunerweisen.



At the exact final note of the piece, autumn had suddenly changed into the longest, coldest winter.