Carnegie Alone

Time felt still to Damien. He was alone, dancing with the beautiful melody of Bach, his fingers filming over each black and white as smoothly as the sound of rain against the hall ceiling. It was a date, romantic and intimate. It couldn’t be anything less or anything more, it was only him and his partner—only music could make him feel like flying.

The world around him crumbled as he soared high above all the troubles that carried the globe and the seas on its jagged back. The empty seats before him fell away beneath his wings of ink and vanished at the motion of mallet striking string, and from his mind he let everything disappear. Left alone with the simple sound of ivory, he was nothing. The war was nothing, money meant nothing, and time meant nothing. All that mattered and all that truly existed in that moment was song. The sound and vibration which echoed throughout the hall like a long winding wind-tunnel, delayed by the grand hall, was left empty and hollow against the heavy dread of mortar and siren. He could hear the last measure he played, its fugue-like ring touching the plaster of the far wall as it bounced gently against the closed doors and back at him. It washed over him like warm sea water, so vivid that Damien could almost taste the salt on his lips and the grains of sand sifting through his gliding fingers.

It was just him and Bach. 

It had been four months since treaties fell and power rose and crumbled. He had this beautiful building, this Carnegie Hall, all to himself. It was a sin, blasphemous as music was left buried under the rubble of war, lying dead and forgotten as loves lost. After his third night performing alone, Damien found these velvet rows of seats and this stage—the very power of this song—as one great metaphor. A physical symbol for his metaphysical feelings of containment and peace. Safety. The masses lacked that. They listen to the wailing of passing planes and the imminent whistle of trembling incendiary, and unknowingly robbed themselves of a true salvation. Safety and peace are a powerful thing.

Then, suddenly the stage shook and dust fell from the rafters. The dark melody of war had crept within the hall, slipping under doors and vaulting windows open in a boisterous, violent Trio. 

What an ugly melody it was! Wouldn’t anyone rather listen to Bach or Haydn? He couldn’t understand, in such a dark and desolate time wouldn't you want to escape the world—even if for only a moment—and dive into the dynamic landscape of a composers conscious? 

War fought against the voice of his piano, but Damien continued despite. He played on. He had so far made no mistakes, performed as Bach would have pleased. It didn’t matter if course, he could stop now, leave the song ringing in the middle of a phrase or wait until the penultimate note—then nothing. It wasn’t as if there was an audience to feel the pain of an unfinished performance, to watch as Damien bared his soul over the keys. No one was watching. No one would care as much as he.

Still, he could not bring himself to do it. It would be too wrong, too immoral, too disgraceful. He used the classics as a medium to show himself to the world, to seek their approval and their acceptance. He honored the memories and the legacies each composer left, he could not bring himself to tarnish that with such vile interruption.

So he played on. On and on until the dreaded, anticipated penultimate note arrived, and at the very tail end he pushed on feeling the last note vibrate. Vibrate throughout the instrument at which he sat, through the long seated hall, and through his body and his being. 

It was gorgeous.

He was winded, the pant of his breath breaking the silence of which he had warmed with his ballad. He could feel Bach blush in his grave. A man like him too good for applause, so he would smile. It was that same all knowing smile when a student had done the impossible, that time when the last vision you prayed to see before death’s vile and cold embrace held you, it had manifested itself before you, more stunning than you could have ever imagined. But if no one but Damien heard, was it really beautiful? Would it capture his audience like it captured him? Had it?

He would never know. 

As he peered out into the many rows, and as he knew he would, he saw it was empty. He looked at each desolate seat and imagined a unique person, crying with joy or left quiet in the melancholic meditation of thought, each one touched deeply by Bach and in turn Damien. He looked and saw what he would. But the dismal, grave melody of war shook the hall again, and without the music to guide him, Damien was taken from his dream.

It was empty. Carnegie was empty, it was the same as the night before and as it would be tomorrow, Damien reminded. 

Slowly, from the very corner, hidden beneath a balcony of darkness and shrouded in a hood of pure rapture, came the gentle sound of clapping. Forlorn against the empty hall, but clapping nonetheless.

From the lights and from the stage, he could not see the shadowed figure, but he rose and bowed to them, greeting the floor as it rose up to greet him back. His thanks was buried deep within, but for his single spectator he dug for it. He sat, peering out into the darkness until his hands perched on piano keys again.

Damien smiled. He played on once more, the toll of war falling deaf to his ear. He played on once more, for the first audience member he had heard in months. He played once more for Bach and for peace. He played on until he could play no more.