COL LEGNO
Legato
in a manner that is smooth and connected.
Interlace. Interweave. Intertwine. A euphonious marriage between bow hair and spruce wood; I cradle my instrument like one would a lover. A glide upon ice. A float downstream. The art of tracing calloused fingers along her smoothed edges, slender necked and wasp-waisted. My violin croons with exultance and virtue at the same frequency does my heart flutter betwixt rib bones. I loathe fatuous acts. No. I’ll never just play. Too juvenile in the flashing eyes of excellency. Instead, I aspire to make love. Love that stops one in their tracks and urges them to press their face against the glass of musical divinity. Fogging up the view in exhalation of adorance. Oh, when I seduce her to sing, even the wind falls quiet.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but both tremor in the presence of my violin. A bridge between heaven and earth, musical notes are a most sacrosanct language. And I, preacher, prophet, disciple, spread gospel with the glissade of a bow against four sacred strings. Once, a poet. My bow was my quill, together we crafted odes of purest allurement, ink spilling from the tips of treble clefs and metaphors dancing ballet along staves. We resigned some time ago - poetry too easily grows prosaic. Now, a priest. The church of stringed instruments. Do not worship false idols, I’ve been instructed, but how can she be fraudulent when I can reach out and nurse her wooden figure? My violin hums and it sounds like scripture.
Pious partisan, a fervid devotee. This dual pursuit becometh existence. To translate all that falls off violin's gentle tongue; to be worthy of presenting the findings. Derive purpose from the pursuit, I chase the flying colours like one would seek gold at rainbow's edge. I refine incessantly, I improve and I pray. Dare I enter sleep, I fall counting the lapses of melodies, and dream of an applause that echoes enlightenment and fails in search of flaw. A thunder fit for the supreme. A throne formed from the collision of hands.
Reposition the bow. And begin.
Arpeggio
individually sounded notes in a progressive descending order.
The glint of my general practitioner's eyes reminds me of the oil varnish that sits in the hickory shelving unit beside my bed. I was there, in his dingy consultation room with that ever-permeating stench of sickness and antibiotics some time recently, perhaps last week. Perhaps last month. I have found that my days tangle, bleed into each other, life but a portamento actuality. The setting sun means very little to me. It sets and rises, rises and sets, blasé as all other natural occurrences. My attention is elsewhere, devotion affixed to another.
A blood test had been processed. Deficient. My doctor exhaled as the word left his lips. I may be priest, but I am first performer. Feigning sincerity, donning the mask of the earnest. When he held out the papers for me to take I ensured my hands shook with a carefully curated apprehension. Not sanctimonious, but still so nescient. He wouldn’t, nay couldn’t understand that protruding phalanges are conducive to perfection. That the jut of a collarbone makes an ideal guideline for instrument placement. That I can only grasp the true spirit of the violin without slabs of fat between our skeletons.
This morning, or maybe the morning of a day not so far passed, there was an attempt to heed his advice. Sat at the kitchen counter, I made space for a tattered notebook amongst the overlapping piles of crumpled sheet music, Moses to this sea of paper and pitiful efforts. Endeavouring to compose a shopping list did not last long, for the ‘p’s’ looked too much like minims and my head started to pound to the rhythm of Mazurka in A Minor.
I think I’ve forgotten hunger.
My stomach growls and it feels like dread. Like guilt, like a coating of dust on abandoned aspirations, taking the form of a wooden hourglass.
I eat strings for breakfast and then I skip lunch; favour the nourishment from the drawing of my bow over the filling of my insides with such tangible temporaries.
Finger cramps will pass.
Reposition the bow. And begin again.
Jeté
ricochet; violinist throws the bow at the strings.
Vision blurs like time. An ample supply of murkiness birthed from the sunken bags beneath eyes and rough dryness imprinted on the inside of lids. My lashes act as feathered obstructions, solid and stiff from repeated denial to meet when drowsy. I don’t remember when blinking began to hurt. Or when discerning shapes became a crucible of squints and migraines, straining my pupils with the grit of my teeth to try and decide whether it be a shiv or bow lying by my side.
Manual breathing. In for five, out for seven. Letting the soft touch of oxygen tickle the tightness of my throat with the shallow relaxation of one forced to keep count. Lose track, slip, fall behind and feel fear. Fear that crawls up my neck at the same speed do violin strings descend upon my larynx. Choked out
and gagged. Strangled and smothered. Thou who tame the beast mustn’t break, not for a moment, nor for a breath. Unprofessionalism laughs when I sigh and smirks when I frown.
Abrupt.
My tongue is doused in a salty wet copper and my bow hits the floor with a disappointed thud. Sticking one blistered finger into the swamplands of my mouth reveals the problem; a deep slit along the side trickles red into now pooling saliva. An unintended incision, a mistake made known through the indentation of two sharp molars. I don’t bother rinsing. Instead, as I clutch my instrument and give her life once more, I leave my mouth agape and let the crimson dribble out the corners and down to the edge of my chin. Vermilion trails diverge on my skin like open roads and I know now that I am God.
I, Christ, Lord and saviour. The title hot like the friction of each individual bow hair moving back and forth in increasingly faster movements. Oh there is nothing holier than sacrifice! My glides are biblical, my intention is exact. This is musical consecration.
Reposition the bow. And begin once more.
Staccato
each note sharply detached or separated from the others.
Forgone a name.
A dissonant tangle of syllables that severs
like a head
like a finger, like a string wound too tight,
the precision of my pursuit.
A blemish on perfections’ clear face to be popped like a pimple.
Shed this discordant title, too atonal for erudition.
Contemporary hecatomb.
Forgone my humanity.
For a curse it would be
to continue surrounding myself with the banal.
I’ve surpassed, with the skirr of a hair
and the embrace of slick wood
the monotonous sound of existence.
No longer martyr.
Death shall not become of me.
Tutelary, now,
sheet music reads as dogma.
I have never felt so pure.
Upon each string imprint gained,
violin and I exchange knowing grins
The temporal tattoo of the faithful.
There is no need to reposition the bow, for my fingers shan’t ever stop.
Col Legno
a technique where the violinist strikes the strings with the stick of the bow, as opposed to the hairs. This produces a sharp, powerful sound, but has the risk of permanently damaging, or in extreme cases, breaking the bow.
Alyssa Goulding, 17 (and three important months), Sydney - Australia ✯ IG: @_alyssagoulding
“Alyssa finds her age to be ridiculous and amusing. She used to tell people in her youth (three months ago) that she longed to be a writer. She has come to realise that writing is less of a profession and more of a willingness to move her fingers in accordance with her mind. Alyssa is as much a writer now as she will be later. Language is an old lover. Alyssa hopes to be bigger than herself one day.”