Natural music

usan, are you ready to play for us?"

"You mean , now? Definitely now ?", she replied to the voice at the far end of the phone connection. "I don't think that even professionals would want to let themselves perform while so ill- prepared. The fiddling hand has to warm up, you know!", Susan's own voice warm and giggly with irreverence.

"Well....." began Susan's good friend Winona, "my mother has been dying to hear you play. I mean, I actually was wanting to stay home and be alone, tonight..."

"With those dreaded chemistry labs!"

"Mmmmm....sure!" Unsure. "and anyhow, you'll be going back home pretty soon, so it should be done quickly..is all."

"Is that the only reason, Winona?" Susan had to ask.

She had seemed a bit lost for a minute, and was found at least for now: "Okay, maybe...maybe I want to see you play too!"

"Well....fine, I think I can manage to charm the family with my rusty old tunes!"

"No, Susan, I doubt if they are that bad!", Winona insisted, as if Susan were deadly serious about her self-evaluation and nevertheless wanted pity from her friends and extended clan. "I'm certain that you've got a natural talent. Why else are you a fiddler?"

"Thanks", Susan says with amusement. "umm.....do you think that we should do our physical chemistry tonight,or.."

"Do we really have to?", asks an almost sorrowful Winona.

"Ha! No, of course not, I just wonder, since there are so many questions to do, perhaps it would be best for us to get started early,"

"yea, sure,", she quietly replied. "Well, you better play that fiddle like you've never played it before, then!"

The stoplight clicked to its double lights of red, halting Susan's travels through the current that flowed to Winona's dwelling.

"Shoot, red as soon as I get here! --well, thirty seconds is no bother, I suppose.

The curves of her thumbs beat against the padded steering wheel for as long as she was in no position do otherwise.

The light switched to green.

Her thumbs were forced from their rhythm.

Susan slithered and manoeuvred around the narrow confines of the main entrance, on account of the long stone-hard plastic case carrying her fiddle.

"Here I am, guys!", perked up Susan. "Obviously, you didn't take off when you knew I'd be taking my fiddle along!"

"What would make you believe I'd ever run away from anything?" Winona giggled.

"Hey, my rotten",sweetly bitter was it said, "cousins did when I practised my way into their ears."

"Oh come on, now, Suze."

"I mean it. Why do you think I shake inside during community performances and the like? Their silly little jibes became a growth upon my confidence. It's weird, I can never do anything about it....how hard have I tried..."

Winona's mother shuffled into the room now. She was a noticeably middle-aged woman; her face and the linguistics of her body showed an almost frightfully cheerful acceptance of the matter that thrust their weight upon all angles of her own physical mass, no questions asked.

"Hello there, Susan dear. And this must be your fiddle!", she started in a somewhat flustered tone.

"Yes, it is, now say hi!", absurd sometimes was Susan's humour.

"This little song is one of the first I've ever learned. So if it sounds really polished, it's because I've had to play the darned thing a million times! The guy who wrote it was actually a distant relative of my instructor....which is of course why he is such a genius at teaching me: music is in the blood! The instructor learned everything he knew from this fellow, so I guess I should thank him, you know. Anyway, what the song is about is, ahhh, rather complicated. You might relate to this,Winona, I don't know."

"Winona's jig!" retorted Winona's mother.

"I don't know, you're not exactly Irish, I doubt if the old people would take to a non- Irish subject for a jig!"

"How would you know this, Susan?"

"Because I'm constantly surrounded by these old people! I can't help it, I was plopped under the same roof as the rest of them."

This came as quite a surprise to Winona's mother: "how could you be Irish, you don't sound it!" , questioned Winona's mother.

"It was quite a long time since I moved here, I didn't exactly have an iron grip in the English language at the time, you know! As the years went by, I was drowned in the sea of your flat Canadian accents and so I sound just like you! I never had the time or the influence to sound Irish.

"It actually hasn't been very long since I picked up this old piece of wood. I...I guess it took a while for me to realize that music was in my Irish blood. Yes, that was meant to be an Irish brogue."

"That's really nice.", Winona quietly said.

"Well, actually I sort of found this talent, you know? I don't really know if anything is really, ummm, natural within me, or anyone perhaps! I just found the music....and it wrapped me around it's finger, you could say!" Susan realized her words lacked an example to back them, "Alright, now prove how much you like it, you're saying, Alright, alright, you twisted my arm brutally enough, let's go!"

The piece began its performance for this easy audience duo:

Susan....she has played this song an infinite number of times, no wonder it seemed as if her body eased into the sawing of the strings. If only they had seen her a few years ago: she was ignorant of her talent, she was merely pushed along by her family, she felt more stiff in her playing. It wasn't until she met her current instructor that her defenses snapped, and her self was torn away from those safeguards of free will and stubbornness.

Winona's mother....she never felt much for this sort of music. This is not exactly what she would say, but it was inescapably true. Every fiddler, from whomever was called one, did little to her. It couldn't be helped. She didn't find an interest for it anywhere within her brain and its files, the cabinet having finally locked itself for all eternity from anything else which may want to loiter in her soul now in the twilight of her life. But she has mastered the art of indifference, so those loiterers may never realize what hit them.

Winona......the music fought its way inside her ears, and it pushed her into a strange, earthy sort of world. Strange due to its bareness, its singularity; earthy due to its warmth. It was the sort of music that seemed to actually pour out of one person, far away from the digitally remastered and precisely choreographed chatter form the radio. Somehow, she felt that this music actually was a piece of someone.

Winona and Susan were comfortable upon the sofa.

"I...I don't think you got around to telling me exactly what that song was supposed to be about.", Winona questioned. It hadn't really came to her until now.

"Really?? Oh, it's sort of interesting, I suppose. It was written by a relative of my instructor, and, anyway....the song has something to do with a young woman (our age, I suppose!) who for some unforeseen reason can't go to this...this ball. And anyway, the song is meant to be the player's way of making up for this missed little party. Somehow, I don't think you could replace a man with a few jigs, but then what do I know, I'm only the one playing them!"

Winona could only wince a little smile. She's missed many hopeful rendez-vous, unforeseen to the writer of the song or the woman in front of her who plays it.

Abruptly:"That was really good, Susan, really I mean it."

"Yea, thanks! Anything for a pal!"

"I'm afraid I don't have any such talent within me. ", she said dispassionately.

"Ah no, don't say that. Have you every tried to do anything creative?"

"...ummm..No, I'm not motivated enough, how could I?"

"There's no reason why you can't be motivated to think."

"Well,....I do too much thinking with my chemistry, I'm afraid." That phrase again, I'm afraid. The fear is complicated and plays shadow games with Winona's will.

"Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry, I know! But I don't think I could do something like that unless I had a real purpose to it...."

"Like fame, fortune, your name in numerous textbooks so you can brag about them to your students!", Winona brightfully replied. She knew if such things were to occur, you'd never let any witness be ignorant of it. It was only inevitable.

"Okay, okay, perhaps you are right. You'll become a brilliant chemist, Winona. Or at least one who teaches them, it's good. I'll be the musician, you be the chemist."

"Hey, you're in my classes, too. Aren't you going to be one?", or one who is not serious about her work, Winona's mind clicked, until it's almost too late.

"I might, I might. Only time will tell."

"Well, I guess I should be off," Susan regretted about a few hours later. "But don't you worry, I'll see you sometime. Hopefully before I leave." She was off to Ireland, to see the land and the people she was brought to by nature. "I'll have to say good-bye to Sean first." In a confiding whisper and touch of Winona's shoulder, "Let's just say that if I don't, he's going to have to wait even longer to feel the energy of these womanly hips!!" She couldn't help but laugh near embarrassedly at this line, even though it was really nothing to be ashamed of, Winona believed. Perhaps such out-going charm is the key to romance.

"Yea, well, anyway, I'll hope to see you." Calm as anything.

Well, now she can return to her planned solitude, her warm blankets and sofa and videos, and perhaps...

Pushing into the den is her mother: "Dear, perhaps you could drive down to the corner and pick up some tea for me?"

It was Sunday evening and so the city's roads were rather subdued, even more so when compared to the previous two nights. Those nights brought with them many different scenarios, each of them clashing with another, to form new tapestries of history, written by either booze, chance encounters, or of stray words.

Winona had no alcohol, strangers or conversation to guide her fate for the next few minutes. Only the possibilities of the road itself. Three other cars were ahead of her own, seemingly impatient as they approached the blinking green arrow. As soon as she hoped for a chance to pass it, the light vanished into its hideaway of computer commands and programming.

"Great! I wonder how many people I know experience that in a day?"

She witnesses those three bold automobiles swinging pass the invisible arrow and wondered if these people knew the rules of the world at all.

"They need to be taught something, you know?" How those words rolled from her tongue! So effortlessly or was it ? Could it really be that the faculty which for the past twenty years, more or less, she had claimed wasn't even hers to call her own, that it was literally stuffed into her throat as a child? The chains around her felt tight with the growth of her realizations. She never really could get a grip on her own personal destiny, and the most frightful thing of all was that perhaps that's the way it is for many. Like Susan.

Winona had discovered that specific physical evacuations were in order, so she had no choice but to delay the meandering. Whenever she gave herself a rest, she would realize how darkly amusing this stampede of thought had been.

As she pulled up to the convenience store which doubled as a gas station (as they all do), she realized that she had no idea where she ended up after this trip. She felt hopelessly lost and would need some intervention so as to get home.

She had went to the counter with her teabags, with a rapturous amount of relief.

The cashier had prepared for this transaction.

"umm...where are the prices for these things. I have no way of knowing these..shit." , curiously looking at all possible sides of the box. "Don't you just hate it whenever this happens?", in an unusual attempt to bond with the consumer.

"Oh... I just live with it, what else can I do?"

"The modest customer, I see!", the cashier said jovially. She had finally received word of the price and business moved on as it always has.

Winona warily stepped onto the concrete at the front of the store. Warily, and to the passing motorist, perhaps, very much unaware of place.

"It appears as though you are lost."

It came from the concrete a few feet away, yet only the voice gave any immediate evidence to Winona that a soul was wandering about for how long, she'd have no clue. The person in question was a woman, not particulary striking, but one who'd be unconcerned if one were to accuse her.

"Well...yes, I'm afraid so!" Where did that nervous giggle come from?

"And where are you going? And where have you been?"

"Where have I.... Home! And I plan on going home, if I knew how I can get out of this lonely place."

"How did you stumble here?" This was a test, wasn't it?

"Hmmm... well... I have to admit that I let myself drift away. I drove the car all over town; I... I guess I was a little off today.... in the past while, really." An even greater pause. "I....I guess i feel a bit sad, you know? This whole...bloody life is sad,...because it seems as if there's absolutely nothing you can do to change it. I mean," , laughs, "I can't change the face that I have a huge report due next week!"

"Are you becoming one of those writers or philosophy types?" The woman's speech was utterly absent of any whimsy or interest, but given solely to factual coldness, and that tone breathed a frigid touch against Winona's bones.

"No...I'm not... I'm a chemistry major." was all she could mutter.

"Well, I know a liar when I see one, that's all I can say." and the woman walked away, just like that.

Winona stood there, stiff from this peculiar event, and knew that everything said was correct.

She was a liar. Only a liar would believe that you and you alone can determine your lot in life.

The bloodiness of life-- the jabbing of ideas and choices and doctrines and os on for eternity against a passive species.

The masses of eyes that beautifully see destines, the masses of eyes that see patience, the masses of eyes that see hostility: they see for they cannot change.

And here she stood, randomly pierced by the weapon of insight, far beyond mere factual science and fiddlestrings, by a being who was not her own.

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