Percussion
My marriage was a master class in musical absolutes.
With lessons like:
1. Every true composer must first be a pianist.
The piano is a percussive instrument
same as a drum, he told me,
manly as any silverback thumping his chest.
2. Only symphony or opera, only what the plebescite deems “classical”
merits the name of music.
Listen to this pop tune:
(sneering at the repetitive bass thumping of techno or house,
the snare solo interrupting the rock ballad)
Can you imagine any sound more emasculated?
3. Composing is not an art form for pussies.
Not when You unzipped and whipped it out
was highest praise for writing a concerto.
And to believe his own vision mangled in performance
by flesh-and-blood musicians?
An erection attacked by a thousand paper cuts.
4. I understood:
To make macho sport of penning duets for Cello and Tenor
was a blow struck at childhood bullies
at jocks who called out “fag boy”
at a mother’s drunken boyfriend who’d pressed a gun into small hands
at a firing range—cold steel to toughen up
what hours at a keyboard threatened
to make soft.
5. I understood at last too:
(once ordered to my knees, bare back turned)
(hearing the strop pull softly from its satin case)
In such man’s logic, any woman’s body could itself become
drum.
Oh lord. Can’t like this one.
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Ha! I appreciate the dilemma.
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Brilliant, brilliant you. I savor everything you write.
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Oh beautiful human. From you, this is praise I shall savor.
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God you’re good. Do you know when I come home and I have X amount of blogs to read, I actually save you for last? So good.
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Joey, I think this may be my favoritest compliment ever, on this blog. In fact, I’m quite sure of it!
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🙂
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Me, too. Save Alice for last because it gives the most power to the words spake!
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😀
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Great minds…
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Grrrrrr. 5 makes me so angry.
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That’s toxic masculinity for ya, babe. Warps everything and every person it touches…
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Sometimes, even now that I’m an Old Woman, I miss beating the sexist shit out of asshole stranger men who rubbed me the wrong way back in the day. They never expected to be punched so hard by a woman. My hands are tingling at the memory. It was dangerous and cathartic as fuck.
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Sounds dangerous and cathartic, for sure! I am almost jealous. I have been wishing lately I could go back, just into certain memories (#5 chief among them), and imagine them happening differently. Imagine myself NOT kneeling down for instance. Or NOT freezing.
Another goal for my fairy tale project, perhaps. (The one referenced in my last post). If I can’t imagine ~myself~ punching back, maybe I can turn Little Red Riding Hood into a wolf…and let her eat somebody…
mmm….
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It makes me angry -at- him, but also -for- him, for the alternate him he could have become if that alternate hadn’t been strangled. It’s not comfortable to feel empathy, or even pity.
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Yes.
And even if I don’t feel a great deal of empathy at this point (it all got used up over the years we were together), understanding where he was coming from made all the difference in putting that relationship behind me.
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