possession

when he was only four years old his mother sat him down and told him one day son you are going to be a fine musician you are going to play the masterpieces you are going to play dvorak and chopin and rachmaninoff you are going to play like an angel so of course it wasn't a matter for debate when she sat him down in front of the piano at the age of five and seven months it was something he had expected to happen for as long as he could remember and was not in the slightest out of the ordinary even though the other boys couldn't have picked a piano out of a lineup and he practiced first because it was a fun new thing to do and then because it held his interest and then because it was the proper thing to do and then because his mother demanded it and even though he eventually grew to dread sitting on the hard shiny bench he never thought of not paying homage to the keys and one day when he was nearly thirteen and his mother was in the yard instead of in the kitchen he was playing a sweet little minuet rather well when suddenly his fingers took it into their mind to play something else to run away with the mozart to rebel against the music of the dead the great the white he looked down at his left hand pounding out the ostinato playing flats that never belonged in any civilized scale and he looked down at his right hand chattering out the uneven limping dancing frenzy of nonsensical doodling and he looked under the piano to see his foot off of the pedal pumping the upbeats his mother stalked into the house demanding that he explain the uproar explain the horrible din driving his defiant fingers and then unanswered she ordered him to stop it stop it stop it but it was of course too late too late for the boy who had lost the other music forever

  Kate Hoffman