wanna hear my new song?

roger radcliffe; twenty; virtuoso. appealing for muse.

[ahundredandonenotes]

.

[a-spastic-piece-of-kelp-blog]

"I am buried in busy work. That’s what I get for missing some classes…"

[ahundredandonenotes]

  "You wouldn't be alone, then. I've missed my last four classes. Statistically, one of them had to be important.   Don't panic."

[fifi-robertson]

[giggles]

I didn’t realize other people were listening.

[ahundredandonenotes]

  "Oh, so it's you, then, is it? Well then -- I'll have to ask that you keep your racket down to a respectful level, or I'll be forced to drown you out with obnoxious tromboning."

[wil-robinson-deactivated2019101]

"Wait…..shower sex?"

[ahundredandonenotes]

  "Yes.         Loud... obnoxious.... fornication.   This is hardly decent."

[thenaomiharris-blog]

"Must be wonderful for your social life." Naomi let out a small laugh before holding out her hand. "I don’t scare away easily, however. I’m Naomi before this conversation diverges onto some odd topic."

"Chatty women? Well I mean, my roommate and I usually spend a lot of time talking when neither one of us has work to do—talking about our days, problems. People like communication, remember that. As for the shower sex… I mean it’s normal for people to give in to their desires right? Then again, I’m used to hearing various noises in my dorm room. The beauty of living in college dorm rooms.” 

[ahundredandonenotes]

  Thankful for the olive branch, Roger took Naomi's hand with a smile. "Roger," he told her. "And I swear that before I dare have a social life of my own, I'll perfect my etiquette." Such was the drawbacks of college life: even without being dragged about on a leash by Pongo, Roger was constantly encountering new people. He was at least thankful that it was people like Naomi that he met.

  "But yeah, it's not so much the noises I mind -- so long as they're quiet," he added, his mind echoing that cacophonous pounding and grunting that haunted the showers. "I just don't think I'm cut out for communal living. Call it the musician's curse, but not all sound is music to my ears."

[thenaomiharris-blog]

"Well… that’s always interesting to know. Do you always start conversations with complaints about normal human behavior?"

[ahundredandonenotes]

  "Well, I have been accused of certain social abnormalities in the past. Most of them stemming from me talking to myself, and having some poor soul caught in the crossfire. Such as yourself.       In any case... that's normal? Really?"

[ahundredandonenotes]

  "I think it's time to start looking for my own flat. There's only so many nights I can tolerate being able to hear the screechy, chatty women down the hallway over my own trumpet-playing.                     ... And then there's all the sex in the showers..."

[theandywhite-deactivated2014032]

[sighs]

Why don’t guys understand no means no.

[ahundredandonenotes]

  Because men, on the whole, are obscenely thick.  Someone didn't hurt you, did they?

[little-wendy-bird]

  She felt a bit as if she were walking a road inside his mind. There was a nice paved path, the main road, the one he was allowing her to see. Sometimes, the faint hint of a trail led away from the main road. The paths weren’t always clean, as with Cruella. That one seemed downright perilous. But still, the walking was nice. She couldn’t see clearly, of course. Stuck in someone else’s mind, the most that Wendy could hope for was understanding, not sight.

  The man teased her, and a soft smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I suppose I am,” She responded. “Wordy, and right.” She listened with interest as he began to play once again, this time telling her about the connections. When the music cut off, she looked at him in confusion. “A lost cause? I should have to disagree. It seems to me that this is the song you care about the outcome of most of all.” Her eyes softened as she realized the problem. “You’re not ready to end Anita are you? Not just the song, the girl. You know, it doesn’t have to be a permanent ending… There’s no such thing as a permanent ending, anyways. It’s more like a- a chapter book. Closing one chapter just leads to opening another. Life is interesting in that way.” She blushed. Her ink-stained fingers pulled nervously at her shirt once again. “I guess I am a bit wordy, huh?”

  Realizing that the song was for her, that this stranger understood her better than most people she had met in her life, left Wendy feeling stronger, more fragile, and overall more confused than anything had in a long time. “It’s beautiful,” She commented. Her eyes met his. “You’re a beautiful person. I’m not sure anyone’s told you before, but they ought to. I’m Wendy.” 

[ahundredandonenotes]

  "Wendy." It was a perfectly agreeable and appropriate name for a perfectly agreeable and appropriate person. The piano was glad to be rid of his fingers as he smiled at Wendy, offering her his hand to shake. "Well, Wendy, I'm Roger, and by no means am I ready to end on Anita quite yet. But you are very right -- at least she gave rise to fresher melodies."

  Roger would later contemplate on the significance of this a little longer. Perhaps the reason he couldn't find a suitable end to the tune was because his interludes with the woman who inspired it were not quite finished. She was worlds away, certainly, but Roger wasn't quite ready to sign off on the song just yet.    But it had given him Wendy. And he would be able to write that one readily for some time to come, as long as it was still fresh in his mind rather than staling on sheet paper.   Enough about Anita.

  With Wendy's hand in his own, Roger was able to examine it more thoroughly. The ink stains he'd found comical some time before were now facets of his genuine interest. "So. What's all this, then?" inquired Roger, using the span of his own fingers to exhibit Wendy's. "Badge of honor? Making your mark on a police record for all eternity?" The warmth of his tired smile assured her that he thought otherwise. Wendy was far too timid and proper -- too intelligent -- to have picked up a record just yet. No; this was an eccentricity.    And, if the way she spoke was anything to go by, she was just full of those. 

[little-wendy-bird]

  A girl he had went to school with. That was, of course, not everything that she was. No one is simply one thing, certainly not just a girl that a boy went to school with. But that image did help Wendy to better understand the song. This Anita… she was the adventure and the magic herself.

  Wendy was suddenly struck by the intimacy of the piece. It was going to be beautiful. She could tell already.

       As the sandy-haired youth started to show her pieces of songs he had written, she tried to create images of the characters in her mind. Not characters, she remembered. Real people.

  The first one, Pongo, was clearly the pianist’s best friend. The music itself seemed fond of him. She pictured a dark haired boy, proud and funny. “He must be quite the boy, this Pongo. A risktaker, He’s arrogant, but… you seem to like him for it. That’s interesting.” The melody shifted then, becoming cold and menacing. Wendy wanted to distance herself from the very sound of it. “I gather that. What on Earth did she do to you?” Wendy wondered aloud. To merit such fear and dislike, it would seem she must have done something awful.

  Thankfully, the music changed. It was soft and thoughtful, pretty. Wendy liked it. “Who is this one about?” She asked, her voice quiet. She felt like a spell had been cast. To speak too loud would surely mean to break it.

  Wendy giggled, surprised by his words. She thought for a moment, her eyes dim as she stared off into somewhere. “You love the girl,” She eventually realized. “Or at least, you did at some point. That’s why it’s so hard for you. How do you capture in a simple song the girl that you believed could hang the moon? How can you adequately do her justice?” She looked over to him, curious to see whether her hypothesis had any merit.  

[ahundredandonenotes]

  He had to laugh. Roger was incredulous that she hit every mark without flaw. Watching her do so as she played was a venture in itself; the fie creases of her faces were telling of the activity in her mind as it seemed to concoct elaborate and vivid images from sound.    Roger felt music. He could listen to a piece and almost grasp every interlude, tracing the fine connection between his heartstrings and his fingertips when he played or committed strings of notes to paper.   This woman saw. Roger knew in the way that her eyes fixed on nothing in particular other than a thing only she could see. They arrived at the same conclusion, he and she, but their paths across the sound could not be more different.

  "You are wordy, aren't you?" teased Roger. "But you're right -- on all counts." He began to cycle through his pieces once more. "Pongo keeps my on a short leash more often than not, and I can't seem to get far enough away from Cruella. But when it comes to Anita..." the song simply ended, as it always did. Possibly because the story had yet to end, at least for Roger. "That one's a lost cause. No sense in dwelling on a story that just doesn't want to be written, eh? But as for this one..."   Roger easily returned to the melody he'd composed on the spot. He ought to be writing it down, but he was far too engaged in the movement of his fingers than to be so rude as to stop them. Eyes on his female companion, he continued to play.  

  "This one isn't quite done. Not in the sense that it's not complete, but that it's not ready to be complete. Oh, it wants to be, and it thinks it's just about ready, but one too many sleepless nights has left it lagging. Which is quite a shame -- it has a lot to it, you see, bounds of potential and plenty of inspiration. A fair bit of compassion, too. It all goes into braving other people, though. There's not much room for balance here -- that's why it's so complex. So, yes -- this one's for you, at this awfully early hour, listening to a stranger play piano, without shoes on. Bit of a mouthful, isn't it?"

[little-wendy-bird]

  A soft laugh escaped the lips of the dark haired girl as she watched her new semi-acquaintance make room for her on the bench, dragging his forehead across the keys as he went.

  He told her that he wasn’t a storyteller and Wendy waved him off. “Of course you are,” She said, with the same sure tone as one might state that the sky was blue. “Art is storytelling. It’s inviting someone into the strange, confusing space that you call your mind and showing them who you are and allowing them to make sense of it in their own unique way. What better story is there than that?”

  Just talking to this man was helping her to focus her thoughts more clearly. It was always easier to think when she wasn’t alone, Wendy had noticed.

  “This Anitamust be terribly special to you,” Wendy commented lightly. There was no denying it, the way that he was laboring over the piece. Whether Anita was a person, a place, or even just an idea, he cared about it.

  She took the young man in more carefully from her closer vantage point. His hands her strong, his fingers long and slender. The nails were cut short, something common among piano players. There were calluses on his fingers and bags below his eyes. The corners of his lips were downturned and his brow lifted in thought.

  Wendy found him fascinating.

  She wasn’t sure what it was about him. Perhaps it was simply the way that he toiled over his art. Perhaps it was the fact that she felt calmer around him than she had before. Quite possibly it was the music he played.

  “I just might, at that,” Her lips quirked into a soft smile.

[ahundredandonenotes]

  How could a person be so profound at so ungodly an hour of the morning? Roger considered deeply the words spoken to him, and arrived at the conclusion that she was perfectly right. That was why he composed -- why he'd composed Anita. Roger didn't speak much of her, as he felt the notes he played spoke of her far more eloquently than he ever could. That was why he mainly wrote melodies without lyrics. The melodies were the words, in their own way. And they were best to write themselves when they were ready to be written.

  With that in clear perspective, Roger heaved himself from the keys of the piano. He snuffed out his pipe, no longer wishing his weighted mind to lag down with smoke, and began to shuffle through the mess of sheet music that dusted the piano's surface.   "Anita was a girl I went to school with," remarked Roger, thumbing a few pieces of paper and setting them in clear view. "I write your standard fare of catchy tunes, but the good stuff's always the ones that're inspired by people. For instance..."

  Roger began to play. The tempo was upbeat, proud, a touch of whimsy to it. "That would be Pongo -- the man responsible for dragging me across the northern hemisphere. And then," he hitched on a laugh as the melody changed; when Roger played it, he felt almost predatory. His lines extended and his shoulder hunched, and if he had a moustache, he'd twirl it. "We have Cruella. If she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will."

  A beat. Roger cast his gaze aside and considered the present company.   There was a remnant of primness and propriety about this woman, but it it belonged to another, previous day. How very grown up she was -- yet how young she looked beneath it. No command of the English language, even one as refined as hers, would completely age her. And there was something very comical about her, Roger thought. In the same way it was comical to fluster a caretaker, or a librarian. She had to be a writer. And if she wasn't she ought to be.

  So the tune wrote itself as Roger considered this. It was soft and considerate, like her, with a dreamy quality to its refrain. Classy but not pompous, invigorating without hyperactivity. She wrote herself easier than Anita did.   "Alright then, O Keeper of the Sacred Story," said Roger. "Put to text, what could my confusing old mind possibly be ruminating?"

[little-wendy-bird]

   Wendy suddenly realized that man hadn’t known she was there, right at about the same moment as he realized that she was. He started choking on his pipe and she grimaced. She felt dreadful about the fact that she had startled him like that.

   It wasn’t too long before the frazzled, and now soot-stained, stranger had regained his breath. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Now would certainly come the yelling, the lecture about how it wasn’t polite to surprise people.

   She had heard them all before.

    He smiled at her. That wasn’t what Wendy had anticipated. Furthermore, he was going to play it again. Just the thought of hearing the calming music was helping to sooth the part of her brain currently berating her abilities.

   As he started to play, Wendy sank into it. She stepped tentatively forward. It was nice to listen to. She wasn’t sure what he had been talking about. It reminded her of… adventures. Of something magical and fantastical and better than anything she knew.

   He stopped abruptly. “Don’t say that,” Wendy hated to think that the talented boy was going through the strain of artistic block.

   When he seemed to collapse in on himself, and the piano, she walked closer. She knelt beside the piano, trying to look at him again. “I don’t know that much about music,” She began, “But I know how hard it is to write an ending.” Her fingers tugged at the hem of her shirt nervously.

   “What story are you trying to tell?”

[ahundredandonenotes]

  Story? Who said anything about a story? Roger scooted across the piano stool to make room for the girl, dragging his head behind him like a dead weight. It played as horrid as it felt.    "I'm not much of a story-teller," Roger confessed. "Music's more an exercise in feeling, I suppose. Well -- piano is, anyway. The trombone is an exercise in noise."

  It was unexpected that a strange, barefoot woman in an otherwise deserted building was being patient with him, Roger thought. The more he thought on it, the more he thought on the question she'd posed and how it might pertain to her. He could see her fingers more clearly from this proximity; it was ink they were blotted with.   Hey. Maybe she dabbled in cave paintings. Though it was much more likely that she was a very, very disgruntled writer who'd had a disagreement with her own tools of the trade.    Roger could relate. His brow creased as he considered the finer details. Finally he arrived at, "It's called Anita. It's been fine to write itself up until now, but it's gotten a bit beyond me." He looked from the girl's fingers to her face, finer details that suggested more than the spoke blatantly. Her presence, he decided, was welcome.

  "You don't happen to have experience in writing stories, do you?"

[little-wendy-bird]

Wendy sat on the floor, surrounded by a mass of papers around her. She had been writing all morning and so far, the only thing that she liked of her work was the opening sentence. Everything besides that, she just couldn’t connect with, The smudge of ink on her fingers, something she was very used to by now, was bothering her more than it had in years. She needed a break from the harsh mistress that writing had always been.

As soon as she had discarded the pile of scrapped works, she left her dorm. Bare feet embraced the cool concrete with serenity. She wasn’t sure where she was going. That was the best way to go places. 

As her mind flew elsewhere, consumed with half-created thoughts and barely remembered dreams, she wandered into the music department. She had rarely been in this building before. A hauntingly beautiful piece called to her. It promised resolution from her strange thoughts. She walked towards it.

The boy was lighting a pipe when she first saw him. His sandy blonde hair was mussed, like he had been running his fingers through it. Or maybe that was just how he liked to style it. Who could tell?

"Excuse me," Her voice was soft. "Would you play that again?"

[ahundredandonenotes]

  Having suddenly been alerted to the fact that he was not alone, Roger spluttered mid-drag. He pounded at his chest to disperse the violent coughing fit, eyes watering, unable to focus on the audience he'd garnered.    "One -- " Choking was graceless. Roger put his pipe down as he raised his index finger. One moment.   Several moments later, he quelled the urge to cough. Roger smiled wryly as he croaked an apology.

  The woman was not one whom Roger knew, but it was a comfort that she appeared equally as frazzled. Something dark tinted her fingertips.   She wasn't wearing any shoes.    How could he shirk her off? A spare ear might improve on his own.

  "It's not done," stated Roger plainly. He stretched his arms far over his head, groaning into his aching joints. Tentatively, he began his piece anew. "And at this rate, it's not going to be, either. See, all of this..." he elaborated with a flourish as his fingers left the keys, "is all passable. And I'm rather proud of..." the sudden change in tempo was exhilarating. "However..."

  The fifth bar loomed. Roger didn't have it in him to come completely to it. He reached the end of all he had composed, and it left him hanging, wanting more, but not knowing quite what more was. He sighed. "See? Not finished. There's not a single not known to man that's going to finish it.  I should know..."   With an ugly crash, his forehead hit the keys. "I've tried them all."

[exploringtheinfiniteabyss]

Visit Original Link

[ahundredandonenotes]

  It was always the same tune. At least, it was always the same four bars. By the time he got to the fifth it was always different, and one Roger Radcliffe couldn't be satisfied with a single variant he played.    He'd been at it for hours upon hours, well past dinner and into a pocket of the evening where time paid no heed. Staring at the same unfinished piece of sheet music could drive a man mad, and by the looks of things, he was very nearly arriving at that point.    Roger flexed his sore, callused fingers as they braced above the keys of the music department's fine old piano.

  Bar one -- nice. It led well into the second, and the third was positively titillating. Number four held such promise, and as he neared the fifth and the crescendo threatened to mount --            -- It still sounded weird.

  The positively mad man let out a frustrated groan as he snatched up his sheet music and screwed it into a ball, lobbing it over his shoulder.   He reached for his pipe, lit up, inhaled deeply. "Come on, old boy," he muttered on an exhale. "Stop writing shit." 

[barbie--roberts]

Oh yay! -links arms with him and starts skipping towards the kitchen- Oh and I could make all the different berry pancakes! And chocolate chip! And maple sugar! And butterscotch! And oh those fancy lavender infused ones and the funfet- oh my gosh, I just realized I haven’t introduced myself yet! Hi! I’m Barbie!

[ahundredandonenotes]

  / roger's long and gangly legs are not made for skipping. if it wasn't for his freakish stride, he'd not be able to keep up with the girl. not that he minds -- it's just so early. /   Steady on, steady on! One pancake mix at a time.   / he finds his feet underneath themselves and quickens his pace toward the kitchen, giving barbie a satisfactory pat on the forearm. /   It's Roger, by the way. What's say I be very British and put some tea on while you go pancake-mad?

[barbie--roberts]

Oh no! You poor thing! Would you like me to make you something! I’m known for my award winning blueberry pancakes!  That would be pretty magical!

[ahundredandonenotes]

  Award-winning? Well, I'm not going to say no to that. Blueberry pancakes sound just the ticket -- I can't promise I'll be awake as you are, but it'll certainly help.