It was the cold, dark of early morning when Stacey woke up from her usual nightmare with a dry mouth and thumping heart.
She sat up gasping for breath and trying to keep her breathing quiet when she saw the other ladies still sleeping. That dream of being chased faded while she fixed her mind in the present. Not even bothering to look at the clock that she hadn't learnt how to read yet, Stacey washed up, changed and went down to where the tutors had kept her textbooks. There wasn't even a glimmer of light on the horizon outside.
She studied and practiced what she had learnt the previous day. Then she memorised and practised writing some Tadpole pictograms from the book. In the music room, she practised reading the Tadpole music notation and made herself a cheatsheet where she had translated things into staves and bars to help her better understand. She kept her cheatsheet in her pocket so that no one else would see and question her fake amnesia. This would be more useful to her than the alternative number notation with dashes and dots.
Then she practiced the falling and tumbling from yesterday while practising the stable singing form that her tutors had tried to drill into her. She ran a few laps around the training yard and did some weights training.
Someone fetched her for a pre-breakfast lesson on the Tadpole language which she attended to while Tonton did her makeup. Stacey spent breakfast practising her pronunciation with the boys who were eager to help her learn. The boys appeared relieved to see that she was no longer in a daze, easily accepting her apology. They were amazed at how much progress she'd already made with just one day of study. After breakfast, in the half hour before assembly, Stacey memorised more vocabulary and grammar. She used her finger to practise writing pictograms while she learned different types of vocal warm ups from the boys and echoed them.
Assembly today was a two part master class on music improvisation and freestyle dance. Stacey only partially paid attention while she continued scribbling down new Tadpole words she was hearing and trying to learn in cuneiform. Ken wrote the pictographs and corrected her spelling every now and then.
"Stacey, you've been called down to the stage," Ken hissed, taking her notepad and pen from her.
"What? For what?" Stacey asked under her breath while she stood up.
"A demo on music improv," Ken replied.
"Did you understand my explanation?" Hugh asked her kindly when Stacey had arrived on stage and a microphone was given to her. "I know your grasp of Tadpole is very weak."
"Uhh," Stacey wanted to cry. Her mind was blank.
What explanation? What had he been talking about again?
Hugh guided her hand holding the microphone up so that the mic was closer to her mouth.
Music improvisation, right? She knew the theory behind it and had studied it briefly years ago but she'd never really tried it. Mrs Igor, her piano teacher, had told her that she didn't have any talent for it and that it wasn't worth wasting time on learning improvisation when she was better off practising real music acknowledged by the world and preparing for the next competition. It hadn't stopped her from messing around every now and then during her daily practice when she wanted a break, but Mrs Igor had probably been right.
And now Hugh wanted her to demonstrate? She crossed her fingers and hoped she'd get out of it. Somehow.
It was better to be honest. She had no idea what Hugh had been saying at all.
"To tell the truth, Hugh," she admitted in a small voice, "I was more focused on writing down the new vocab I was hearing you use than the actual meaning of what you said. So, uh, I have no idea what you were talking about. Sorry."
Stacey hung her head, looking at the scuffed toes of her shoes. She hadn't thought to use the new shoes that had been provided by the program for her but now she regretted it. She probably looked scruffy and unkempt with these discoloured old runners.
Ken held up her notebook as evidence while the nearest camera zoomed in on it for a moment. The image was cast onto the big screen for everyone to see. Stacey glanced at it and felt herself colour in embarrassment when her poor spelling and ugly writing with Ken's corrections became visible to everyone.
"Hmm," Hugh scratched his chin, taking a long look at the notebook showing on the screen, asking Ken to turn go back a few pages and then turn the page for him to see one by one. When he was done, he smiled brightly at her. "I don't think you'd have any major issues in this area. Your friends can fill you in on anything you've missed later. In fact, from what I can see of the vocab you did write down, you've been taking notes of my lecture in Tadpole. You can study it in more detail later. If I'm not wrong, from what I saw in your audition, you should be a natural at this. Why don't you just play something and I'll talk to everyone while you play? Don't worry. You'll be fine. Don't play a piece you know. Play something from your heart and tell us through your music how you're feeling. We'll talk you through it if you gt stuck. How about it?"
Stacey had a feeling that Hugh had some big misconceptions about her. For some reason, he seemed to have unrealisticly high expectations regarding her musical ability.
A natural? She doubted it. If she had been a natural then Mrs Igor wouldn't have had so much to say about her playing.
"Not a piece. Something made up?" Stacey tried to confirm, feeling her heart racing. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach.
What to do?
What should she do?
She should be awful at improvisation and making things up. She'd never tried playing something made up in front of other people after the first time she had eagerly played for Mrs Igor. Now, so many people were about to be witness to what a failure she was.
"Well, this is a class on improvisation," Hugh raised an eyebrow at her, making Stacey feel chagrined. "You are extemporising. Let your emotions sing through your musical instrument."
"Here," Telea beckoned, sitting down on the piano bench, shuffling to the left and patting the empty side of the seat to invite Stacey over. She distracted Stacey from her feelings of inadequacy. "Play with me first and let's see what happens."
Telea started with a simple chord progression in common time. Stacey hesitantly sat to Telea's right and paid attention to what key she was in and what she was doing. Then she tentatively began playing something with her right hand to match the chords, trying to find a pattern. A hesitant tune flowed from the feeling the chord progression produced in her. Telea added some ornamentation and Stacey played along, starting to get the feel of things. Her left hand joined her right on the keyboard.
The tune brought a stream of colours and images to Stacey's mind, but they felt stilted. Stifled. Confined. They didn't flow coherently or freely enough to form the musical landscape that was waiting to be brought to life. Stacey felt herself pushing the boundaries of Telea's musical skeleton, wanting to break beyond the restrictions of an unchanging chord progression.
Slowly, slowly, Telea gave way to Stacey and then got up. Stacey paused. Was that it? Had the impromptu demo come to an end?
"Keep playing," Telea winked at her. "You've got the hang of it now. The stage is yours. Let it out."
Stacey took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She played the original chord progression, holding one note in suspension through it all before it took a running dive into the sounds of the thundering storm and crashing waves in her mind.
She used the chord progression Telea had played as a base and then modulated to a different key to create a tumultuous forefront of an incoming storm, landing in a minor key full of angry, crashing chords and running notes. Discordance vied with concordance. Melodies and counter melodies fought with each other, trying to drown each other out in turns. Soft harmonies sang or shouted in between the thunder but were drowned out here or there by various other elements. Regular fleeting bass notes rumbled the marching rhythm of ominous rain in the background beyond the intermittent thunder and lightning. The foot pedals of the piano were pumped for full effect and to emphasise changes in sound effects.
Behind her closed eyelids, a huge storm was raging and she was a little boat at the mercy of the wind and waves. She played her loneliness and fear out. The feeling of desperation, despair and loss. The terrifying realisation that she might remain forever lost with no way home. That she might be crushed and drowned in this storm. Broken and sunken, never to be found again.
The boat creaked. The wind and waves hammered. The lines on the boat hummed and slapped against the poles and rails in a frenzied tattoo. The intermittent sharp percussion was made audible by her knocking and slapping of different parts of the piano, during the short gasps between slopping notes or anxious arpeggios.
Distantly, she heard Hugh and the other mentors make a few comments on the modulations and technical aspects of the music during the quieter moments, but their comments fizzled out as they were drawn into her mental soundscape. All was silent and she became immersed in the world she was building.
She was just a bit amazed with herself at how smoothly things were coming out and how reality and imagination had become intertwined. There were small pains in her hands at using muscles she had not exercised so greatly for such a long time. Somehow, her mind-hand coordination was perfect despite her lack of practice. It hit the sweet spot. It was a perfect replication of what she was hearing and feeling in her mind.
Sensing that she wasn't doing too badly, Stacey relaxed and let herself go, allowing her entire consciousness to immerse itself in the melding of her internal and external worlds.
And then for some reason, her voice wanted to be let free. It was buffeted and cracked through the storm but then broke through the angry clouds to soar above the storm. It sang a wordless tune of nostalgia, the warmth of good old memories.
In the warm sunlight above the storm clouds, she soaked up what she could from the rays of the sun, briefly changing to a major key and a slowed tempo. Her voice faded away to be swept away by the wind before she gathered herself to dive back into the heart of the storm to save the little boat, performing a reprise of her original theme but with a more uplifted variation.
The variations of her original theme continued and revitalised itself with each new variation as if the little boat was cheering itself on despite its hopeless situation. The fast paced intensity of the storm gradually died out in an elongated rituendo with the little boat's rising hope.
The wind and waves of the storm settled into a simple, peaceful melody as the storm blew itself out, causing sighs of relief after the anxious intensity. The little boat rocked gently on the water with a quiet lullaby that rolled into a rippling interrupted cadence that left two alternating low notes a semitone apart. It broke the lighter breath of relief, bringing about a sinking sensation that the little boat's troubles weren't over yet. More was yet to come.
The alternating semitones started slow and ponderous, gradually speeding up to faster and faster. Faster and faster, turning into a nervous trill with arpeggio runs that skidded in panic as the sounds of a new storm rumbled in the distance... and then BANG!
The final chord startled everyone, making them jump in their seats and return to the present with a start.
Stacey had been jolted by the sudden ending chord too and found herself strangely out of breath. She hadn't expected the music to end this way. As if the music had escaped from her and turned around to take control of her instead.
The bang woke her from her reverie. For a moment, she couldn't remember who or where she was. How she had gotten here? Why was she sitting in front of a piano?
She stared at her hands on the piano and they trembled visibly. A cameraman by her side smoothly stepped away to give her some space when she jerked away from his presence in surprise as if she hadn't realised he was there.
What was going on? What was she doing here? What had her hands just been doing on that keyboard? Those beautiful black and white keys that she had decided to give up on all those years ago. Why was she here?
Yanking her hands from the piano keys, she suddenly remembered where she was and what was happening. That she wasn't alone venting her feelings in a practice room but in front of an audience. A very big audience if she counted the viewers beyond the cameras. They had all probably just seen how awful she was and were stunned by the atrocity - that was why the room was so silent and her mind so blank.
Goodness, what had she just done? How could she have let down all her walls like that? How could she have let herself go? Mrs Igor had warned her before not to lose herself in the music because that was when she made big mistakes. Is that what she has just done? Made a huge mistake? What was she doing here? What had she done?