Prelude
Frederic Chopin, famous 19th century composer, taught me that life is lived in preludes. Beginnings, fragments, moods-in- miniature, some less than a minute long. Introductions to larger works that don’t even exist. Lullabies overtaken by laments. “Why can’t you be more like Mozart?” I once asked him. “More…predictable, more full of pleasing pattern?” “Why can’t you?” he shot back. Ghosts can be very peevish. But Chopin didn’t like to be called a ghost. Or an imaginary friend. “I am real,” he insisted. “Though as you well know, I died a horrible death in Paris over a hundred years ago.” Unlike the Holy Blessed Virgin Mary, who miraculously appeared to the children at Fatima, and about which we were forced to read every Sunday in our Blue Army Cadet readers, Chopin’s presence was a miracle of a non-religious nature. Perhaps it was the tiny slice of diamond in the record-player needle working its magic; maybe Chopin was a time-traveling phantom-man, or maybe my brother was right and I really did have the brain of a demented ferret and was simply hallucinating. This I know: when his music spilled out of our record player, he came to life for me right there in our living room. He might have been dead and hypersensitive and invisible to everyone but me, but sometimes you don’t choose your best friends. Sometimes, they choose you. …show more content…
“If you would just listen to the preludes more closely, you would understand that paradox is a condition of joy, even in Kentucky.” He sighed. “Especially in Kentucky.”
His music is like a suicidal act that ends up saving one’s
Frederic Chopin, famous 19th century composer, taught me that life is lived in preludes. Beginnings, fragments, moods-in- miniature, some less than a minute long. Introductions to larger works that don’t even exist. Lullabies overtaken by laments. “Why can’t you be more like Mozart?” I once asked him. “More…predictable, more full of pleasing pattern?” “Why can’t you?” he shot back. Ghosts can be very peevish. But Chopin didn’t like to be called a ghost. Or an imaginary friend. “I am real,” he insisted. “Though as you well know, I died a horrible death in Paris over a hundred years ago.” Unlike the Holy Blessed Virgin Mary, who miraculously appeared to the children at Fatima, and about which we were forced to read every Sunday in our Blue Army Cadet readers, Chopin’s presence was a miracle of a non-religious nature. Perhaps it was the tiny slice of diamond in the record-player needle working its magic; maybe Chopin was a time-traveling phantom-man, or maybe my brother was right and I really did have the brain of a demented ferret and was simply hallucinating. This I know: when his music spilled out of our record player, he came to life for me right there in our living room. He might have been dead and hypersensitive and invisible to everyone but me, but sometimes you don’t choose your best friends. Sometimes, they choose you. …show more content…
“If you would just listen to the preludes more closely, you would understand that paradox is a condition of joy, even in Kentucky.” He sighed. “Especially in Kentucky.”
His music is like a suicidal act that ends up saving one’s