Assignment 11- Sara Anderlich

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there. Miles Davis." 

You sit down on your last day of band class, only half hearing what your band director just said. It's the final rehearsal for the big performance tomorrow night and you're filled with nerves. 

"Notes don't mean anything. You can play right notes and rhythms, but without expression, it will be meaningless."

****

It's now the day of the concert, the curtains open, your band director starts the count off, and suddenly, everything disappears. Everything but you, and the music all around you. It's like a stage light is shifting around the room, dimly lit as the the faint sound of chimes enter. You hear the drone of the horns faintly in the back, and then watch as the light drifts over the soft melody of flutes. It gets brighter as the clarinets join. The trumpets soon, stealing it away, and slowly, the light begins to sway across parts of the room as each instrument has their moment. You start playing. Your sound seeming to hold itself in the middle of everything. It's floating, shifting against the other sounds, blending so meticulously that you no longer hear yourself. You are not one, but part of a group, a movement, an entity that has taken time away from the world, and left it here, with you, in your own personal bubble. You feel stuck in time, like nothing is moving but the music.

It's dancing now, going faster and faster... the light growing brighter and brighter... You watch as the light moves over the brass, over you, sometimes over both, feeling the warmth of it filling you....until everything stops. The light grows until it's too bright to see, everything is warm, and suddenly, all goes dark. The silence floats around the room like an orb, sucking out the life.. but you know this part of the music all too well.  The silence is music and you play it with such enthusiasm that when the flutes join back you hear faint cheers from the crowd. The piece isn't over. The light is growing again and you feel yourself lifting with it. The joy you feel is incomparable to anything you've ever experienced and you begin putting that love into your sound. It swirls with the light, creating lines of tension and release, dancing more as others do the same. You are not you anymore. You are the music, you are your instrument, and thus, the music is only what you make it to be, what everyone makes it to be. Together. This is your life, and this is your moment, a moment you are sharing with anyone who can hear you. 

At the end, you feel yourself breathe, but the light isn't gone, it's only paused, hovering above the entire group. You feel yourself standing, your feet pulling the rest of your body up, though you still can't see past the curtain of light. You are held in place, stuck in time... The light sinks like the setting Sun and you start to see again. You glance down at your music stand, the blots of ink scattering the pages in front of you. 

"This is so much more than a piece of paper." you think. 

And it is. Music takes whatever form you give it.