august blue
You are a pianist named Elsa who since childhood has been under the care of your piano teacher. A great, strict man with precise aesthetic ideals, a winning smile, and philosophical grit. You dye your hair blue before the book begins – maybe you’re getting a bit rebellious. Sick of being at the whim of your own hands, who only listen to your teachers, your conductors, and not to you.
Maybe you don’t like being bossed about, composed and written before you can make your own choices. So you’re in Vienna, on a great stage with your blue hair in a gorgeous plait. You’re playing Rachmaninov and it all bubbles inside you. Your hands will not play this written tune for him. What a bully, the conductor, and what stubborn anarchists your hands have just become! You lose control and finish the concert with music entirely made up from your imagination.
You will never be hired to play the great hall again. So, you are unemployed, roaming around Athens. There is a market-man selling mechanical horses. He pulls on the tail and they walk forward. They are beautiful and you feel at one with them, prompted into movement by your masters. A woman at the stall feels your presence, feels you wanting to buy a horse, and purchases the last one from the market-man.
You are angry. She left her hat behind. You steal it in spite – you will think of this woman every day from now on – how she stole your horse and how you stole her hat.
As your life in Europe sings on, she will speak to you in your mind. She will conjure your spite, your anger, your obsession, and you will know yourself.
Silently crazy is this girl who narrates a book about many things: love and caring in its many faulty iterations, composing and rewriting, writing and recomposing.
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