In every performance, Octavia plays one wrong note. Her life depends on it.
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TCC56
Loganberry
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I really like Octavia's depiction here. Too bad for Vinyl but you can really tell that Octavia's sole interest is for her music.
Also, maybe it's the melancholic tone of the story or the talk about death, but it kinda strike a chord in me. ( Pun intended :P )
I'm pretty sure this story will haunt me from time to time.
So, have a fav and a like.
Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grab,
weil ich grad kein ander'n Schuh hab
Und heute Nacht schwimm' meine Zähne im Glas
Während ich mein' Zauberstab
für deine Oma gimmeln lass
What a shame for someone young to think that they could have reached the highest for of their art. For her to think of willfully discarding all that music that was left to be played. Almost pitiful, how naive and short sighted she is. To talk of death as if she knew it.
As someone who frequently gets terrified when things go the way I want them to, I related far too strongly to this story. You're clearly a very talented writer, and I'd love to read a sequel if you make one.
Anxiety
This is an accurate depiction of how tortured true artists can be. She is trapped; she can't walk away from the music, for it IS her, nor can she ever reach the perfect state she longs for. Though I have no doubt she plays exceptionally, I would not trade places with her for an instant.
That's a new kind of artist anguish if I've ever saw one
Dang, this one is deep as heck and I love it! It really can make ya think about how others truly feel about what they're passionate about or maybe something that they're bothered by because they're too good at it! All of it is just super interesting and got me thinking a lot! I hope ya didn't mind, but I simply HAD to make a reading of this very deep fic of yours!
Audio Linkyloo!: https://youtu.be/TVE0OtOBUIg
(I don't mean to offend anyone with this comment in any way!)
ooof, that hit a bit close to home ngl,
Cash Money
This is definitely going into my favorites. I 100% know what it feels like to play something that others think is good but you know you didn't play it as well as you wished. But hey, at least she didn't play Flight of The Bumblebee.
If ever we reach perfection, what point is there to live? For it is in our imperfections where we are truly alive.
Personally, i think it's more a case of perfection being a false ideal, but i can certainly understand what's being said here.
Sounds like Tavi is a very sick mare.
As a musician myself, this is very bittersweet. Because there is so much competition and because everyone is so invested in learning all that they can, everypony strives for perfection, to be the best of the best, but many once they get there think there is nothing left to learn. But there's always another song waiting to be played.
It is said that in India, Alexander the Great wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.
There is no perfection, only the pursuit thereof.
For to achieve perfection, one invites stagnation, and thus is inherently imperfect.
That last line, it hit me. I get her, on some level.
This was written impeccably. I love your prose. Each word has a place and a purpose. Perfect narrative clarity.
So there is…
Hello! I recently reviewed this, although I don't think my review really did it justice as I didn't quite have the ability to get Octavia's situation. That is entirely on me, not on you. As I did say, though, this is beautifully written. "Like" isn't quite the right word for a story like this but, sheesh, you have to have one.
This is a very interesting story. Something Goethe or Byron would have liked.
I think I'm going to be talking about this story in the future, because it's illustrative of one of my favorite rants: the fatal seductiveness of the concept of "perfection".
Before Plato, the concept of "perfection" existed only in Sanskrit. It's absurd if you stop and think about it for a few seconds: is there really, even as a hypothetical ideal, a perfect woman? a perfect evening? a perfect performance of a song? Obviously not. It would be pretentious to say that either spring or fall is the best season, or that male or female is the best sex, or Beethoven or Bach the greater composer, or mysteries or adventures the best stories. For anything worth doing or being, there are many good, radically different, and mutually exclusive ways of doing or being it. It would be asinine to say we should throw away the Leonard Cohen version of "Hallelujah" now that we have Jeff Buckley's version. And yet people persist in imagining there could be a "perfect" instance or way of doing something, an eternal ideal Form which all instances must attempt to emulate, and which renders all other instances obsolete.
But few people ever stop and question anything everyone else accepts without question, even for a few seconds.
I can read this story as Octavia's personal tragedy after believing the lie of perfection. You can't play music if you seek perfection. You can accurately play a series of notes, in a dictated pattern, with a given tempo and dynamics. But you can't play. The joy of play, and of infinite, open-ended growth and exploration, is ruled out by the belief in "perfection".
(Can you imagine Louie Armstrong trying to play something "perfectly?" He'd rather play, man.)
Or I can read it as a metaphor for art in general. The belief in perfection (telos, the ancient Greek word which Plato abused to express the concept of "perfect", but which originally meant "mature" or "complete") is the basis of the recurrent claim, by lazy, untalented, or stupid artists, that some form is "played out": that there is nothing left to do with rhymed poetry, or realistic novels, or representational painting, or harmonic music, because they have already attained their true mature Form, which they may not go beyond. Yet this is what the entire art industry proclaims loudly and uniformly. And we see that doing so has destroyed these arts.
I can even read this story as a metaphor for Western civilization's love of death. Its moral prophets so often despise life and its messiness because they demand "perfection". The belief in perfection seems inevitably to lead to embracing death, because it assumes from the start that evolution is impossible. Every species, culture, and individual is expected to grow to just its telic destiny, and no further. Anything more than that is impious. To contemplate being more, or to realize there are many different ways of being good, is unholy, blasphemous. Everyone who seeks "perfection" ultimately embraces death, because perfection is by definition static and unchanging, and hence a kind of death.
I posted a review of this story, which says pretty much the same thing as this comment.
Nitpick: I can't tell whether Octavia composed the piece she plays, or not. It doesn't matter much, but the question is distracting.
Some typos:
=> spatial aspect
There are numerous grammatical errors, but I think most of them are good ones.
10804116
I don't think most good musicians ever think they've "gotten there", or think there's nothing left to learn. Look at the Beatles, Paul Simon, David Bowie. Octavia thinks she's striving for the ultimate, but all she's doing is holding herself back, stuck on this one piece, and never really playing at all anymore. And even if she succeeds in her own mind, her victory will be hollow and fatal. All because she bought into the myth of "perfection".