//------------------------------// // Music of the Night // Story: Nuit Blanche // by nightwalker //------------------------------// “Hey, would you mind if I checked that program, see what else there is around here?” Octavia obliged and rolled to the side a bit, allowing Vinyl’s prodding magic to pull open her saddlebags and fish out the booklet. Once she had it in hoof, the magic on her horn switched from the typical aura Octavia was used to seeing to a beam of light much like a flashlight. “Much better,” Vinyl commented as she started to go through the pages. Too far away to read the pages herself, Octavia settled back into the cloudbank once more. The two pegasi were still busy making their own light display in the cloud from earlier and there weren’t any more of them in this part of the sky to keep her attention. She looked back up at the stars for a bit. They were beautiful. Were they always this wonderful, or only since Princess Luna had returned? She really had never paid the night much attention. Closing her eyes, she shifted about on the cloud to get even a little more comfortable and just let the deep pulses of the music behind her come through the cloud and wash through her. After a few minutes Octavia commented absently, “I must admit, I am liking tonight’s music. All of it, surprisingly. What they’re playing here complements things quite nicely.” “It’s called ambient dub,” Vinyl answered her unspoken question, “just so you know. And yeah, for an exhibit like this, it does work well. Ambient is all about creating an atmosphere more than a song, to allow the listener to lose themselves in an ocean of sensation.” She waved a hoof back at the cloudbank. “Head in the Clouds, a perfect metaphor for that. Actually, this is musically closer to what I play normally. It has a bassline you can feel, but the drop-outs aren’t as hard and it works in more psychedelics.” “So what were you playing back at the plaza?” Vinyl extinguished her hornlight. “That was house. It’s lighter, more audience friendly. It’s a more minimalistic form of music, the whole idea being to vary the rhythms while maintaining a consistent beat. There’s still a classic intro, chorus, mid, and outro structure, but you gotta work more to figure where each is as the songs typically run long. I can still play with bass there but, uh,” a wide grin had crept its way onto her muzzle, “it’s nothing like true dubstep. That’s heavy, that’s powerful when you can put together a good piece. Not for every pony mind you, but if you let the wubs really speak to you, you’d be surprised what you can get out of it.” Octavia turned back, admiring the white mare beside her. “So what’d you find? Anything strike your fancy?” “A few things,” Vinyl replied, the grin never having left her muzzle. “In terms of the festival, there are a couple events and installations along this level that sounded interesting.” “I was thinking perhaps one of the galleries.” “Nah. Well okay, maybe. Depends what we find. Could be some good stuff around.” She rolled herself over and off the cloud, shaking out her mane and tail. Octavia followed suit. On the way out they passed a few other groups and couples. Most were unicorns and earth ponies, marveling at the clouds around them. A few had pegasi that, while not quite as impressed, at least seemed to appreciate the cloud engineering required to get it all working with the lights and sounds. Vinyl and Octavia didn’t even make it past the edge of the promenade's grassy park before stopping again. Under a street light, a barbershop quartet decked out in green and gold sweaters and bowties was serenading a couple of older unicorns. A grey mare with a purple and white mane was being embraced from behind by a blue stallion with an even darker blue mane. The two were swaying gently back and forth to the harmonious tone of the four singers. ♫Tonight, tonight I'll see my love tonight And for us, stars will stop where they are. Today The minutes seem like hours, The hours go so slowly, And still the sky is li-ight Oh moon, grow bright, And make the endless day, endless nii-ight! Endless nii-ight!♫ The couple before them stamped their hooves in applause. “Wonderful, just wonderful,” the mare told them. “You’re quite welcome, Mrs. Sparkle,” the leader singer, a white unicorn mare herself, replied. The ears of Mrs. and presumably Mr. sparkle pricked up at that. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?” The white mare had a musical laugh to match her voice. “No, we’ve never met, darling, but I recognize you from pictures your daughter has shown me. I’m Rarity, one of Twilight’s friends from Ponyville.” She gestured to her companions. “This is Toe-Tapper, Big McIntosh, and Torch Song.” The group quickly fell to introductions and casual conversation, causing the small crowd they had gathered to disperse. Vinyl and Octavia continued their largely aimless journey. The tier they were on now was noticeably quieter than the one lower down, the only real noise coming from the odd gallery, studio, restaurant, or club that had its doors still open, and the clop of their own hooves on the pavement. “I never had a voice for music,” Octavia mused. “Performances like those always make me wish I did.” “What do you play?” “Cello.” “Nice. I could never do that myself, don’t have the legs or the balance for it.” “Earth pony stamina certainly does help. I just wish I had unicorn magic for some of the more fiddly pieces of music. The fingering can be quite a challenge when all you can use are hooves.” Vinyl snickered. “Fiddly pieces, that some sort of classical music technical term? Like needing a fiddle?” Octavia rolled her eyes. “Har har. What about you, do you actually play anything?” Recoiling in mock horror, Vinyl pressed a hoof to her chest: “What, you don’t think DJing is a legitimate craft, something that requires actual musical talent? ” This time it was Octavia with the sarcastic smirk. “You mean it’s not just putting on records and pressing buttons?” “Maybe you should try it sometime,” Vinyl replied, leering closer, her muzzle twisted in a challenging grin. “But to answer your previous question, I started with piano. We couldn’t afford a real one, so I had a synthesizer keyboard. I was never very good at it, kept over-hoofing the keys. Still, it’s what got me interested in electronic music. I found the almost freeform structure that a lot of it has much more appealing to the strict regimentation of classical works.” Octavia shrugged, her ears backing self-consciously. “I don’t know, I always found composed structure more comforting. Like, I always knew what would be coming up. Freeform stuff like that was always Jazzie’s forte, she’s good at that kind of thing.” She was about to go on with more when she realized that Vinyl had stopped several steps back and turned around. “Hey, this place looks crazy retro, let’s check it out!” Before Octavia could say anything one way or the other, Vinyl had taken off through the door from which poured the bright purple of ultra-violet lights and the drums and guitars of rock music. Shaking her head, she followed. As it turned out, Vinyl had ducked into not a nightclub as Octavia had first surmised, but rather an artist’s studio. Andy Warhoof was well enough renowned – even in her own circles – and she recognized several of his pieces glowing on the wall. His famous studio, The Stable, was lit entirely by blacklight for the evening. There were ponies lounging on couches, admiring various sculptures and paintings, dancing on a small dance floor, and even dancing on what were probably some of the sculptures, too. If the artist in question minded, he didn’t seem to be showing it or was too engrossed in showing off his skills with a brush on the wings of a cute pegasus filly to the group of ponies gathered around them. At least finding Vinyl proved to be an easy task. “You look like an enormous glowing light bulb!” Octavia exclaimed as she walked up to the pool table Vinyl was in the process of setting up. It was true; under blacklight, the unicorn’s white coat was a radiant shade of violet, the blues of her mane and tail throwing off their own vibrant glows. “I don’t think we even need the overheads for this.” “Oh, very funny,” Vinyl grumbled. She looked over her shoulders, giving Octavia a once over. Unlike the DJ, Octavia’s drab coat and mane were practically a void in the rest of the sea of fluorescence that was The Stable. “At least the glow from your collar picks up your eyes nicely.” She turned back to the table, arranging the last of the balls into the rack. “And just for that crack,” Vinyl said, floating them over a pair of pool cues, “I break.” Octavia just nodded, thankful that the light and her coat would both help hide her deep blush. The first game went quickly, Octavia coming back from a three ball deficit once she was able to properly get her head in the game. The two spent it discussing the game or ponywatching as the other tried to figure out how best to take their shot. Over it all, the sounds of rock music played, the age and aesthetic of the songs befitting the rest of the studio. Octavia was going around the table retrieving the balls for another game when she heard Vinyl rumble, “Argh, what is this?” The unicorn was standing up on her hind legs and holding her cue in front of her, head cocked to one side and ears perked as she listened to the song playing. She stamped the cue. “I should know this!” Taking a few seconds herself, Octavia paused to listen. This song was more piano heavy than the last one, with a distinct drumline supporting it, one very military in flavor. A smile came to her muzzle as she heard the singer start. “That’s Empire of the Clouds by Stormrider. They were a pegasus prog-rock band out of Cloudsdale from about… gotta be forty years now.” “Yes, that was it!” Vinyl exclaimed happily, adding another stamp of her queue for good measure. She watched Octavia take the first shot, the break scattering balls across the table, sinking one. “My mother loved music like this and they were one of her favourite bands. I remember her listening to them all the time when I was growing up. She loved music, all kinds of it, and would always have a record on especially when alone in the house. Whenever I got home from school I could tell what kind of mood she was in – how her day went – by whatever was playing. Stormrider, with all their pulp-horror and pulp-fantasy imagery meant she was in a good mood, and we’d usually end up playing games together that night.” Octavia leaned down and took her second shot, doing nothing but scattering the balls further. “For me it was my aunt, Silver Cord. She was the, uh, cool aunt of the family.” She smiled happily, watching Vinyl try and figure out how to get the cue ball out of the mess Octavia had left for her. “She had a music shop when I was growing up and I’d often go there after school so she could foalsit me. She usually had on something unique and different, usually from when she was growing up. A lot of it was like this. She loved Stomrider, Queen Crimson, bands with a symphonic influence like that because they just weren’t your typical, disposable pop garbage. She loved groups that wanted to do something different, to push the boundaries, to mesh and merge different styles of music.” Vinyl finally settled on a shot, using her magic to drop the cue almost vertically down against the cue ball, bouncing it over one of Octavia’s and narrowly failing to knock one of her own into the side pocket. “That does sound pretty cool,” said Vinyl. “Yeah, it was,” Octavia replied as she carefully lined up a shot. “Unfortunately the shop didn’t last. The building was sold out from under her, the new landlord wanted some exclusive boutique or some other crock in that space, and so muscled her out.” A quick jab sunk that ball and she began hunting for another target. “She ended up moving to Fillydelphia about eight, nine years ago now. The shop’s doing pretty good, but I just wish I could stop by anytime like the old days.” Octavia failed to sink her shot, in turn giving Vinyl a perfect one. “Now that I know so much more about music than I did when I was just a filly, I think I could finally truly appreciate what she had on offer.” Vinyl quickly sunk that shot, missing after that. “I’ll have to mention it to mom, the next time she’s out that way. She always complains there’s never anything like the old stuff nowadays, and she can’t stand my music.” “Actually, that’s not true,” said Octavia as she leaned over the table again. “You just have to know where to look. Some of the new progressive rock stuff is pretty interesting. Instead of pulling from orchestral influence, it’s more folk oriented, though there’s certainly a legacy metal influence coming more to the fore as well…” That was the time Empire of the Clouds’ first guitar solo kicked in and Octavia missed her shot from laughing too hard at Vinyl. The unicorn was rocking right along, playing air guitar on her pool cue, shaking her mane like a proper headbanger. How her glasses stayed on was anypony’s guess. “Heh, sorry about that,” Vinyl said after playing through enough of the solo. “Just that you were starting to sound like some of my old music teachers and I just couldn’t let that happen.” She sunk three balls in rapid succession before missing her fourth. “Eh, it’s fine,” replied Octavia. “I can go off on music theory and structure sometimes. I just… understand it more than feel it, as aunt Silver always used to tell me.” She shot and missed. “Though it does occur to me that I haven’t really heard any folk music out there tonight and I don’t think there was anything particularly folksy listed in the guide booklet. Your music, the Head in the Clouds stuff; I just realized how odd that is considering who is behind this fest.” “Well, maybe that’s part of the point,” Vinyl mused, lining up her shot. “This festival is meant to celebrate what’s new in the night after all.” She missed. “Yet it’s also to remember the old, given who it’s meant to honour.” The game ended soon after, Octavia again with a decisive victory and Vinyl declining to be beaten again. The two wandered the studio briefly. On their way out they were stopped by an earth pony, her mane in pigtails, who gave them a pair of neon markers and directed them to the studios windows. She explained that ponies who stopped in that night were encouraged to draw their cutie marks on the window, an autograph to show they were out at the fest. As Octavia looked for a good place to draw hers, she noticed that some pony had gotten a little more artistic and drawn in a pair of chibi ponies having a running pastry fight amongst the cutie marks. One was a neon pink earth pony, the other a neon yellow pegasus with neon pink mane and tail. She smiled and scrawled her mark with a practiced flourish of her muzzle before heading out again with Vinyl. They peeked into various galleries and studios along the street that had their doors thrown open to the night’s festival goers. Most were smaller than The Stable, typically with just the artist or a curator to guide the guests amongst the drawings, paintings, or sculptures. Winding their way back down the mountain they came across an exhibit that dubbed itself The New Horrorism. The placard outside described it as “A collection of spectral works that transmogrify, inner and outer-selves, dabbling in hauntology, transcendental mime and landscapes incinerated, by heavenly forces far beyond our control.” Outside there was a mint-green unicorn begging a beige earth pony to go in with her. Octavia had to credit the unicorn’s enthusiasm, with her pronking around her friend as she went on and on about how cool the exhibit sounded and how much she wanted to go in. Her eyes rolling and hoofs dragging, said friend eventually let herself be pulled inside to the sound of happy squees from the unicorn. Octavia turned to Vinyl, cocked her brow, and nodded towards the open door. “Hauntology?” Vinyl returned an equally deadpan look. “Transcendental mime?” Both ponies burst into laughter and continued along their way. They finally found themselves back at the plaza they started at, albeit on the other side. One of the restaurants along the perimeter had curtained off one of their main windows and hired an earth pony artist to transform it into a full mural. Across from it, conveniently, was a display from a company dubbing itself Quills and Sofas. They’d set up a number of their products, signs on them inviting ponies to take a load off their hooves and relax a few minutes on one of their sofas. Vinyl climbed up the platform nearest and flopped down on a sofa, Octavia choosing to curl up on the opposite end. Reaching back into her saddlebags, Octavia nosed around until finding one of her chocolate bars. She bit off a piece of the rich, dark chocolate to find almonds, the taste of cinnamon, and hot peppers exploding across her tongue. It wasn’t often she treated herself to something like this, but tonight was a special night. For many reasons. She passed Vinyl a chunk of it. The mural they were watching was undeniably that of Princess Luna. The artist had chosen to portray her resting beside the lake of a fantastical dreamscape. That did make sense to Octavia, as she’d heard stories that Luna had been in charge of dreams and the dreamland before her banishment. The landscape slowly taking place was one of contrasts, with cliffs and shadows, the waters of the lake still and dark around the Princess. Yet she was cast in light, from the glowing lily pads dotting the shore, to the psychedelically glowing mushrooms on the ground and cliffs, to the glimmering, feathery fronds of the tree she slept beneath. The artist had finished the outlines to the whole piece and was working on filling in the areas that needed it. Octavia watched the charcoal-grey pony brush a lock of vibrant blue mane from her eyes and go back to working on one of the mushrooms along the cliff. She had chosen to leave the glass untouched to highly areas of black, only painting what was needed to show the dreamscape and the Princess at its centre. A good four-fifths was probably done, most notably the main subject. Octavia looked back up at the blank moon and then back down to the painting. “It’s so strange, to suddenly have a second princess like this. I wonder what she’s like.” “She’s nice enough,” Vinyl commented, much to Octavia’s surprise. “A little awkward, but given the thousand year gap in things, that’s understandable.” Her muzzle curled up in a smirk. “A bit of a temper, too, when she feels that ponies are patronizing her.” “Heh, you sound like you know her. I’ve only seen her in the papers.” “Well, I did meet her once. All the exhibitors here did, actually. While the palace had their usual army of professionals arranging everything, she apparently insisted on meeting all the artists personally. She was nice enough, but had this weird combination of eagerness and… I don’t know, insecurity about her. Like, she wanted to do this on her own, but still had to have her sister help her out. Then there was the whole language barrier. She sounded like a character right out of a William Flankspeare play, especially when she got flustered.” Vinyl laughed. “Heck of a voice, too! Wow! Puts some stadium speaker systems I've seen to shame. You’d probably get along with her better.” Octavia grinned back, sliding over along the sofa. Teasingly, she asked, “What, you mean my antiquated posh accent would put her at ease?” Vinyl laughed again. “Nah. She just strikes me more as a pony more comfortable discussing music out of the romantic period — ballets and concertos and stuff — as opposed to what I play. I don't think she really got what I meant by samples and synths, and when it’s a good time to drop the bass.” “I can just imagine what she thought actually hearing your stuff!” Octavia said with a snort. Again, another laugh from the DJ. “Why do you think I was out here earlier playing house instead of my usual dubstep?” Octavia looked back at the mural, and at the face of the sleeping Princess in it. She tried to reconcile the image it showed with that of the agitated young alicorn she had glimpsed earlier that evening, and the out-of-time princess that Vinyl had described. Again, she was struck by the strangeness of it all; to all of a sudden have a second alicorn on the throne, one that had been nothing more than stories and fables all her life, and the lives of virtually every pony for generations. To have a pony who had been little more than a name in history step off the page and into real life was both disconcerting and wondrous. “Well, I do have a booking at the Grand Galloping Gala in a few months,” Octavia commented as she dusted off her hooves. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and meet her there.” “Sure, you never know. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?” This time it was Octavia’s turn to laugh. “A bunch of stuffy royals demanding stuffy music to go with their stuffy party. That’s usually the way of things.” Vinyl couldn’t help joining in. “Sounds right. At least that’s not something I have to worry about. Not like the nobility would let a DJ like me anywhere near a royal event.” “Hey, there you two are!”