//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Refrain // by NTSTS //------------------------------// After several months of piano lessons I was finally enrolled in school proper, complete with a body of musical knowledge more vast than was useful. There was a great deal to unlearn about my mother’s teachings first before I could begin to properly play the piano—though, Grace Note was right, I did seem to have an aptitude for it. It was no surprise, then, that the first day of school, one of the only occasions I had been without my mother aside from piano lessons, I spent the whole day occupying myself away from my anxiety by reciting piano exercises in my head. Moving my hooves underneath or on top of my desk in an attempt to whittle away the hours until I could go home. It wasn’t something I did for pleasure—it was just better than the alternative. At one point on that first day, everyone around the class was forced to introduce themselves. One by one, each pony stood up and said something about themselves with varying degrees of nervousness: what their name was, how old they were, what they liked to do. Some kids were into collecting rocks, some into sports, most into just doing whatever. When I stood up, I collected a chorus of ‘oooh’s and ‘aaah’s for being the only pony in the room, aside from the teacher, with a cutie mark. “My name is Octavia,” I said, quiet enough that I could see the teacher urging me with her eyes to speak up. “I like—I play the piano.” I stopped myself before the first sentence could get out. Thought finished, I sat back down and tried to pretend I was somewhere where neither music nor school existed. Getting home that day (mother asserted that I was old enough to walk home from school by myself), I was gushed over. How was school? Did I make any friends? What did everypony think of my cutie mark? I told her the day was fine, and then went to practice. This process repeated for some time. The metronome I took with me to my first day of lessons became more of a companion than anything else in my youth. A diligent practice schedule and an overbearing mother left no time for socializing. On the off chance that I did manage to draw the attention of a neighbourhood pony or someone from school, my mother’s disdainful glare and mumbled bitterances were usually enough to scare the prospective friend away. So, I learned to take comfort in the things I had, which were very few. One of them included the metronome. It took me some time to understand what about it might be so important. Couldn’t anypony keep time with a clock, or a watch? Couldn’t you just figure the tempo out by yourself? Who cared about tempo anyway? It was Grace Note that told me, in his very oldpony fashion, that timekeeping was a lost discipline of modern music, and that nowadays ponies just smashed their hooves wherever and hoped for the best. Yes yes, it was all well and good to play with passion, and emotion, but what about precision? Articulation? He stressed to me over and over that it was a rigid adherence to proper rhythm that would help me develop to the best of my abilities. And so the metronome went with me everywhere, even when I wasn’t practicing. I would set it to let it tick, dancing back and forth to a tempo until I was sure I could turn it off and keep time for an absence of its ticking. The sound became almost second nature at a point. A sort of hypnotic, therapeutic back and forth that I would catch myself thinking about when it was gone. During recess at school, I’d pull the metronome of my bag, being very careful to be gentle with it, lest I break the quartz crystal inside, and set it to a slow, steady beat. I would close my eyes and envision a giant pendulum swaying, rocking from one side to the other, and sometimes me with it, until anything I had on my mind that day would disappear, replaced only by the ticking of the metronome. I kept it on every time I practiced as well. Even for simple songs I could master after a short time, I would start with a slow tempo, then gradually build up until I reached the peak of reasonable articulation—then go back down until a cheerful scherzando piece was transformed into a dirge. My mother would occasionally hum along and nod her approval from the door. Thankfully, she never interrupted my practices. Even when practicing that song. Because, as I had told Grace Note that first day, there was one song I knew I should learn. The first time I tried to pick out strains of it, I could hear my mother’s sudden intake of breath from through the glass door. But even then, she didn’t barge in. She left me to hammer out the notes as I read them uncertainly from the page, the simple bass notes she had taught me becoming chords, the melody becoming harmonious, the feel and flow growing each night I practiced it. And I did practice it, at least once every night. For every day that I can remember, I practiced that song. Time and time again, I would come back to it, telling myself I had learned everything about it, played it as best I could, there was nothing more to be done with it other than to play it so fast that it would lose all resemblance to its original composition. But still, I practiced it, because for some reason I knew I had to. I would play it even outside of practice time, sitting down at the piano when I had nothing else to do with myself and toying with the progression—improvising silly flourishes and fills over it for a moment before returning to my senses and playing it normally a few times, then stopping. More often than not, it would make my mother smile. I don’t think I ever smiled while playing it. After a while at school, the inevitable happened. A pony approached me at recess, bringing a bright red ball along with him. His coat was a banana-yellow, and he had a spiky blue mane that looked to have been trimmed too short. As I saw him approach, I hurriedly put my metronome away and pretended very hard that I didn’t exist. To my disappointment, he saw right through my attempt. “Hey,” he said. I didn’t say anything back. Even when the teacher called on me, I was reticent to talk, and it was not a habit I was about to break for a colt whom I did not know. “Hey,” he said again. “Hello,” I said. Politeness took over more often than not. Be polite, be proper, my mother would always stress.. I remembered, most of the time. Be polite, be proper. Manners. “What’s your name?” the pony asked. I suppose it was too much to expect him to remember me from my introduction, but it wasn’t as though I remembered him either. “Octavia,” I said. “Cool,” he said back. “My name’s Sweet Breeze.” Gosh, someone really did dislike him. A boy saddled with such an awful name. I didn’t say that to him, of course. I just nodded my head and wrapped my forelegs around my knees. “Do you like to play ball?” he asked, putting his bright red ball on the ground and rolling it slightly towards me with his hoof on top. I shook my head. “No.” “Do you like to play made-up?” he asked, referring to the make-believe games the other kids would imagine on the playground at breaks. Again, I shook my head. “No.” “Well,” he asked, “what do you like to do?” I opened my mouth with the words already in mind, and once more had to stop them before they came out as they first appeared. “I play piano,” I said. That was true, at least. He looked at me with a quizzical sort of grimace, as though I’d admitted to enjoying visits to the dentist. “Do you wanna play?” “No.” Pause. “No thank you, I mean.” “What about after school? Do you wanna play then?” “I have to practice piano after school.” That too was a default reaction. It was true, then, and always. It earned me another grimace, but Sweet Breeze hung on, perhaps because he was a masochist. “Don’t you even play after school? Do you do anything for fun?” I could feel the disbelief and subtle contempt creeping into his voice. “I always have to practice piano after school,” I said. Silence hung in the air for a minute, save the constant background noise of playing children. Sweet Breeze stood for another moment before picking up his ball and making a sour expression at me. He turned swiftly without waiting, but paused long enough to hurl two words over his shoulder. “You’re weird.” And that was the last time anypony tried to play with me in elementary school. While my younger school years were mostly an indistinct blur, there are a few more moments from them that I remember. Chief among these are my birthdays, not all of which bear mentioning—save, perhaps, the one I remember from my first year at school. I got home from school several weeks before the date I had long ago given up on as a disappointment to find my mother waiting for me at the kitchen table. She had a great big smile on her face, which in my experience was usually a cause for concern. I scanned around the room but didn’t manage to see her standard fare of a half-empty wineglass anywhere. “Hello, Octavia dear. How was school today?” “Fine, Mother.” I sloughed off my backpack and opened it up, pulling out my metronome and the sheet music folios for practice that day. Mother’s smile turned into a small frown as she watched me walk towards the music room. “You really should be careful with your metronome, dear. It’s quite fragile, you know. If you dropped it at school there’s a very good chance it might break.” “I know, Mother. I’m sure to be careful.” I set the metronome and music on the kitchen table as I went to grab a glass of water. “Good, that’s good. I know you are. Good for you.” The water at our house decided to be inappropriately hot as much as it decided to be inappropriately cold. That day, it was like drinking out of a lukewarm rain barrel. I finished half the glass and poured the rest out into the sink. “You know, your birthday is coming up,” my mother said as I collected my sheet music and made for the music room. I left the door open as I set up my things, fully aware that she had followed me. “I know, Mother,” I said. That was as much needed to be said, really. Birthdays were nothing special by that point. I looked up from the piano to find her leaning in the doorway. I sighed. There was no point in doing anything until she said whatever it was she wanted to say, at which point I could get on with my exercises until the night came. I walked up to her, but said nothing, knowing full well that she must be concealing something she was waiting to let out. I couldn’t see a wineglass when I came in, but as I stepped closer, I could certainly smell it on her breath. It was a familiar scent, like cigarette smoke. Sour grapes. I know, even in whatever state she was in, she could see the irritation in my eyes. Seemingly enough to spur her on to get her announcement over with. “Oh, fine. I was going to wait until a bit later into the week to tell you, but I’ll go ahead and spoil the surprise: I’ve been organizing a birthday party for you! I sent invitations to all your friends and classmates at school. Isn’t that exciting?” “No,” I said simply. Somewhere, in an alternate dimension where reason and fairness are tangible concepts, my mother let the subject drop at ‘no.’ Sadly, this was not such a universe. “Won’t it be wonderful? You can have cake to share with everyone, and some fun party games, and everypony will bring presents of course. Won’t it be lovely?” “No,” I said again. I could feel the tears starting in my eyes then, pushing her and her talk of birthdays away with the only force I could muster. I don’t think she noticed then, whether it was the alcohol or simply willful ignorance on her part. “It’ll be just grand. Your first birthday party!” She stepped from the doorway then, into the music room, and next to the piano, letting her hoof run over it in much the same way she had done the first day of its arrival. “Oh, and of course, perhaps you could play something on your piano, to show to all your friends.” That was where I knew she would go, and why the first ‘no’ had left my lips. “I don’t want to play the piano for them,” I said. I made a point avoiding the word ‘friends,’ which I knew would be a lie. “Nonsense, Octavia. You play brilliantly. I can hear you, you know. It would be a crime to keep your beautiful playing to yourself. You must play at your party.” “I don’t want to have a party,” I said. The tears started to come down in earnest then, along with the shake in my voice that always accompanied them. And of course, my mother, in her infinite composure, turned to me and sneered at my contemptible display of emotion. “Oh, really, Octavia. Don’t be such a brat. Can’t you at least pretend to be happy? You’re getting a birthday party, after all.” “I don’t want a party,” I said again, sniffling as I tried to hold back the sobs. “And I don’t want to play piano. I just want to go to school and come home and have a normal day. That’s it.” “You are such a little brat.” My mother walked closer to me then, sneering, practically spitting disdain from the curl of her lips. “I suppose this is all about you then, hmm? The thanks I get, for trying to organize a celebration.” I didn’t say anything back, couldn’t. The crying was on in full force, me sucking in air through my tears, through my sobbing, as my mother berated me for my selfishness. “Is it really so much to ask that you play something for my benefit, for the benefit of company, when I’ve already spent so much on you? On the piano, on lessons...” My mother held up a hoof despairingly, while still I cried, wishing I could let out the tears until they washed me away, and my mother too, neither of us to see each other again. “Really, I can’t believe you. Nothing at all like your father. He always used to play for me.” “That must be why he left!” I said, shouted, screamed. “He left because his piano playing was too good for you and he couldn’t stand to be around your horrible singing any more!” The sound of my mother’s hooves on the carpet preceded the impact, and the sound. A loud smack. It took a moment for me to realize the sound had come from me, from her. Even longer to realize my head needed to be righted, and that the stinging sensation on the right side of my face was something tangible. I raised my hoof to it, and somehow didn’t flinch as I pressed down into the raw, bruised skin. “Oh... my goodness, Octavia, I’m... I’m sorry...” Oddly—and I remember thinking it then—I stopped crying. I just stood, frozen, hoof raised to my face where my mother had struck me. Tears drying. The loudest noise the house had heard aside from the piano. A crack that echoed louder than any crying I'd managed to fill it with before. My mother grabbed me then, held me to her chest with her hooves around my back, pulling me forward and whispering into my ear. “Oh, my baby, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...” I didn’t say anything. I let her rub my back, kissing the top of my head and mumbling ‘I’m sorry’s into my ear over and over again. The stinging on my cheek eventually settled, as did her mumbling. The subject of the conversation was dropped. That night, she bought me a whole tub of ice cream to make up for it. I ate one bowl, then practiced for an hour and went to bed. The party was never discussed again. I can only assume the invitations were rescinded. For my birthday, I had another bowl of ice cream. The expiration date on the lid only appeared obvious when I put the tub back, and I spent the rest of the night being sick into the toilet. My mother checked in on me occasionally, most of the time with a glass of water, which I thanked her for, graciously. In a lesson, some time before the transition to high school, but not long before, it occurred to me that for all his instruction, I’d never seen Grace Note play. “Mr—I mean, Grace Note,” I said, stopping myself from using his title, a habit I was only just beginning to get the hang of after repeated insistence from him that I just call him ‘Grace Note’, despite my mother’s instruction otherwise. “I just realized... I’ve never seen you play the piano before.” “Haven’t you?” He sat back in his chair, long since migrated from his place on the bench beside me, now that the upper and lower registers of the piano were available for use. He stayed there for a moment with his eyes half-closed, then leaned forward suddenly and opened them wide. “Well, I suppose that might be so. I often find it’s better to let students learn by instruction, rather than by example.” “Do you think you could play something for me?” I asked. For some reason, my usual soft-spokenness disappeared during lessons. It was the only time of the week I managed to smile, though it was fleeting amidst interludes between practice. Sometimes Grace Note would make funny faces at me or play awful notes on the upper end of the keyboard while I was doing scales in an attempt to make me laugh, which he often succeeded at. My request seemed to take him off-guard. He stroked his beard a few times, playing it on his face like an absurd single-stringed harp. He stood up and considered the piano, which I was still seated at. “Well, I suppose I could. Do you have anything in particular you’d like to hear?” I slid off the bench to make room for him. He took the seat like the instrument was unfamiliar. Even the way his hooves touched it seemed strange, though he took no issue tapping out notes or corrections for me during my playing. “Can you play something you like?” He sized up the question for a bit. I could almost hear the chewing of the thought as he mulled it over. “Well,” he said again, “I was known in my day for a particularly stirring rendition of The Geldingberg Variations,” he said, letting his right hoof languish on the top of the keyboard. “Particularly number twenty-five. Played almost like a nocturne,” he said. “‘The Geldingberg Variations’?” I asked, leaning backwards and forwards on all fours as I watched him at the bench. “What are those?” Somehow, when I was around him, in that soundproof room, it’s like all the material in the walls might have sucked away my fear of being judged. Like, for one day a week, I could be a real little girl. “Very well-known classical folio,” he said. “Quite complicated in its own right as well. Composed of a series of variations on an initial aria... there are thirty in total, I believe, and a final piece, which is of course a reprise of the aria.” “Would you play it for me?” He turned to me and looked me up and down, as if trying to suss out some ulterior motive in my request. I can only guess he found none, because he turned back to the piano after a moment. “Alright then. Apologies if I’m a bit rusty.” I’ve not heard a version of the aria like that since then. It being my first time hearing it, there was a great deal to be surprised by. I’d only heard my own playing up until that point, unless you counted the disjointed hammering on the keys in my mother’s desperate attempts to teach me as ‘playing’. Watching someone experienced at the keys left me awestruck. I sat in complete silence as Grace Note played, a soft, dulcet melody, a relaxed tempo with bass notes that led me along through every measure until the finish. Contrary to his preface, he seemed to play every note perfectly; if he got any wrong, I certainly didn’t notice them. When he was done, after what seemed like an eternity, but what must only have been minutes, he raised his hooves from the piano keys. Even though I’d never heard the song before, I could tell it was over. I took a few seconds to recover, then clapped my hooves together as fiercely as I could. Grace Note looked back at me. I think, for an instant, I caught a hint of blush under his beard. “Maybe I’ve still got it after all,” he said. He plunked down on one of the lower notes, the same key he’d finished in, and the sharp bass rang throughout the practice room. I giggled, which wasn’t something I did often. “The aria is, of course, perhaps the simplest part of the folio. Variation number five was always particularly challenging, if I recall...” Without even raising his hooves in preparation, Grace Note turned back to the piano and began to play again. That is to say, he played, and it was at that moment that my jaw most assuredly hit the floor. Where the aria had been relaxed, contemplative, and soulful, the piece Grace Note played without so much as a warning was nothing short of astounding. His hooves moved faster than I knew any hooves were capable of moving, dancing over the keys, blending melodies together perfectly on each side, plucking out notes and bounding over each other in sections that I couldn’t even begin to understand for their technique, let alone the melody itself. As stricken as I was by the performance, there was almost no time to enjoy it—just as soon as he’d started playing, Grace Note stopped. It couldn’t have been for more than a minute. When he lifted his hooves, the piano sang, like it was letting out the traces of the fury he’d just graced it with. He turned to me with a smile on his face. “Haha. That one’s a bit of a show-off piece. Do you think I pulled it off well enough?” I took a few moments to collect my words from my throat. “Wow,” was all I could manage. Grace Note’s grin was the widest I’d ever seen it. “That was amazing,” I said after a few more seconds. “How did you... how does anypony play like that? It was incredible!” “Oh, hush. Don’t flatter an old stallion,” he said. He shifted a bit on the bench and stretched his forehooves behind his head. “All things come with time, my dear. I’ve just been around long enough that they’ve had no choice but to give up and go willingly in my direction.” “Can you play some more?” I sat on the floor of the practice room, my eyes no doubt beaming from the astonishment I couldn’t keep from my face. I wanted to see everything now, this whole world of music I had no idea existed. When all I had played were simple melodies at that point, working my way up to real songs, this was a true master at work—though, I imagine he might prickle to hear me say so. “Would you like me to run through the whole set?” he asked, with a bit of a chuckle at the end of his question. But I nodded, and the idea became real. “Well,” he said. “I suppose just this once.” The rest of the practice I did that day was at home. But I couldn’t help thinking, as I plunked out strains of Clopein’s Nocturnes, how far I had to go before I was capable of playing anything like that; even with an hour a day’s practice, Variation Five and Twenty-five seemed a long way away.