David’s Lyre
Words, I have come to understand, is man’s greatest limitation. Some things are better left unsaid but that does not mean they have no form of expression neither do they not need to be said. The truth is that words make them seem so ordinary and that is what they are not. “I love you”, “I’m hurting”, “I feel this way" are all spoken so frequently they seem to have lost their spark; just another pair of words in the dictionary pushed and pulled around till we pretend they mean more and pretending is what we humans are adept at. If we are left to it, we would pretend till the end of our lives. But I am simply tired of pretending. So as I lay in a trance like state, where I am not awake nor asleep, I try to figure out a way to explain the feelings I have inside, some of them bottled in for years, when I get it: dance, drums, music. The sheer art of rhythm and sound can tell my story, give voice to my emotions, add flesh and bones to my feelings better than the mere combination of letters.
The times I was young and ignorant, unstained by the filthy hands of the world, I danced to the steady dah-dum-dah-dum of a brand new drum. My drum, unaccustomed to anything but a continuous contact with a gentle palm, emitted a rhythm that required a simple tap-tap-tap from me. To say I was happy would be to plagiarise the feeling of more than a billion souls so I would rather tell you that I tapped my feet to my heart’s content. My drum’s rhythm required no complexities or thought, I only needed to obey its call.
But there came a day when madness wore flesh and took over. Dah-dum-dah-dum became a deafening rhythm, too fast and without control and I struggled to keep up. My feet bled continually as I tried to push myself towards the brink of exhaustion just to be in tandem with the rhythm of my drum. I could not bring myself to stop as that would mean ending my very existence so I begged and cried for this rhythm to cease, for my feet to rest, for me to learn how to breathe again. But I had long lost control over such matters. So I continued to bleed and break till I found an opening, a way to escape the torture that had become my life.
What you do not feel cannot hurt you — this was a song I learned to dance to, a truth I lived by. So I simply stepped out of myself, my spirit and soul spectators to my body’s pain. They — my spirit and soul—created a different reality for me, one in which I was in charge of my life and chose my own music. So I watched my body break and burn, opened to the lashing out of my crazed drum while I floated in the unreal world I opted to remain in. I told myself it was just for a while, till my real world gained a rhythm I could blend to, one that I could manage without losing my mind.
But a year became two, and two became five still the crazed drum continued to beat, its sound slowly seeping into the world I had created for myself. During the days, my heart would beat to a rhythm so fast I could hardly keep up, and at night, the silence was so deafening that I wanted nothing more than to pull on my hair and scream! One day, in a fit of rage, I reached inside myself and destroyed the drums. In a moment of desperation, I tapped into the rage, frustration, and tears hidden deep inside of me and stomped on every rhythm inside me. I screamed and cried as I did this because I knew the silence that would follow this act was going to be one I might not survive but better to drown in the silence than live with madness simmering under the surface.
Being a human is living in constant dissatisfaction. When it’s cold then it’s a bother. When it’s hot we ask and plead for the cold. When there was a rhythmic madness living and breathing inside me, I craved silence; when I got silence, I sought sound. This seeking led me to a more complicated form of companionship: the piano. It was just keys right? Just putting enough force into my fingers as I pressed down on do re mi; as I begged fa so la to soothe the ache in my soul; and I closed my eyes to soak in the magic of ti do.
My hands and feet worked in tandem to produce music that I couldn’t dance to. I could only stay still and allow. Allow the music emitting from these keys wash over me as I pictured scenes and memories I never had. I dwelt for a while not in the real world but in the emotions this piano drew out from me. For a year or two, I sat at this piano, coaxing sounds out of it to keep me grounded. But then, I faced the issue of a stiff back and aching fingers. Cramped feet and an immovable neck took out the magic and serenity of stillness so I stood from my place to move about, to get my blood flowing again into the right places. But I left my piano for so long that when I returned, I forgot the amount of force I needed to put into my fingers to awake do re mi; I did not remember how to use fa so la to soothe the ache in my soul; and the magic of ti do seemed lost on me.
Not wanting to deal with the silence that would come with abandoning the piano, I played mismatched keys and made chaos instead of magic. This was better, I thought, and continued to make do. That is until he came around, dressed in black slacks and a silky white shirt. His hair a pretty mess and eyes that seemed to hold the secret of the sixth wonder of the world. He smelled of promises and vows, his outstretched hand beckoning me to leave the piano and come. His dance was unknown to me, it seemed like ballet and tango mixed together. I asked him what he danced and he laughed and said to define his dance was to take away its mystery and power.
I shrugged and took his hand. We swayed and spun to a music that lacked a coordinating rhythm. He went slow, I went fast; I went fast and he went slow. It was a disaster but he made it into a masterpiece so much so that I believed I had found it, the dance that would form the solid ground I would dwell on. And on and on we went, in the rain and sun; when I felt gloom and when I felt bright. But how long can a mess continue to pose as a masterpiece? Two years it seemed. I know this because after two years, I began to realise the loopholes in this arrangement: we were not in tandem in any way. We were on a long term blind date, each of us not willing to see the destruction we were causing. The vagueness of this dance that he called “its mystery and power” and the uncoordinated rhythm of the music disguised as a harmless quirk all acted as a form of cloak to hide the fact that it was all a hoax and nothing more.
I let my hands slip away from his and walked away. I walked till I began to wander, seeking sound, seeking rhythm, something to anchor me to this world. Something to remind me that I am here, I am here, and I am here. Desperation and panic set in when I imagined myself as a drifter, nothing to hold me in place. I started to ask questions: what does the world hold for me? Will I ever find my own rhythm? Is erasing my very existence really as bad as it sounds? The answer: a smooth call from a lyre and a fragrance of flowers and the earth itself. I looked up and saw a Man dressed in a colour whiter than white, holding David’s lyre. He said nothing, just looked into my soul as He played the lyre and I understood. This was where I was meant to be; I did not need to dance or soak in memories I never had. All I had to do was look back and let the music of the lyre wash over me to my very core. I had found my rhythm.
