Glomy Sunday by ironypills

yes well. some ip for ya'll (because it's good for you). proof that this girl's got style.

Gloomy Sunday

Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless.

To play the blues, says my music teacher, you've got to be black, pickin' cotton, and oppressed. Lumbering in your dark-blue canvas overalls (we call that denim, now) out in the sun. Hot sun. Relentless. You've got to see the worst of the worst, and let it all fall out of you. Never rushing. Rushing is for Chopin and Beethoven. You've got to be slow and steady, your bare feet hitting the hard dirt, colouring them the same way it would colour a white man's. Or a white girl's.

Sunday starts the same way each week. Chaos on the day of rest. Especially the every once in awhile my mother gets distressed. Panicking that we'll end up in hell. Dragging us down to St Paul's or St Peter's or one of those p-named saints. St Paradox? God is just her reassurance that we'll be more than rotting shells. But I'll humor her today. I won't say anything about my profound hatred of Christianity's impact on post-modern society affecting a dissatisfied agnostic-atheist like myself. That's not me, really. This guy I knew said it once. Before he got kicked out of school and started working at the local Woolworths. Spending his wage on drugs he got from god knows where. God again. He sneaks up on you like that.

It's hard to avoid Him really, if you think about it. No matter where you look, there's always some reference. Obvious or subtle - all created as He intended. Me and my friends know how to handle it. Teenaged parties at a holidaying adults house. Lights turned low, personalities masked. People we know, not by name, but by alcohol. We are whoever we want to be in the dim Sunday gloom. We are also who everyone expects. Drinking, dancing, singing, shouting, fighting, cheating, smoking, fucking: Regretful youth. It breaks the monotony of school and jigsaw puzzles. The only other things to do in the God-unforsaken place. I wait for my father to yell at me, anticipating, excited, I am ready to be a disappointment. I used to party when I was your age too. You're kids having fun. You'll grow out of it. It's natural, you can't help it.

But I swear we do it on purpose a lot of the time. Loud music, swear words, hostile behaviour. It saves days, not believing. We don't want to be like our parents. We want to get out. It takes connections to do that though, and bravery. Things most of us will never have. There's one other way: Scholarships work too. Music scholarships for gifted students. There are enough classical pianists 'out there' , I had to learn something new. Have to learn something new - it isn't past tense. It's confusing, and I don't always understand what my teacher is telling me. History is irrelevant - I just want to play. The piano keys, they're black and they're white, without argument or violence. They work together and it doesn't matter what colour they are, because (unless you listen closely) they're not singular, segregated notes. They're a constant flow of equal rights and opportunity.
This is wrong, says my music teacher, you have to concentrate on what's being said, what do the pieces mean? It's more than acting, it's faith too. You have to believe, in what you are playing.

So I try walking, sometimes, to find the rhythm she talks about. At night mostly. The dark makes things easier, cloaking distractions. Some people are scared of it, because their minds tell them there'll be bad things hiding. Even in a small, lost town like this. They don't think there could be good things too. I'm not meant to be looking for those though. I'm searching for blues. My own, suburban poverty kind. For a soul twinging misery, like the sound of the black sea hitting an empty construction site. Waves and concrete were never meant to touch. I'm searching for known impossibility, like shining a flashlight toward the moon, hoping to show the world shadow puppets. Or something so lonely and desolate that my heart stops beating and my tombstone reads something cliched, like 'in pursuit of music.'

I don't have an image of this yet. I haven't found it, and I don't know if I should. But maybe one day I'll stop being scared and step outside with a song for locked cars and dead leaves. With only sepia-tinted street lamps to light my performance. Gritty film noir blending with my melody, which will be made from 'the worst of the worst,' the true sound of sorrow. Someone will walk down the wet footpath. Shoes getting ruined regardless of gender or class or race or religion. They'll listen for awhile, then keep on moving. Because it is cold and late and I'll be almost finished anyway. Then I'll get out of here, on one of those walking bass line trains, leaving behind a letter. The closed down shops, the overgrown gardens, and the crooked windows. A letter addressed to no one, or to God, explaining why I've gone.

Dearest,
The shadows I live with are numberless.