A zuihitsu of strings

A zuihitsu of strings
for Ying

A lacquer table, gloss under fingertips. A raised stage with dark linen. A young woman smiles with her hand-held harp, its nine strings glistening. The room swells with the cadence of her pearly notes. Beneath the pendant lights—a vision of serenity.
*
The memory of my fingers at three—curious caterpillars, pressing the keys of a toy piano. My hawk-eyed parents note there is something there. The search for a teacher leads to a derelict with ochre walls, a staircase winding into an attic. Ramshackle shelves stacked with music, a hoary piano bundled in a corner, more carcass than instrument, still holding woody notes. A child set on the path.
*
Some things are forbidden: flat hands, locked wrists, crossed feet. Each lesson begins by flexing my soft bones, the conscious unknotting of my spine, my hands holding the fullness of an imaginary grapefruit, then letting the orb drop, but remembering its perfect curvature as my fingertips hit the ivory.
*
Outside the music room, birds peck at the shadows of coolibah trees. Their trunks peel—grand staffs shedding the curls of their braces. A gale strips all stray notes and sows them upon the dunes.
*
I tremble as my teacher looms—a backlit beast in the sandstone fortress. Her rattan cane, sleek and sharp, writes warnings on the wall. I watch it twitch—an uneasy metronome. My gaze must never waver from the score. A wayward glance at my fingers and a swoop of the cane leaves a searing kiss. The lub-dub of my pounding heart. High-treble strings shine across my metacarpal bones in lines of wet crimson. In time, they soften to mauve, and resemble a harp.
*
But the teacher is God. I learn to cover her hostility with irises and calendula, her features less macabre when obscured by flowers. Without a face, she is just a bouquet of desert blossoms. I watch from the bench as her protege plays the Ocean Étude. I marvel at the flawless articulation as my teacher transforms into a swathe of sunlit sea, basking in her student’s artistry. I aspire to be the perfect student—the one who elicits kind waves. I rub my wounds, and wait patiently by the shore.
*
Water bleeds onto city asphalt. The tremolo of the Enmore night—metal and slanted rain. Poems strung on tuning pins. The harp flowers in arpeggios.
*
This is who I always wanted to be—a musician with my edge off. The young woman on stage runs her fingers on the strings. The softness of her touch brings forth silver rivers. My meditation is interrupted by the ghost of my teacher’s cane. But I have harped on its cruelty too long. I shred it to splinters and bury its memory.
*
A brewery transformed—white linen and chandelier light. The humble beerhouse morphs into a ballroom of gold—a measure of healing, in the aura of the muse who plays the harp tonight.

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an award-winning Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. She lives and works on traditional Gammergal land. Find her@oormilaprahld and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings