Untitled by Trevor Klee, '15

UNTITLED

by Trevor Klee ‘15

d written after pianist Marc-André Hamelin performed on February 26, 2015 Marc-Andre is cursed. A boy of northern Floridian provenance, living on the more remote outskirts of Tallahassee, he is unable to play the music that he hears in his mind. His is a land of swamps, alligators, and snapping turtles, and the music of this land is that of the banjo and the drum, sounds that weave between and over the sloshing of water against muddy banks and the mating calls of bullfrogs. The music that Marc-Andre hears in his mind, however, is that of the piano. Tremolos, melodic fragments, triplet notes, tonal centers. It is a music for quiet landscapes, forests and rolling hills and fields. That is, at least, how Marc-Andre imagines it.

Marc-Andre is also blessed, however. He is blessed twofold: with an unusual persistence and with the ability to stop time. The latter is likely more unusual a talent than the former, yet both are important to this story. You see, Marc-Andre discovered his ability to stop time only recently, and has been experimenting with it since. He has just found out how to manipulate sound while time is stopped, to move in between the heartbeats of the wetlands and produce music that has never before been heard in these backwoods.

Now let’s turn to Marc-Andre himself. He stands on the bank of the creek, barefoot, toes slowly sinking into the mud. A curious crayfish stares up at him through the muddy water. It is not curious so much about the boy, although he is dressed oddly, in a ragged vest, torn khaki shorts, and a baseball cap worn through until it’s no more than string. The crayfish (or crawdaddy, to use local parlance) has seen humans wear stranger things. The crayfish is curious about the array of bells Marc-Andre has before him, which he has smuggled out of his school’s strangely overfunded music department. (It has to do with a complex embezzlement scheme being carried out by the superintendent, but that is a story for another time).

Marc-Andre listens, carefully. At this time of year and this time of evening, the two most prominent sounds in rural north Florida are that of the cicada and the bullfrog, and their syncopation is slightly off, such that a sound (a bell ringing, for instance) may occupy a space in between them, a space of complete silence. This is what Marc-Andre is listening for. Cicada, bullfrog, pause, cicada, bullfrog, pause, cicado, bullfrog, there!

Marc-Andre rings his bells, and, before the cicada has a chance to respond, he stops time. He now can work at his leisure. He carefully examines the air around each of the bell’s immediate locations. If he swirls the air just right, pushing some vibrations closer together, others further, expanding some, contracting others, he can create the first note of Mozart’s Sonata in D Major. After working for some time, or rather no time at all, Marc-Andre is at last satisfied with his work. He restarts time and holds his breath.

Now he’s unsure. Born and raised in these swamps, he believes that if he plays his notes at the right time, in the inhales of this biosphere, he can, for a spell, be the only noise in the swamp. He’s heard the swamp quiet before, in response to an earthquake, and it seems possible. But, if he can’t, the noise of the swamp will crash over his piece, drowning it with croaks and buzzes.

The first note of Sonata in D Major rings out as if sounded from Mozart’s own piano in the middle of the Emperor’s court in Vienna. It quiets the swamp, and Marc-Andre’s heart rejoices. But there is no time. He must work. Each note must ring out like the first if he is to bring this whole piece to life amongst the muddy reeds.

He rings his bells, pauses time, and rearranges the vibrations again, creating his second note. Then he restarts time again, and again it rings out beautifully. His confidence grows, and he creates a third note, and a fourth, and fifth. Time passes. It has been an hour in the swamp and it’s getting dark, yet there are still no sounds except for Marc-Andre’s faux piano. He works feverishly. For him it’s been a day, or maybe two, but it doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that he is bringing the music in his head to life at last. It is ringing out as if over the green hills of Marc-Andre’s dreams. It seems as if the whole world is listening to him play. It’s beautiful, it’s ephemeral, and he crafts the sonata like he’s building castles out of water in each instant.

Finally the lyrical second movement ends, and he begins the final sonata-rondo. It swells, and pulses, and breathes, and lives, and even in a place of the greatest simultaneous life and decay in the world it lives and dies more fiercely in each passing note than any muddy creature has ever dreamed. Then, at last, Marc-Andre reaches his triumphant final note, and it stretches out of the bell, soars to the center of the swamp just above the reeds, pirouettes, bows, and dives beneath the murky waters.

The swamp stills for a moment. The last of the bells’ vibrations pass through the top of the pussy willows at the far end of the swamp, then are absorbed by the ground.

The cicadas hesitantly resume their chirping. They quickly are eclipsed by the bullfrogs following too soon on their heels. The two briefly engage in a struggle for sonic dominance, then return to their natural rhythm. And Marc-Andre looks over his swamp, now moonlit and cooling, bows once to the swamp, once to his bells, then departs. He’ll get his equipment later.

And beneath the water the crayfish shakes its head as if to clear cobwebs, then crawls under a rock and goes to sleep.

d Trevor Klee is majoring in Geosciences. He is writing his thesis on the Earth’s crust and will graduate this June.

Though he has taken several creative writing classes at Princeton, this is the first concert he has ever attended. His family recently moved to Florida and he is just getting to know it. He finds Florida foreign from Connecticut where he grew up near a swamp. He thought it would be hard to understand the music but he was transfixed by Marc-

AndrĂŠ Hamelin. His seat for the concert was in the far reaches of the balcony surrounded by a number of distractions. He found himself wanting to be transported to a place where he could be alone with the music. And so he wrote this story. Â