Chopin’s Jell-O
Music was his soul. And his soul was his food. He slouched now more than ever on his sofa listening to nothing but music. Everything around him would have been turned off. The lights, his fridge, his cellphone, anything that could remotely produce an intrusive hum, a careless beep, was shut down, unplugged – except for that vacuum tube amp he had built a long time ago, and an Accuphase CD transport that’d always spinned his lonely collections on repeat. In pitch darkness he sat there with a symphony of meshed audio frequencies and himself. It took hours, sometimes even days, before he ever noticed the passing of time, and actually realized he was alive and breathing. Music was truly his soul on which, interestingly enough, he survived. He consumed music, but not through his ears. It actually involved his mouth slowly inhaling a faint, white mist that had layered all over his body, until this substance was absorbed to fill his lungs and stomach. To him this was also a process of how he consumed himself, devouring his very own essence, his “soul.” And it tasted (that is, if he ever had to identify such peculiar sensory quality – the taste of soul) somewhat like sugar-free orange Jell-O. Upon entering his body, this gelatin fluid usually began to dissolve in his throat and release, thereafter, a kind of sweetening, calming effect that gradually dissipated over time. The feeling was warm and kind. It sedated him. Sometimes it could alleviate his troubled mind, taking him away from his head and away from the memories embedded within. Most of the time, though, he would fall asleep unknowingly on the sofa, only to open his eyes at the wake of the morning hour, and find himself, cried. Regardless, however, listening to his music had kept him mentally sane and physically alive.
He had sold his beloved Steinway after his wife left him. That day on, he was never to produce music, and for that reason, he had lost the ability to revive and redeem himself. But that beautiful piano paid for 10 months of mortgage and added 24 artists into his music library. The stock market was booming, but his portfolio was crashing. He could no longer focus and was therefore making the wrong bets, and had to sell his expensive personal belongings just to feed his empty stomach. Indeed, ever since the love of his life had abandoned him, working to earn a living became pointless. He gave up and resorted to enrich his being, or what was left of it, with nothing, but music.
He was an amateur pianist, having played classical and jazz piano for over 35 years. And throughout the years, he had acquired musical works from more than 80,000 artists. There were perhaps around two hundred thousand pieces of vintage vinyl, tapes, and CD’s scattered throughout his apartment. He used to keep a precise, alphabetized list of his collection, but had lost track somewhere around hundred fifty thousand. The number was increasing at an arbitrary rate, and in this super music archive, the addition of each new work became so trivial, it didn’t even matter anymore. And he became so obsessed after his wife left, he was buying all kinds of media but only to leave them lying around unopened, untouched.
He wasn’t sure what happened, of how his hobby became a full-time obsession. He never investigated, nor took a single moment to stop his shaky hands from taking his overcharged credit card out from the wallet to buy something that had become a complete useless necessity. Something had to occupy his mind and perhaps that was a solution he subconsciously devised. Looking back, two years five months and twenty-three days ago, his love, his need to express, the passion to embrace, were altogether striped from his body, packed into her suitcases, and left in the dark inside that cab’s trunk, forever. Who was he to love again. Years of living together with her had left him empty. They did not have kids, nor pets, and anything that represented meaning or substance was now only retrievable from his music collection. They both loved Chopin, particularly the Nocturnes – charming short piano studies that were emotional, with a slight trace of melancholy, tastefully tactical but never superfluous or overpowering. The raining days were the time when they would sit on the sofa, where he would put his hands around her shoulder, listening to their favorite piece – Nocturne Opus 9 No 2 in F Major. Then they would take turns to play on his Steinway, attempting to reenact the impossible. It was love, he’d always thought.
So money and things lost their value because all he wanted was to be again. But he knew he couldn’t. Like those clean, fleeting piano notes that echoed and disappeared from years ago in his apartment, the reality of who he was had vanished too. If music, or indeed, their music, was truly something he could taste, like his soul, he would have recorded it. He would have somehow materialized the experience into some kind of physical form, into words, and kept it. But she left. So he sold his piano. Gone were the memories of Chopin’s Nocturnes that they loved and shared. But there was hope, and he continued to buy, to collect something that could perhaps one day somehow replicate what they had.
Out of all the music he’d ever acquired, though, he probably only listened to one thousandth of them now. Tonight he inserted Chopin’s Etudes into the CD player. It would be a night of literal, disciplined piano mastery, filled with passion but without the compassion he was looking for. It would be a study, a emotionless chew and regurgitation of what was left of him. It would satisfy him, though, he didn’t need much anymore. Like a small dose of morphine injected, a slight puff of opium inhaled, it would keep him alive through the night; until the wake of dawn when he found himself half awake, and soaked with Chopin’s tears. That’s when a new day would begin.