Speak & Listen

PACIFY

PACIFY

It was the last week of summer vacation. I was still quarantined in the house. It has been two weeks since Benjamin's death and a week with four days since the shooting incident that happened so unanticipatedly.

I think I had sunken back into that deep hole again. The era of deep blues. A mild depression.

My ankle was fine now, however, things fell apart ever since the shooting day, the day I almost died and how dad is still trying to avoid having a talk about it with me. He has trusted Alejandro more than his very own son, reason being my naivety.

I wasn't jealous of that. Alejandro gave me more than a reason to believe that I was indeed naive. But now I was completely left out. Sebastian, Jeremiah, Mia, Alan, Alejandro, Jason, Craig, Elijah now, Gabriel and Mason were involved in my father's 'plan' except me.

With this conflicting feeling of despondency, which was apparent to both my friends, valet and father, my father restored the music room for me where I could go to 'free my mind' and have something to do, which I love.

The feeling was impossible to explain. It was as if I wanted to cry, but literally couldn't. I went down the stairs, I noticed that there were cars outside and I assumed that they were having a private meeting, my friends, valet and father. I knew something heavy and scary was approaching, like winter. Both literally and figuratively.

It was already close to the end of the first semester, the first age. And a new age was to come, one that, like Shakespearean tragedies, ended with the protagonist of the story, which was now I, buried in his grave. I was so toxic that everyone had found reason to over-sympathize with me, Gabriel now visiting my room more than often, Sebastian agreeing to read a book with me which I know he despised reading books in general, Mia listening to music with me that I knew she hated but nodded to. I was ostracized in my own home.

I unlocked and opened the door to the music room. Although the song I had in mind wasn't really as pessimistic as my soul was, it was quite the opposite. I sat on the stoel and picked the piano by playing with each key first before the melody came to me. What A Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong, was the song I had in mind. I tried to think of a sadder song, but the song was engraved in my mind.

I began harmonizing the song on the piano, picking each key to every note Louis used in the song. I cried but didn't stop playing. It was so beautiful and soothing. It was a frequency of humility and ambience in a clouded, conflicted mind. The more I listened to the beautiful melody my fingers made, the more it felt okay to cry.

By the end of the song, I did an off-cycle and continued to Can't Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley. It was my most favourite song. I loved how it sunk me back in a world, a time when I didn't exist. The 60's, if I'm being accurate. I harmonized the song on the piano and as much as tears flooded down my eyes, a smile shined from my face. It was a beautiful song.

I heard a satin guitar joining in. It startled me until it registered that it was probably my father, Alan, Jeremiah, or Gabriel as they were the only people who could play instruments. A bass guitar joined from behind, which made me assume that someone else was inside. Then, following by the strum and bum of drums which compelled me to 'melodize' slower. Then the music sank in, I was silently sobbing. The drums, most especially, brought in a crashing feeling in my heart by introducing a Blues and Doo-Wop symphony. I just couldn't continue playing when the violin harmonized Elvis' lyrics and suddenly, the drums and bass guitar were the only instruments that hit me where it hurt.

I buried my head on the top of the piano and I just sobbed. If Alan was in the room, I was then certain that he must have told them to keep on going. Even Jeremiah never understood how the music made me feel, and I knew how it made him feel, but Alan knew that music was the epiphany and the manifestation of my truest, most raw feelings and solace for my pain and distress more than words.