Prompt II Response

Alyosha is playing down the hall.

My book has fallen to my lap without my realizing it; my head is tilted toward the door. The notes, played slowly and almost tenderly, drift through the old house like air, and like air I breathe them in. It is Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique. I close the book in my hands to listen.

It happens without fail, though he does not know it: if I were to tell him that I stopped what I was doing every time he practiced, he would probably apologize for disturbing me. There is no need for that. His music is like an old friend’s embrace: far from being a disturbance, it is a comfort.

That is especially true today. I have heard this piece played many times, by many different pianists, but Alyosha himself plays it very, very rarely. I love it when he does.

He is already well into the first movement. It is fascinating to listen to, swinging between fast cascades of sound and phrases defined by their aching loneliness. Under his hand, the soft passages are heartbreaking, the loud ones angry, and the sudden outbursts that spot each quiet phrase feel like blows. The emotion is almost more than I can bear.

The second movement finds deeper places in the heart to touch.

I have always found the Adagio’s cantabile lonely and filled with a sort of slow, bittersweet hope. Very few performances of it have failed to move me, but at his fingers, the reoccurring melody has such a longing to it that tears are wetting my cheeks before the first phrase has left the air.

It is not unusual for me to cry while listening to Alyosha playing. He has seen me weep at his music in the past and he understands, but just as he does not know how often I listen to him practice, he does not know how often he brings forth tears.
I do not know how he would react – he does, after all, understand. But there is a part of me that thinks he would apologize, and this is what stops me from being an overt audience more often. I don’t want him to regret my tears: they, too, are a comfort.

This is how I mourn my dead. This is how I find my healing.

The Adagio ends, rich and heartbreaking, and I am beyond the simple action of listening as the last movement begins. I wrap myself in the music, in my grief, and when the piano falls still and the last notes leave the air, I do not open my eyes.

For one precious moment of silence, the music echoes in my blood. I am home.




(hnnn i don't know. alyosha is a friend's; the character speaking is one of mine. the short version of her deal is: there've been a lot of bad things that have happened in her life, and she can't ever go home. she never developed a mechanism of her own to work through her issues/dead, but music functions in its stead. she's been sort of adopted by alyosha's family, and she's slowly settling into it, but it's still not home - the music, however, is.

(Mov. I) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq4G3KRAuXc
(Mov. II) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2nG1bt7IBM
(Mov. III) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRkr7WgQ_Y4

this took way too long to write and is slightly embarrassing. my characters/oneshots are all disgustingly melodramatic, but usually they don't go further than the eyes of alyosha's writer.)

Prompt II Response

I find comfort in almost being somewhere, whether it's my home in Sorrento, the UVic Residences, or visiting a friend elsewhere. The possibility of finding exactly what you're looking for exists and you know for certain that everything will be wonderful and fantastic.
It's the same feeling I get from walking under orangey city lights alone at night with their light reflected in the sky above me, or standing by the ocean, or listening to "Solsbury Hill." This sense that life is beautiful and perfect and that I can do or be anything I want.
Anyway this is pretty much the hills just before you get into Kamloops, where my parents were picking me up after I came home at reading break. The lights of the city were reflected in the clouds overhead and everything felt huge and exciting.
(Sorry it's so terrible; I'm not really used to digital media and I only just found out my scanner doesn't work.)

Prompt II response

I blorped this together in the past hour or so and /hopefully/ I'll have something better to show, but if not, then this is what I got (:




What else can I say! Winter (December in particular), my cat (who is fat, and is probably the person/creature I spend the most time with), and adventuring in/with those things. Vermont is a pretty good place to live if you want foresty winterventures.

Prompt II Response from Machi

Machinari here, breaking in and probably messing up. >< I have no idea who the speaker is, but he's probably either bald, or a nudist with a mohawk. Yay inspiration...? Um.

"There aren't many comforts around for people like us. We gave up our homes a long time ago, escaping the cities and human company in favor of the unexplored jungles, where civilized men would never dream of walking. There is death there, they say, as the metallic cities siphon away their spirits and leave them there, nothing more than plodding masses of warm flesh where a human once stood.

Somehow, we find jungle death far more appealing. Out there, we at least know when we're dead. For the city-dwellers, it could take years, decades, whatever, oblivious as they are. They walk along their routine for their whole lives without realizing that they have none. Their ways suit them, and ours suit us. For them, home is security, comfort is monotony, happiness is sleep. It isn't a dishonorable life, but not one that we could ever be a part of.

For us, home is wherever we can see the wind ruffle the feathers of our falcons, or seeing the moon in its cold glory. Comfort is a successful hunt, or living through another day. Happiness is wading into the stream when the fish are thick, or the wildness in running beneath our companions as they dive, the beast from land and beast from air. It's different, it's living, it's feeling hot blood pounding through our veins, blood that has stagnated within our 'civilized' counterparts. It's freedom that's home for us, and death before I give it up."

FFFFFFFFFFFFFF *hides*

PROMPT II: [WEEKLY] Home/Comfort

This is the second prompt, for a WEEKLY challenge. The month-long theme is of course still going on. Bear in mind that because these are weekly, less is being demanded of you (pretend like anything was being demanded of you in the first place). Sketches and doodles are welcome, as always.

"Home" and "Comfort". They don't always equal one another. What is home to you? What comforts you? Is home a feeling, a person, an object, or a construct?

Again, be as literal or metaphorical as you like. There are no limits.

Your deadline is DECEMBER SEVENTH.