text: [Themes: historical]
  
  Despite your parents worrying that you were starting your musical studies too late to have any sort of talent, you find yourself drawn to the piano and practice every day. At first your small hands can only play lullabies and simple tunes meant for teaching children, but you quickly move on to what your mother calls "real music". You take about a week to master each piece, to the point where you could play each of them with your eyes closed. Your father often praises you for your progress and hard work but your mother constantly tells you you could do better.
  
  One day your mother sits you down and gives you a new piece to play. This one was composed by J. S. Bach, a composer whose songs you have been learning for almost a year now. You are handed the sheet music and told to listen to your mother play. Looking at the sheet music you realize that this piece is quite simple, you should be able to it fairly easily and you find yourself focusing more on your mother's playing than on the sheet music in front of you. The song quickly finishes.
  
  "Now play, and be careful not to rush."
  
  You nod and begin to play. When you play piano you are able to focus, it is unlike anything else in your life. Even when you are at school or reading you constantly find your mind wandering off, thinking about pretty girls in your class or staring into space. When you play piano the only thing on your mind are the eighty eight keys and three pedals. You look down at your hands and begin to play, note by note, measure by measure.
  
  After you finish you look to your mom for criticism.
  
  "Play it again, but this time read the music."
  
  Confused, you start over, this time with your eyes on the sheet music. While the song is similar to what you played before, a few notes are different.
  
  "You have to play what's on the sheet, don't just play what I play." your mom instructs you.
  
  You try again, this time eyes on the sheet music. You play slower this time, being careful to play the notes as written. You realize that your mother played parts of the song wrong. You finish, this time taking significantly longer to get through the piece.
  
  "You need to be more careful, Dmitri. Writing music is hard work, don't disrespect the composer by playing what you think should be there. Play what is written. You have talent Dmitri, don't trust anyone but yourself to play the music for you."
  
  You contemplate what she says. Over the next few months you begin to teach yourself to compose music, at first copying the classical style. While romantic era composers are your favorite, the structured method in which the simpler classical piano pieces are easier to emulate. However each time you finish a song you realize that you could do better. You think of the music you like it all has meaning. Für Elise was written for a girl, Clair de Lune is about walking alone. You decide you need to pick a topic to write about.
  
  You ask your mother what you should write a song about and she tells you to focus on practicing playing and you can start composing once there is nothing else to play. You don't like this answer so you ask your father what you should write a song about. He says every good song is either about a girl or a death. There is an Elizaveta in your class you have always admired from a distance, but you don't know how you would show her the song. You have also heard your father talk with his friends about how some communists murdered a politician in St. Petersburg.
  
  > write a funeral march for Andrei Shingarev
  You find out that the democratic martyr was named Andrei Shingarev. You do not know much about politics, but you know that if you have to use violence to prove your point you have lost the ideological battle. You take the unfairness of the world and the anger at those who make the world cruel and you put it into a song.
  
  The anger is slow, not the anger of a man screaming at the world, but the anger of a dead man silently waiting for someone to pick up where he left off. The left hand plays soft solemn chords to accent the frustration. of the melody. The whole piece is quite rhythmic, almost like a march.
  
  By the time you have finished writing you know that this is your best work so far. It has passion. It has a purpose. You are proud of yourself. However what you lack is an audience, so you go back to playing the music of other composers.
  
  > Nine Years Later
  You did it. You finished your studies. You have established yourself as one of the finest pianists in the newly established Soviet Union. Your first Symphony has premiered in Germany and the United States. You are on your way to becoming one of the most famous composers of the 20th century.
  
  It is in this period of optimism you are visited by two agents of the government, waiting for you when you arrive home.
  
  "Mr. Shostakovich. We are here on behalf of the federal government. You have made quite the name for yourself and while we admire your individual achievement, ultimately you publicly represent the Soviet Union. We understand that you failed you exam on Marxist methodology, we want to make sure you don't embarrass yourself or us with your music. Art is political as I'm sure you understand."
  
  You do understand. Everything is political, especially anything creative. However, letting them know you understand won't help you. You need to play the game.
  
  "It's just music, comrade. I'm a composer, I'm no politician." you reply.
  
  "We both know that isn't just isn't true anymore comrade. Be careful, I'd hate to see the Union lose such a talented composer."
  
  The man who didn't speak offers you a handshake. You accept and then they leave without another word.
  
  Shaken by this experience you become reclusive. You start on your second symphony. You make it as patriotic as you can bear to.Sadly it is not praised as highly as your first symphony. Your third symphony suffers the same fate, and you take a break from symphonic work to work on operas.
  
  For the next few years all is well for you, the communist party has not bothered you and your compositions continue to provide you with a living. You even manage to find a wife in Nina Varzar and sow a daughter. This is until one night when you are informed that Joseph Stalin will be watching a performance of one of your operas. Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was an opera you had premiered two years prior, based on the story of a murderous wife in love with the employee of her husband. It had been quite successful and you felt pride in the fact that Stalin would want to see it, even if you didn't have any positive feelings towards Stalin himself. As the performance went on, the pride you had felt turns to dread as Stalin walks out mid performance. You understand this to be an omen of forthcoming denunciation.
  
  Within a week your fears are confirmed. Other musicians will not speak to you, the critics that had once praised your works now changed their minds. No one was commissioning your works. Trying to make the best of a bad situation you begin working on your fourth symphony. Little would you know this would be a mistake. A short while after rehearsals begin you receive a letter from the communist party asking you to publicly denounce the symphony. It was "too western" and :"formalist" to be performed in any capacity in the Soviet Union. You are only a little surprised at this turn of events. In the past year artists in all fields and their families were disappearing, with rumors circulating that they were either killed or sent to labor camps in Siberia. This music is your life's work, if you were a younger man you would have told the government to fuck off, but you have your family to think about now.
  
  > refuse the Party
  Music is music and art cannot be silenced. You are a man of strong principles, and this is one of them. You will not be bullied into submission.
  
  Within the year you regret this. You learn new things about yourself and your principles fall apart. The first thing you learn is that you are not made for hard labor. You spent your childhood alone making music, when you are forced to work fourteen hours a day in a mine you begin to see how good you had it before. You art was appreciated and you could have lived under Soviet censorship for the rest of your life without a complaint. Now it was too late to make that choice. The second thing you learned is how warm the winters of St. Petersburg were. Siberia is cold. So very cold.