text: A hand emerges; enormous, colossal. Protruding, spiny tendons snake like oaken roots from strong, dexterous fingers into the damp, moss covered ground. Another, like sized hand surfaces to grasp a hardened willow, bark tearing as black fingernails dig deep in wooden flesh. Darkened muscle against darkened soil against darkened moonlight coils, surges, and onyx mass continues to galavant from the Earth. In this witching hour, by rock and stillborn wind, none awaken to the silent, seemless, ceaseless birth. Base notes pound, and the creature surfaces to the swelling orchestra. Glowering thunder lies dormant in its empty eye sockets, as the creature, blacker than a frosted winter night, stands level. Broken obsidian juts from its jagged jaw, and stretches across its peninsular-like spine, a shattered, cluttered exoskeleton. Wood chips collect under its fingernails. The surrounding woods darken and collect. The night lengthens. The music builds. * The muggy stench that exists solely in a single tent on a summer night drives me out to the moon and wind. Sweat beads continue to roll down my skin. Even outside the heat is inescapable. A lone boobook owl hoots, a soloist instrument amongst the concerto of crickets and cicadas. Moonlight cascades through the canopy of leaves. And so I begin to carefully place footsteps amongst the fallen undergrowth behind me. Tonight will be number 6 on the sleepless night count. Despite the heat I’m glad I’m away. It hadn’t exactly been easy, especially with work, but “challenge” wasn’t quite apt either. The conversation had gone smoothly with her. I’m still unsure whether thats good or bad. “One night is all I’d need really” “Just one?” I remember she’d had a tiny piece of avocado hanging off her chin. She wasn’t a messy eater. “Fair enough” Rachmaninoff’s “Concerto No.2 in C minor” filled in the rest of the conversation, the words disappearing behind the music. Rather a strange choice for dinner music. I’d heard the piece for the first time roughly a week ago, in the small coffee shop at the end of our road. Always playing records of the romantic period, I often visited purely to sit in a complete soundscape. The coffee often disappointed. Surrounded by the likes of Debussy, Satie, Ravel, the dramatic, chaotic cohesion of Rachmaninoff stood out like a beautifully enormous thumb. It emerged from its ambient atmosphere like a coil from its delicate eggshell. The building tension and base notes crash over me under the moonlight * 1900; Rachmaninoff decides he doesn’t like Russia. Sitting in his study, the cold naws into his exposed fingers, hands resting on the piano. Strings tiptoe through his mind and he feels his face downturn. Frowning always came easily with a hook nice like his. The taste returns to him, the same one that had first coated his mouth the night of March 28, 1897. A symphonic disaster, as the critics labelled it... He’d heard people laughing at him, or he swear he could have, as he’d rushed from the theatre. Shoving his fedora tight on his head and upturning his collar, his 6’ 4” figure struggled to remain hidden. Such a way to start a composing career. He knew it before he read it, how the critics would write. He knew, and he could taste it. ...The piano feels alien to him. So long has it been since white fell to black fell to white. His fingers tremble slightly. Outside he feels he can hear the sigh only brought on by early morning dishwashing. He begins to play. A chord, foreshadowing, soft at first. Another, accompanied this time with the dull thud of a bass note. Octaves build, dissonance rises, tension escalates. And then, his hands begin to dance: arpeggios, rolling, spinning, rising, cracking through the eggshell, a momentous outbreak. His fingers stop. A few notes more and the strings will come in. The orchestra stands ready in his head, symphonic swell at the ready, well rehearsed from the many hours spun through the theatre of his mind. If he so chose, the entire piece could be notated and ready for release: “Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor” He hates it. His fist curls and with an enormous swing, he brings his gargantuan hand cracking down on the keys. A clatter of pained confusion fills the room. Another swing and his hand begins to bleed, red on white on black - He hates it. -another shattering swing, this time his left hand. His bones clack like keys as they break in his fingers - He hates the way it sounds, the way his hands feel on the piano. -both hands at the same time now, more keys break - Most of all, he hates that he loves it. Hates that he thinks its good. Hates the hope he has. -moving to the back of the piano, he lifts the lid, bringing his monstrous hands down on the strings - He hates his work, his incompetence at composition. -with an all mighty heave, he flips the piano, and it crashes to the ground beyond repair. A silent promise slips from his lips. Never again, shall he play Concerto No.2 in C minor - He hates the piano. * The creature is everything. Its empty gaze bores deep into me. Staring into that creature I feel as if I am in an endless library of infinite knowledge, except all the books face backwards, the spines impossible to read. The tendrils that spring from its features drag my view in, until all I see is the creature. It holds all attention in its obelisk hands, the upturned moon and choir of forests drawn closer. A silence settles. Yet I feel Rachmaninoff’s Concerto within me. It rumbles across my mindscape like unbroken thunder. Large hands strangle, as the world goes dark Finally, I sleep. Deep. Uncompromising. Fulfilling * Rachmaninoff sits at his broken piano. Some of the keys are out of tune. Others are missing. Only one of the three pedals remains, and part of the lid is chipped, lost forever. In the dark he sits on his stool. And his hands begin to dance.