Art

In a fit of anger, or perhaps sadness, or maybe just insanity, my fingers ghost over the keys, playing over the lesson book, choppy, unattentive, as I hear the happiness outside. Maybe it's jealousy. My mother walks in, and my rendition of "Deck the Halls" ends on a sour note, then morphs into a fiddling of keys, a machine-gun massacre of music as I jumble the notes and make the lesson book bleed out its ears.

My mother leaves, and my "music" instantaneously becomes sane, or something similar to it, again. I play my favorite chords, the first 9 to Coldplay's "Viva la Vida", and smile. The smile is wiped off when my father, as per usual, yells from outside, "Play the next chords!" Instead of shouting "No!" and teasing, as is normal in banter, my chords become a rapid succession of Db Db Db Ab x 4 Eb Eb Db Ab x 5, over and over again, faster and faster, eventually morphing into a mash-up of notes and random outbursts frighteningly similar to my compositions as a 7-year old, pounding on my grandparents' old piano.

I finish off with a half finished sliding of my fingers from the left, then all the way from the right, and then, like an afterthought, a middle C, quiet and alone. I turn off the piano, turn off the light, and leave.

Music is art, so I suppose mine is fingerpainting.