The Happy Blues
The dinner table was quiet as we all sat in silence.
The light above us flickered and called for attention, but no one listened, no one could hear for the tension, was much too great, it filled our estate, and consumed our minds conception.
The clinking of the fork on our plates was bringing a melody to my mind.
Along with the ticking of the wooden clock it brought a sound sublime. It told me there was hope even in confusion, hope even in illusion.
I sat my face to the plate, my mind away from everything.
I was now listing to what was around us, making a danceable beat, a tune to swing feet.
I sat there whilst my mother stared at my father, and my father at the newspaper, and the newspaper at my brother. My brother looked to the dog sitting beside him waiting for his plate. I was in my mind making sense of it all.
The escape! “You may be excused,” my mother said. I leap out of my chair and run to my room. The door I leave ajar in case anyone cared to see my great mixture of our dinner feat. I went to my piano and played the river of notes that had flooded my mind.
I played it knowing this may be the only way to break the silence, this might be the only way to bring back the chatter, and should I dare to hope, the laughter.
So I played the piano pressing each key with passion knowing that if I stopped no one might hear, all we needed to give up, in order to speak, all we needed to sacrifice in order to be, to be a family.
All we needed to say, to say while we ate.
I played louder, trying to make the melody sweep through the whole house, in the attic, in the basement, in the little cherry tree outside.
Let us be bright, let us be bright! Let us be loud, let us be us, and let us be free now! I continued to demand, I continued to hope.
I continued, until my fingers burned red and blue and my back hurt, until my eyes started to water. I played as I remembered the first day in this home, we all had promised so much, so much we disregarded, so much we took for granted. So much love we rejected, so all of us dejected, could love no more.
Awaken! I pleaded, the salty water now steaming on my face; I started to sing, to sing out loud with a calloused tone, for my bruised home.
I sang of joy and happy times, when we went to amusement parks, when we were read bedtime rhymes. When the fairytales were real, and we could never talk our fill.
I sang of when we crashed down, the plane ride over, no survivors found.
My fingers now were weakning but never would I give in.
I would not stop till we did, and started again. I wanted the best, I wanted rest, I wanted love, and truth, and jest. I sang until my throat was sore and my vocal chords were strained to the full.
I wanted to sing the blues for this family, our anthem, our anthem of who we once were, of who we had become, an anthem that was never before sung.
Shaking violently I played my fingers slowing down, my head drooping low, my voice almost bound.
The song seemed though to continue on even within me, I was starting to be the song.
Whether they heard me or not I would never stop. The song was me now. It has become who I am. And I have become who it is.
The Blues! So I sat there playing the blues, the blues of our blindness and sickness and rust.
The blues of our failings, our troubles, our crust.
The foundation of who we once were now is in this blues song.
And in the end, in the end of me,
it was revealed to me that our blues started well, it started with our hope, with our promises, with our life.
With what made us good, and right, so how could I say this was just the blues? How could I say this was just the blues? No, this was, this is, the happy blues.
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125,013 Literary Works • 672,844 Reviews
Good morning!
This is an interesting piece. I think it captured the growing desperation of the girl and how she wanted everything to be the way it was, although for me the mention of the plane crash seemed more metaphoric than actually what happened. Could you clarify that? I'm still not sure. To me, the plane was the symbol of everything that was good about the past and how it flies high in the sky at speed is being compared to the jovialness the family used to share before the 'crash' came, and things went wrong.
However, I agree with other reviewers, this comes across as a poetry-short story hybrid, especially with the rhymes at the ends of sentences and parts of the story such as 'The blues of our failings, our troubles, our crust' which, for me, gave the story a sort of a half-hearted rythmn. I think it needs either one or the other, unless that was meant for effect too due to the girl's piano playing being delirious in nature and not necessarily having a strict beat all the time. If that was the intention, I'm not quite sure I fully felt it whilst reading.
Having said that, I don't think there necessarily is much to change about the story. However, I do agree that the ending is slightly unclear and the reader is left confused as to how the girl has come to be happy or more hopeful after rigorously playing her piano. She seems to have ceased her desperation and delirium, and therefore I'm thinking the reader should be able to gain control of what's going to, to match the senses of the girl. But all in all, I think with a few tweaks this story could be really interesting!
Good luck, and keep writing!
Bacon.
yay! Bacon. ^.^ thank you! And you were right, the 'crash' was metaphorical, and in the exact way you described it to be, at least when I wrote it, but I don't mind how people interpret my work. I leave it open like that.
I love imagination! So, the ending, it is more of an ending where you go...interesting, and are speechless. I was trying to give the reader the view that she was dying, or at least I attempted to. But then I also wanted to leave hope that she was doing the right thing by singing and playing her blues, because it was happy, she was doing something good. Changing her life and her families. Also, I put that she became the song, to say that when the song ends, she could too. Anyways, thanks again!
I see what the reviewer before me has said is quite accurate -- this reads a lot like poetry and that whole effect seems to be due to the occasional rhymes and alliteration. The line-breaks after almost every sentence give that feel as well. The voice of the poem/story is strong which is really nice to see, but I think the meaning is very clouded.
The description of the music is lovely. I particularly like the "river of notes", but I can't really understand why the parts about blisters and bleeding come into the story. Sure, I understand that they are about decay and destruction, but I think their presence spoils the beauty of the piece somewhat. Are they entirely necessary to achieve the message you want? I got the impression that the voice of the poem was ghostly rather than corpse-like.
I like how you delay the mention of the plane crash until quite late in the piece. This is a great example of how you can make something mysterious but still clear. Early in the piece, the reader wonders about all the silence and the strangeness, but later they get their answer. I feel that later in the piece, things become much less clear-cut -- maybe you can reread the last two paragraphs and try to distill from them their meaning. The part about being the song and becoming the song wasn't particularly clear to me.
Overall you've done a nice job. As I said before, the twist was good and well-executed. As this is so close to poetry, maybe you can see about using some more poetic devices / techniques as well? Though, at the moment, it's quite tasteful so I'd understand if you didn't want to add too many more flourishes to it.
Happy writing, and PM me if you've got any questions!
So...I'll PM you the questions.
But my comments, thank you for your advice of the "blisters" and "bleeding" I re-read it and I realized that you were right! It sounds out of place in the, yes, prose (I should put it in poetry. I just wanted to make sure it would fit in there.). So I've changed it to something I think is much better, but still describes the pain. The last two paragraphs are very deep. I truly wanted the reader to think on it, when I said that she became the song I meant that when the song stopped (when she stopped playing), she would stop too. But that if she lived, if her family heard her, she would sing forevermore this blues now within her, to try to keep her family "alive". As for the plane crash...it was more metaphorical, but I think it's cool that you saw it that way! And thank you for your review!! I appreciate it, it made me smile! ^.^
Hello! I thought it was quite interesting. Different, and your imagination is wonderful. But now, to get down to the constructive criticism part of this comment, if you don't mind?
It reads an awful lot like poetry. Both the structure and the rhyming make this sound like less of a prose piece, and a bit more like lengthy poetry. That being said, I don't know if I should be beta'ing it as a prose piece, and since I'm not much of a poet, i don't think it'd be fair of me to comment on it as a poem, either. But I love the story that it tells.
I hope you don't quit!
xo gummies
I wasn't sure what to do with this piece. When I feel compelled to write something, like a short story it often ends up like poetry, but when I put it in the poetry section I feel it doesn't fit since it isn't only poetry. It's kind of both, you know? So, hopefully I can figure that out, maybe I'll just put word like this in "other"
. Thanks so much, and I get what you mean! 