A story about... Classical Music © 2000 Marg Frey, Bryce Graves-Hurst, Nahoya, Christine Schwab	BRYCE	CHRISTINE	MARG & NAHOYA
				NAHOYA & MARG
			MARG	CHRISTINE & NAHOYA
			NAHOYA	CHRISTINE & MARG
				MARG & CHRISTINE

     "It is not my lack of ability that I'm afraid of--it's what my ability calls out--in me, in my listeners,... in the world."

     Her impatient look has turned skeptical. "If you did not come to play, then why did you come?"

     "Because I cannot stay away. Sometimes the music brings beauty and joy; I wish for those times. Other times...horror, sadness, a slow-moving change that comes to fruition long after the music has stopped. I never know what it will be--I can never control it--and yet I must play."

     With that last warning, I put my fingers to the keys and began to play. I could never be sure if it was just my music that was so powerful, or if all the artists who surrounded me felt the power of their own creation so intensely. Did they all not realize how these powerful products of the human soul made manifest could change them and those around? And so. They had been warned.

     This was a falsely light-hearted piece. The undertone hinted the darkness underneath the apparent triviality of a pretty melody. There was the tragedy of potential, lost beneath a protective mask of shallow aspect. It was a melody of subtle depths, with an incongruous and deceptively thin crust of pleasing superficial overtones.

     The piece ended to some polite applause. A survey of the room revealed that several of the other guests were lost in their own conversations and hadn't noticed the end of the performance at all. My gaze came to rest finally on my hostess, the one who had asked me to play. She was not clapping. Neither was she really looking at me, but down at her hands. Tears had filled her eyes, obscuring her vision, but her air of preoccupation was such that I don't think she would have seen me in any case. She rose as if transfixed and with no announcement or comment to her guests, quietly left the room.