Hola a todos, bien en lo que puedo escribir algo sobre lo que ha ido a conocer este fin de semana y subo los archivos les dejo aquí una historia que en lo particular me parece muy buena. Gracias a Adrian que me la mostró y a 4chan que fue donde la publicaron, según dijo Adrian, ahora puedo yo compartirla con uds. Si no saben ingles les recomiendo usen algún traductor de google o algo así, aunque su traducción es un poco chafa pero igual le entenderán. Comenten que tal les pareció. 

Today, I played Unstern! Sinistre, Disastro, composed by Franz Liszt in 1886. I wanted to play Concerto #3, but I didn’t. I haven’t played it in a very, very long time.

I also felt like writing. So here I am, writing.

I don’t write often, as you may be able to tell from the age and brevity of this notebook. In my defense, writing is difficult for me. I can’t see the page very well. I have to close one eye, squint out of the other, tilt one’s head, and scrawl block letters that, while acceptable in terms of legibility, would certainly be deemed chirographically and calligraphically displeasing by anyone well-sighted enough to evaluate their aesthetics. Were I highly practiced in penmanship, I’m certain I would scarce need to look at the page at all. Alas, I was only created to be accomplished in a single art.

Nonetheless, I fear if I don’t write something down, I’ll forget it all. I don’t ever want to forget the last time that Madotsuki came to visit me. I don’t believe I could ever forget the first thing she asked me that day:

“Seccom Masada-sensei! How many keys are on your piano?”

“Ah! You startled me, Madotsuki. I hadn’t heard you come in.”

“I came by when you were playing the scary part. I didn’t want to interrupt you until you were done.” She adjusted her ponytails and scowled dramatically. “You didn’t answer my question, Masada-sensei! How many keys are on your piano?”

Despite being confined to a sparse, nearly monochrome capsule with little else to look at for almost as long as I could remember, I realized that I had not once bothered to find this out, and I was suddenly curious to know the answer for myself. I counted them then and there; there were sixty-eight, and I said so.

“You can make a lot of songs out of sixty-eight keys, can’t you?”

 “I think so; there’s… ah…” I trailed off, attempting and failing to perform a hasty mental calculation. The next day, I figured it out: Sixty-eight keys means that within the first eight notes, over four hundred trillion possible melodies are possible. And that’s not even taking into account variations in duration, and the fact that multiple notes can be played at the same time, which makes the number practically infinite. I wished I had known that at the time that she had asked. But Madotsuki wouldn’t have had any reason to be impressed with a thing like that, anyway. She brought tales of colorful worlds where the ground itself sang with every step, of strange creatures with terrifying beaks or superfluous arms. Her presence and her stories always brought life to that room, barren of all furniture excepting a round table and two chairs that no one ever had occasion to sit at. And even the notes that emanated from the piano, while beautiful, seemed somehow as if they had been bleached of color and feeling over the years, unless she was there. When she was absent, any melody played on the instrument was beautiful but pale, giving the haunting impression of an ornate but fading tapestry. But when she was present, they were full of life.

“Yes,” I finally responded, snapping out of my contemplation. “Yes, you can make a lot of songs out of sixty-eight keys.”

She came over and stood beside me, placing her small hand over mine. “Then how come you always play the same sad song?”

I didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t know what to say. So I let ten long seconds pass in silence.

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “I do it too. You’re a lot like me, Masada-sensei.” She rested her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes. For the first time that day, I didn’t feel like playing anything sad at all.

“I know a lot of other pieces, too, you know.”

“I know you do, silly! I’ve heard them. I bet you know hundreds that I haven’t ever heard before, either.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Hundreds? Well, it’s possible…”

“Hey, let’s play a game. I’ll tell you something that happened to me this month. Then, you can play whatever song it makes you think of. ”

“I’m not very good at games…”

She laughed and slapped me hard on the back. “You can do this one! Okay, first is the time I got to be a witch. Remember, I told you about that day, Masada-sensei. I wore a hat and a broom, and I flew over the city for hours and hours.”

“I remember that story. You met a cat, right?”

“Yeah! It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. And at the same time, I felt incredibly relaxed. Play a song like that, Masada-sensei. Happy and full of peace.”

Turning to the piano, I began to play Debussy’s Reverie. It’s one of Debussy’s earliest pieces and many critics don’t consider it one of his best, but I’ve always admired it for the delicate way it conjures the feeling of a pleasant dream that one doesn’t want to leave. When the last lingering notes had finished, I looked over at Madotsuki and saw that she had her eyes closed once again.

“That was wonderful. It was like flying, having the wind pushing back on your ponytails.”

“I don’t have any idea about things like that.”

Madotsuki giggled. “Of course you don’t! You would look pretty funny in pigtails, Masada-sensei.”

“No, I mean--”

“Nah, I know, I’m just kidding you. But that’s amazing. You’ve never experienced the feeling of having the wind rush through your hair, but you can still capture the feeling of it like that.”

I blushed. “Is it?”

“It is! But by delivering an excellent performance, you’ve only raised expectations for your next challenge. Prepare yourself!”

“Oh, dear...”

“Neon World!” She was practically shouting, her small fists punching at the air in excitement. “A world of electronics and bright colors, set against a black background for maximum impact! A world of worms and parrots and moving pinball machines. A world where everything flashes like it’s trying to give you a seizure! Are you ready for it?”

“Um. Is there anything that doesn’t flash like it’s trying to give you a seizure?”

“Only the walls. But they give you seizures too, if you stare at them long enough.”

“Hmm. Well, I don’t really know, but let’s give this one a try.” With that, I fired up Le Chat el la Souris by Aaron Copeland, a wild, rollicking piece intended to sound like a cat chasing a mouse across the surface of a piano. I felt a little rusty, but seeing as the tune involves numerous random assortments of notes hitting the piano at once, I seriously doubted Madotsuki noticed any errors.

When I reached the end of the piece, plinking of some of the highest notes on the piano to represent the mouse’s eventual escape to freedom, she let out a cheer. “Whoa! I didn’t know you knew any songs like that! I thought you were all classical, all the time. It was cool!”

“Thanks! It was pretty far afield from what I usually play, I’ll admit.”

>>

“Yeah--I like what you usually play, but I liked that one too. It wasn’t really like the feeling you get from Neon World, though. It had a lot of speeding up and slowing down. In Neon World, everything is about the same rate of craziness all the time.”

“Sorry,” I shrugged. “Best two out of three?”

“Okay, last one. Remember the time I stabbed you in the--”

“No! Are you crazy? I don’t want to be reminded about that!”

“Aw, you’re no fun. It’s not like you didn’t come right back again, anyway… Fine, fine. Then, why don’t you play a song,” she said tentatively, “about that one time that I came and visited you, when I was feeling sad, and you showed me all of the constellations out of your space window. You showed me the King, and the Balloon, and the Frog, and even though none of them really looked like the things they were supposed to look like, it was fun to imagine them there in the sky.” She played with her hair shyly, nervously, looking down at her red sneakers as she spoke. “And you know, I didn’t say it then, but I really felt a lot better, after that. Play me a song about that time.”

>>  

I didn’t need to think about this one; I knew what I had to play. I would play Concerto #3, an emotional three-part work that I composed myself. I had been working on it for many weeks, but the day that Madotsuki spoke of was its initial inspiration. It’s called Concerto #3 simply because it’s the third concerto I’ve ever written, but it really deserves to be titled something much more meaningful. I was planning on saving it until it had a proper name, until I was more practiced. I had imagined myself introducing the piece on her next visit: “This is for you,” I would say. “Thank you for coming and keeping me company.”

But the concerto’s moment had come. It was earlier than I would have liked, but it had to be done, and I felt myself cutting into the opening bars without a word. Although I never gave the full piece a proper title, I did make up secret names for its three parts, which were “Crisis,” “Pathos,” and “Catharsis,” respectively. Through it all, Madotsuki kept her eyes firmly closed. She was remembering a series of events from her past, I presumed--shaking as if filled with uncontrollable rage during the most intense portion of “Crisis,” sitting motionlessly throughout the entirety of “Pathos” and shedding a single tear as it neared its conclusion, and gradually drifting into a small smile during “Catharsis,” never wiping the tear’s residue from the right side of her face. Twenty seconds of pure silence followed the final chord, and finally Madotsuki opened her eyes and spoke extremely softly, almost to the point of a whisper.

“That was for me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Thank you... Thank you for coming and keeping me company.”

I had imagined that these words would make her happy, but instead of smiling, her face became extremely serious; she looked at the ground and turned away. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No… I know you appreciate the company. That’s what makes this so hard. I-- I’m going away, Masada-sensei.”

“You are? Where are you going?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Someplace I’ve never been. The only place I’ve never been, actually. I don’t know what I will find there. That’s why… that’s the reason I needed to say goodbye.”

“But you’ll be coming again? You’ll be coming again soon, won’t you?”

She looked away again, and I could hear her voice starting to crack. “Masada-sensei, don’t do this to me…”

“I understand,” I said softly, not actually feeling that I understood very much at all. “Go where you need to go. I understand if it takes a long time. I’ll see you when you return.”

Her head pressed hard against my chest, she gave me a long, powerful hug, and I could feel her tears seeping through my clothing. “Thank you,” she whispered again and again, echoing the words I had spoken just a few moments earlier. “Thank you for keeping me company.”

After looking into my eyes one final time, she let go abruptly and ran sobbing into the other room. By the time I reached it, she was gone, no doubt already having pinched herself awake.

Not knowing quite what to do, I lay down in bed, but I couldn’t sleep. A spaceship can be a lonely place sometimes.

>>  

I wanted to play Concerto #3 today, but I didn’t. I haven’t played it in a very, very long time.

It’s okay, I can wait. She’ll be coming again soon.