The Diver: On Electronica and Women in Music by Emma O’Keefe
“Emma DeleRosa has been making music since she was a kid.”
(A photo of Emma taken by @raajasvi on Instagram)
Emma DeLaRosa has been making music since she was a kid. She’s classically trained on piano, self-taught on guitar and bass, and has been in multiple bands since moving to Boston for college. After graduating from Boston University last year, Emma has started her new project, The Diver. A solo act, The Diver creates ambient electronic music, a great divergence from the rock music DeLaRosa has played for years in groups like videodays and jimrat. I had the opportunity to talk to her about this new solo project and what it's like to become a solo female artist after years of playing in bands.
While Emma has always written her own songs, and wrote collaboratively in the now disbanded Corporeal, for the past few years she’s been mainly focused on playing bass in videodays as well as guitar, vocals, and occasionally synth in jimrat. She’s not the lead of either group but The Diver is where she has full artistic control. “I’ve been really satisfied with that, supporting my friends, working on their music with them, and enjoying the collaborative process of that but there was a lot that I wanted to do on my own that I wanted to explore. It was time for me to write my own music and I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t have as much input from anyone else, I wanted something that was wholly myself.”
While DeLaRosa makes rock music, namely shoegaze, in her current bands and in the former Corporeal, she’s been equally drawn to electronic music. “Every band I’ve been in has been some variation of rock and shoegaze music and I really love that but this satisfied a different itch for me.” Emma mainly plays traditional instruments in her group projects, but immersing herself in the synth, even the accordion, are essential parts of The Diver’s sound that she wouldn’t otherwise be able to fully explore. “There’s a whole other world you tap into with electronic music that’s really different from what you get with a typical band setup with guitar, bass, drums, and whatnot. I really wanted to explore the sounds of it, see what I can do, how I can experiment with those sounds.”
The Diver is all about experimentation. To anyone who hasn’t heard The Diver before, DeLaRosa would describe the music as “dark, ambient, electronica, moodiness.” The name comes from a Stina Nordenstam song of the same name filled with muffled vocals and eerie, spaced out instrumentation. The electronic pop singer is one of Emma’s biggest inspirations for The Diver. “Her whole sound and the whole universe her songs create… I don’t hear a lot that sounds like that.” Nordenstam’s sound isn’t the only inspiration for The Diver. She states that “another reason why I wanted to start The Diver is because I have such an immense respect for solo female artists and she’s one of my favorite solo female artists.” She credits Bjork as another major influence and notes Portishead and Goldfrapp as the biggest electronic groups with an impact on her sound.
While The Diver is all about Emma relishing in her own creative freedom, collaboration is still a part of her process and always will be. “I wanted to start something that was totally my own but I really don’t think I could ever create music without the people I’ve collaborated with for so long. I’ve been in the same bands with the same people for a couple of years now. Their input and their help with things is really important to me.” Her collaboration with members of videodays and jimrat as well as Marcy the Baptist will be released on her upcoming album.
Being a solo artist comes with the benefits of full creative direction but being a solo female artist also comes with the sexism and flippant attitudes of male audiences that DeLaRosa has experienced since promoting The Diver on social media. “Especially online I feel like I don't get taken very seriously a lot of the time and that's something that tends to bother me when I just want to be seen and heard for the music I’m putting out and not for whatever gross things an incel has to say to me.” The dismissive attitude female artists face is nothing new to Emma or other women in the music industry but it’s not something that she had to face as prominently while playing in male dominated groups. “It’s not something I've really had to deal with as much as being in the other bands because it's a band of several people and a lot of them are men. It's me being singled out as a solo female musician.” While these reactions are disheartening, she appreciates more than ever the support she’s received from listeners who care about the music she’s putting out.
The Diver continues on despite any comments from incels on the internet and DeLaRosa doesn’t stop at just music, she’s working on her second play titled Pretense; Meditation at the moment and hopes to use sounds from The Diver as interludes for this multimedia project. “I’ve written a play before (Caved In) and my friend Sam (jimrat) wrote a lot of the music that went along with that. So I kind of want to do something like that where I’m blending the writing that I do and the music that I do to a kind of comprehensive thing.” In addition to the play, an EP will be out soon featuring The Diver’s latest work and collaborations.
You can keep up with The Diver on Spotify and Apple music and her visual content on Instagram @_thediver and on Tumblr @thediverrr. Her website exhausts all of her work.
Emma O'Keefe is an Emerson College student studying Writing, Literature, and Publishing. At Emerson she is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Five Cent Sound Magazine where she writes and edits all things music. Readers can find more of her work on Substack @emmaokeefe.
Update: Audio was recorded with the typo ‘DeleRosa’ instead of ‘DeLaRosa’. The text has been edited and corrected, but the audio has not.
Worry by Emily Wykoff
“You told me the stairs at the Colosseum are steep and slippery”
You told me the stairs at the Colosseum are steep and slippery
In a text from your trip to Rome
You wanted to make sure I wouldn’t fall
When I claim that city as my own
It reminded me of that time in November
When you texted me after you left
Worried I’d slip in the morning
Warning me about the ice on my front steps
You worried about me
Back when we were together
And you still worry now
Even without icy weather
You worried when I wasn’t getting enough sleep
When I was so sick that I couldn’t sing
You even worried when I worried too much
You were the cure to my anxiety
You worry so I don’t have to
You warn me about uneven stairs
Because you know I’m uncoordinated
I could even trip on thin air
I worried less when you were here
More now that you’re gone
But I won’t fall down the steps in the Roman Forum
You made sure of that all along
Emily Wykoff is an English Major at Amherst College. Her work has been published by The Amherst College Indicator, The Lilac, Livina Press and SIEVA Magazine. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Like a Fantasy by Chase Wolfsohn
“I dreamt of you last night. You were sitting at the piano and playing your favorite song.”
Trigger Warning: Suicide
Movement 1:
I dreamt of you last night. You were sitting at the piano and playing your favorite song. Like you always used to. Sonata No. 14 in C# Minor. Your body moved violently, swaying with each note like you used to do when I was young. I used to be scared of your movements, when they pulsed with the music, like your heart was beating with that rhythm instead of a natural one and if you played for too long you would become the song. You were stuck in time and I was stuck with you, listening to each movement over and over until the music got loud enough to make me scream at you to stop.
When I woke up, I played it. It was early in the morning, but the notes were looping in my head and I knew I couldn’t get them out any other way. I could play it with my eyes closed at this point, but I still read the sheet music, tracking each line, letting my fingers have autonomy. You were there too, your breaths on my neck like a metronome, following along to see if I messed up, but I know you would hear any mistake at the same time. You knew every note, rest, and beat of that song so even if you weren’t over my shoulder you could hear my errors from anywhere.
When I was little I had sworn that I would quit piano when I got the confidence to do so. But I have always loved it just as much as you did. It was both unchanging and exciting at the same time. A million songs could come from the union of me and the keys if I spent the time with them. Like raising a child, the ivory notes could be anything if I put the care into them. They have been my only love, though I am afraid one day that I will play and they will sound like your screaming voice and I won’t be able to touch the instrument again.
I finished the song and returned to bed when I remembered why you had been in my dream. It was early this morning, December 16th, which meant two things: tonight was the first night of my tour with the LA Philharmonic and exactly one year ago today you killed yourself sitting at the very piano which I learned on when I was a kid. I hadn’t really thought about the anniversary, but I guess my subconscious had decided to remember for me. I used to think that this day would be a celebration. My hatred for you ran deep for a long time, but being out of your rule when I became an adult helped me see that there was love under the harshness of your words. I used to believe that we made quiet amends. When I had told you that I had finally made it to our dream, playing at a concert venue where people paid to see me, I believed we had finally overcome it all. You had said that finally both of our lives had paid off. I thought you were finally happy.
And now, I can’t focus on opening night. And the stakes are high. I made a mistake yesterday and I don’t make mistakes, not anymore. Not when my career depends on playing perfectly night after night. I wasn’t sure why it happened, but my finger slipped. No one heard it, it was during a forte of the violins in our final run through, but the note rang out to me like a scream. Your scream. When I returned home I played again and you were there with me, ready to correct me. I played through perfectly, but the memory of my failure lingered.
The crowd is clapping and I realize it is my cue to enter the stage. I step out and try not to smile too wide. You used to tell me not to be prideful on stage. That just because I got to sit up here and play for these people didn’t make me any more special than the girl who played Chopsticks for her Kindergarten recital.
The first memory I have of playing is of sitting next to you on the bench and pressing down two keys back and forth while you improvised a melody a few octaves up. You moved my hands where you wanted them, and showed me how fast to play. I was overjoyed just to be doing something with you, to be joining you in something you loved so much. My feet swished back and forth and I remember smiling at you. You didn’t smile back. You told me I wasn’t listening to the music — that my mind was somewhere else.
Eric taps his baton and looks at me. The crowd is silent. I straighten up and look out among the rest of the ensemble who are poised, eyes trained on Eric. He gives the signal to the concertmaster, Laura, who pulls her string across the bow in a single A. She plays it again and the violins join in a cacophony of strings across bows. The rest of the instruments jump in to tune and produce that noise of pure chaos and beauty all at once.
When I was ten you had taken me to my first symphony concert and I listened in awe as the musicians all clashed together in those terrible moments until they found their tune. You told me to listen carefully, that this was the most beautiful part of the entire performance because of the potential in the multitude. I hadn’t heard it then, and didn’t, concert after concert, until I was sitting among them, hearing the music in the dissonance.
Movement 2:
I play softly at first, alone. My introduction is short and soon the violins come in and grab the song from me. It soon goes to forte as the strings take it away with accompaniment from the flutes and I am floating in the music like I am every time, waiting for my moments to play. I fall back into my notes soon and let the rest of the orchestra play around me. Through me. Out of the corner of my eye that’s when I see you. I know it cannot be you, but there you are. You are smiling at me like you did at my first performance with a philharmonic.
It was a small smile, lips barely curved upwards — anywhere else I would have thought it was a trick of the light, a shadow warping your cheeks. But that was true happiness on your face. I didn’t realize that I had never seen you smile for me. You smiled when you heard a good violin solo, or when we tuned the piano, but this one was for me. It was what made me believe you were alright. When I had found you afterwards the joy was gone from your face and you told me that I had been slouching in between pieces.
And now here you are again. I almost miss a note, but I catch myself and continue on in the song. I will not let myself mess up again. Not with you watching me. I am no longer lost in the music, but focused completely on my hands— suddenly aware of how fast they are playing. I breathe deep as they fly across the keyboard and try to clear my mind of that image of you.
I learned this piece a while ago, when I was practicing for my audition for Juilliard. You told me that it was the only school that was good enough for me and even though you had not gotten in, it still held a special place in your mind. That whole trip I had never seen you so nervous, never care so much about something. I thought it was because you cared about me and my future. You told me that I had to get in. It was the only way my life could go. And I listened.
The piano concerto is my favorite form because it feels like I am playing not just for the audience, but for the rest of the musicians. I get to teach them the tune, show them what I can do and listen to them copy the melodies in enthusiasm. It was like Eric wasn’t there any longer as I played. Like I was the conductor, and the entire orchestra. If I could play all of the instruments at once then you might let me see your smile again. As the music progresses I realize that I am playing the correct notes, but my mind is hearing something else entirely. I am listening to the song that you were playing in my dream. But there are no mistakes.
When I was fifteen, you told me you wished you were dead. You were drunk, I think, and you sat on the couch while I played your song for you. Somewhere in the middle I paused too long, losing my place on the sheet, and you stopped me and told me in a quiet voice that every mistake I made convinced you that life wasn’t worth living. You told me that if a mother couldn't get a single song from her daughter that a mother doesn’t have anything to live for. I didn’t know what to do then, and maybe if I did, you wouldn’t have followed through twenty years later. One year ago today.
The song finishes and the applause erupts. I feel my heart beating fast as I look for you in the crowd, but I know you weren’t out there for the song. You were up here. Playing with me. Leading my hands. Telling me to play right and listen to the music.
It was after one of my performances at Juilliard that I finally told you how much I hated you. You had flown to New York to see it, even though I didn’t ask you to be there. We got dinner afterwards and I decided to say what had been circulating in my head for years. I told you about the pressure you put on me, the way you made me hate myself, the fear that I got from your voice. I told you all of it in a stream of anger and resentment until I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe and people in the restaurant started to give us weird looks. I expected you to yell back. You said nothing at all.
Movement 3:
We all bow in unison and exit the stage. The aftermath is filled with quick goodbyes as I make my way through the back rooms and to my car. We are supposed to stay a while after, to meet, but as soon as the song ended I felt my heart beating too fast. It is not just the post-concert excitement, but something else. I am in my car and driving before I let myself think about it too much.
When I was young I would have panic attacks frequently. Sometimes they were the quiet ones where I would huddle somewhere dark and close my eyes until I was so deep in my head that I felt like I was floating somewhere and couldn’t find my way back into my own body. More often than not, I would hide underneath the grand piano we had inherited from your mother. It was dark brown and was so big you got rid of our couch to make room for it in the living room. It was forced into the corner and when the bench was pushed in, below was entirely enclosed. Other times, the attacks were loud. Where the lights would scream, and I would scream back until my voice gave out it felt like nothing could quiet the world around me. I don’t know which one was worse.
I can’t tell what this one is, but as I pull up to my house I just want to close my eyes and lay down in my driveway. I make it to the couch without collapsing, but my head is spinning. I cover my face with my hands to block out the light from outside street lights that spotlight me in my living room like I am on stage again. I ask the world to stop for a moment.
You used to play when I would huddle under the piano. You were never one for hugs, or telling me you love me, but you would play for me. Underneath, it was so much louder. Totally encompassing. And no matter what you played I felt comforted. In those moments, the music became my world and I wasn’t a little girl under a piano, or a mind lost in the dark, but a single note among the hundreds that you played. You wouldn’t just play slow, soft songs, but some of the fastest most intense music I had heard. It would calm me down anyway. I remember opening my eyes and seeing your heels tapping the pedals violently — sustaining and dampening in a beautiful dance between your feet and the piano. There was peace in that harshness, quietude in the deafening.
I open my eyes, now, to the sound of you playing. I stand and see you at my piano, playing the same song as you were last night in my dream. Your favorite one. I see myself too, under the piano, examining your movements from the safety of that enclosure. I watch you play the song in awe, unmoving. You near the end, slowing, and then approach the last concluding melody on the keys moving faster and faster until you hit the last notes with a fermata, a sustain, and then finally lift your hands. You sit still looking at the keys.
When I got the call that they had found you dead on your piano the first thing I wondered was what song you were playing when you died. I knew, deep down, which one it was, but I lied and told myself that you had merely stumbled to the bench in the stupor that comes from taking that much Valium along with a bottle of Grey Goose. I imagined that it may have been an accident, that you had forgotten that the medication that you took for most of your life couldn’t be coupled with alcohol. I hoped that it had nothing to do with the fact that I had skipped a note somewhere in the middle of my performance that night and couldn’t find you afterwards. I fantasized that maybe it hadn’t happened at all.
. . .
“You held the notes too long at the end,” I say, “He intended the end to be abrupt.”
“It sounds better that way,” you say, looking at me from the bench.
“You think you know better than Beethoven?”
“Yes,” you say, smiling.
I smile back.
“Will you play it again?” I ask.
You nod, place your hands on the keys, and begin again.
Chase Wolfsohn is a Master of Theological Studies student at the Candler School of Theology. His short fiction pieces focus on the intersections between faith, religious systems, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Having studied religion alongside creative writing, Chase has incorporated religious motifs into his writing in order to fully capture how belief operates to the individual and the communal. His academic work in the field of theology including projects on queer sexual ethics, cosmological narrative, and scriptural formation have been key themes in his creative work.
The Blue Sky Cowboy by Ellie Holt
“Gather everyone and hear a tale from me:”
I. The Devil’s Docket
Gather everyone and hear a tale from me:
There was once an outlaw in these very streets
She hid in the frontier, but in the calm of night
Barreled into town, her bullets blazing bright
She’d break into your homes and she would rob you blind
She’d tip our water barrels that we had refined
She’d either hold your horses or else kill them dead
She’d knife us poor folks if she caught us out of bed.
“More cases for your corpses, Mr. Coroner.”
“Good Mourning Secretary, I’ll just be next door–
I’m off to send a message to Sequía Grande,
Supposedly they’ve got someone to lend a hand.”
Far away the outlaw counting out her dough
Never could expect that she would meet her foe.
II. The Ballyhoo Belvidere
A-straddle in a saddle while the sun hung high
In rode a bounty hunter dressed like the blue sky
Double-checked the figures of the wanted ad
Sequía Grande’s own hero shimmered silver clad
We watched the stranger tread beside the wooden tracks
While exiting the chapel in our nicest blacks
The cowboy stopped and waved, their glove a light azure
“A hundred fifty grand, now are you really sure?”
That dusk we held a dinner for our highest guest
They told me that to bounty is a game of chess
Always think ahead so you can set a trap
My mother who would hover whispered that was crap.
Past my bedtime, I snuck to a window seat
To study up on outlaws and how they were beat.
III. The Shootout Showdown
Backlit by the moon the hunter on their steed
Boomed out to the villain and her vile greed
“Return the loot you stole from the good of the town,
Or I’ll come over there to give you a beat down.”
The outlaw cocked her gun and said “I guess you could,
Or I could shoot you now to serve us both some good.”
Swiftly, as soon as she countered their demand,
The cowboy dressed in blue shot her right through the hand
Pistol fell to sand, the bandit’s horse did bolt
Herding her with bullets how their colts did jolt
Wildly they galloped up the tracks on par
Clamor down the line warned them of a train car.
Morning came, we skirted over blues and red
Coroner yelled out, “At Least The Bandits Dead!”
Ellie Holt is a student at Oberlin College. This piece is a western sonnet sequence that explores the sonic elements of poetry. The sequence utilizes rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration to lovingly poke fun at the genre.
Unburied (Cicada Shells) by Ash Zeng
“Wind-dried, strewn among blooms, crushed”
Wind-dried, strewn among blooms, crushed
bits of the June afternoon: flaky air, dead lips, leaf spots of shade,
crispy as my patience, ground into wispy heat with a pinch and rub of
forefinger and thumb. Hooking onto the bark of trees, a snapshot of years of nymphs,
exoskeletons oiled, sheening. Seventeen years of burrowing in the husk,
albino and fleshy, sightless without songs. What darkness did they feel (moist
soil or blindness from their hulls)? Cicadas continue their epics of ascension and
reproduction (a week only). No time to lament, sing it, the feeling when sunlight pierces
their ommatea, first vibrations of ink-lined wings: sing it. A flimsy façade left
to microbes, digested like questions such as “how does it feel to touch the sun?”
Cicadas don’t need to answer (or mourn, even): they only sing.
Ash Zeng is a poet from Shanghai, China who explores gender and immigrant identity in their poems and wishes to use poetry as their conduit of self-expression. They study at Emory University's English & Creative Writing Program. In their free time, they like to listen to Yorushika and cook food from their hometown.
Through the Fog by Zenia deHaven
“Anne wiped her hands on her tights in an attempt to remove the sweat from her palms in a relaxed, nonchalant way.”
Anne wiped her hands on her tights in an attempt to remove the sweat from her palms in a relaxed, nonchalant way. She sat with the other young pianists waiting for their turn to perform on stage for their family and friends in attendance. Anne liked hiding in the shadows. They shrouded her insecurities, while the spotlight brought them all to the surface. It would illuminate her with such intensity that even the farthest, least attentive audience member would notice the sheer terror written plain across her face.
While she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t about to have a panic attack, the other kids seemed unphased. The boy next to her was fast asleep, his head slumped against his chest, his sheet music spilling from his folder. Was he so confident in his playing that he could peacefully doze off? Or had he stayed up late practicing, and was now too exhausted to stay awake? There was another girl, one with her inky, black hair tied back in such a harsh ponytail that Anne felt a headache coming on just from looking at her. She had her arms crossed over her chest; her folder nestled in her grasp as if she was worried that someone was going to yank the sheet music away when she wasn’t looking. Other than holding her folder in a headlock, her posture was relaxed.
Maybe they’re just better than me, Anne thought, and they have nothing to worry about. She gnawed at the inside of her cheek, then stopped. She imagined a fantasy where her recital went off without a hitch, and, while absorbing the applause and hollers of praise, she opened her mouth to reveal a bloodstained grin. That wouldn’t leave the right impression, she reasoned.
Though Anne had been taking piano lessons for about a year, she had refused to perform in public until now. Even the idea of playing for an audience made her heart rate skyrocket and her insides twist into a labyrinth of knots. Her parents had finally pushed her to perform at this recital, threatening to cancel her lessons with Ms. Lawrence if she refused. After pushing down a feverish panic attack, Anne reluctantly agreed.
The current performer, a sixth grader stumbling through Prelude in C Major, was nearing the end of his piece. His technique wasn’t half bad, but he slipped a couple of times, accidentally hitting two keys instead of one, giving what should have been a major chord a dissonant tone. When he made these errors, Anne noted that the crowd didn’t scream at him to get off the stage. They didn’t hurl tomatoes and spoiled fruit at him or chase him out of the auditorium with torches and pitchforks, but would they be as forgiving if she made worse mistakes? She wasn’t sure. The audience sat in polite silence, demonstrating stellar “concert etiquette.” She was glad that her piano teacher had fallen ill recently, making her miss Anne’s recital. This sounded mean, but Anne couldn’t handle disappointing her. How could she? The teacher who gave her candy when she played an entire piece without referring to the sheet music? The only teacher at Thomas Jefferson Middle who still put stickers on their homework that said “GOOD JOB” with smiley faces and rainbows?
No, she couldn’t hurt Ms. Lawrence’s feelings, to reveal that she was a fraud and that all of their after-school lessons were for nothing.
The boy slammed the final chord. He slid out of the seat, faced the audience, and bowed stiffly. He was breathing heavily, and the spotlight illuminated dark pit stains on his baby blue shirt. Applause broke the silence, not the overenthusiastic, rambunctious applause that happened in movies, but the kind of applause that said, “Well, you did something.”
As he returned to his seat, retreating from the light into the shelter of darkness, an overdressed adult wearing a full tuxedo approached the microphone. Anne wasn’t sure what his role was, other than the summoner of unwilling middle-school-aged pianists to their doom.
“Anne Garrier,” he said into the microphone. The feedback squealed like a metal chair grating against a linoleum floor, and he flinched. He then nodded, as if approving of this minor technical malfunction, and then looked to the row of kids to the right of the stage.
In a daze, Anne felt herself stand, proud that her knees didn’t buckle. She moved her left foot forward, then her right, her feet uncomfortably hot in the dress shoes that her mom insisted upon. Though they were entirely flat, they offered no purchase, and Anne feared that she would slip on the carpet. Her movements became entirely mechanical like she was a passenger in her own body, a body that had decided it should follow the tuxedo man’s orders to play piano for an audience of parents, grandparents, and bored siblings. She approached the piano bench like a French aristocrat walking towards the guillotine.
When she finally reached the humming spotlight, she thought she might throw up. The light soaked her skin in an iridescent glow, blinding her. She could make out the silhouettes of the crowd in the darkness, but they were just that. Silhouettes. They were faceless figures eager to watch her make a complete fool of herself.
She began to bow, then froze halfway. Were you supposed to bow before you played? She couldn’t remember. Her thoughts were drowned out by her heartbeat that pounded in her skull like a war drum. Her second guessing resulted in a strange half-bow like she was stretching her back. Anne pretended that this was entirely on purpose, perhaps a new interpretation of what a bow could even be, and she sat down.
She slid the sheet music from its folder; her sweaty hands moistening the edges. She resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her blouse; she was in the spotlight now, and every movement she made would be noted by the unblinking audience. Her trembling fingers hovered over the black-and-white keys, her eyes flicked to the music, and her heart plummeted.
She couldn’t read it.
The notes were there, the staff, the quarter notes, the rests and half rests, they were all present, but when she tried to focus on it, the ink bled in black rivers and swirls. They swam in her vision, taunting her, dancing like witches circling a fire on a sabbath. She scrunched her eyes shut, then opened them again, hoping this would perform a hard reset on her vision, but it didn’t work.
She imagined her parents in the audience, their breaths held in eager anticipation, to see what their daughter had learned in almost a year of after-school lessons.
With a strangled sob, Anne shot up from the bench and fled from the stage.
♮
The car ride home was unsurprisingly awkward. She sat with Grandma in the back, who was looking out the window absently. Dad was behind the wheel, humming along to the Oldies radio, Mom bobbing along in the passenger seat. If they were disappointed by Anne’s performance after a whole year of piano lessons, they didn’t say anything. Somehow, their silence stung, and part of her wished they had scolded her at least a bit. Now, it just felt like they were pretending nothing happened like she hadn’t had a panic attack in front of a crowd and fled like a rabbit escaping the claws of a mountain lion. They were both singing along to the song with low undertones. It was a song about a boy asking a girl to run away with him, away from all of their troubles and sorrows. Anne thought it was cliche, but the tune was catchy.
Grandma reached over, holding Anne’s smooth hand with her wrinkled one. Anne looked over, surprised, and her grandma was watching her with a look of complete admiration.
“You did great, sweetie,” she said, pride gleaming from her sapphire blue eyes.
Anne forced a smile that she hoped was convincing. Grandma’s memory had waxed and waned in recent years, and Anne found it easiest to not correct her.
“Thanks, Grandma.”
She wanted to get better, to earn the look of unconditional love that her grandma gave her, to show her parents that she was at least learning something during her lessons with Ms. Lawrence.
But she had no idea where to start.
♮
The next day, Anne pushed past a group of sixth graders sword-fighting each other with their bookmarks that said things like, “Reading is fun!” and “Open your book = open your mind.” Mrs. Redmayne must have been passing out free ones outside the library.
She still had a few minutes before class, so she slipped into Ms. Lawrence’s classroom. Ms. Lawrence didn’t have a class during the first period, so the room was empty. It was a standard choir room, with risers facing two whiteboards and a grand piano. Ms. Lawrence herself was behind her desk and she beamed as Anne walked in.
“Oh, Anne-Marie!” Ms. Lawrence exclaimed. “How was the recital?”
“It wasn’t great,” she said. “I panicked and I ran away.”
“Aw,” Ms. Lawrence said sympathetically. “I’m sorry about that. What do you think happened?”
Anne took a seat on the risers, exploring the contents of her lunch box that Dad had packed for her this morning. Usually, Anne handled her lunches, but Dad must have noticed how defeated she was, and she found her lunch box fully equipped with a ham and cheese sandwich, apple slices, grapes, and Reese’s chocolate. Lunch wasn’t until noon, but she was too nauseous at home to eat, so she tried to get something in her stomach before classes started.
“I don’t know,” she said, popping a grape in her mouth. “I just got up there and froze.”
Ms. Lawrence leaned back in her chair; her chocolate eyes lost in thought.
“Anne, do you listen to classical music for fun?”
Anne laughed. “No, why would I?”
Ms. Lawrence grinned. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you need a drive to perform in front of people. It should feel like an opportunity, not an obligation.”
“But I like classical music,” Anne insisted. “It’s just not, like, fun.”
“A recital isn’t just to show the audience what you’re capable of, but what you’re passionate about,” Ms. Lawrence said. “If you’re going up there because you have to, not because you want to, you might question why you’re doing it in the first place and hesitate.”
She sat up straighter, tapping her pen.
“I can’t meet with you after school today, I have to pick up Mrs. Fluffernutter from the vet,” she said. Mrs. Fluffernutter was her cat, a feisty Siberian with icicle-blue eyes and thick, silver fur. When neither Anne nor Ms. Lawrence felt like tackling a new piece, Ms. Lawrence would sometimes show Anne photoshoots of Mrs. Fluffernutter dressed in clothes from different historical periods.
Ms. Lawrence’s words circled Anne’s brain like a BREAKING NEWS bulletin. She barely paid attention during Spanish and cared even less about Gym than usual. Several try hard boys tried to encourage her to run faster, but Anne couldn’t care less if Team Green qualified for the quarterfinals.
She was passionate about music, obviously, but what kind of music? What would make her want to go on stage and share a song with a bunch of people?
That evening, Anne lay sprawled across their living room couch, trying to read Act Three, Scene One of Macbeth for the third time, but it was no use. She gave up on analyzing Shakespeare and went to Spotify. She had another recital this weekend, and if Ms. Lawrence was right and her issue was that she wasn’t passionate enough about her song, she would have to find something else.
Anne tried everything. She listened to the entirety of the “Classical Bangers” playlist which featured a piano and violin emoji with an album cover of Beethoven wearing pixelated sunglasses, and while she enjoyed the songs, she didn’t find anything that moved her. It was all perfectly okay. She tried “classical music that goes hard,” “Instrumental Piano Mix,” and even an edgy, lowercase playlist titled “listening to piano music pretending i’m neither here nor there,” but nothing inspired her.
It was nearly 11:00 pm; Anne had spent the entire evening listening to Spotify playlists with no luck. She plucked out her earbuds as Grandma eased her way down the stairs. It was far past her bedtime, though it wasn’t uncommon for her to wake up and meander. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years back, and she was never fully present anymore. Anne wasn’t sure what she was looking for when she wandered; if she was searching for something or someone, or maybe she just wanted to explore. Mom usually found her on her nightly strolls and escorted her back to bed.
Anne texted her mom. She was probably downstairs, going through her English students’ papers.
Grandma’s up
The three bubbles of anticipation flickered on the screen, and then Mom’s text appeared.
Almost done with work, I’ll get her in a bit.
Grandma had settled in a rattan armchair, her eyes glassy. Anne liked her grandma, but it was hard to talk to her. How were you supposed to talk to someone when you had no idea what they would and wouldn’t understand? She didn’t want to talk down to her like she was a child, but she also worried she would overwhelm her if she spoke normally.
So, they sat together without speaking, Anne’s phone softly playing classical music from her lap. Suddenly, Grandma perked up, sitting up in her chair. She looked at Anne, her freckled face drawn in a frown, then blinked at her phone.
“Did you know I played piano?” she asked. Anne blinked at her. Mom had never mentioned that Grandma was a musician. Anne had spent long hours at the keyboard, learning new compositions, and practicing proper hand technique, and Grandma never said anything. She usually sat quietly in the living room, her eyes downcast and her mind somewhere lost in clouds.
“No, I didn’t,” Anne said.
“Hm,” Grandma said, looking contemplative. The thoughtful expression on her face was unfamiliar to Anne. She couldn’t remember a time when her grandma looked more focused.
“I can play that song,” she said. “The one from your phone.”
“Oh,” Anne said, stumbling for words. She couldn’t remember the last time that they had a normal conversation, especially one that her grandma had initiated. “Would you like to play it?”
Grandma pursed her lips, and for a moment Anne worried that her thoughts had been obscured by the fog of her mind once again, but she nodded. She stood, shuffled over to the piano, and groaned as she sat on the stool. Her wrinkled hands hovered over the keys, trailing their surfaces but not pressing them.
Anne was expecting it to be nonsensical, a stream of random notes and chords in no particular order, but she was completely wrong. Grandma was right, she did recognize the song from Anne’s phone: Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie 1. The song was soft, and leisurely, with the fragility of porcelain and the preciousness of a baby’s sleeping breaths. Her hands moved across the keyboard slowly, like exploring a place that she used to call home.
Anne was familiar with Gymnopédie; it was a popular song for its intentional simplicity but striking melody, but the way Grandma played it reminded her of something else. The music tickled the back of her subconscious, unearthing a collection of memories so old that Anne had to blow off the dust that coated their surfaces. Suddenly, she was a toddler, waist-deep in a bath overflowing with bubbles and toys. She squeezed a rubber duck, which let out a mechanical quack in response, and laughed as if that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, which, at two years old, was possible. Mom was there, though there was less gray in her hair. Grandma was there too, but she was actually there. Her brain was free from disease, her eyes intelligent and rimmed with wrinkles from her laughter, and she looked at Anne with a love so deep it had no end.
Grandma finished playing, then looked to her hands, as if surprised by what they had accomplished. She had played the song perfectly as if the melody had lived in her even when so many memories were lost. She looked like she was ten years younger than she was four minutes ago. Her posture was upright, her shoulders back, and her breaths were unlabored.
“Grandma, could you teach me that song?” asked. Grandma turned to her, blinking. For a moment, Anne feared that she had spoken too late, that this window of clarity had already passed, but to her relief, Grandma smiled.
“Of course, dear.”
♮
For the next week after school, Anne attended lessons on technique and style with Ms. Lawrence, and when she returned home, she asked Grandma if she wanted to play piano together. Some days were better than others. Sometimes, when Anne assumed her spot at the piano and asked Grandma if she wanted to join her, she would blink at her, as if Anne had asked a question in a foreign language. Anne found that it helped if she played Gymnopédie from her phone or played the first few notes on the keyboard. The sound of the music unclouded Grandma’s eyes, and a smile would break across her face. She would sit beside Anne, eager to teach the lesson.
One evening, as Grandma showed her the best way to transition from one chord to the next about halfway through the song, Anne asked,
“When did you learn this, Grandma?”
Anne hoped that she didn’t push her memory too hard and trigger some kind of relapse, but Grandma didn’t seem to mind.
“Probably when I was your age,” she said. “It’s quite silly. I was interested in this boy… Pete? Patrick? I’m not sure anymore. I thought that, if I played well enough, he might ask me out to the dance.”
“Did he?”
Grandma laughed, abandoning the chord shape and playing a quick major scale before settling back on the chord.
“He did not,” she said. “I went on stage and froze. I think I ran off and cried in the ladies’ room.”
Anne tried to imagine Grandma as a middle schooler, but all she could think of was Grandma wearing a very old-fashioned uniform and standing in front of an auditorium of kids. It was hard picturing Grandma young, or her panicking on stage and running off just like Anne did. She knew that feeling. She hoped to never experience it again.
“He didn’t invite you out of pity?” Anne asked, giggling.
“Not even out of pity,” Grandma confirmed. “Come on, try from this stanza.”
Before she knew it, Anne was once again sitting in the darkness, awaiting her turn to approach the glistening, charcoal piano. Her nerves cackled like lightning, her hands quivering like autumn leaves in the wind, but it was different this time. She was nervous, but she was also filled with determination. Because this time, she had a mission. She would play Gymnopédie, both to prove that she could play under pressure and for Grandma, who was so interconnected with music that it freed her from her foggy mind, if only for a short while.
The boy before her bowed before the crowd, who applauded in approval at his mediocre rendition of a Beethoven piece. The lady who approached the microphone wasn’t nearly as fancy as Tuxedo Man from last week. She wore faded blue jeans, an off-white blouse that was probably solid white at some point in its life, and golden hoop earrings that reflected the spotlight.
“Anne Garrier,” the woman said, her voice cackling.
When Anne stood, her legs felt solid beneath her, like Greek columns that have lasted centuries of weathering. She walked towards the piano, but this time, she didn’t feel like a doomed girl walking to the gallows. This time, when the spotlight bathed her in gold, the budding anticipation in her core caught fire. She was frightened and lightheaded, but it was exhilarating. It filled her, not with dread, but with adrenaline. She felt like she was on a rollercoaster, and it was tick, tick, ticking up towards that first drop.
Was this adrenaline? Did professional musicians feel this way before every performance? If so, she understood the appeal. She wanted to feel this way forever.
She sat down at the bench and splayed the sheet music before her. The notes on the page were handwritten, not printed with ink, and when she looked at them, they stayed solid, eager to be transformed from mute markings into stunning sounds.
Anne took a breath, and she played.
The music sprang from her fingertips like a river flowing over pebbles in a stream. She started slowly, her fingers warming to the feel of the piano, the mellow sound resonating from her hands down her arms and into her spine. As she became more comfortable with the instrument, she felt her body swaying on its own accord, wrapped up in the sound like a caterpillar encasing itself in a cocoon. The audience faded into an irrelevant blur, and it was just her, the piano, and the sound. Anne knew where the music wanted to go. She was its vessel, its conduit, and she would guide it as it pleased. Sometimes, she let her eyes flutter closed, living and breathing the moment as she let the melody wash over her in tidal waves. She almost didn’t want to open her eyes, even if it was to anchor herself back to reality and not lose her place in the song. She wanted to live in this space beyond time and reason, where it was just her and this music and nothing in between.
When she finished, she was almost sad. She wanted to keep going, to explore the melody, to see where else it could take her. In a bit of a daze, like she was coming down from a music-induced high, she stood, bowing to the crowd. She heard them clap, but she didn’t bask in their praise. She was still thinking about that song. It had swallowed her whole and shut her off from the whole world. She wanted to go back to it.
Trying not to trip over her dress shoes that Mom had once again insisted upon, she made her way back to her seat. She wanted to dash out of the auditorium and meet her parents, grandma, and Ms. Lawrence outside, but she would have to wait until all of the performers finished their pieces. Ms. Lawrence would be especially offended if Anne broke concert etiquette. So, she sat still, the only sign of her impatience was her tapping her hand on her music folder. When the lady with the off-white shirt and gold hoops finally declared the end of the recital, Anne dashed out of her seat to find her family.
She found them waiting outside, each of them smiling so widely that her heart fluttered. She rushed to Mom, who wrapped her in a hug so tight that Anne felt her ribs creak a little under the pressure. When she pulled away, Dad ruffled her hair, the way he used to when she was little.
“You did great, kid,” he said. Anne was too full of emotions to say anything, so she just smiled. She turned to a beaming Ms. Lawrence, who retreated a step.
“I’m not allowed to hug you, Anne-Marie, but you did wonderfully!” she said. Anne laughed. Her heart was so full it felt like it was going to burst.
Grandma was watching her, and her eyes seemed less glazed. She looked more like the woman from Anne’s memory, the one whose laugh sounded like the leaves fluttering in a warm breeze. The one who had written an entire lullaby in honor of Anne’s favorite doll.
Anne hugged her, and Grandma chuckled.
“I’m so proud of you, Anne-Marie,” Grandma said softly. The back of Anne’s throat burned and she felt her eyes get watery. This time, she had earned this admiration, and she would cradle it deep in her heart.
Zenia deHaven (they/them) is a middle school teacher and an MFA candidate at Emerson College’s Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing program. Their short stories and critical essays are published in Fruitslice, NoVa Prism, As Alive Journal, and Page Turner Magazine. When they’re not writing or managing teen angst, they enjoy video games, group exercise classes, and giving their dogs scritches.