Feeling Piano

I’ve been feeling piano of late, dear friends. Light, natural light, sizzles across my face enlightening me. The miraculous entity we call light inspires me to write great works of Bart and in the middle of it, the crux, as it were, a tinkling of Hollywood piano spatters from the beyond, everything spurts from God. The piano melody speaks to the soul, harkens back to lullaby time with mother.

Tears stream down my spotless, ageless, face – I was meant for this.

My child walks into the room, my sublime daughter who loves me and calls me daddy. She is BEAUTIFUL. I turn towards the window and the light flecks off of my profile. I must appear very intellectual, full of beans, delicate.

I’ve not lost hope, oh no, don’t you worry about that. There’s light at the end of my tunnel even if the candle-holder is a mystical man of ninety-four who despises me for all the right reasons, all the wrong clichés. He plays piano pretty well like that guy from The Pianist.

My wife walks in followed by my father, her father, his father. They sit down at my magnificent faux-marble table. My uncle serves the food, every plate is a work of art. He’s cooked it himself, an expert, trained under Michel Roux. Dinner’s ready announces my lovely wife who gives me her special smile, reserved for me only. The smile tells me that our love is everlasting and the meal is delicious. I smile back in the same way. We will grow old together and die old together, yes we will.

A fox marches to the window. It stares at me, unafraid, and, in the serene greenness of my garden, screams. Arthouse. This is when I take out my razor-blade and slit open the pigs in the room, turn the key and splice open tendons. This is when I bellow out my heart of darkness and exhaust the sun, batter back light, take grey from the sky and envelop the dogville of our chalked-up-pruned-bonsai existence – finally, some cool indie tune whispers in, swirls on, that’s it, the mystery of life is the mystery I express.

My wife says hurry up, the food’s getting cold. I realise there are too many men sitting at the table. The aggression is hysterical. Want some help? You look tired. I’m fine. I can do it. Look after dad. I wheel myself over to the table. Luckily, instead of talking, strings blank out conversation. Wonder what I’ll do next? Once I recover my ability to give a shit. The wine glass is full but not for long as everyone dips their beaks, hammer back heads like wolves after slaughter.

A noise, a whirr, a buzz, a slither, my father-in-law is a despicable man but we understand each other tonight. What’s that in the corridor? My father-in-law is overweight and he’s lost his hair. His permanent expression is fed-up, head in the gas oven. He owns a shotgun, once threatened to pull out my toenails if I didn’t lend him a few quid. I said here have it, loser. When I was young I wanted to earn big but I married big instead.

In Easy Town everyone plays the same song. No one suspects me. I am like them. Except I’m not. No more music, wait patiently for the sex scene, sweat, muscle, the same boring positions every time, backside pointed towards the ceiling, moonshine. I am a big drinker. A cowboy. A killer. And a writer for I write their letters, their shopping lists and their poems. I’ll write anything for a few bob. I am shameless.

Grin.

Bogdan Tiganov