Bataclan

He lies on the bed, toying with the remote. Every channel, every discussion, every image he has seen a thousand times. “Friday night's attacks”, “rising death toll, the number now stands at 127 dead, with more than 300 injured”, “Bataclan” “Carillon”, “scenes of carnage” “we managed to escape”, the sheer number of journalist accents, montages of international leaders condemning the actions, and the sounds of sirens in all the clips. It makes him jump every time a siren passes under the window. It is astounding how one half hour on evening could shake the world this much.

He doesn't want to go outside. It is a ghost town, anyway, no one wants to go outside. The shops are closed, the metro is closed. No one looks at each other - he can see them through his window.

Live feed keeps adding to the death toll, keeps linking to witnesses' stories. Photos of carnage, frenzied videos. People going down, tripping those trying to flee the scene. (Little warnings about graphic content).

The smell of the coffee he made three hours ago is going to make him sick. These walls. But he can't go to the door. He won't close the curtain, (or the window). It looks too obvious, too scared. (“We're staying. We can't cower because that's what they want,” says a man on the television).

Were they still out there? Were they coming for him? Another #porteouverte notification – this one only half a block away. Good heavens, if he only had the strength to get there. Perhaps being amongst people would help. The safest time to travel, actually (so someone said on the tv). Everyone on high alert.

A loud noise.

He jumps. In fact, he is so frightened, he may have soiled himself. It was only a knock at the door, a server who had come to clean the room. Breathlessly, he bids them leave, too hurriedly, too angrily – ashamed of his fear.

They were coming. They'd have to be. Them and every one else. Every single one of the dead, rising from their hastily-donated death sheets, standing in their own blood on the sidewalks. Look around you, they are everywhere! No dignity in death only quantity of corpses. But it's not them. It is the people weeping at the sites of flowers and candles. Not the ones who will, days from now, be taking up arms and waving burning banners. It is those weeping. They accuse him.

What is this you have done?

Three on a Bench

I can tune shopper-buzz out pretty easily when I have to. So I just took the first bench I saw. There was a lady facing the doors taking up a half between herself and her handbag, and a scruffy-looking man on my left who asked me to move up just as I was sitting down. I obliged. We sat a minute. I got out my notes and pen, facing the windows and the other two, one on my right and one on my left, facing the doors. For a moment no one spoke. In the buzz, we formed an interesting tableau of strangers who had no interest in crossing the walls which divided us, and who were closer to each other than we might ever otherwise choose to be, and were politely ignoring the fact. I focused on the work, grateful to be thus excused from smalltalk, but interested nonetheless in the bizarre indifference of us all. Presently, the man to my left spoke.

– Please ma'am do you have some money. I'm want to buy some bread. I live onna streets. I'm want to buy some bread. Please ma'am, some bread.

– No, I don't have any money on me, my daughter has money. In the same tone I always think, but out of self-effacing feigning apology I never speak to beggars out loud, the woman's tone was brusque and at the same time plaintive. It was the sort of tone that one hears on radio stations when the host realises too late that they've allowed a ranter air time.

Disturbed from my work, and pre-empting the inevitable truculence, I turned and said in my apologetic tone, I'm sorry, I don't have cash either. Not strictly true – I had one coin of small change, which I wouldn't part with (because what was worse than giving was frequently the disgust with which such gifts were received), and a note which was intended for my brother-in-law's birthday tomorrow. So, technically speaking, not mine. I returned to my notes. In my head at least, this old lady was feisty and snappy enough to deal with him.

– Please'm. Do you have money. I live onna streets I'm just want to buy some bread.

– If you wait, I will give you something when my daughter comes, said the old lady to my right, in a scolding tone. A surprise, I hadn't expected her to give in, but perhaps, seeing I did nothing to chase him away, she was exasperated and would prefer to shut him up than stick to those the rules which dictate the poisonous They'll Probably Use It To Buy Drugs, and the more socially-aware You're Not Helping Them Get Off the Streets If You Give Them Your Money.

– Please ma'am I'm just want to buy some bread I'm sleeping on the streets, ma'am, he whined.

– I know that. You don't need to tell me again. (I suppressed a giggle).

And so, her brusque tone held off conversation. I flipped between pages. I wrote things down. I was pleased with my progress, vaguely interested to see the end of this piece unfold, and to my knowledge, neither moved. My attention wandered occasionally. Could I buy something substantial at the little pharmacy over there, not a chocolate, but maybe something for this man. Stingy perhaps, but I would never give money. If he wants money for food, I'd get him food. That's the way it is. But after a polite but Don't Forget Me I'm Here sigh, he would try to catch my eye. So I made the gaze vague, pretended to finish the thought that I had wandered after, and returned to my notes.

Time passed. My page filled.

He got up.

– Ma'am I'm coming now. He was getting up.

– Don't be too long, she admonished. I'm leaving now.

I watched him go. Bored of waiting. Suspicious of her promise (I was too). Perhaps to check there weren't any other most likely options for his time while he waited. I wondered what the turnover was per hour. If she pulled a Me, she'd give him a coin whilst he might have gotten at least three times as much if he hadn't chosen to wait. The retired, the student and the beggar on a bench. He returned. What a group we made. We could be a bar joke. At the moment though, I wondered whether we weren't a sad subject for at artist's exhibition.

Time continued.

– The payson you are waiting for ma'am she's not coming.

I heard complaint. But my annoyance was stifled by an urge to laugh.

– She's just in the chemist, the lady said, a trifle impatient. What's your hurry?

This time I couldn't stop the smile. Facing the wrong direction, head bent over books, it didn't matter. I thought of this blogpost I would write when I got home. I wondered whether I had a spare sheet of paper to make notes. There was comedy gold here.

He paused – wisely, I thought.

– The security ma'am. (One had just walked past). They don' wan' tme here. And he lapsed into silence again.

At last she said, Oh there she comes. I pulled myself from my concentration. I'd found a sheet of paper. I heard someone approaching. The old woman said, I was about to send out the boy scouts. (I had thought at first she was saying voice note, which simultaneously would have made her a techno-savvy grandma and a fuddy-duddy old bird in my mind for knowing how ostentatiously to operate her mobile phone.

– I've never met with such a useless bunch of ruddy... (an incoherent sighing mumble). Here. I paid with a hundred, and there's forty-four.

The old lady again, There you are. It was worth the wait. (She sounded as if she was smiling, genuinely happy to fulfil this duty).

He, insignificant once again, Thank you ma'am.

I had my paper. They were getting up.

– What was that?

– He was asking me for money. He's very hungry, she said.

Funny, I didn't recall that he'd ever pushed that detail.

– And you have that face.

– I know. “Try Me”.

I turned. I wanted to see that face. But I only knew her as the pulpy body next to me, head visible under a coiffed measure of scarce hair, though dyed very red.

I feel I could be very preachy about moral values, human dignity or something more important, but it's more likely to be a sermon against myself and the callousness of writers to be content to observe these situations and amuse themselves with thoughts of writing them up.

Story Stew: "Exodus: Gods and Kings"

He looked out over them, a new people, enlivened by a relief so noticeable, it started to look like hope. Their enemies misinterpreted it as a plague of madness brought upon them by the sun-god, and where there was refreshed endurance and docility, they read insolence.

He looked over to his brother. My brother, he thought. I have one of those. That was his own chin he could see in him, the spark of his own eyes, blood of his blood.

“Speak what is on you heart brother,” Aaron said. “Tell me what troubles it?”

“Nothing ttroubles it,” he said, glancing to the men jostling near him. “The people the people the people the people look to me now. And a And a aI am not troubled.” He motioned for his brother to lead on. He seldom spoke but when he had to. Often his speech more impeded action and slowed his interlocutors though they patiently awaited the flooding of his words for the rest of the sentence to break free from his stammer. He was scared of being thought a fool, of being pitied, treated as one the gods had cursed, and it was worse when he was scared. Right now, it was terror.

Aaron reached over and grasped his arm. “Brother,” he said. When whole courts of Egyptians looked over him as if he were a foreigner, slow of tongue and impoverished in common parlance, Aaron knew him. Aaron saw a man of character betrayed and disguised by his tongue. Aaron saw a leader. “Brother, do you now doubt? You, whose witness rekindled our faith by its mere report, we who have not seen the wonders which you know. Can you now begin to doubt?”

“Ido not doubt,” he said, squaring his shoulders,“do not doubt that we weare called. We are called. Momostly Ido not doubt the nnnobility of our cause.”

“A noble death even, is more than any of us dared wish for, brother. We lived and toiled and died in the mud.”

They surveyed the working men. Weakened, and limp as string, it seemed there was nothing more than hope holding them together. Following his gaze, Aaron's face coloured with grief, every personal anguish and each person's pain was his own as if it were his own flesh. That grief, that overwhelming agony was now washed with a stronger determination. This hope, the hope of redemption, salvation. This hope that he had brought, this hope of which he was the emissary. The poor herald who could not speak.

He had never known these people, not as they would want. He viewed them with a foreman's eye, and the eye of a foreigner.

When he spoke, it was gruff, gargled as with great emotion, but the words, curiously came easily. “These men are weak. They are beaten down. They cannot wield swords. They have no strength to do anything.”

Aaron's face changed, a little of that confidence had washed away.

Moses took a breath, readying himself to meet whatever came. “We are truly in God's hands now.”

And he dared not doubt. His God repaid the genocide with genocide, his God banished their sun-god with darkness, though it came not near the camp of the Israelites. The sacred all-sustaining river turned to blood, and the crops, the livestock and the houses of the enemies were ravaged by plague upon plague, though it did not come near God's people. And god by god, the enemies were abandoned. Their own king, their own incarnate deity among men, was failing them, and every time he negotiated for the end, refusal to honour the agreement brought ruin and disaster upon their houses. Their land was brought to its knees, without one god in their temple to turn to but the One outside of it.

And having freed his people, this One remained with them always, teaching them, instructing them, enduring with them when human leaders failed them. He carved his ways on stone for them to learn, and on their hearts (some time after Moses broke both stone tablets at once) for them to love, so that no one would ever be estranged from him or have to guess at his goodness.

__

OR

You could just make a movie where God is a vindictive child, Moses and his merry men have time (and equipment) to take weeks off their oppressive slavery schedule to have Egyptian-slaying training camps, and Moses himself, the circumcised adopted boy is raised in a house of true-blue racists who never notice his is one of the hated Other. Oh, and stone rules endure through the ages, apparently even beyond the (more important) New Commandment given by God (actually) humanly incarnate. Yeah.

There are no Words.

The situation in Syria is no topic for Christmas eve. It's too easy to shelve, in their range and vastness, with the uncomfortable issues that might plague us any other day of the year. Christmas, for all it's supposed to be about sharing, giving and love, is also incredibly selfish. It's about what I want – the gifts, the traditions, the family time (lucky bonus if the rest of the family agrees to these principles) – and what I do not want is cold images of mass beheadings, reports of troops kicking down doors and murdering screaming families, or the ancient fear of a dark and powerful evil raising its ugly head again, sinking bloody teeth into the pages of history to ruin my feelings of warmth, and joy's security. Despite a pricking conscience, I must confess, I found the reminder to be unwelcome – which is selfish when you consider those for whom forgetting is not an option.

Yesterday I was discussing this topic with a friend. The familiar sense came over me as we talked, and I found I had less and less to say, as my mind opened wider and wider to the horror of the images I had seen and deliberately forgotten, and to the terror of what he was describing. I felt overwhelmed, overcome with the sense of helplessness. So far away from anything I know, it may as well be an invading black mist in a fairytale, for I've no idea how I would find it, or how I might combat so great and so advanced an evil. My courage, my valour, if I should prove to possess any, or at the very least my burning zeal – or perhaps it is desperation – is not a weapon I might wield against any foe. For this reason, it is easier to soothe the burn of its urgency, and to forget – society's greatest fault: diffused responsibility equates to universal exemption from the obligation to act. Even acknowledging that I find to be a most depressing reality.

I might have answered it in a number of ways. For one, it brought home to me how divine is the gift of prayer. What a blessed gift, to have the ability to reach out using a number guaranteed to answer. As someone to whom such devastation often is heard (before it is forgotten) as a call to arms and has been near to signing up several times, it is the greatest salve to my mind to know that something I do, can and will make a difference. Not to say that an almighty god relies on the pleas of lesser beings, but in the smallest way, my little voice and the groanings of my heart which words cannot express (Romans 8:26), are understood and are felt by one who knows all, hears all, and controls all. His might is sufficient for them. And that is a great comfort.

As we discussed what one might do in the face of this, for having been fearfully awed by the regimes of Hitler and Stalin together in high school, neither of us wanted to look back and say “We didn't know” or “We did nothing”. On the other hand, what might my puny contribution be worth to an NGO? What might my zeal in my limited sphere accomplish for those who needed it?

In younger days I would have expressed my fervour, and diverted the darkness of the topic by suggesting that I ought to be president. Depending on the mood, this would successfully redirect the conversation, or perhaps allow me a soap-box to air my social conscience and assuage the assault of my conscience, believing I had 'done my bit'. But the suggestion seemed hollow. I was assured through hard knocks a a few more years' experience that I was no ruler, and would never be able to steer a country clear of the calamity I wish all people to be rid of.

“We need a world president” was what came to mind. What might such a man do?

And at last, I remembered. Given the time of year, it took me long enough.

We need a world power, one with might and power to break the rod of the oppressors and rob them of their sinister strength; one which might bestow peace and comfort to those who had been victims, to those lost in desperation and darkness, to those living in the literal land of the shadow of death.

An infinite moment, reminding, humbling.

The people walking in darkness

have seen a great light,

on those living in the land of the shadow of death

a light has dawned...

Every warrior's boot used in battle

and every garment rolled in blood

will be destined for burning

will be fuel for the fire.

It was imagery lifted straight from the prophesy of Isaiah, which has been my Christmas reading.

And you've already guessed what follows:

For to us a child is born

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders

And [even so] he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

There are no words.

Death for Christmas

So it's Christmas.

And in that sentence seems the entire motivation for writing this: happy twinkles in your heart, inundation of goodwill (especially from the local shops, whose saving offers – they seem to think – border on Richard Branson-sized generosity), and of course, the familiar story re-invigorating my imagination. I always like to look at it in a new way each year – the temptation to confine it in mental Christmas-card snapshots and childlike warm-and-fuzzies is exactly what shelves it among the likes of Santa, the Grinch, and that jar of fruit mince in your fridge for mincepies – they only ever come out on one occasion.

Just because that's what we do every year.

I'm not about to jump on the anti-consumerism bandwagon (though for Christmas, Easter chocolate and Valentines' roses I could rant for hours). But consider: why else but for silly sentiment do we drag boxes of dusty and tired décor from the garage and install it in the house for a set period of time? My little soapbox sermon today is not for anti-consumerism, but for anti-sentimentalism... and my thesis this year was on narrative empathy – go figure.

Again a disclaimer: I do not pretend to be a cynic on this issue. I, probably more than most, appreciate and generate the happy twinkles, and write about them and dream about them, and for ages can stare contentedly at the myriad of pretty shadows made by the lights on the Christmas tree. But I'm reminded of the phrase (probably paraphrased or misquoted, but anyway) that which brings a man to faith sustains him.

Why do you sing the carols? Why, once a year, if never at any other point, is the idea of a present God, Emmanuel, less offensive to you? Why, even if you see through the gift-exchange, because Christmas is actually about Christ, is the preparation of the traditional feast, the exact calculation and budgeting for perfect gifts, so extraordinarily important? If you come to God at this time because you like to keep it up, or you like the warm fuzzies, let me be another in a long line of people to try and pop that bubble. What is the distant mood of the Christmas spirit going to do for you during an existential crisis at midyear?

But I digress.

This year, I have been contemplating myrrh. (And if we're going to discuss wise men being brought to God by a star – that involves a separate post). I remember, in an otherwise forgettable representation of the story, a man presenting a gift to the boy Jesus, after the gold-for-a-king and expensive frankinsense were presented, saying “Myrrh is for dying and day of death.” It was perhaps a bit harsh for a children's film, but gives new context to “And Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

And perhaps, in keeping with my theory on injecting new emotions into tired narratives, I will venture a heretical statement: that Christmastime is not so much a time to contemplate warm blessings, but a tragedy. It's not difficult to be awed by the intricate operating bodies of newborns, the springing of new life in a tiny and complete human form, and yet here was one who had been branded at birth, like a Jewish child born in a concentration camp, marked for death. I don't know about you, but this year I find that desperately sad.

I have two friends whose dearest (and until now impossible dream) of having a child has just come true, and seeing this tiny person, so fragile and dependent, scares me terribly because I know (and can feel from their new-parent over-protective and by-the-book regime) how much the loss of her might affect them. Now consider Mary.

Now consider God.

What "More Trust" Looks Like:

Don't ask God for more faith if you expect he's going to let you stay in the boat

There are some Bible stories that completely flummox you, and then there are some that have a seemingly open-and-shut case to be made which can be picked out and applied in your life like reposting an indispensably encouraging picture on your preferred social media site.

Then there are others which come like an ice pick to the temples, and have you sheepishly cowering before a throbbing conscience.

Peter is usually the reason for this. I usually like watching all the disciples hopelessly toddle after Jesus in what we condescendingly look on as pure ignorance, but Peter always is the wild card. One foot permanently in his mouth (except of course in moments where he contrives to put the other in as well), and sometimes the only one who seems to get it. Like in Matthew 14:22-32. The disciples in their intrepid little boat, and here comes a bit of foul weather, but they're not despairing of life just yet. It's been a pretty emotionally draining day: the prophet cousin of their trusted leader had been murdered for the sake of an impetuous ruler at his birthday, and when they tried to withdraw, crowds followed so that Jesus had to perform a miracle to feed five thousand of them. He's been having some quiet time, but they're now far away because of the wind against their boat. No cellphones, so they're just going to re-convene elsewhere.

Now, just before dawn, at the darkest point in the night – picture a very long night, emotionally-exhausted men on a boat that's been buffeted too much to let them sleep – and suddenly there's a figure on the water coming toward them! Death on their minds and jumpy sleeplessness, it's even easier to conceive why they thought it was a ghost. But it's the Lord. Peter, first to jump to a conclusion, hits on the right one this time, and in an opportunity to enact his faith (and to walk on water!) climbs out of his boat – remember, the sea was a scary and unpredictable thing in their books, and this little boat is not becalmed; it had been bumped about all night – and Peter walked on water toward Jesus.

I love this mental image. What must those steps have felt like under his feet? Here is the storm, here comes Jesus – why not jump out of your little safety zone to meet him? Why not walk on the water because if your Lord is there, what shall come against you? For Peter though, it was the wind – and of course, he, as I would, suddenly grasps how very little there is between him, and this sea, and now there is no boat to rest his feet on. And what's this? Is he imagining it? No, he isn't he's really sinking!

It's almost too easy to pick out the application. The hard part is recognising how very everyday it is. What is it that distracts you? What safety zones of careers, friendship circles, home comforts, feelings of contentment or fulfilment do I rely on to keep feeling like I'm happy, or at least, I'm coping? And that's not the worst of it:

Peter knew John had been murdered by Herod because his steadfastness would not be compromised. And Peter, as I do, wanted to demonstrate that fervour. Fierce and desperate to prove his faith, and to be “on fire for God,” as our church slang would say. He enacts what has been my prayer of late, “help me trust more” – and what better way to prove it than on a rollicking sea, when all his comforts and trust typically lay in the rigging and a lifetime's experience and skill on a fishing boat? He stepped out, as I long to have a chance to prove, in that same inescapable way, that I do trust, that I am convinced – so everyone, including me, will never doubt the depth of my commitment.

But here's the catch – it's so obvious, it's shaming how I miss it every time – if you're going to ask to walk on water, don't expect you can do it from the boat. Trusting in its very nature, is an act of trust. You can't be put on medication for a disease you haven't got – how will you ever trust that the medication works when you need it to?

To learn to trust means to be in a position where doubting is easier, doubting is the most natural, and wishing for those comfort zones is almost all I can do: wishing for the nest of love and protection, shutting out the big bad world, so I can have the security of self-confidence that I can control things in my own ability. That's where life is easiest. But that's not where God calls us. To Peter, as to us, he says “Come.” Not stay.

Come out of that comfort zone, where security threatens to make you believe the lie that you are always going to be just fine where you are. Come away from that uncomfortable feeling of having done all you could, and things aren't going as you planned. Come back from the prettier distractions of your own ability, that seductive belief of your own agency, that you are the only builder of your sandcastle. Come and walk on water toward Christ.

A sense of blatant dishonesty won't let me end on that poetic image because Peter didn't. Peter sank. Peter sank as I have, and will do again many times, I'm sure. It's going to be very, very difficult. And for most of us, it won't feel like sinking instead of walking the water, floundering in the middle of a very heroic deed, no. It will feel like daily, quiet emptiness. A subtle failure and dissatisfaction depressing us without our even realising. And our walk with God will feel like a slow, laboured stumble.

But then is when I most need to return to God. Crying silently in the bathroom, with literally no other handle left to turn, no more mental energy to map out yet another coping strategy, and finally no more confidence to try or to cope at all, and with the water rising up about the neck, I shout out to God, like Peter did, “Lord, save me!” because at that point, I'm under no illusions that I have any ability to save myself anymore. And here's the glorious bit:

“And Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.”

He is going to see us flounder, and we like Peter are going to believe it's the end of all things, but he won't leave us there. And sometimes it may be like walking on water with our Lord back to the boat, where all the storm dies down, and with dawn in the air, everyone must acknowledge the awesome presence of God amongst them. And others it will be like drying your eyes, and telling yourself constantly until you believe it, that Jesus will not let you drown. So that next time there's a storm, you have your umbrella in one arm, and Jesus's hand in the other, and you are ready to be washed downstream without panicking this time.

It'll be some time before I get that right. But God is walking toward me as I walk toward him, and in all events, and I need to keep reminding myself of that, he's only, literally, an arm's length away.  

Latecomers to the Concert

You talk of 'losing yourself in music'. It is the comfy clothes of the clichés of approbation to be used today - like 'love'. To 'love' a band could mean a degree of enjoyment or devotion that spans mild appreciation for the choice of the iTunes shuffle, or rampant, obsessive fandom.

This last week, I was late for the concert of a brilliant pianist, and declining to make an obvious entry between the flow of pieces (between which there was no window of applause), I felt it necessary to rather linger in the anteroom outside than intrude foolishly amongst the better-mannered, and more punctual audience. I sank onto a step, and listened.

There is nothing so thrilling, I have often said, as the green-room sound of an orchestra warming up in the pit. The Konserv at Stellenbosch is a myriad of doors and walls whose generous confines occasionally allow vaporous sounds, thrilling airs, to flutter past the passers-by. What now emptied from the hall was an overflow of notes, tumbling and raining down from Chopin and Rachmaninov preludes. Streams and cascades fell between torrential thunderstrokes with earth-moving finality, and I was left breathless.

Another person appeared. We smiled briefly at each other, in reciprocal sympathy for our tardiness, and mutual pleasure of the performance. He hovered at the crack of the door. I watched in fascination as, eyes closed, he his fingers began to move, yearning after the sounds pouring from the keys, his head tossing gently in thorough acquaintance of the piece.

Another man entered; a small man, compact, with wizened grey scruff covering his face and pate, and with a ready smile, though missing a tooth or two, and gesticulating, with the over-exaggeration of a complete foreigner, he mimed a request to join me on the little step. I smiled and budged over, a gesture more to indicate my willingness than of necessity. In unbroken silence – but for the thunderous passion booming gently through the walls – the three of us lingered to wait out the storm. Though the first soon left, the second remained tucked on the step, blue cap in hand, staring at the carpet, tossing his head, dolphinlike, to the waves.

I could feel my head beginning to empty. It had been alarming, the first time this happened, to feel the return of conscious thought seeping back cautiously after the first brilliant performance I witnessed. I felt like I had somehow broken the bonds of gravity and had floated in ephemeral space, buoyed up by the flurry and flourish of the tumultuous sound of that stately instrument. But now I embraced it. The very furtherest extent of my thought, when it did come, was that next door, these notes were being brought to life; someone's fingers were creating and killing them right next door. And as they dripped and danced about the room, I was swept up in the tide, plummeting from their short lives, jostled out by over-eager successors.

With gradual interest I began to notice my little foreigner on the opposite end of my step. Sitting with knees pulled up close, half-leaning against the wall, one hand lay forgotten, neatly on his lap, and the other brought to his eyes. It was too intense for sleeping; I watched his chest heave with mighty effort - I half expected to presently find him weeping - moved beyond expression by what he heard. I could not but look on with envy and with awe, admiring him from one step away. Could that unearthly music be made visual, if you could paint it, it was, all its electrical energy, its heavy falls, all its impossible pouring rivers, somehow entirely captured by this little man, huddled against a carpeted wall, his eyes closed in thorough absorption.

And then I was lost. We stayed for the rest of the concert, slipping in at the eventual applause for an encore, and witnessed the insect fingers that scuttled at inhuman speeds, bringing forth more sounds than could be heard, and joined the applause at the end. But if I forget the face of the pianist, I will never forget the face of his music.

I shook hands with him afterwards, and he held mine. Even if I could speak his language, I don't know what I would have said to convey my wonder of his.