The Gunshot Symphony


When no one observed him, Beethoven would press his ear to the pianoforte to hear the notes he was creating. He would close his eyes and as he played he held his fingers curved, so curved that they were completely hidden by the hand. This was Beethoven’s way of saying I choose to be faithful to the music. Secretively cupping sound he felt the power of it.

There is an art to listening to music, to appreciating its fullness. There are people who are so sensitive to it that every instrument played and every beat that is counted is recognised. For such people the symbol of the treble clef is a delicious shape. Rounded and gifted like a song, it is soft like sweet chocolate. If it went by any other name it would be called ‘sensual’.

Aaron takes his mother’s car keys from the kitchen bench and walks to the garage. When he opens the door its cool darkness circles him. He climbs the driver’s seat and turns the key halfway to play the stereo. Click. The digital clock lights up and as the seconds calculate Aaron moves the CD into place. He watches it count itself into motion and at Track 3 he increases the volume and places his hands on the dashboard, placing them hard and flat until his arms begin to ache. He is ready for Beethoven.

When the music begins Aaron feels each instrument from his palms and the soles of his feet while the car becomes a minor earthquake.


By the time Thomas Edison was sixty-four years old he’d become so hard of hearing that out of desperation he got down on his hands and knees and bit into the wood of a piano leg in order to hear it being played.


Aaron refuses to open his eyes for his mother. Sally holds him firmly by the arms as he squirms, her thin fingers wrapping tightly around him like jewellery. The heat of her palms burn into skin. Shaking him, Sally tries to grab his attention but Aaron refuses to cooperate. Under closed lids he watches a small boat on the river. He can see himself and Uncle Joe sitting in it. They are both quiet and they have been for some time. Conversation isn’t needed when you’re fishing, that is what Uncle Joe said before they headed out in the small aluminum boat. It isn’t so much to scare the fish away but to concentrate, to observe and read the water for signs of life. When they do talk they speak with thick carpenter pencils and scraps of paper because Uncle Joe doesn’t know sign language and Aaron is still new to the art of lip-reading. Both are mute in the world they share.

Aaron likes the aluminum frame of the boat. It reminds him of the folds created in paper boats, especially the ones when he and Sally went to London for a holiday. Sally told him it was a tradition to sail paper boats on the Serpentine and she folded her own in memory of Shelley. Aaron’s was a large boat made of thick cartridge, his mother’s sailed on the edges of their hotel bill.

Aaron could still remember the wind and London’s bare trees, the ill-tempered ducks moving about them and the heaviness of the green landscape that folded him into its own neat construction. When it rained Aaron and Sally ran toward The Long Water and huddled under Georgian pillars. When the rain eased they found their shoes caked in pigeon poo and they scraped their feet along the path, making a game of it as they walked out of Marlborough Gate.

This and the smell of London after rain holds Aaron in thought before a group of birds lift themselves from their trees to shadow the sky. But before this he feels a vibration that fractures the air. It touches his entire body like nothing he’s ever known before.

What language is this? This vibration that becomes a second skin of feelings.

He interprets the scene in his own way and it becomes a symphony of moment – the drum of strong vibration; the panicked violin of birds; the soft oboe of feathers rising, wings darkening the sky. Like an eager cradle the boat rocks and Aaron’s small frame lurches forward. As he steadies himself he turns toward his uncle but Uncle Joe’s no longer beside him. The music continues inside the untidy water circling itself, as if it is unsure of how to proceed after swallowing a man.

As Aaron searches the water for clues his uncle’s face resurfaces and stares back at him at a wild angle. The bullet wound on his forehead is as black as an eclipse.

When Aaron opens his eyes he presses his ear into Sally’s stomach to hear the piano of her voice.


When Uncle Joe fell from the boat he drifted into a strong undercurrent and travelled for seven kilometres before tangling himself in reeds. After a ten day journey he was found by a man walking his dog.

When Anton, the grief counsellor asks Aaron to recall his uncle’s disappearance his mind circles the sky with the birds. His body shakes like air after gunfire. When he returns to the rocking boat his white-knuckled fingers grip its side while he watches the water. He searches the bank of the river and then consults the sky. By now the violins are silent, leaving the landscape clueless and empty.
At most sessions Aaron sits opposite the counsellor and Sally and stares down at the polka dot carpet. When they try to grab his attention he wriggles away and stands at the window to look down at the park. He notices how the trees change, how autumn’s slow progress is stripping them bare.


Somebody is playing the bongo drums in the living room but Aaron refuses to cooperate. He doesn’t venture out to see who it is, instead he twists the handle of his bedroom door and removes its short cylinder from the centre and replaces the knob. He had seen his mother do this once before when they hid from his father.

He turns the light out and opens the curtain wide to see the sky light up in short bursts. Each time it does this the tall scrub outside Aaron’s window lays its shadow on his cheek. Thunder sounds itself out into the night, sharp and clear until it cracks the sky open. The streetlights go out as rain begins to fall. Aaron is left in darkness.

Creeping into the corner of his bedroom he sits and watches the memory birds come alive inside the darkness of the room. They nest in the bookshelf and on the desk until someone tries the door. The room darkens with feathers and Uncle Joe's face lingers on the wall. In a moment, he thinks, they will be gone.

When the power returns to the house electricity surges through its wired veins and runs up Aaron’s spine to make the walls hum. Rain falls on the roof spasmodically, growing heavier each time. Large, fat droplets of rain that sound familiar. Aaron is almost sure the rain is playing Für Elise by the way it hits his bedroom window.

Beethoven had a tendency to begin his work in whispers but Aaron can feel their soft fingers reaching out to him. Softly, softly like an embrace. There is almost as much silence in Beethoven’s work as there are notes played. This is a deaf man writing passionate notes to the sounds he can no longer hear. Beethoven’s memory of such sound is untouchable, something out of reach. Aaron does not understand this because he feels the music. He feels it in his hands, in his teeth and in his muscles.

Aaron focuses on the rain, wanting to become the music it is playing. As an experiment he concentrates on this thought and holds his hand up to his face to see it wash away and become nothing but sound.


Like an alchemist altering precious metal Aaron tries once more to shift his shape into music, this time concentrating on his feet which are planted firmly on the frayed carpet in the back seat of Anton’s car. Here Aaron has a certain freedom from prying eyes and he takes full advantage of this, listening as he does to the car’s baritone engine. He takes delight in watching his feet disappear and fall back into place when Sally asks him to turn the music down.
 
He takes delight in the feel of becoming pure vibration. It feels like heaven; a place where gravity becomes obsolete and he loosens up like invisible confetti. He likes the idea of this, the feel of it and the exhilaration. Perhaps, he thinks, this is heaven and he’s been granted an opening into a richer world. Seduced by this thought he turns wild-eyed to watch trucks push past his window. As they change gears and move away they sound like large church organs that reside in old cathedrals. When they drive onto the freeway Aaron gives thought to where they are going. They are on their way to the river to get a second glimpse of its power and to lay ghosts to rest, but everything is untidy about this idea.

Aaron knows what to expect when they get there. They will walk through scrub and spindled eucalyptus trees with the smell of damp leaves under their shoes. The sun will shine in fragments through tall trees. All will be quiet while Aaron walks the rhythm of Anton’s stiff gait. As he holds Sally’s hand he will feel the urgent need to pull away from her.

But when they get there it is different. They step out of the car into a soft deceiving rain that soon clings to clothing. The earth smells like rounded fruit in the humid air. They persevere through scrub and dripping trees catching fragments of the river through clearings. It is Anton, not Sally who holds Aaron’s hand and pushes him forward into the rain. Aaron wants to peel open into a scream. His uneasiness grows like a tumour.

At the river’s edge all three survey its strange immensity with suspicion. Its flat surface seems almost lifeless but Aaron knows there’s more to it than that. He imagines an army of bodies anchored and unseen at its bottom. Shivering in this thought he vomits. When Sally tries to hold him he takes flight. Although he is heavier and less agile than the memory birds he is almost as quick and manages to distance himself from Sally and Anton. He keeps running until his body can no longer take it. When he turns around they are nowhere to be seen but inside the late afternoon shadow Uncle Joe's face stares back at him. His portrait is altered, made shapeless and grotesque by fear. Aaron remembers how his uncle was kind and friendly but the image that hangs like muslin doesn’t justify such qualities. It has a meanness that is expressed in the eyes and lips.

A bird lands beside Aaron’s feet to investigate the earth. He watches it rummage for food and is unable to move away. He can’t comprehend this scene. It’s without music and the reliving of memory sits uneasy on his body, leaving the fine hair on his arms to stand on end. Uncle Joe's face empties into shadow but the bird remains. He wants to shoo it away but doesn’t know how. His body is cemented to the earth.

When they find him he is standing in a clearing, his eyes are closed as if he is sleeping. It’s been dark for several hours but the search party’s torches illuminate the night in patches. When they touch him he does not flinch. He does not move or open his eyes but lives with a scene in his mind, a scene where birds rise and the day grows dark with fear. The haunting sound of gunshot pulses each heartbeat. He knows there is no escape from it, from the fear of it or from the memory that comes alive. He makes no attempt to cooperate when large hands pick him up and place him onto a stretcher. Eventually he will fall asleep but this will be inside the cradle of an ambulance that will rush through the black fog of night.


He wakes to find himself in his own bed. Sally has tucked him tightly into the linen, so tightly that the top bed sheet feels like a coffin lid. Again, Uncle Joe's face lingers on the wall and moves with the shadows that creep over it when cars drive by. The memory birds are on the desk and in the bookshelf. When he sees these things he feels the pull of the river dragging him in. Unable to breathe and struggling out of bed he searches for music. In the darkness he fumbles for something to listen to. Beethoven, always Beethoven. He goes in search of Sally’s CD Walkman.

Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata burns slowly with desire. A sense of constancy and dedication permeates the entire song. Sensitive and wanting, the notes search for an audience. For Beethoven this was an audience of one – Giulietta Guicciardi, whom it is dedicated to – but for Aaron Moonlight Sonata is a song about escape, a chance to shed skin. It is a song of metamorphosis.
Aaron walks slowly with purpose through the dark house wearing the Walkman. To become music Aaron centres his concentration on the notes being played and treats each one like a mantra.
It takes time for his body to respond to the process but after a while he begins to feel lighter.

As he walks, Aaron feels the music take shelter in his teeth and in the fingers that anchor the headphones to his head. His throat vibrates down to his chest and along his arms. At the doorway of Sally’s bedroom his torso becomes even lighter while he watches her sleep. When he moves into his own room and closes the door behind him he stands at the window. He looks up towards the moon while his feet become small particles of sound. He knows the morning will come soon. His breathing slows, becoming as deep as a Stradivarius while the CD repeats itself. The unfathomable feelings that reside in his chest become air and vibration. The memory of Uncle Joe's death floats to the ceiling as soft music works its way through his veins.

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