It’s Mendelssohn again.

The last wisps of smoke from your last cigarette spiral slowly upwards. You sip from a whisky glass before dropping it in the glass ashtray on the baby grand. It practically takes up the whole space in the room.

Once upon a time, you’d offer me a cigarette too, but you know why I swore off them. We’re not much older than we used to be, but somehow the years have left their mark nonetheless. Scars from the past bleed into the present eventually.

And yet, the piano sounds the same.

The thoughts lapse in and out between the melody. I recall the piece you’re playing now. It’s the same one each time you play Mendelssohn.

Songs Without Words.

Music was purer for you. Easier to communicate, where words would be a poor substitute. The right words were hard, but the right melodies were always easy, because they filled a gap that words could not.

For example, there were the pieces by Phillip Glass you became fond of on sleepless nights.

“A talentless hack my classically trained piano teacher called him. Nothing more than a few repetitive patterns right? Ok now listen to this.”

You’d play a few more bars, but I still didn’t get it.

“Just keep listening.”

So I did. But it’s a struggle now as it is then to put into words what it sounded like. The written word felt clumsy in comparison, something is lost in translation inevitably. The song I later learned was called Metamorphosis, which I joked was a big complicated word for something so simple.

It was gentle, repetitive, and peaceful.

And for a while when you played, it was a little easier to breathe. It was a familiar escape and remained a constant throughout the other vices. Although you’d say that it was perhaps the biggest vice of all.

“I could give up smoking, or drinking even. But this, I could never. I can just play and play, and forget everything else.”

Everything else comprised a lot. Past ghosts that evolved into spectres of the future. Events that bathe dreams in fire. A smoke-filled room in need of clarity. And yet, music was a universal medicine. You didn’t need to speak any language for it to speak to you. It was for everyone, whether you were rich or poor.

(and for a while, the nightmares subsided in that small room)