Emma's Composer/ Blair Fanfic

Composer/ Blair Fanfic

Emma Dansak

1. ESSAYS IN JIMMY’S CLASS

            “Hey, Clara, Robby,” said Johannes, sliding into a desk near the front. “How was you guys’ weekend?”

            “Awesome!” said Robby. “I went out and had totally wild parties with all my friends.”

            “No you didn’t,” said Clara. “You stayed in your room by yourself and played with sock puppets.”

            Robby frowned, as if the idea rung a bell.

            “Again,” Clara added. “How was your weekend, Johannes?”

            “Pretty good,” said the ickle sophomore, glancing around at his illustrious peers. “I mostly just chilled out and worked on my beard.” He stroked his chin.

            “It’s looking pretty good,” said Robby.

            “Thanks!” said Johannes.

            Wiggy and Franz came in. Johannes’s eyes lit up at the sight of Wiggy, and he sat up straight and stopped stroking his chin. “Gosh, I hope he’ll sit with me!” he thought anxiously. His heart leapt when Franz motioned towards them, and Wiggy followed him to their desks.

            “Hey, guys!” squeaked Franz.

            Johannes stared at Wiggy, who had sat down and was rustling through his Rucksack, a searching frown on his face. If only Johannes could be more like Wiggy! His firm jaw, his stubby little fingers like sausages of glory, his unkemptable hair buzzing with all the ordered disorder of a beehive. Wiggy was everything Johannes wanted to be. Even to sit in the room with him was in some ways torturous, because he knew Wiggy’s glory was unattainable by mere mortals such as himself, but this anxiety was mostly overwhelmed by the sheer bliss that came from simply being around such greatness.

            “What’s that, there?” asked Clara, as Wiggy withdrew a paper from the Rucksack and slammed it triumphantly on the table.

            “Essay,” grunted Wiggy, arranging his Rucksack beside his desk.

            Johannes’s heart leapt to his throat. “Oh,” he breathed, “can I... can I read it?”

            “Sure.” Wiggy held the paper out to Johannes, who took it with trembling hands and bulging eyes.

            “Let’s do an essay swap!” Franz suggested, and everyone got out their essays. Wiggy had Clara’s, Clara had Franz’s, Franz had Robby’s, and Robby had Johannes’s. And Johannes had Wiggy’s.

            “It’s good, Franz,” said Clara after some time, holding out the essay between two fingers and giving it a short shake so that the many pages flapped against each other, “it’s just so long...”

            “A lovely piece of writing, Robert,” said Franz, “if not necessarily the most cohesive.”

            “Pretty good,” remarked Wiggy. “For a woman and all. Pretty good.”

            “This is really nice work, Johannes,” said Robby. “I mean, really nice. It flows beautifully and organically, it holds together really well, it’s intelligent but not dry, it’s not super long...”

            Johannes wasn’t listening. His eyes were darting back and forth across Wiggy’s essay. A bead of sweat formed on his brow.

            “...um, yeah, clear thesis, good imagery...”

            Johannes flipped a page so quickly it almost ripped and read on.

            “...just, overall, really good job.”

            By now everyone was looking at Johannes.

            “Hey, Hans?” said Robby.

            Johannes still ignored him. He was frenzied, entranced, visibly shaking. Suddenly he leapt from his seat, snatched his essay from Robby’s hand, and began to rip it into a billion pieces.

            “Hey!” cried Robby, over the panicked sound of ripping pages. “What are you doing? It was good!”

            Johannes kept ripping. He began to rip the larger rips into smaller ones. The group watched him in stunned silence.

            “You dumbass,” said Clara.

            When he was finished, Johannes scooped up all the pieces and ran sobbing from the room.

            “Guess he liked it,” said Wiggy, lifting his slightly battered essay from Johannes’s old desk.

            “Guess so,” said Robby.

            The bell rang. All the students who were milling around headed to their seats. “Hey guys,” said Jimmy, beaming. “Hope you all had a good weekend!”

            “Hi, Jimmy,” chorused the class. “Our weekend was good. How was yours?”

            “Oh, it was great, thanks for asking,” Jimmy answered. “I went to the annual meeting of the Plainchant Lovers Society. We had conferences all day.”

            “Sounds like a FRICKIN BLAST,” said Dick.

            Everyone shushed him.

            “Hey, I saw Johannes leaving the room with some ripped up pieces of paper,” Jimmy said. “He looked like he was crying. Does anyone know... what’s...”

            The whole class groaned and looked at Wiggy, who shrank in his seat.

            “Uh-oh,” said Jimmy. “Wiggy, did you overwhelm him with your glory again?”

            Wiggy nodded sheepishly.

            “EVERY DAMN TIME,” said Clara.

            “Man,” said Dick loudly, “what a wimp!”

            “Okay, first things first,” said Jimmy. “Everyone get out your essays.” A wave of paper noises rolled through the room. “Now, before we turn these in, did anyone have any questions about--”

            The door burst open and Wolfy strode in, headphones blaring around his neck, audible to the entire room. He stopped short and looked around. “Wait, what?” he said. “I thought class started at 9:35??”

            “It starts at 9:30,” Jimmy reminded him.

            “Oh,” sad Wolfy.

            I WHIP MY HAIR BACK AND FORTH I WHIP MY HAI

            “Wait, what’s that on everyone’s desks?” he asked.

            “That’s the essay,” said Jimmy. “The one on starfish.”

            “Ooooooh...” said Wolfy, “....shhhhit.” He glanced around and then up at Jimmy. “I think I left it in my, uh, locker,” he said. “Can I run and get it?”

            “Where’s your locker?”

            “Um, it’s... you know, like, ...around here.”

            ND FORTH I WHIP MY HAIR BACK AND FORTH I WHI

            “Pretty close,” he finished.

            “All right, go get it.”

            Wolfy scampered out. The door slammed behind him.

            “Okay,” said Jimmy, “now, any questions about the paper?”

            Dick raised his hand and began to speak without waiting to be called on. “I made sort of a multi-media, sort of virtual reality type presentation,” he said, holding up a jewelcase. “Instead of an essay. Is that all right?”

            “Um, I guess so,” said Jimmy.

            “Oh, good,” said Dick. “Also it’s thirteen hours long.”

            “Ummm, okay.”

            “Also you can only watch it in my room.” Hugo nudged him and told him to say ‘no homo.’ “No homo.”

            Bruckner, who had been meekly raising his hand the whole time, emitted a small cough. “I have a question,” he said.

            “Go for it!”

            Bruckner held up 3 different esays. “I couldn’t decide which one I liked the best,” he said. “Could you grade all 3 and take the best one? Or maybe the average? Or even the lowest?”

            Hugo rolled his eyes, plucked the middle draft from Bruckner’s hand, and gave it to Jimmy.

            “Mine doesn’t quite reach the length requirement,” said Web. “Is that okay?”

            Jimmy took Web’s paper and looked at it. It read:

            the sar f i h

                        v  G

                          m      nclk

              quod pppppb z  uy j

                                                w

                                                  XXxxxxxxx

            “Web, what language is this in?” Jimmy asked.

            “Arnie made it up,” said Web. “We’re trying to think of what to call it. I’m partial to Parseltongue.”

            “We can’t call it Parseltongue!” said Arnie for the hundredth time.

            Jimmy was distracted as more and more students stacked their papers in his arms. One caught his eye. “Hey, Philip, I dunno if copying and pasting the word ‘starfish’ 5000 times counts as filling the word count.”

            “There’s more,” said Philip.

            Jimmy turned the page.

             o                     w                      o

       o        o            w        o            o        w

   o               o     w                o    o                 w

w                      w                      o

            “That’s the ocean,” Philip pointed out.

            “Right,” said Jimmy. “Oh, Cage, what the hell is this?”

            “I put a wet starfish on people’s faces and these are the noises they made,” said Cage. “I arranged them *IN* the shape of a starfish.”

            “Where did you find a... oh, nevermind. Okay, is this everyone’s? Except Wolfy’s?”

            “And Johannes’s,” scoffed Dick. A few of his friends made scoffing noises. Clara glared at them. “What?” said Dick.

            Sibelius raised his hand politely. “Oh, and you’re still working on the one that was due a few weeks ago.” Sibelius nodded. “How’s that coming?”

            “Pretty good.”

            Wolfy burst in the door, headphones still blaring, still Willow Smith, holding out a crisply papered essay. “Here it is!” he panted.

            “All right, good,” said Jimmy. “Let me just go and put these in my office so I don’t forget, and then we’ll start on our unit with rainbows. I’m so excited to do this with you guys! I couldn’t even sleep last night.”

            Jimmy left. Wolfy slid down into the first right corner seat, the last one available.

            “Did you just write that just now?” asked Robby.

            “I DUNNO,” said Wolfy. “I DUNNO. MAYBE?”

2.   IN WHICH DICK ASKS WIGGY IF HE WANTS TO GO TO SPORTSMANS AFTER RECITAL

            Wiggy was in the library, hunched over some work. His grand face was clouded and fists grubby with concentration. He was writing a paper on Napoleon. “FUCK NAPOLEON!!!!!!!” he screeched suddenly, erasing his paper so hard it ripped.

            Dick walked up. “Hey, Wiggy, want to go to Sportsman’s after recital?” Dick asked.

            Wiggy scribbled seriously.

            Dick tried again. “Hey, Wiggy?” he said. After a moment’s hesitance, he placed his hand lightly on Wiggy’s shoulder.

            Wiggy spun around. “Was!!” he said.

            “Wanna grab Sportsman’s after recital?”

            Wiggy stared at him, then cupped his ear. “WAS?”

            “I said, want to get Sportsman’s--”

            Wiggy shook his head, tapped an open notebook beside him, and handed Dick a pen.

            “Oh,” said Dick, and wrote his question. Wiggy looked at it, scribbled a word under it, and looked up.

            “(awesome non-recreatable scribble in my notebook)”

            WAS??? wrote Dick.

            Wolfy came over. “Oh, he’s having a deaf day, is he?” he asked.

            YES, Wiggy wrote. Dick, assuming Wiggy was answering his question rather than Wolfy’s, since he was assuming he couldn’t have heard Wolfy’s, gave Ludwig a thumbs up and moved to leave, but Wolfy stopped him and plucked the conversation book from his hands. He began to write seriously. When he put it down there were fifty-two small penises covering the page.

            THANKS A TON, WOLF-LAME, wrote Wiggy.

            “That’s my portrait of Dick,” said Wolfy.

            Dick saw the penises and thought of the word “come.” An idea “came” to him. “Hey, you could come too, Wolfy,” said Dick.

            “Oh sure,” said Wolfy. “A beer after recital would be cool. I’m playing and all.”

            “Then I’ll be sure to skip. Just kidding!” he added hastily, seeing the hurt rise in Wolfy’s eyes.

3.   IN WHICH RECITAL

The program for recital read:

Polonnaise and Kinkywaltz in G-double flat augmented minor, mit cadenza

LISZT FERENÇ, Klavier

Whatever the last guy played,

but Backwards, Hands-Crossed, Blindfolded, and Tipsy

WOLFGANG MOZART, Klavier

My Humps

Alma Mahler

4.   DR. ROSE

            “...But of course, there’s no real answer to this question,” Dr. Rose finished. “The beauty of music -- the genius of music lilke this, the -- what’s miraculous about it, is that we can’t explain... aswers like this. All we can do, is wonder. Did Brahms intentionally tonicize the B flat here, and should the listener hear it as such, or is it simply a twinkling coincidence, a gentle subconscious recollection of a time before the ravages of formal expansion and tonal breakdown, hearkening back to a childhood innocence for which we all must pine. And that’s so beautiful, because it allows us to have this music, this wonderful masterpiece, this huge gift from Brahms and the cosmos -- cosmos, you know, that’s from the Greek, Kosmos, meaning “order,” “arrangement,” to put an army into order -- and that’s what Brahms is doing, he’s... he’s not even Romantic, he’s post-romantic, but he’s still a classicist... in the true, COSMIC sense of order... he’s an ancient Homeric warrior... and he gives us this... this gift.... and that’s the mystery of love. That’s the miracle of genius. And that’s why MUSIC is truly the most sublime of all art forms. Or at least that’s what we like to believe.”

            Brahms popped his head in. “GUTEN TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG”

            “JOHANNES BRAHMS???” chorused the class.

            Brahms cleared his throat. “I just wanted you all to know that--”

            “NOOOOOOO!” cried Dr. Rose, sprinting to the door.

            Brahms stuck his arm in the room and waved around a yellow cereal box. “--that I’ve developed a really sweet new cereal and it’s going to be available in the munchies starting this weekend.”

            Rattle rattle, went the box.

            “Raisin Brahms!” gasped a student. “That’s my favorite cereal.”

            “Oh my gosh,” said Dr. Rose. “I was terrified you were going to answer the question.”

            “What question? About the B flat?” Brahms frowned and shook his head dismissively. “No way, Michael Alec. I just wanted everyone to know about Raisin Brahms.”

            “Oh! Good!” said Dr. Rose. “You know, I’ve seen that around in the grocery store, and I’ve always wondered if--”

            “Although,” Brahms went on, “it’s really pretty simple. The B-flat in measure 2 is just a --”

            “NOOOOOOOO SHUT UP!” squawked Dr. Rose, limbs flailing ungainlily. He shoved Brahms out of the door and slammed it.

5. SPORTSMAN’S

            “You eat wings like you were born to,” commented Hugo, his voice swelling with admiration.

            Wiggy tore the last ribbon of flesh from the bone, sucked it clean, and tossed it aside. It clattered in the glass plate against the already stripped bones. “Thanks,” Wiggy said, reaching for another wing.

            “So, Ludwig, I beg of you,” entreated Dick, resting his head on his elbow-propped hands in a vaugely homosexual way, staring intentely at the orange-stained object of his inquiry, “would you not agree that the presence of a choir in the last movement of your ninth symphony indicates a shift in the direction of an all-encompassing art form?”

            Wiggy paused, mid-flesh-rip. “Was?”

            “I mean,” Dick said, “would you not say that your artistic need to blend the genres of choir and symphony indicates that the direction music must take is the direction in which the borders between all art forms must be blurred even more strongly?”

            Ludwig squinted, then frowned. “Was??” he barked.

            Dick cleared his throat. “What I mean is, do you--”

            “Dude, Dick, forget about it,” muttered Hugo.

            Wiggy looked helplessly at Wolfy. “He wants to know if he’s your heir,” Wolfy said loudly.

            Wiggy tugged at a lock of his own hair and gave it a puzzled look.

            “Not your HAIR,” said Wolfy, “your ‘HEIR.’” Wiggy waved his hand in the air. “No, with an H, your-- oh, for cryin out loud, never mind it.”

           

            Wiggy went back to gnawing his wing.

            “Look, Dick,” Wolfy said, “how about this. Why don’t you just do what you feel like without worrying about your place in music history or whether or not Beethoven would write like you if he was alive? If you’re too self-conscious about it it doesn’t work. It’s like the subject of an experiment knowing he’s in an experiment. It falls into an infinite vortex of paradox.”

            “Hmmmmmm,” said Dick. “Nope.”

            “Johannes is no better,” Wolfy grumbled, “always burning his work, ‘ooh Wiggy’s shadow, eeeuhuaeuehh.”

            “I’d burn my work, too, if I wrote like Johannes!” crowed Hugo.

            “BUUUUURRN!!” cried Dick. He and Hugo high fived.

            “Good wings,” commented Wiggy.

            “Oh, so you’re not deaf anymore?” said Dick.

            “I’m not what?”

            Jeff-with-a-G came by. “How’s everybody doing over here? Everything okay?”

            “Great!” said Wolfy, nudging his heaping bowl of pickle chips.

            Jeff sassed up his face and stepped back. “Somebody’s sarcastic today!” he said.

            Wolfy frowned. He was sick of Jeff-with-a-G’s sass. “You know what, Jeff?” he snapped.

            “What?”

            Wolfy scowled at the waiter, then ceremoniously threw a handful of pickle chips at him. “Oops, I dropped my pickle chicks,” he said.

6. WHO VOMITED IN A PLASTIC BAG AND LEFT IT UNDER THE SINK?

            “Eeurgh!” shrieked Clara, and emerged from the Mayf bathroom clutching a heavy plastic bag. “Who did this?”

            “Wow, gross!” said Johannes. “I bet it was Wolfy.”

            “No way, man, that’s sick!” said Wolfy.

            “Franz?” said Clara. Franz shook his head, scrunching up his face, offended to be asked.

            “Robert?” she called, and looked around. She began to climb the stairs. “Robert?”

            “He’s here,” Franz pipped. “Try another name.”

            Clara sighed. “Florestan?”

            Silence.

            “Eusebius?”

            After a few moments, a thin voice in a queerly upright accent floated down from the stairs. “What is it?”

            “Did you throw up in a bag and leave it under the sink in the bathroom?”

            “Hm, I don’t know anything about that,” said the voice. “What about you, Florestan?” The voice changed; now it was deep and gruff. “That’s just disgusting,” it declared. The high voice said, “Perhaps Robert knows something about this.” “Good idea,” said the gruff voice. Let’s ask him.”

            Clara rolled her eyes and, turning her head to the interior of the room, found herself making eye contact with Johannes. It lasted a moment too long. She turned away, feeling herself blush.

            Robert was continuing his inquiry upstairs. The high voice said, “Robert, do you know anything about this vomit-in-a-bag business?”

            Normal voice: “No, completely strange to me. Quite disgusting though.”

            “Quite disgusting!”

            “Repulsive!”

            “Though it would explain the queer scent emanating from the bathroom as of late.”

           

            “All right, thanks guys.” Clara headed back down the stairs and poked her head into the kitchen corner. “Wiggy?”

SOME TIME LATER...

            It was Chris.

            “Aw, man, Chris!” everyone groaned. “That’s so gross, dude!”

            “Puh huh huh,” said Chris.

7. GERMAN

            “Man, German is so friggin hard,” said Gustav, flipping through his notes.

            “What the hell is this dative pronoun bullshit?” said Franz “Soups” Von Suppe.

            “And we have this test tomorrow!” said J. J., which stood for Johann Junior.

            The three students sat glumly around the library table. It was simply impossible. How were they ever to become fluent in a language where the pronouns you used changed into one of three manifestations depending on the preposition you used with them? How were they to be able to manage when “der” applies to masculine nouns in the nominative and female nouns in the dative, and they couldn’t even distinguish one from the other? How were they to get by in a language where “schwul” meant “gay” and “schwül” meant “sticky” and they couldn’t pronounce umlauts? What if they wanted to say they were hot and sticky, like the day was really muggy and they had been out walking in the woods or something, to explain why they were all in a room together, bodies drenched in sweat and glinting in the soft light, clad in nothing but small white shorts?

            JJ sighed deeply and looked at the alphabetical list of dativ prepositions in front of him. “Aus außer bei mit...” he muttered, “nach seit, von zu...”

            Something began to click. He glanced at Gustav and Soups. “Aus außer bei mit,” he repeated, “nach seit... von...

            “Guys, I’ve got it!” he cried. Gustav and Soups looked at him, puzzled. He tore a piece of staff paper from his notebook and stole off in the direction of the practice rooms.

8.  TWINKLING LESSONS

            “no, no, that’s not it” said rf, “you... you’ve got to... leonard, just relax.”

            Lenny sighed and dropped his face. “I just don’t know how to do it, Dr. Fountain,” he said. “I can’t twinkle like you. I’m not English and I never will be.”

            “come now” said rf “courage”

            Lenny looked up at his mentor and idol with doleful doe eyes. How would he ever be as great as Robin “Mighty Eagle” Fountain if he couldn’t even twinkle? He gave it another shot.

            “look, you’re, what you’re doing is... grimacing. you’ve got to sort of, just, twinkle. here, like this.” rf twinkled at Lenny.

            Tee hee, thought Lenny.

            “it’s sort of smiling without the mouth,” said rf. “try it. try smiling.”

            Lenny smiled.

            “now make your mouth normal again, but keep your eyes smiling...”

            Lenny dropped the smile.

            “no, your eyes aren’t smiling now”

            Lenny tried to make his eyes smile.

            “no, now you’re just squinting. have courage. the courage to twinkle. like a star.”

            Lenny thought of that great set of Mozart variations and turned his face to the... ceiling of rf’s dim and austere office. He once more tried to twinkle, tried with all of his might.

            “don’t do that, you look constipated.”

            Lenny looked once more with exasperation upon his austere mentor whose hair was like the crest of a mighty wave on a stormy sea and whose psychic power was so extensive that no one could get wireless signal within twenty feet of him. “How I wonder what you are,” he murmured.

            “sorry?” He also looked kind of like Richard Gere.