THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: THE LAST MOVEMENT

The music sits upon the page, but it is not really contained there. It already sprang to life in the mind of the musician, alive and writhing some time before. Spinning to push the hand that set it out, flat, to be released upon the world. The music hangs in the air between the notes as they are played, as much as inside those notes. It is a worm that, upon entering the world, infests the brains of others, spinning them up, making them play it in the ghost-voice of their minds, or on instruments. They are taken by the tune, and they continue it, working in their own variations like any good musician would.

A master can play a song so subtle, so simple, that it hangs in the mind forever, and in more: in the minds of the world forever. A true song can shape a world. Something so haunting and clear and easy that no one can escape it, or the way it crawls around in your skull, rising again and again despite anything you try to throw at it to silence it. Thoughts and songs spread from man to man like a disease. Music is an infection in the same way thoughts are an infection. When it comes for you, sometimes, you don’t even know you are owned by it. You are a puppet to the song.

I’ve certainly played my song here. Since 1930 or so, I called a tune. Quietly. Simply. Slow, at first, and always in the background. Certainly not an orchestra at the start, but the backbone of the music that we’ve all been playing for certain. The core of the march. That was mine. I brought it. I wrote it down and shared it with others. Other…musicians. Now it is deep. Resonant. Basso music. An orchestra. Drums and war marches, and the high, thin strings of shrieks, peppered by staccato beats of small arms fire.

Berlin is a drum being smashed to pieces within a relentless beat.

The others have worked in their variations. The camps. The experiments. The outré researches. Still all based on my theme, for a surety, but not mine. At least not directly. Still, my music put those others in this mindset. The core of the tune made this final movement possible. Without my simple melody, this orchestra of doom could never be played. It all comes from this, as a bit of snow becomes an avalanche. I am the father of it. The mother. I gave birth to it in a bookshop with a voice speaking to me in low tones told me the secrets of the future.

I will surely die here. Russians will spot me walking the streets and shoot me, or hang me, or drag me off to be interrogated and executed. There is no way for me to leave my song now. No way to resist the demands of its pace. Nor would I want to. I should like to be eaten by my song. To be consumed by it. The creator disgorges his art which in turn destroys him. I think I should like that very much.

Because, in all the years since this song came to me, I have seen things so huge, so vast, so perfect, that I know that the song is greater than myself. I was merely the vessel to disgorge it. I was the doorway. When I am gone, it will live on. It will find other ears. It will catch in other minds.

It may take years. But the melody will begin anew when I am old bones, shot to pieces. The song will catch and begin to spin up to speed once more. The drums will start. I will live on inside the song, merely a part of my creation, digested and forgotten, while it rages across the world like a riot of sound.

Perhaps if I am lucky, some mote of me shall know its hunger.