jasmine’s jazz
marius zhang
“Practice set number six. Focus on the sheet music while performing. ”
“Can I try – “
“One, two, three, and…”
He stood behind Jasmine when she pressed the first chord. The metronome oscillated precisely at 120 beats per minute. He took off his watch, held it in his left palm, and started counting the numbers of segments of his metal watch bracelet. He whispered to himself one chord for each segment he counted. At bar twenty-three, Jasmine hid an extra note with her pinkie, and he grasped the watch tighter than before. Red marks circled his palms when he relaxed his fingers from squeezing it.
After counting the twelve bracelet segments for three rounds, he shook his head slightly, placed his watch in his pocket, stood up from the chair, and reached for the metronome.
“Halt,” he commanded before pressing the pendulum back inside the hook.
“Stick to the score. Bar twelve to thirty six. I want twenty reps.”
“Wait, before that, I had this solo I’ve been practicing and I …”
“Thirty reps before I’m back.”
“It’s a Jazz solo, you know, to make my notes sound better. I made one twist at the very end, around the last twelve bars…”
“Forty.”
“... added some triplets, switching the chords here and there, swinging a bit, also…”
“Fifty.”
Jasmine stopped, stood up, and picked up the metronome to wind it. She gripped the small, bronze winding knob with her finger pads. He inhaled deeply and sighed out with the rhythm of twisting.
“Why don’t you just let me play?”
He slammed his right hand into the keys. The piano wailed and screeched.
“...”
“ Bar twelve to thirty six. I want you to play bar twelve to thirty six until you’ve forgotten about your solo. ”
Jasmine’s heart pounded on the verge of implosion. But she didn’t stop it. It drummed. She listened. Brushing over the keys, she listened to its complaint, to its heat, to the syncopation.
She closed her eyes. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub — and her world was silent, waiting.
Jasmine struck the piano with all ten fingers, and he immediately looked back.
“Stick to the score — “
His voice was instantly overwhelmed by the second row of thunder struck: then came the third, the fourth, and then the tempest.
Under her flying fingers, the piano began to talk. She caressed, she plucked. She hammered, she brushed. It then held the most loving tenderness and in a split second metamorphosed into a red-eyed, rage-infused bull with its blood boiling. And there was no power imbalance nor did she solely own the instrument, for the keys gradually became an extension of her ten fingers that shook and danced.
Her fingers started to hurt each time she knocked the key as if the devil chiseled her joints and her fingertips. Chords then no longer progressed in a marching line: they broke free from the jail of staff and reveled as if death was the consequence of pausing their dance and holding their twirling, shaking, vigorous bodies.
Then she saw the black metronome, 30 feet high, towering in front of her. With each frustrated tick, the metronome pounced forward. Its red-hot pupils stared into Jasmine and her piano. Just when it was about to crash into her, Jasmine transferred her life from her swelling fingers into the final chord.
She then opened her eyes.