Synaesthesia

 

Max and Anjelica Harris had music in their veins.

Other people might cut themselves and ooze red, but Sibella was convinced that her parents would bleed the tonic sol-fa.

It was a ghoulish notion, but that was Sibella all over. Half-past normal, she sometimes thought.

Luckily, no one seemed to notice.

The marvellous musicality had sprung from who-knew-where. Granny Alice Harris played the piano in a competent fashion. Grandpa Piet de Jong had briefly played with a band called Dutch Treat when the usual drummer was off on paternity leave.

None of that explained Max and Anjelica.

“It’s a gift,” Grandma Deb said with a shrug. When the couple moved in together, she portended, “Like calls to like.”

It was a gift, but a little bit magic.

Sibella grew up with two musical magical parents and five magical musical instruments.

These instruments; two violins, a flute, a French horn and a cello, were old, polished and beautiful. They whispered and promised from their rack in the music room.

“How did you know to get five?” Sibella asked Max as soon as she could formulate the question.

Max hugged her. “One for each of us.”

“But Sky and Talie hadn’t been born yet,” Sibella reminded.

“Well—that’s why they had to be born,” Max said with devastating logic.

Sibella used to go and stroke her violin. She couldn’t wait to play it.

Her early lessons on Max’s student violin failed to make her heart (or anyone else’s) glow, but that would all change when she played the magic one.

Max and Anjelica were professional musicians. Once she got to high school, Sibella avoided telling new acquaintances that because it led to suppositions and questions. The main one was, “What’s their band name?”

“Marris,” Sibella would answer, and watch faces falter and turn uncertain.

“They’re mostly session musicians,” she’d add in a tone that was either bored or patronising, depending on how she felt about the person who had asked.

“Oh.”

“They play back-up on other people’s recordings,” she would clarify, just in case they hadn’t got the point.

Max and Anjelica also did their own gigs at pubs and clubs and festivals and recorded with Arts in Tune, but Sibella, reversing snobbery for the hell of it, didn’t mention that. 

There was another reason she kept quiet about the higher echelons of the family business. She tried not to think about that, because it didn’t do her credit.

Max and Anjelica, when they jammed, played innovative music on French horn and violin, tossing and catching harmonies, and leading one another into complicated routines. The fact that these two instruments weren’t natural companions made their jams even more unexpected and magical.

The young Sibella was entranced when the harmonies soared, lighting the sky with patterns of pure coloured energy.

Then—after a while, Skylan and Taliesin took their places with flute and cello in Marris, adding to the complexity of sound.

Sibella, as the eldest, should rightly have joined the family band before her siblings, but she hovered on the edge, listening, loving the trembling tapestry and watching the rapt expressions of the others.

Max and Anjelica never pressured her to participate, any more than they pressured the younger ones. Sky and Talie just had, organically, automatically, taken up their instruments and woven their own complexities.

Sibella tried to join in, but although she saw the net of sparkling music she contributed no strands of her own. Her music failed to fly.

When she realised the others were supporting her playing, consciously simplifying and slowing the tempo, she backed away, slowly, step by step, from the coalface.

She took to joining sessions after she washed dishes or made a call, then excusing herself for homework or to go out with friends.

Did the rest of the family notice when, after six months or so, she no longer joined the family jam? They didn’t mention it.

She still played at school. She passed exams and led the school orchestra.

Her music teacher, Mister Damask, looked to her for answers or examples and even for her input regarding practices and performance.

Did she think the orchestra could play this? Would extra practice perfect them or make them stale?

He talked to her almost like a friend, but Sibella knew she might never see him again once she left school at the end of the term.

It was now, or probably never.

She lingered after Friday’s lesson.

Mister Damask stopped shuffling music sheets. “What’s up, Sibella?”

His son, Hathaway, stuck his head in and gave Sibella a considering nod.

Sibella, squinting through a gush of late afternoon sun that blurred his image, nodded back, though she barely knew him. Hathaway didn’t do music. She supposed it made sense to stay out of his father’s class.

“Won’t be long, Hath,” Mister Damask said.

Hathaway withdrew, taking the sunlight with him.

“Sibella?”

“It’s not important if you need to go.”

“No hurry. Hath was just taking his establishing shot.”

That was a weird thing to say, but Sibella’s now-or- probably-never feeling kicked up a notch.

Get on with it.

“I need your opinion,” she said.

“Okay.” He sat down and folded his hands.

“What do you think of my playing?”

“You must know it’s excellent.”

Sibella rolled her eyes, knowing a stalling tactic when she heard it. “Let’s put it another way. What do you think of my potential—of my innate musicality?”  

Damask frowned. “What makes you ask?”

 There were several possible answers to that. Because I trust you. Because you have no skin in the game. Because you know music. Because you must have seen dozens of excellent players. Instead, she quoted an old saying. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

A gleam of appreciation came into his eyes. “Are you asking if I can, Sibella?”

“Can you?”

He picked up a violin and played the first phrases of a piece Sibella didn’t recognise. His pleasant, ordinary face went remote and ecstatic. She saw the musical web forming in the air and was entranced.

Damask laid the instrument aside and morphed back into his usual self. “What do you think?”

“You can. Why don’t you?”

“How do you know I don’t?” he countered.

Sibella held up her hands, acknowledging a hit. “You’re right. You just don’t at school. I assumed. I should have known better.”

“Why?”

Sibella told him about Marris. Then she told him about the five magic instruments, and her failure to fly.

“That’s an interesting way to put it,” he said.

“You don’t believe me,” she said.

“About what?”

“The magic.”

He hesitated. “I do, as it happens.”

“What’s your advice, then?” Sibella asked.

He countered with another question. “What were you looking at when I was playing?”

“The tapestry. That’s what I call it. It’s patterns I see in the air when Mum and Dad jam. Sky and Talie make it happen too.”

“Synaesthesia?” he murmured.

She shrugged. 

“Do you see all music that way?”

 “Only when people make the music fly. I love listening when Granny plays the piano, but the music doesn’t fly.”

She watched his face for comprehension, for sympathy—for pity.

He said, “What you’re describing can’t be taught.”

“So studying music or practising won’t let me play the way my family can—the way you can.”

“It’s a blind alley,” he said. “It comes from synergy; the stars have to align. In the end it matters only to the ones who can do it and to another very rare class of person.” He nodded to her. “I know of only one other.”

“Another person who plays the way you can, you mean?”

“No. Another person who perceives the way you can, though not in the exact way.”

 Sibella said sadly, “I don’t suppose you can help me then.”

“I can give you the same advice I gave him, if it’s any use.”

“Go on then.”

“The challenge is this: find a way to use your perception to your advantage. You might be able to paint your tapestry or use it in design. If your talent extends beyond seeing music, it might help you to identify opportunities you’d otherwise overlook.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“Of course. Seeing is my thing, translated from another sense.”

She smiled at him, feeling the load of never flying lift from her shoulders, seeing a haze of sunlight.

“It’s a magical challenge,” she said, “but I can’t go round talking about magical challenges. What was that word you used? Syn-something.”

“Synaesthesia. Crossed wires in sensory perception.”

“So it’s a synaesthesia challenge.” She contemplated her hands, stretching them out. What might they enable her to do? She looked up. Sunlight. “Mister Damask, the other person you know who’s like me. It’s Hathaway, isn’t it.”

“I shouldn’t answer that,” he said.

“You don’t have to. I know I’m right.”