Duende

I don't mean to overexalt myself. I'm well aware of my status as a simple teen soprano, with barely a smidgen more talent then the general population. Most of what I am and what I can do, I owe to people far greater than myself who've had the patience to teach me how, and to a pit bull-like discipline (some say it's stubbornness, but fuck that).

But if there's one thing I know. One single little solitary thing that keeps me going these days, it's duende. And that's not something you can just get, just translate into words.

Duende. I don't think it can ever be described, but a tiny tiny fraction of what it really is: it's floating in a white, blank world. But the blank isn't really blank, it's just too colorful to exist. And all there is in that blank is one column of what seems to be air, but it could be water, could be fire, could be anything. you're the only one there, and all you can do is to push it out and up. You decide what it'll be, if you're strong enough. You decide what it'll sound like, and the sound is huge, it vibrates and threatens to shatter the entire world you're moving in, but that's all right, because it can never break, it's more fluid and amorphous than mercury. And it's better and more beautiful and more terrible and more heartbreaking than anything you've ever seen. And against all the white that isn't white, all that your eyes can truly, physically see, is one thing. Then, it was my coaches hand up in the air, telling me to hold it. And then it drops, so you drop the note too.

And when you come down, when you let the note go, you come back to that other place. The real world, I guess, though it's not as real as the other one that you're coming back from. And you can see again. And you can feel how the entire room is vibrating with the potency of that one note. The echoes too. You see that your hands have been gripping the edge of the piano so hard that there are your nail marks on it. And there are other musicians from the other classes peeking through the windows to see who it was singing. And you find that you're shaking, and you're not standing the way you were before.

And that's D above high C.