In Temperance

The dogs are circling, tussling. They rush each other, scuffle and bounce back, haunches lowered, ears back, the whites of their eyes flicking from side to side. They’re at play, though, so their grins are strictly for show. In a tree above the garden there’s a pair of pigeons making a nest for the spring, a tangled, half-hearted bowl of twigs that’ll shelter their scrawny young. The wind blows last season’s leaves about in miniature whirlwinds. The air itself is unsettled, both warm and breathy and icy, whistling through the drainpipes.

The dogs canter away from each other, mollified by some unseen intervention.

A teal loveseat under the awning embraces an old guitar, its neck smooth with the slide of rough hands and calloused fingers, whose curled shapes call out thrumming chords and resonant tunes when the evening mood seems right. The body of the guitar has nicks and chips from being slung onto the backseat of cars like a summer fling or hefted into use when the beer has been flowing. Its gold label is fading with each year that it gains its voice, the strings buzzing with restraint against worn frets. An hourglass figure or a sensual eight, the curves used to being tucked into an embrace and brought to life.

There’s the guitar player, breathing out light clouds from a cigarette, the ash dusting his shoulders as he sits, thinking:

Air.

That’s what music is; a re-imagining of oxygen/nitrogen/argon, perhaps a little carbon dioxide thrown in. The music of the spheres an elemental inclusion of the very atmosphere and, finally, the stratosphere.

It’s corralled into harmonies and rhythms, songs and symphonies. Sly, simple tunes and grand, eloquent explosions. But, without air, it’s voiceless.

He taps out a gentle beat against his thigh, hearing the rise and fall of a melody in his mind.

Goosebumps and tears.

That’s what music is; a chemical reaction in the body that causes the pulse to dance against your wrist or nerve endings to hum with life. Just as anxiety can drive your physical responses, music can get into your pores with quiet intensity.

Your breathing can echo the rise and fall of phrases; in, out, in, out. Building up and subsiding with subliminal power.

All this, with air.

The cathedral-like inner workings of a string instrument with its vaulted ceilings and private alcoves, magnifying the gentle plucking.

The smooth trachea of the wind instrument, channeling human breath through its mystical curves.

The deep boom of a stretched drum vellum like a lung, transporting that unworldly vibration from top to bottom.

All this, with air.

The birds clasp onto their twigs and whisper romance as the hounds call out to a world beyond the boundary fence.

Just air.