Slipping into the Dream

Watching the notes dance

Sometimes I used to look up classical music on a sheet music editing website. There was an option to listen to the sound while an indicator would glide across the sheet. I mostly preferred bombastic and fanfare music or marches. At times, when I was bored, I would sit back on my sofa with my laptop resting in front of me and look at the notes dancing to the overwhelming sounds of "Stars and stripes forever", "Entry of the gladiators" or "The force theme" (from star wars).

I was involved in a private facebook conversation with a friend and I constantly switched back and forth between the liveness of the music and the empty-minded numbness of the conversation. We were talking about her ex, also a friend of mine. They had dated for four months, had sex twice, then had given up their relationship over a pointless conflict over something that I failed to remember. Her ex had been in bad health at the time, both physical and mental which not only emphasised the pointlessness of the break-up but also the meaninglessness of them ever getting together. They had got together at a party where they started face sucking each other out of the blue, disgusting every other friend at the party, including myself. From that point forward, I decided to ignore every thought of them together and later I started to ignore and avoid them both altogether. The friend who was in bad health was skinny, pale and in my eyes not very attractive. His girlfriend was the exact opposite. I often wondered why they were together as I didn't feel like it was a healthy relationship. Of course, I wouldn't ask them because I didn't want them to feel like I was in any way interested in them, yet I always assumed that it wasn't for love.

With "Ride of the Valkyries" in the background I tried to confirm my thoughts: "Was it love or pity that drove you to nail a corpse?" The question may have been rude and filled with irony but the confirmation quickly came along: "pity". I told her I thought it was sad that pity drives us to fake love. She said she was still mad at him for not seeing that the sex was meaningless. I asked her whether all acts of love didn't become meaningless if we thought about them too much. She failed to give me an intelligent answer so I concluded that it probably depends on who is in love with who and that the happiest person is probably the person who's blind to the meaninglessness.

Months later, the two still didn't want to see each other. I didn't understand why, nor did I care very much. I simply put on my headphones, listened to the music and watched the notes dance on the sheet.