attitude raze she leaned hard on the last syllable. she was showing one of her dancers how she wanted her to move while a girl whose name i didn't know played "moonlight sonata" on the school's upright piano. "attitude," she said. "attitude." my mother always wanted me to learn that song. the sheet music would have broken my brain. i could have worked it out by ear, but i didn't want to give her the satisfaction of thinking i'd done something to please her. i only played that piano three times. the first time, i caught isaac in the music room before morning announcements and jammed with him until mr. ross told me to get out. the second time was when i auditioned for a student-organized arts night that never got off the ground because the seniors they picked to put the thing together didn't give a shit. the last time i sat on that unforgiving wooden bench, we were running through the set list for a talent show that called itself something you could put in your mouth. a guy who was two years removed from graduating played "evaporated" by ben_folds five before i got my turn to play a song i wrote myself. he wasn't even going to be there the day of the performance. i guess he wanted to spend a little more time in a place he wasn't ready to leave. even though he was already gone. i went back to that school a little less than twenty years after they gave me my diploma. i asked if i could take a picture in front of my old locker. the principal said i had to wait for security to escort me there. like i was some kind of threat. they had a piano in the hall just outside of the office. not brown like that old upright. it was this glossy black hunk of junk. they let me try it out. the keys were made of plastic. there weren't strings inside. there were tines. it sounded like a toy. i could hardly hear a thing i played. it didn't matter how much i dug in. being there made me angry. maybe i was thinking of the dance teacher who turned a word i'd heard a hundred times before into something strange and percussive. one morning she screamed at one of her students. she didn't stop until the girl was sobbing. i wanted to say something. i should have said something. but i kept my mouth shut like everyone else. or maybe every bad memory anyone who ever haunted those halls lugged around with them started seeping into me. maybe that's the price you pay for returning to a place you got as far away from as you could as soon as your legs were strong enough to take you where you thought you wanted to go. i left without taking any pictures of anything. i ate soup that gave me heartburn in a restaurant that played john_coltrane and served overpriced coke in glass bottles. for the rest of the day i wanted to punch everyone i saw in the fucking face. myself included. 241027 ... epitome of incomprehensibility As a child, I didn't like when adults would tell me to stop giving them this. I would get literal-minded and think, or say, that everyone has *some* kind of attitude if they're awake and aware of what's around then. Anyway, I also want to praise how raze put this memory together. (Wires crossed when I typed that first; I wrote "praize.") I also had an impulse to write something like, "yes, 'Moonlight Sonata' is overrated" - on something that never once expressed the propriety of rated-ness of the piece. But I want to express some kind of admiration and compassion, stumblings be damned. 241027 ... raze (hey, i like praize! if this name ever starts to feel like it's lost its appeal, that could be a fine alternate blathernym. and that means a lot coming from you. i was just marveling at the music you made out of memory over on "grief" a moment ago.) 241027 what's it to you? who go blather from