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Author's note:
All right, so this one's a bit different: words and music! Up top is an mp3 of me playing the solo flute piece by Debussy entitled Syrinx. The story, which appears down below, is my (very) loose retelling of the Greek myth of Syrinx and Pan. The original version carries a strong undercurrent of mysogyny, so I felt compelled to twist it.
All about Syrinx and Pan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrinx
All about Claude Debussy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy
****************
Syrinx
Rye, Sussex
November 2017
The east wind moans across the marshes, and all the reeds bend low in serried waves of genuflection. The stems, bereft of summer's warmth, sigh out a single, mournful chorus.
Maia has wrapped her tired old bones tight against the cold, but the wind's edge still finds a way to cut through all her clothes. She shivers, pressing onwards anyway. A sudden drizzle fogs her glasses, but she doesn't bother stopping to clean them; the moon is bright and full here in the small thin hours, just as it was the night she lost him.
She's on the public footpath that skirts the fringes of the reedbeds. But there are other trackways out here too, the ones that snake off through the ghostly stems, older than memory itself. Mothers forbid their children to play amongst them, for the reeds easily overtop a full-grown man, and it's easy to become disorientated. The sucking mud has claimed many cattle down the years.
Maia is unafraid. She's made this folly of a trek each year on the anniversary of their last night together, and although her quest has always been in vain she's not about to let a bit of arthritis call the shots. But it's getting harder to be brave...
Her breath catches, and she stands perfectly still. There, just there! Her joints may not be what they were, but her hearing is as acute as ever; there's a snatch of something out there, something keening and aeolian way off among the reeds, and it has nothing to do with the ceaseless coursing of the wind. With a thumping heart she tugs her little backpack tighter and sets her face against the wind, upping the pace; presently, she comes upon a trackway that was never there before.
There are marks down in the mud, a spoor. Maia snaps on her torch, peers closer, and dares to grant herself a little smile.
****************
Royal Albert Hall, London
August 1977
The concert's over, and Maia is sat there cleaning her flute in the woodwind players' dressing room when she catches sight of one of the doormen edging towards her.
"Ms Thessalides?"
She smiles up at the man; her work's done for the night, and she's in wind-down mode, relaxed and happy enough to chat. "Hi there Rob. So, how'd we do tonight?"
She often asks him this question, or variations on it, and in fact she's genuinely interested in his opinion. Rob's fifteen years her junior, and as a tack-sharp graduate economist he could probably land a six-figure city job with little problem. But no, he'd rather be a doorman at the Albert Hall just struggling by on minimum wage – because Rob dearly loves his music, and with this employment he gets to sit in on every evening concert, every matinée. For this alone Maia respects him hugely; the fact that he's got a damn fine ear is just an added bonus.
The young man grins back at her. She's told him in the past that she's interested in specifics rather than gratuitous praise, and he hadn't needed to be instructed in this twice.
"Small balance issue with the horns in the Beethoven; they swamped the violas in the final movement tutti. But that might just be the crappy acoustics of this place, or maybe just the doorway where they stuck me."
It was something to remember; the conductor would want to know. "I'll make a point of telling Walter. If it's not the hall, it's something we need to work on."
"Well, don't get into trouble on my account!" He's suddenly very earnest. Perhaps a little too earnest, she thinks: he's delighted that she takes him seriously, and he's not very good at hiding it. Oh how she misses it, this delightful lack of guile that's gifted only to the young!
But there's something more.
"The performance tonight was wonderful, Ms Thessalides. No surprises there. However, what happened in the foyer afterwards doesn't happen every day."
Rather timidly he pulls a small envelope from the pocket of his tux.
"A gentleman from the audience was most anxious that I give you this." She sees his shoulders tense; he's probably noticed her frown. "Forgive me Maia, I know the rules, I know I should have declined him. But he really was awfully polite."
She forces the smile back onto her face. "It's quite all right, Rob. No harm done."
She plucks the envelope from his hand with her fingertips, as one might pick up a burning coal with tongs.
****************
They'd finished the first half that night with Debussy. Not just any Debussy of course, but that Debussy, the ten-minute riot of musical eroticism, of imagery and lyric wonder that changed the face of classical music forever. The Debussy that opens with one of the scariest and most exposed flute solos in the entirety of the repertoire.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.
As principal flute in one of the top half-dozen orchestras in the world, Maia normally burns four or five hours a day on practice. In preparation for this piece she'd bumped that up to six. And in the end, they’d carried off the performance smoothly; well enough, at any rate, to garner more than a few cheers mixed in with the din of the applause, topped off to boot with a broad and genuine smile from Walter. Of course, the hardened professional in Maia wouldn't let her enjoy the moment for very long: perfection was getting more and more elusive the closer she approached it, as if she and her muse were bound on some cruel asymtote, destined never actually to meet. There were always minute improvements that might be made; tonight, five minutes in, her intonation with the oboe had been minutely off in the half-second it took her to correct it with her lip...
When the orchestra is on its A-game it's not unusual for some in the audience to rise to their feet to give ovation, and tonight had been no exception. But filing off the stage with all her colleagues she felt her skin prickle, and glancing up she found a short and strangely ageless man with a goatee beard there in the crowded gallery. He remained firmly seated, but in a moment of intuition she sensed that his plaudits were for her and her alone.
She looked a second time. Yup, he was staring down right at her, clapping unashamedly all the while. Against her better judgement she deigned to meet his eye, to give the smallest nod. The nod he gave her in return was equally discrete.
The second half of the programme was a Beethoven symphony, and the suite from a Bizet opera; she could have played both of them in her sleep. But with everything that came thereafter she never could remember exactly which symphony they played, or which suite – because the Debussy was at the core and centre of everything, the vital pivot, as if the Maia that had existed before those ten short minutes had been a diminished chord, three poor notes upon a piano keyboard, and the woman who came after an augmented one, embellished and built upon, fulfilled in a riot of orchestral colour.
****************
Quality writing paper, some weird hand-crafted weave with a fancy watermark. And could that really be...?
She lifts the note up to her nose, sniffs at ink that's barely dry upon the page. Yup; fountain pen. So far, so classy.
Dear Ms Thessalides
Oh well; Rob had been right about the politeness, at any rate.
Dear Ms Thessalides,
Never have I heard the Debussy played so beautifully; I was quite undone. Your phrasing and tone colour would have made the very composer blush...
Maia snorts and grimaces. She's had admirers before today, and this bore all the hallmarks of another hanger-on. It's honestly the last thing that she needs. She glances at her reflection in the mirror: at thirty-five she's still stunning in all her blonde and curvy Grecian loveliness. But her looks belie the steel within. Through talent, graft and downright bloodymindedness she's clawed her way to the top of a profession still awash with testosterone and prejudice, and she's not about to toss all that away on the foolish infatuation of a fan. Besides, an orchestral touring schedule leaves precious little room for romance; it's altogether more straightforward that she stays chaste.
She should not have taken pity on Rob, should never have taken the note. Muttering a quiet curse, Maia sets about reading the remainder quickly; after a few short seconds her eyes go wide.
I have a small business proposition for the finest orchestral flutist of the age. In truth I have been waiting for some time to approach the right musician, but it was not until tonight that I found her. The terms of the deal would not be onerous upon you; indeed I dare to hope you might find some small professional satisfaction in fulfilling your part of the bargain...
She finishes the note, incredulous. Was this guy for fucking real? But then she looks down to the signature, quite legible in an a hand so elegant and outmoded it's almost copperplate, and gasps.
The famously reclusive Landon deChèvre, most celebrated maker of handmade flutes in all of Europe, desired to carry out a redesign of his famous platinum flute. Would Ms Thessalides consent to undertake an extended trial of the new instrument? The only commitment on her part: to play the flute and, after proper consideration, provide her honest feedback.
In a daze, fingers trembling, she picks up her own flute once again. It's a respectable instrument, it can hold its head up high: a Sankyo, made in silver but of course, a decent and reliable workaday tool. That said, she'd love to make an upgrade – if only just the headjoint. But even the best orchestral players aren't exactly paid a fortune, and the rent on her south London pad is crippling. For her, a platinum flute lies firmly in the land of dreams.
A platinum flute by Landon deChèvre – the famously picky flutemaker who rejected many requests from rich hobbyist players, whose yearly output of top-end flutes could be reckoned on the fingers of one hand – well, the notion of having access to an instrument of such surpassing magnificence existed only in the realm of the unreal, and far, far beyond the wildest of oneiric fantasies.
Ms Thessalides, I humbly ask that you might consider my proposal in all seriousness, for if you were to decline I do not know when or where I might find another candidate. I have written my telephone number and address down here below, and I rely on your discretion not to disseminate them further...
****************
Rye, Sussex
August 1979
Maia pulls up outside the lonely cottage, kills the engine, and steps onto the driveway. Swifts scream about her ears, swoop and dash in fading summer sun; not to be outclassed, five thousand starlings swirl in dizzy unity out over the wetlands, their ritual pre-roost routine. The low rays saturate the reedbed swathes to set each stem ablaze, a million and more slender saffron spears.
She hears the electric thrum from inside the workshop, and knows just where she'll find him.
She leans against the doorframe, knowing better than to interrupt him; he's hunched over the milling machine, making micrometer adjustments as the cutter whirls. Satisfied at last he eases the lever downwards, and the motor's revs drop slightly as the sharp steel kisses the tubing with an almost ultrasonic whine. Drops of lubricant catherine-wheel away, along with the precious shavings; the litter of them on the floor alone looks to be worth more than a month of her orchestral wages. But he's not profligate, never wasteful; he'll sweep up every last filing when he's done, and for pure platinum the marketplace is always full of ready buyers.
She eyes him fondly as he works.
She should have known, two years ago, that there'd be more to the deal than met the eye. For what forty-something man does not have a history, with an emotional baggage-train riding right alongside? In his case that past had garnered infamy, and so, all things considered, she only had herself to blame.
What character of man might 'instrument maker' conjure in the mind? A craftsman, a patient perfectionist, a fellow with an obsessive eye for detail? Perhaps a social outcast, a loner, a man only really contented in his own company?
Not Landon deChèvre. Oh no, not that at all. For he'd been the enfant terrible of his profession: brash, extrovert, an untamed genius with spring-steel and the lathe –
And an utterly insatiable womaniser.
If only half of the swirling rumours had any basis in reality, that still left him responsible for a slew of dadless spawn spread liberally from Singapore to Scotland. Ten years and more he carried on, his parallel career of unparalleled carnality, until at last he'd been stopped dead in his tracks.
By Sylvia. His beloved Sylvia who, just nine short months later, he'd been obliged to lay into the cold dark earth along with their stillborn child.
That experience, five years back, seemed to finish him for women. No more girlfriends after that, no fresh grist for the bad-boy rumour-mill. He'd moved to England, bought this isolated refuge on the lonely borders of the old Cinque Port, and in his wind-raked castle girt all around with marshes and with reeds he'd retreated to his work.
All this Maia knew full well when she plucked that flute-shaped fruit he'd dangled so enticingly before her. But Lothario was in his past, his present celibacy confirmed; she dared to hope he'd keep their relationship entirely as he'd proposed.
And he had. It was she, to her chagrin, the knockout blonde professional, the woman with a heart of steel who yet conveyed the tones of angels, who’d failed.
Who could say how he sparked the ardour in her, kindled responses that she'd long thought dead and gone? There was certainly no intention on his part. In any case, by the time she committed fully to the pursuit the question had become entirely redundant in her mind.
Maia bent all of her determination and resourcefulness to her wooing. It'd still taken her a full twelve months to obtain what turned out to be a limited capitulation.
It's almost 11pm, and the swifts have ceased their screaming. She'll drag him off to bed as soon as he's finished with that tone-hole, but she knows full well that her forthcoming entertainment, while intense, will shy just short of satisfaction. She's coming to her fecund time again, and she's just about run out of ways of persuading him to give her what she wants.
It hasn't been for lack of trying.
****************
Two weeks later
There are some nights, particularly around the fullness of the moon and when the wind sings through the fringing osiers from the east, when he seems to be perpetually priapic.
Now is one of those times, and she's hardly complaining. She knows that in another short fortnight's time, when her shrinking resource of fertility stutters once more to life, she'll be hounding him all over again for that which she so dearly desires – just as she knows he'll deny her one more time.
The complaint nicks at the back of her waking mind, but not for long. For in these moments of their coupling she's utterly fulfilled; atop him or below, their union is the agency that makes her whole. Spurred on by him she crests each crashing wave in raw carnality, each peak more numbing than the one before. Drenched in sweat, moaning inchoate, in his arms she becomes Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Freya...
In a fortnight he'll frustrate her all over again; they'll row, she'll sulk, a discord driven deeper every month by the faltering of her body's clock. But for now, oh gods, for now there was no denying it: the sex, it was sublime!
****************
Rye, Sussex
November 2017
"I never took another mate, you know. After I chased you off, there was no one else."
"No?" His muzzle twitches, and his big brown eyes, always so expressive, become wide circles beneath the moon. "That – that is a great shame." He hangs his head, goatee bobbing, the paired horns that curl so handsome from his brow dipping towards her. "It's why I left – while you still had time to have the child you wanted. You didn't really chase me off at all."
She gives a short and mirthless laugh. "Feels like I did, though; I was relentless. Well, it doesn't matter now. You're here with me tonight – that's all that counts."
They're in a glade of sorts, a lacuna of precious sanctuary out amid the vastness of the reeds; they sit cross-legged together on the wet and silty mat of rushes and dead leaves that is their floor. Maia feels oddly comforted to reach and touch the stems that arch and sway above her, and she happens to notice, vaguely, that getting mud all over her clothes doesn't bother her at all. But her bones still ache with cold.
She glances up at him, and when she speaks her voice is as quiet and timid as any teenaged girl in love.
"Hold me?"
He smiles, reaching out with arms that are as lithe and youthful as on the day they met. She scoots around and nestles close, head upon his chest; his furry thighs are warm and soft against her own, but something with hard edges is nudging into her calf.
"Well, be careful with the hooves! I bruise too easily these days, I'm afraid."
"Sorry! Oh, I'm sorry!"
She sighs, gazing out happy and unseeing into the reed-curtain swaying ghostly-grey before her. "No harm done, old goat. It's magical out here, isn't it? I've always loved the reeds."
They sit in silence for a while; Maia doesn't want for anything other than to hear the beating of his heart and the sigh and rustle of the feathery stems. After a while she speaks again, but very soft:
"I did get to have a family, of a sort. I started teaching – in the schools, and privately. Turns out I was actually quite good at it. Who knew! But anyway, I got to make a difference. I brought music into a lot of fine young lives." She sighs, running gnarled, stiff fingers through the curled locks of his fur. "Some of those students, they stayed in touch. What with music, and with you, and them – I've really had a wonderful life."
He strokes her face idly for long seconds before replying.
"I'm sure you're right about making a difference. But my lady doth protest too much." He's whispering into her ear, as if to speak the words more loudly might tempt a vengeful god. "You were willing to take the risk of bearing our child, even after Sylvia; that's a choice the woman gets to make, never the man. I didn't understand that at the time. Now, I do."
"Hush," she says at once. "Don't say a word. Look what I brought with me tonight."
She reaches for her pack, then for the case inside. The flute gleams lustrous silver-white under the moon, as untarnished as the day she first took it from his hand.
"An extended trial, you said. Proper consideration. Have I held up my end of the bargain, would you say?"
He bleats out a short sharp laugh at that, the sound oddly sad and giddy both at once. As Maia puts the flute together he lets his hands slip down to hold her lightly round the waist, an unspoken invitation for her to play. Maia brings the flute up to her lips and lets the notes breathe forth; she only stops when she feels his body shake, and realises that he's sobbing.
"Syrinx," she hears him mutter through his tears. "It was always going to be Debussy, first and last."
His arms fall from her, and she frowns; she never wants to lose his touch again.
"I cannot play the flute, not when I'm like this. My lips, they're shaped all wrong." He sniffs in a breath, close by her ear. "But I can play this."
He's naked, naturally – but he does carry a basic buckskin pouch, slung on a belt that runs from his shoulder to his hip. He draws out a simple whistle cut from reed, six simple tone-holes bored along its length.
"If you would permit me, I'd like to make one for you."
****************
Neither Maia Thessalides nor her priceless flute were ever seen again. The police searched long and hard, along with many residents of Rye – including some of her old students, often their parents too. If any of them had been biologists, they might have wondered at the odd tracks that would occasionally appear at the reedbank's muddy edge, so curiously resembling those of two goats walking on hind legs.
Maia's old friend Rob, now semi-retired and greying and with his children all quite grown up and flown away, searched for her longer still. That he persevered for so long in this endeavour baffled all who knew him, but he never offered any explanation.
Rob wasn't a biologist either, but he had be blessed with exceptionally fine hearing. And he'd found that if he visited the marsh of a midsummer's evening, when the moon was full and the breeze soughed in from the east; well sometimes, when his mood was right, he thought he could just catch the voices of two flutes sighing out a lithesome sad duet upon the wind, far, far out across the reeds.
All right, so this one's a bit different: words and music! Up top is an mp3 of me playing the solo flute piece by Debussy entitled Syrinx. The story, which appears down below, is my (very) loose retelling of the Greek myth of Syrinx and Pan. The original version carries a strong undercurrent of mysogyny, so I felt compelled to twist it.
All about Syrinx and Pan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrinx
All about Claude Debussy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy
****************
Syrinx
Rye, Sussex
November 2017
The east wind moans across the marshes, and all the reeds bend low in serried waves of genuflection. The stems, bereft of summer's warmth, sigh out a single, mournful chorus.
Maia has wrapped her tired old bones tight against the cold, but the wind's edge still finds a way to cut through all her clothes. She shivers, pressing onwards anyway. A sudden drizzle fogs her glasses, but she doesn't bother stopping to clean them; the moon is bright and full here in the small thin hours, just as it was the night she lost him.
She's on the public footpath that skirts the fringes of the reedbeds. But there are other trackways out here too, the ones that snake off through the ghostly stems, older than memory itself. Mothers forbid their children to play amongst them, for the reeds easily overtop a full-grown man, and it's easy to become disorientated. The sucking mud has claimed many cattle down the years.
Maia is unafraid. She's made this folly of a trek each year on the anniversary of their last night together, and although her quest has always been in vain she's not about to let a bit of arthritis call the shots. But it's getting harder to be brave...
Her breath catches, and she stands perfectly still. There, just there! Her joints may not be what they were, but her hearing is as acute as ever; there's a snatch of something out there, something keening and aeolian way off among the reeds, and it has nothing to do with the ceaseless coursing of the wind. With a thumping heart she tugs her little backpack tighter and sets her face against the wind, upping the pace; presently, she comes upon a trackway that was never there before.
There are marks down in the mud, a spoor. Maia snaps on her torch, peers closer, and dares to grant herself a little smile.
****************
Royal Albert Hall, London
August 1977
The concert's over, and Maia is sat there cleaning her flute in the woodwind players' dressing room when she catches sight of one of the doormen edging towards her.
"Ms Thessalides?"
She smiles up at the man; her work's done for the night, and she's in wind-down mode, relaxed and happy enough to chat. "Hi there Rob. So, how'd we do tonight?"
She often asks him this question, or variations on it, and in fact she's genuinely interested in his opinion. Rob's fifteen years her junior, and as a tack-sharp graduate economist he could probably land a six-figure city job with little problem. But no, he'd rather be a doorman at the Albert Hall just struggling by on minimum wage – because Rob dearly loves his music, and with this employment he gets to sit in on every evening concert, every matinée. For this alone Maia respects him hugely; the fact that he's got a damn fine ear is just an added bonus.
The young man grins back at her. She's told him in the past that she's interested in specifics rather than gratuitous praise, and he hadn't needed to be instructed in this twice.
"Small balance issue with the horns in the Beethoven; they swamped the violas in the final movement tutti. But that might just be the crappy acoustics of this place, or maybe just the doorway where they stuck me."
It was something to remember; the conductor would want to know. "I'll make a point of telling Walter. If it's not the hall, it's something we need to work on."
"Well, don't get into trouble on my account!" He's suddenly very earnest. Perhaps a little too earnest, she thinks: he's delighted that she takes him seriously, and he's not very good at hiding it. Oh how she misses it, this delightful lack of guile that's gifted only to the young!
But there's something more.
"The performance tonight was wonderful, Ms Thessalides. No surprises there. However, what happened in the foyer afterwards doesn't happen every day."
Rather timidly he pulls a small envelope from the pocket of his tux.
"A gentleman from the audience was most anxious that I give you this." She sees his shoulders tense; he's probably noticed her frown. "Forgive me Maia, I know the rules, I know I should have declined him. But he really was awfully polite."
She forces the smile back onto her face. "It's quite all right, Rob. No harm done."
She plucks the envelope from his hand with her fingertips, as one might pick up a burning coal with tongs.
****************
They'd finished the first half that night with Debussy. Not just any Debussy of course, but that Debussy, the ten-minute riot of musical eroticism, of imagery and lyric wonder that changed the face of classical music forever. The Debussy that opens with one of the scariest and most exposed flute solos in the entirety of the repertoire.
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.
As principal flute in one of the top half-dozen orchestras in the world, Maia normally burns four or five hours a day on practice. In preparation for this piece she'd bumped that up to six. And in the end, they’d carried off the performance smoothly; well enough, at any rate, to garner more than a few cheers mixed in with the din of the applause, topped off to boot with a broad and genuine smile from Walter. Of course, the hardened professional in Maia wouldn't let her enjoy the moment for very long: perfection was getting more and more elusive the closer she approached it, as if she and her muse were bound on some cruel asymtote, destined never actually to meet. There were always minute improvements that might be made; tonight, five minutes in, her intonation with the oboe had been minutely off in the half-second it took her to correct it with her lip...
When the orchestra is on its A-game it's not unusual for some in the audience to rise to their feet to give ovation, and tonight had been no exception. But filing off the stage with all her colleagues she felt her skin prickle, and glancing up she found a short and strangely ageless man with a goatee beard there in the crowded gallery. He remained firmly seated, but in a moment of intuition she sensed that his plaudits were for her and her alone.
She looked a second time. Yup, he was staring down right at her, clapping unashamedly all the while. Against her better judgement she deigned to meet his eye, to give the smallest nod. The nod he gave her in return was equally discrete.
The second half of the programme was a Beethoven symphony, and the suite from a Bizet opera; she could have played both of them in her sleep. But with everything that came thereafter she never could remember exactly which symphony they played, or which suite – because the Debussy was at the core and centre of everything, the vital pivot, as if the Maia that had existed before those ten short minutes had been a diminished chord, three poor notes upon a piano keyboard, and the woman who came after an augmented one, embellished and built upon, fulfilled in a riot of orchestral colour.
****************
Quality writing paper, some weird hand-crafted weave with a fancy watermark. And could that really be...?
She lifts the note up to her nose, sniffs at ink that's barely dry upon the page. Yup; fountain pen. So far, so classy.
Dear Ms Thessalides
Oh well; Rob had been right about the politeness, at any rate.
Dear Ms Thessalides,
Never have I heard the Debussy played so beautifully; I was quite undone. Your phrasing and tone colour would have made the very composer blush...
Maia snorts and grimaces. She's had admirers before today, and this bore all the hallmarks of another hanger-on. It's honestly the last thing that she needs. She glances at her reflection in the mirror: at thirty-five she's still stunning in all her blonde and curvy Grecian loveliness. But her looks belie the steel within. Through talent, graft and downright bloodymindedness she's clawed her way to the top of a profession still awash with testosterone and prejudice, and she's not about to toss all that away on the foolish infatuation of a fan. Besides, an orchestral touring schedule leaves precious little room for romance; it's altogether more straightforward that she stays chaste.
She should not have taken pity on Rob, should never have taken the note. Muttering a quiet curse, Maia sets about reading the remainder quickly; after a few short seconds her eyes go wide.
I have a small business proposition for the finest orchestral flutist of the age. In truth I have been waiting for some time to approach the right musician, but it was not until tonight that I found her. The terms of the deal would not be onerous upon you; indeed I dare to hope you might find some small professional satisfaction in fulfilling your part of the bargain...
She finishes the note, incredulous. Was this guy for fucking real? But then she looks down to the signature, quite legible in an a hand so elegant and outmoded it's almost copperplate, and gasps.
The famously reclusive Landon deChèvre, most celebrated maker of handmade flutes in all of Europe, desired to carry out a redesign of his famous platinum flute. Would Ms Thessalides consent to undertake an extended trial of the new instrument? The only commitment on her part: to play the flute and, after proper consideration, provide her honest feedback.
In a daze, fingers trembling, she picks up her own flute once again. It's a respectable instrument, it can hold its head up high: a Sankyo, made in silver but of course, a decent and reliable workaday tool. That said, she'd love to make an upgrade – if only just the headjoint. But even the best orchestral players aren't exactly paid a fortune, and the rent on her south London pad is crippling. For her, a platinum flute lies firmly in the land of dreams.
A platinum flute by Landon deChèvre – the famously picky flutemaker who rejected many requests from rich hobbyist players, whose yearly output of top-end flutes could be reckoned on the fingers of one hand – well, the notion of having access to an instrument of such surpassing magnificence existed only in the realm of the unreal, and far, far beyond the wildest of oneiric fantasies.
Ms Thessalides, I humbly ask that you might consider my proposal in all seriousness, for if you were to decline I do not know when or where I might find another candidate. I have written my telephone number and address down here below, and I rely on your discretion not to disseminate them further...
****************
Rye, Sussex
August 1979
Maia pulls up outside the lonely cottage, kills the engine, and steps onto the driveway. Swifts scream about her ears, swoop and dash in fading summer sun; not to be outclassed, five thousand starlings swirl in dizzy unity out over the wetlands, their ritual pre-roost routine. The low rays saturate the reedbed swathes to set each stem ablaze, a million and more slender saffron spears.
She hears the electric thrum from inside the workshop, and knows just where she'll find him.
She leans against the doorframe, knowing better than to interrupt him; he's hunched over the milling machine, making micrometer adjustments as the cutter whirls. Satisfied at last he eases the lever downwards, and the motor's revs drop slightly as the sharp steel kisses the tubing with an almost ultrasonic whine. Drops of lubricant catherine-wheel away, along with the precious shavings; the litter of them on the floor alone looks to be worth more than a month of her orchestral wages. But he's not profligate, never wasteful; he'll sweep up every last filing when he's done, and for pure platinum the marketplace is always full of ready buyers.
She eyes him fondly as he works.
She should have known, two years ago, that there'd be more to the deal than met the eye. For what forty-something man does not have a history, with an emotional baggage-train riding right alongside? In his case that past had garnered infamy, and so, all things considered, she only had herself to blame.
What character of man might 'instrument maker' conjure in the mind? A craftsman, a patient perfectionist, a fellow with an obsessive eye for detail? Perhaps a social outcast, a loner, a man only really contented in his own company?
Not Landon deChèvre. Oh no, not that at all. For he'd been the enfant terrible of his profession: brash, extrovert, an untamed genius with spring-steel and the lathe –
And an utterly insatiable womaniser.
If only half of the swirling rumours had any basis in reality, that still left him responsible for a slew of dadless spawn spread liberally from Singapore to Scotland. Ten years and more he carried on, his parallel career of unparalleled carnality, until at last he'd been stopped dead in his tracks.
By Sylvia. His beloved Sylvia who, just nine short months later, he'd been obliged to lay into the cold dark earth along with their stillborn child.
That experience, five years back, seemed to finish him for women. No more girlfriends after that, no fresh grist for the bad-boy rumour-mill. He'd moved to England, bought this isolated refuge on the lonely borders of the old Cinque Port, and in his wind-raked castle girt all around with marshes and with reeds he'd retreated to his work.
All this Maia knew full well when she plucked that flute-shaped fruit he'd dangled so enticingly before her. But Lothario was in his past, his present celibacy confirmed; she dared to hope he'd keep their relationship entirely as he'd proposed.
And he had. It was she, to her chagrin, the knockout blonde professional, the woman with a heart of steel who yet conveyed the tones of angels, who’d failed.
Who could say how he sparked the ardour in her, kindled responses that she'd long thought dead and gone? There was certainly no intention on his part. In any case, by the time she committed fully to the pursuit the question had become entirely redundant in her mind.
Maia bent all of her determination and resourcefulness to her wooing. It'd still taken her a full twelve months to obtain what turned out to be a limited capitulation.
It's almost 11pm, and the swifts have ceased their screaming. She'll drag him off to bed as soon as he's finished with that tone-hole, but she knows full well that her forthcoming entertainment, while intense, will shy just short of satisfaction. She's coming to her fecund time again, and she's just about run out of ways of persuading him to give her what she wants.
It hasn't been for lack of trying.
****************
Two weeks later
There are some nights, particularly around the fullness of the moon and when the wind sings through the fringing osiers from the east, when he seems to be perpetually priapic.
Now is one of those times, and she's hardly complaining. She knows that in another short fortnight's time, when her shrinking resource of fertility stutters once more to life, she'll be hounding him all over again for that which she so dearly desires – just as she knows he'll deny her one more time.
The complaint nicks at the back of her waking mind, but not for long. For in these moments of their coupling she's utterly fulfilled; atop him or below, their union is the agency that makes her whole. Spurred on by him she crests each crashing wave in raw carnality, each peak more numbing than the one before. Drenched in sweat, moaning inchoate, in his arms she becomes Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Freya...
In a fortnight he'll frustrate her all over again; they'll row, she'll sulk, a discord driven deeper every month by the faltering of her body's clock. But for now, oh gods, for now there was no denying it: the sex, it was sublime!
****************
Rye, Sussex
November 2017
"I never took another mate, you know. After I chased you off, there was no one else."
"No?" His muzzle twitches, and his big brown eyes, always so expressive, become wide circles beneath the moon. "That – that is a great shame." He hangs his head, goatee bobbing, the paired horns that curl so handsome from his brow dipping towards her. "It's why I left – while you still had time to have the child you wanted. You didn't really chase me off at all."
She gives a short and mirthless laugh. "Feels like I did, though; I was relentless. Well, it doesn't matter now. You're here with me tonight – that's all that counts."
They're in a glade of sorts, a lacuna of precious sanctuary out amid the vastness of the reeds; they sit cross-legged together on the wet and silty mat of rushes and dead leaves that is their floor. Maia feels oddly comforted to reach and touch the stems that arch and sway above her, and she happens to notice, vaguely, that getting mud all over her clothes doesn't bother her at all. But her bones still ache with cold.
She glances up at him, and when she speaks her voice is as quiet and timid as any teenaged girl in love.
"Hold me?"
He smiles, reaching out with arms that are as lithe and youthful as on the day they met. She scoots around and nestles close, head upon his chest; his furry thighs are warm and soft against her own, but something with hard edges is nudging into her calf.
"Well, be careful with the hooves! I bruise too easily these days, I'm afraid."
"Sorry! Oh, I'm sorry!"
She sighs, gazing out happy and unseeing into the reed-curtain swaying ghostly-grey before her. "No harm done, old goat. It's magical out here, isn't it? I've always loved the reeds."
They sit in silence for a while; Maia doesn't want for anything other than to hear the beating of his heart and the sigh and rustle of the feathery stems. After a while she speaks again, but very soft:
"I did get to have a family, of a sort. I started teaching – in the schools, and privately. Turns out I was actually quite good at it. Who knew! But anyway, I got to make a difference. I brought music into a lot of fine young lives." She sighs, running gnarled, stiff fingers through the curled locks of his fur. "Some of those students, they stayed in touch. What with music, and with you, and them – I've really had a wonderful life."
He strokes her face idly for long seconds before replying.
"I'm sure you're right about making a difference. But my lady doth protest too much." He's whispering into her ear, as if to speak the words more loudly might tempt a vengeful god. "You were willing to take the risk of bearing our child, even after Sylvia; that's a choice the woman gets to make, never the man. I didn't understand that at the time. Now, I do."
"Hush," she says at once. "Don't say a word. Look what I brought with me tonight."
She reaches for her pack, then for the case inside. The flute gleams lustrous silver-white under the moon, as untarnished as the day she first took it from his hand.
"An extended trial, you said. Proper consideration. Have I held up my end of the bargain, would you say?"
He bleats out a short sharp laugh at that, the sound oddly sad and giddy both at once. As Maia puts the flute together he lets his hands slip down to hold her lightly round the waist, an unspoken invitation for her to play. Maia brings the flute up to her lips and lets the notes breathe forth; she only stops when she feels his body shake, and realises that he's sobbing.
"Syrinx," she hears him mutter through his tears. "It was always going to be Debussy, first and last."
His arms fall from her, and she frowns; she never wants to lose his touch again.
"I cannot play the flute, not when I'm like this. My lips, they're shaped all wrong." He sniffs in a breath, close by her ear. "But I can play this."
He's naked, naturally – but he does carry a basic buckskin pouch, slung on a belt that runs from his shoulder to his hip. He draws out a simple whistle cut from reed, six simple tone-holes bored along its length.
"If you would permit me, I'd like to make one for you."
****************
Neither Maia Thessalides nor her priceless flute were ever seen again. The police searched long and hard, along with many residents of Rye – including some of her old students, often their parents too. If any of them had been biologists, they might have wondered at the odd tracks that would occasionally appear at the reedbank's muddy edge, so curiously resembling those of two goats walking on hind legs.
Maia's old friend Rob, now semi-retired and greying and with his children all quite grown up and flown away, searched for her longer still. That he persevered for so long in this endeavour baffled all who knew him, but he never offered any explanation.
Rob wasn't a biologist either, but he had be blessed with exceptionally fine hearing. And he'd found that if he visited the marsh of a midsummer's evening, when the moon was full and the breeze soughed in from the east; well sometimes, when his mood was right, he thought he could just catch the voices of two flutes sighing out a lithesome sad duet upon the wind, far, far out across the reeds.
Category Music / Fantasy
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 87px
File Size 4.61 MB
Listed in Folders
Whoa Onic, that was quick. Best pair of headphones, huh? OK, now I'm worried! But at least you'll get to hear the awesomeness of the mics. I treated myself a few years back; they're a matched pair of Rode NT5s.
I always appreciate your comments - you know that - but thank you for giving this one your consideration. And look, two comments so far, and both from musicians! I like that.
I always appreciate your comments - you know that - but thank you for giving this one your consideration. And look, two comments so far, and both from musicians! I like that.
It took me a little while to remember the song. It was hauntingly familiar...but damn! You performed that?? Wow, amazing work!
Also, excellent story telling. Once upon a time, I went to school for Composition, though classical was not my forte. But I do remember being awed by Debussy. Quite the fine pairing of words and sound.
But I can't resist. Every time I hear someone mention Debussy, it always makes me think of "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" by Art of Noise, especially this track.
Rapt: In the Evening Air
(which of course leads to the next track...Metaforce)
Also, excellent story telling. Once upon a time, I went to school for Composition, though classical was not my forte. But I do remember being awed by Debussy. Quite the fine pairing of words and sound.
But I can't resist. Every time I hear someone mention Debussy, it always makes me think of "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" by Art of Noise, especially this track.
Rapt: In the Evening Air
(which of course leads to the next track...Metaforce)
Thank you so much. Yeah that was me and my flute there; I've been playing Syrinx on and off for, oh gawd, 35-odd years. The perfect performance still evades me... that's just the sort of piece it is. And you're right, Debussy is downright awesome. He hated being labelled an 'impressionist', but I think he got pigeonholed like that simply because he was so innovative and no one could think of another term to describe his music.
I would never have thought of doing a mashup of Debussy like Art of Noise have done. It's cool discovering new stuff on FA, so thanks for mentioning those tracks. (The links didn't work I'm afraid, but I found the tracks no problem anyway.)
Ooh, and thanks for the appreciation of the story too!
I would never have thought of doing a mashup of Debussy like Art of Noise have done. It's cool discovering new stuff on FA, so thanks for mentioning those tracks. (The links didn't work I'm afraid, but I found the tracks no problem anyway.)
Ooh, and thanks for the appreciation of the story too!
I have to write this before I finish as it's time to go to that place called work. Thinking you had submitted only music, I listened and was shocked. This is the piece I remember as a child. It was on a storybook record album that I and my siblings listened to incessantly. What wonderful memories this sparked.
I read slow - I especially read slow when I am reading for enjoyment; it is my curse I suppose. So you know, I even set aside the piece I was working on for this particular story. It is like nothing I was ever expecting and is so very beautiful in its richness of words.
*smiles...
and now off to that place...
V.
I read slow - I especially read slow when I am reading for enjoyment; it is my curse I suppose. So you know, I even set aside the piece I was working on for this particular story. It is like nothing I was ever expecting and is so very beautiful in its richness of words.
*smiles...
and now off to that place...
V.
'Syrinx' is distinctive, that's for sure; it could only have been written by Debussy. I was very happy to be able to bring back those memories for you.
Seriously, you put your own story on hold for this one? I have this vision of the words bubbling up in you like a pressure cooker, impatient to get out... I feel bad about that... but thank you very much in any case, and for the kind words about my writing too of course! I had been wanting to tackle this story for some time.
Seriously, you put your own story on hold for this one? I have this vision of the words bubbling up in you like a pressure cooker, impatient to get out... I feel bad about that... but thank you very much in any case, and for the kind words about my writing too of course! I had been wanting to tackle this story for some time.
This will be the hardest review I've written to date.
I knew something was up when I loaded the page and saw the media player displayed. Knowing you teach music and play the flute, I was quite happy to listen. Only I didn't. Not at first. I glanced down and saw text so, naturally, I investigated that first. I soon realized this was far more than your first media upload to FA.
On reading the first line of the story, I saw I was in for a rough time. "Reeds bend low in serried waves of genuflection?" Yeah, someone had cranked a control to 11.
So I read, looking first for the obvious. There was a lot going on, and I had to go slow. I was a little stunned by the magnitude of it. I understood only that this was a piece unlike anything I've seen in a while.
A second reading found a good bit more. But before I could go further I had to check the Wiki pages. I played the media file of Sarah Bassingthwaite's rendition. My confidence slipped a bit, listening to the piece.
Finally, I played your recording. I tried to imagine how your fingers had to move over the flute to make the music I was hearing. Sarah Bassingthwaite's recording is studio clear and orchestrally finessed. It's smooth and amazing and sounds almost artificial. Yours... yours sounds real. It sounds like it's coming from another room in my house, and if I could only find you I could watch your performance and marvel at those bird-call flutterings that seem nearly impossible to produce with only breath and nimble fingers.
This... whole thing. This unexpected duet of words and music from a single source... I don't feel honestly capable of giving a meaningful review. It's like going to an opera for the first time and being unable to offer more than "That was some really nice singing."
I don't know music well enough to fully appreciate the depth of the material you've offered here. I understand the context but I simply don't have the receptors to 'get' everything you've put into it. I don't know Greek mythology or Debussy beyond what I can glean from the Wiki page, so the really subtle stuff must certainly be passing me by.
I want to give a more comprehensive review of this but I simply don't have the skill. What I can say is that I am quite humbled by what you've shown us. I envy both your musical skills and your creative flair for writing. This is a step well beyond your first short stories. And this is after your new chapters of 'Tremble.'
There is one thing I can confidently say about this, though. After my fourth read-through, I found myself comparing the overall plot to a book you recommended to me lately. I've read 'The Wolf Border' by Sarah Hall recently enough to recognize the thematic similarities. Very nicely done, that.
This is simply one of the best things I've experienced in a long time. Thank you very much for sharing it with us. I'm most eager to see what you come up with next.
I knew something was up when I loaded the page and saw the media player displayed. Knowing you teach music and play the flute, I was quite happy to listen. Only I didn't. Not at first. I glanced down and saw text so, naturally, I investigated that first. I soon realized this was far more than your first media upload to FA.
On reading the first line of the story, I saw I was in for a rough time. "Reeds bend low in serried waves of genuflection?" Yeah, someone had cranked a control to 11.
So I read, looking first for the obvious. There was a lot going on, and I had to go slow. I was a little stunned by the magnitude of it. I understood only that this was a piece unlike anything I've seen in a while.
A second reading found a good bit more. But before I could go further I had to check the Wiki pages. I played the media file of Sarah Bassingthwaite's rendition. My confidence slipped a bit, listening to the piece.
Finally, I played your recording. I tried to imagine how your fingers had to move over the flute to make the music I was hearing. Sarah Bassingthwaite's recording is studio clear and orchestrally finessed. It's smooth and amazing and sounds almost artificial. Yours... yours sounds real. It sounds like it's coming from another room in my house, and if I could only find you I could watch your performance and marvel at those bird-call flutterings that seem nearly impossible to produce with only breath and nimble fingers.
This... whole thing. This unexpected duet of words and music from a single source... I don't feel honestly capable of giving a meaningful review. It's like going to an opera for the first time and being unable to offer more than "That was some really nice singing."
I don't know music well enough to fully appreciate the depth of the material you've offered here. I understand the context but I simply don't have the receptors to 'get' everything you've put into it. I don't know Greek mythology or Debussy beyond what I can glean from the Wiki page, so the really subtle stuff must certainly be passing me by.
I want to give a more comprehensive review of this but I simply don't have the skill. What I can say is that I am quite humbled by what you've shown us. I envy both your musical skills and your creative flair for writing. This is a step well beyond your first short stories. And this is after your new chapters of 'Tremble.'
There is one thing I can confidently say about this, though. After my fourth read-through, I found myself comparing the overall plot to a book you recommended to me lately. I've read 'The Wolf Border' by Sarah Hall recently enough to recognize the thematic similarities. Very nicely done, that.
This is simply one of the best things I've experienced in a long time. Thank you very much for sharing it with us. I'm most eager to see what you come up with next.
Oh, goodness! I admit it, I did get a slight thrill from posting something a little bit different, something that might surprise folk. But I never intended to give you a hard time reviewing! Hearing from you that the 'duet' satified you overall, and also your opinion that my writing has improved: these things are entirely sufficient for me. Thank you so much.
Bassingthwaite's rendering is indeed highly professional and polished; mine is unashamedly raw. A lot has to do with the recording space and microphone placement: one recording was made in an 'idealised' studio setting with mics set a little way off, the other in a confined stone turret deliberately chosen for its claustrophic reverb, and with close-set mics. Bassingthwaite does, however, achieve more variety of tone colour than me (the player can control the richness of harmonics in the sound: few harmonics = thin, pure tone; lots of harmonics = intense, dark tone).
Ah, so you finished 'Wolf Border'. We should compare notes! Theme aside, it's Sarah Hall's vocabulary and phrasing that influenced me most. She has persuaded me that pushing the vocabulary is a valid move, when the word's meaning fits and when its inclusion helps the rhyme and rhythm and flow of a sentence.
Bassingthwaite's rendering is indeed highly professional and polished; mine is unashamedly raw. A lot has to do with the recording space and microphone placement: one recording was made in an 'idealised' studio setting with mics set a little way off, the other in a confined stone turret deliberately chosen for its claustrophic reverb, and with close-set mics. Bassingthwaite does, however, achieve more variety of tone colour than me (the player can control the richness of harmonics in the sound: few harmonics = thin, pure tone; lots of harmonics = intense, dark tone).
Ah, so you finished 'Wolf Border'. We should compare notes! Theme aside, it's Sarah Hall's vocabulary and phrasing that influenced me most. She has persuaded me that pushing the vocabulary is a valid move, when the word's meaning fits and when its inclusion helps the rhyme and rhythm and flow of a sentence.
To be honest, that review took several days of separate readings, almost an hour of perusing the Wiki pages for reference and a good hour to write out. It really was possibly the most difficult review I've ever done and the sad thing is it's mostly about how poor a review it really is. Your work is challenging enough when you aim your big guns at my heart. I'm starting to think Anhedral will surpass us all in his skill at writing.
In fact, I really hope he does. The inspiration given to the rest of us would be a great boon.
In fact, I really hope he does. The inspiration given to the rest of us would be a great boon.
Oh dear, did the story really eat into your time that way? I feel bad...
Your review was in no way poor. No, it made my day! I was seriously concerned that a story I'd been thinking about for months might fall flat on its face, which would be a poor tribute to Debussy indeed.
You continue to find the kindest things to say about my writing, things I feel I in no way deserve. But please don't think me ungrateful; on the contrary, hearing your appreciation gives a huge lift to my day and is the best spur for me to continue and try to improve. Thank you, my kind friend, thank you!
Your review was in no way poor. No, it made my day! I was seriously concerned that a story I'd been thinking about for months might fall flat on its face, which would be a poor tribute to Debussy indeed.
You continue to find the kindest things to say about my writing, things I feel I in no way deserve. But please don't think me ungrateful; on the contrary, hearing your appreciation gives a huge lift to my day and is the best spur for me to continue and try to improve. Thank you, my kind friend, thank you!
Oh no, there is nothing to feel bad about. I didn't sit down to review your work with any dread. I only related the amount of time spent because I felt a bit disappointed in my response. After soaking in such a rich environment I wanted to relate how much the piece meant to me. For whatever reason, I just couldn't produce a response to your work that felt worthy. Luckily, Onic was good enough to do that for me.
A full week after you posted this story, I think I'm ready to review. Two points I need to start off with first.
Based upon my first comment, I can see you may have thought I had already read the story when I made it. This is not the case. I thought it was a lone audio file and began listening to it. When the scroll down revealed more than a simple descriptive accompaniment, I hard braked, wrote my comment, then settled in to see what I was in for.
Secondly, this review will pale in comparison to Wirewolf's. I'm quite glad he wrote it so I can fully echo his sentiments about how difficult it is to write my thoughts on this story. It is important to note that Wirewolf and I's strategies for tackling this story are completely opposite. I did no research or digging of any kind prior to reading, as I am wont to dive in looking for first impressions rather than building a scaffold upon which to hang my expectations. If I've read about Pan and Syrinx, it was so long ago that the details are not readily in memory. As for Debussy, I strongly admire his work but know only a few pieces by name, and not the one you played in the recording.
Here goes...
From the second paragraph, I knew this story would jump into the past. An old woman who lost someone has a history waiting to be retold. That first jump to four decades prior put me in mind of the visual distinction between eras in the film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. The present shows elderly characters in a old-film style black and white, and when time pulls us backwards into the past the colors blossom and clarity returns to dazzle us with the events that begin to unfold. The comparison only grows stronger as the scene opens at the end of a performance.
From the initial introduction of Landon by way of the letter, we are given two more time hops, 2 years, then 2 weeks, respectively, that offer the reader glimpses of how their relationship develops. A simple nod to changes that occurred in the interim is all that is needed. Those truly important details are happening in the moment, and the reader has little to worry by way of filling the gaps, since you paint such a clear picture of where Maia is internally and emotionally. This is one of my most sought-after skills, as I have a tendency to write consecutively to a fault, even if the story isn't contained in those portions which would be better off summarized or skipped entirely.
I'm not going to try and match your beautiful prose here in my review. Your word choices and phrases were gorgeous, visually stunning, heart stirring, and invigorating to read. I occupied every location as though I there watching events unfold. I felt the curiosity, frustration, and eventual fulfillment that Maia did upon her leaving of this earthly realm to live with her god of music. I heard the hiss of windswept reeds, blinked in the moonlight, and even got caught up in Maia's determination to win her prize from the reticent man she loves. I must add that the word choices you made required multiple tabs for dictionary use, because I was not about to have any part of this story lost on me in the moment of reading. Serried, genuflection, aeolian, spoor, musical eroticism, exposed solo, strangely ageless, plaudits, likening a person to a musical chord, riot of orchestral color. The list goes on. Even in the realm of sexuality you made me blink in surprise at a few choice terms that I had not run across before, and I perceive myself as relatively well read.
My interpreted theme of the story is longing. Both characters are in different stages of desire. Maia's desires in her youth are immediate and pressing. Pan's desires were failures and he does not want to repeat that again, so he is withheld even as Maia slowly erodes his personal inhibition. Only when Maia has aged into the same stage of longing that he exists in does Pan fully accept and draw Maia into his own realm.
You have a professional exposure to music, and to musical performance, based upon this piece. Hearing a writer do music justice is such a rare treat, so thank you for that.
I've read your story about four times through. As I become more familiar it seems shorter and easier to encompass. That is why I enjoy the first blind read through without expectations. I can be enveloped by the story and feel it the most intensely in that first pass, while all others must inevitably become more analytical and less emotional.
Wonderful work, my friend.
Based upon my first comment, I can see you may have thought I had already read the story when I made it. This is not the case. I thought it was a lone audio file and began listening to it. When the scroll down revealed more than a simple descriptive accompaniment, I hard braked, wrote my comment, then settled in to see what I was in for.
Secondly, this review will pale in comparison to Wirewolf's. I'm quite glad he wrote it so I can fully echo his sentiments about how difficult it is to write my thoughts on this story. It is important to note that Wirewolf and I's strategies for tackling this story are completely opposite. I did no research or digging of any kind prior to reading, as I am wont to dive in looking for first impressions rather than building a scaffold upon which to hang my expectations. If I've read about Pan and Syrinx, it was so long ago that the details are not readily in memory. As for Debussy, I strongly admire his work but know only a few pieces by name, and not the one you played in the recording.
Here goes...
From the second paragraph, I knew this story would jump into the past. An old woman who lost someone has a history waiting to be retold. That first jump to four decades prior put me in mind of the visual distinction between eras in the film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. The present shows elderly characters in a old-film style black and white, and when time pulls us backwards into the past the colors blossom and clarity returns to dazzle us with the events that begin to unfold. The comparison only grows stronger as the scene opens at the end of a performance.
From the initial introduction of Landon by way of the letter, we are given two more time hops, 2 years, then 2 weeks, respectively, that offer the reader glimpses of how their relationship develops. A simple nod to changes that occurred in the interim is all that is needed. Those truly important details are happening in the moment, and the reader has little to worry by way of filling the gaps, since you paint such a clear picture of where Maia is internally and emotionally. This is one of my most sought-after skills, as I have a tendency to write consecutively to a fault, even if the story isn't contained in those portions which would be better off summarized or skipped entirely.
I'm not going to try and match your beautiful prose here in my review. Your word choices and phrases were gorgeous, visually stunning, heart stirring, and invigorating to read. I occupied every location as though I there watching events unfold. I felt the curiosity, frustration, and eventual fulfillment that Maia did upon her leaving of this earthly realm to live with her god of music. I heard the hiss of windswept reeds, blinked in the moonlight, and even got caught up in Maia's determination to win her prize from the reticent man she loves. I must add that the word choices you made required multiple tabs for dictionary use, because I was not about to have any part of this story lost on me in the moment of reading. Serried, genuflection, aeolian, spoor, musical eroticism, exposed solo, strangely ageless, plaudits, likening a person to a musical chord, riot of orchestral color. The list goes on. Even in the realm of sexuality you made me blink in surprise at a few choice terms that I had not run across before, and I perceive myself as relatively well read.
My interpreted theme of the story is longing. Both characters are in different stages of desire. Maia's desires in her youth are immediate and pressing. Pan's desires were failures and he does not want to repeat that again, so he is withheld even as Maia slowly erodes his personal inhibition. Only when Maia has aged into the same stage of longing that he exists in does Pan fully accept and draw Maia into his own realm.
You have a professional exposure to music, and to musical performance, based upon this piece. Hearing a writer do music justice is such a rare treat, so thank you for that.
I've read your story about four times through. As I become more familiar it seems shorter and easier to encompass. That is why I enjoy the first blind read through without expectations. I can be enveloped by the story and feel it the most intensely in that first pass, while all others must inevitably become more analytical and less emotional.
Wonderful work, my friend.
This review... I scarcely know where to start. I'm a little overwhelmed, to be honest.
I think you and Wire both have valid methods of gaining first impressions of a piece. Saying that your first 'blind' reading allowed you to concentrate on the emotions rather than anything more analtical makes a lot of sense, because Debussy is about musical scene-painting and evocation of emotion more than anything else - at least, that's my take on what he was about as a composer. And if the emotion of 'longing' came across to you then I'm glad, because it is definitely felt by both of the main characters here, both in the ancient original version and in mine.
You also picked up on two things that I worried might not quite work: the time hops, and the vocabulary. I've done time-hopping stories before, and there's always the risk of introducing confusion; but I've found that readers are resilient if they're invested in a story, and will happily jump a span of years - as you have done - if they can see that the story requires it. As for the vocab, yes I pushed it; it just felt right for this story. Nonetheless I was concerned that it might seem 'over the top', so I am so relieved to hear that it added flavour rather than cause irritation to the reader. Oh, and I knew you'd pick up on the diminished and augmented chords thing, I just knew you would!
The perception and attention to specfic details that you brought to your review are things I appreciated hugely. Thank you so very much, Onic.
I think you and Wire both have valid methods of gaining first impressions of a piece. Saying that your first 'blind' reading allowed you to concentrate on the emotions rather than anything more analtical makes a lot of sense, because Debussy is about musical scene-painting and evocation of emotion more than anything else - at least, that's my take on what he was about as a composer. And if the emotion of 'longing' came across to you then I'm glad, because it is definitely felt by both of the main characters here, both in the ancient original version and in mine.
You also picked up on two things that I worried might not quite work: the time hops, and the vocabulary. I've done time-hopping stories before, and there's always the risk of introducing confusion; but I've found that readers are resilient if they're invested in a story, and will happily jump a span of years - as you have done - if they can see that the story requires it. As for the vocab, yes I pushed it; it just felt right for this story. Nonetheless I was concerned that it might seem 'over the top', so I am so relieved to hear that it added flavour rather than cause irritation to the reader. Oh, and I knew you'd pick up on the diminished and augmented chords thing, I just knew you would!
The perception and attention to specfic details that you brought to your review are things I appreciated hugely. Thank you so very much, Onic.
Okay. Let's see how this copy-pastes in here. Poke me if there are obvious typos or formatting things I missed.
Here is my first lit review. I tried my best!
What I think makes Syrinx such a standout piece is closely related to the way in which you use soft references to harmonize his story with the mythos surrounding the Greek legend Pan, god of shepherds, wilds, and music. While these references, which I will talk about later, give the story a verticality that elevates it above a typical snapshot romance, it is not the references themselves that owe to Syrinx’s overall quality. Rather, it is the way in which you use them to first construct and then dismantle our Classical assumptions of what the story is about and who these characters ought to be that highlights the strength of this piece.
I hesitate, however, to call this approach a subversion of expectations. I don’t think that’s quite right. Because while you do indeed square up our expectations early on – with both the title itself and through the imagery of reeds in the first sentence to color in motif, meanwhile also forging parallels between the first sections of the story’s narrative and classical mythology – you ultimately do not do away with these expectations all together as would be required by subversion. Like many classical retellings, you let the gravity of myth dictate the fall of the plot. However, and this is what makes Syrinx such a standout piece in my opinion, rather than recreating the landing, you have chosen instead to shake the fall.
The best analogy I can think of is that the myths of Pan are like the bones of an old house that you bought with the purpose of remodeling. The foundation is good, the outer walls and roofing is sound, and structurally, there’s nothing wrong with it. So, on the outside, you let what be, be. But on the inside, you took a hammer to the walls, opened it up a little, and lay down your own blueprint for how it ought to look. Outside, it is the same house. But inside– well, let’s just see. Take your shoes off at the door. I made cookies.
None of this makes sense without proper examples. If we are at all familiar with the stories surrounding Pan, then from the title alone we can guess that the story may have something to do with it. Additionally, within the first sentence, within the entire first section of the story, and within the last, reeds dominate the setting casting further callbacks to the nymph-turned-flute that would come to bear her name. Any lasting doubts about the mythological influence of the story are gently ironed out as we unfold further and further into the story itself. The name of the main character is a large giveaway, Thessalides being a direct reference to the naiad-nymphs of Thessalia, a central region in Greece. Ms. Thessalides herself is described as having “Grecian loveliness”. Landon Chèvre is a man described as having a “goat”ee (ha!), an “ageless face”, a womanizer, and of course, he is a flute maker.
By themselves, each of these is simply a small detail, placed appropriately within the story to provide context, to give texture. Unassuming. These soft references, perhaps better classified as allusion, I consider to be a strength because they give the moments in which they appear more nuance upon a second reading. They imbue the lines with a kind of deftness, a dexterity that bends the imagery down multiple paths. On their own, each allusion is like a single drop of water that drips through the paragraphs of their own accord. At the end though, each of these individual pieces has collected into a bucket that you use to splash us into realization upon reaching the denouement of your story: What’s this? This was a story about Pan? How did we not notice before?
The devil was in the details. Well – in this case, maybe not Satan but upon close inspection, the goat god of music certainly was.
Next, in keeping with and furthering the discussion of how your story parallels the myth, so I can then explain what I found to be so clever about the way in which it was twisted (but not subverted, remember!), I want to zoom out a bit and paint the broader strokes.
First, I think it’s important we look at which elements were directly taken directly from the myth itself. I’ll start with the characters. Ms. Thessalides is a flutist, independent, and prioritizing. She is beautiful, chaste, pursuant to the classical arts which we may take in the story as a kind of purity. So, not only in appearance, but also in ability and mannerism does Ms. Thessalildes bear the characteristics of the fantastical nymph. So we can check “nymph” off the list of things this story has in common with the myth. Next we have Landon the flute maker, ageless and obsessed, an enfant terrible, selfish in his profession to a fault, aloof or arrogant or both. All these things neatly pin him as the god Pan. Obviously, a story about Pan needs the goat himself, so he gets checked off the list too. Finally, by my estimations, there is a third character in the story of which you have dredged up from the past: Sylvia. By my interpretation, Sylvia is a representation of the nymph Syrinx, at least in part. By this, I mean that Sylvia was someone Landon (Pan) had great affection for, someone who died, and that in doing so carved out an eternal longing within Landon. While the details of her character have been altered – obviously Sylvia wasn’t turned into reeds like Syrinx and, unlike in the myth, Landon was actually able to “catch” her and try to have a child together – the underlying themes of love, pursuit, loss, and longing are similar enough between Sylvia and Syrinx that the character Sylvia bears mentioning. And not only that. The way in which she appears in the story, in my opinion, signifies the inflection point by which the story steps out of the classical realm altogether and into your hands alone. I can’t talk about that yet, but I’m almost there.
Apart from the characters and the obvious themes of music and chastity, there is one final element that has been taken from myth and it is this final element, less an object and more an idea, that is the code-red, critical bit you use to transform the story completely.
I’m going to borrow my house analogy from above. If a story is like a house and the framework it’s plot, then the foundation represents the most fundamental part of the story altogether: its conflict. Without a foundation, a house will inevitably collapse; there can be no home. Likewise, without conflict, there is no story.
Warning: I’m not an expert in Greek mythology. I probably should have stated this earlier. However, even from a superficial glance at the myths and stories that surround Pan, it seems a straightforward thing to argue that the central conflicts of these stories always fit snugly within the man vs. man conflict archetype. Most notably, it is Pan the chaser, going after nymphs and women in fits of lust. Or Pan the performer, challenging Apollo with claims of musical superiority (poor Midas!). Pan is always challenging, but it is never himself that he challenges. And why should he? He is a Greek god. Hubris is kind of his thing.
So this is the kind of backdrop I expected going into your story, as a necessary requirement for this kind of retelling. And for the first half of the story, this is exactly what I got. To the letter, this is how you set up the elements of your story, how you propose the conflict to us, the readers. We have Ms. Thessalildes, beautiful, musical, the nymph to be chased. There is Landon, the flute maker, praising her skills, imploring her service, chasing. He spurns greatness; it is beneath him. He asks only for perfection because his instruments deserve absolutely nothing less. He knows this. His hubris and his lathe are one and the same. Thus we have man vs. man: him vs her. The setup is complete. Let gravity do the work. And it does. But not in the way you’d think.
See, with the single mention of Sylvia, and, considering her likeness to Syrinx, the main conflict that we expected comes to a grinding halt halfway through the story. We see that, in actuality, the conflict that I’ve been talking about ran its course before the narrative of the story had even begun, and that ultimately, as in the myth this story is based off of, Landon lost. Syrinx became the reeds. Sylvia died, the myth is over. And next, we are told that Landon no longer goes after women the way in which he did before, the way Pan does. So this begs the question: is Landon in actuality completely different from the Pan of myth. Not necessarily, I say. This revelation doesn’t mean that he now isn’t chasing something, nor is his hubris in any way lessened with respect to his music. Our Pan is still Pan. But he has been retextured and we come to realize that the story has never been about the underlying conflict that we assumed it to be. So what is it about then?
I’ve arrived now, I think, at the place I set out to get to when I first started typing this a while ago. This next bit is why I really like Syrinx. In doing away with the expected conflict of the story, You give yourself the room to insert your own. And you do. In actuality, you had been openly presenting to us the real conflict of the story since its beginning and we just didn’t realize it. But that’s only half of it. The magic, the real magic of this is that after finishing the story, we realize that you built Syrinx using nothing less than the exact same conflict as the one you did away with!
I’m probably not making much sense. Let me try again. Imagine taking a room and applying paint remover to the walls only to repaint them the exact same color, but using a different brand of paint. That is in essence what you did to the central conflict of Syrinx. You took what we assumed to be the expected route the story, stripped it down completely halfway through, and then said, “Well no, but actually yes,” while slapping the same thing back up again. By my interpretation, the real conflict of the story still fits snugly within the man vs man archetype. We learn after reading the latter half of the story that it was still, always, fundamentally man vs. man, him vs her, Chèvre vs, Thessalildes. But, tactfully, upon this same foundation, you did some shuffling. You’ve given Maia some of Landon’s cards and Landon some of Maia’s cards. We’re playing the same game with the same people, but now, they have slightly different hands. Example time!
The same flashback which sees the revelation about Sylvia crash the stock market of our expectations sees also the idea that it is Ms. Thessalildes and not Landon who is the chaser of the story. This is where a diluted form of role reversal comes into play. Here, now, the nymph is chasing the fleeing Pan. It’s now backwards. Except that actually, wonderfully, this reversal of character interplay has been present from the beginning. During the opening scene, it’s an older Ms. Thessalildes searching through the reeds to find her lover, not the other way around. And while it was Landon who gave her the note after the concert, it she who first acknowledged him in the crowd, and later, wasn’t it she who chose, ultimately, to pursue his deal? And also he, later on, chooses not to be with her and to run away instead, leaving her to a life without him. And finally, the cherry on top is that in his absence, all she has left of him is a flute to remind her of him, just as Pan made a flute of Syrinx. So as Syrinx became to Pan, Landon’s flute became to her an “extended trial”.
And there we have it. The subtle and beautiful rotation of a classical myth. As I mentioned in the beginning, I do not believe this to be a subversion of expectations. Yes, the nymph chases Pan and not the other way around. Yes, Pan himself turns away from from his lusts (thus introducing a man vs. self character development sub-conflict with its own sub-resolution that I won’t get into because this is long enough as it is). But ultimately, I don’t think this necessarily constitutes a subversion because we know that the initial expectations of what we assumed would happen did happen, just not within the scope of the narrative itself. The myth had already played out in its modern context. Landon had his ego. Landon chased his lovers. Landon got his loss. Pan was Pan was always Pan and Syrinx, the story, both was and wasn’t his retelling. This is what I meant in the beginning when I said that you, Anhedral, let the gravity of the myth dictate the landing of the plot, but that you yourself chose to shake the fall.
I’m probably being very confusing even though I’m trying hard not to. This piece to me feels like a colorful film has been placed over a modern retelling so that it is multi-hued and fuzzy and cool to look at but difficult to describe. Basically, all the above has been me following my own tracks of logic in order to explain to the best of my abilities what it was about this piece that grabbed me. I couldn’t do it properly without first talking about all the references, the allusions. I couldn’t do it without first talking about which elements were direct transplants from myths. I needed both of those things to underscore how they built up our expectations so I could then explain just how it was that you broke them and then wonderfully pieced them back together. I’m terribly sorry it took this long. Also get ready to groan. I’m not done yet...
First of all, nothing I have talked about has had anything to do with the writing itself. Writing the monstrosity above felt very much like an exercise in theory, but theory alone is not what makes a story good. Solid writing must also be present and I’d like to make a few comments about the strengths of the writing in Syrinx as well as highlight a few places that stood out to me as places for consideration. While I’ve certainly taken some pains to talk about what I liked about the story, nothing that I’ve written yet feels either that constructive or critique-y and since a constructive criticism should probably have both, I’ll do what I can below.
The first thing that stuck out for me, or rather what didn’t stick out to me, were the little snatches of dialogue that peppered the story. That’s because, when dialogue is good, I tend to not notice it too much. It’s smooth. It just flows. This story is a good example of when dialogue is done right. Syrinx is a short story and the thus the writing must be economical. The dialogue, as well as the rest of the prose, adheres to this fairly well and yet, nothing is sacrificed within the story or the dialogue for brevity’s sake. This aspect of Syrinx stood out to me because I find dialogue to be the most difficult part of a story to write. So perhaps the greatest compliment I can think of is that in reading Syrinx, I learned something about the way in which I write dialogue for my stories. I love it when stories can teach me something. This one certainly has.
Also, in many cases when I read writing online, the choice of tense and point of view seem arbitrary. By that, I mean that it feels like an author picked either first or third, past or present without much consideration and headed on their merry way. There is nothing wrong with this approach. However, I think stories can gain an additional impact, they can have leverage with the reader, if the author can successfully utilize the strengths of the tense and point of view that they have chosen to write in. In Syrinx’s case, the present tense is used to excellence in the first and last sections of the story to create tension within each scene. The wind didn’t blow sometime in the past. The keening didn’t rise above the reeds some time ago. The wind is blowing now. There is music and lamentation coursing the marshland this second. Reflection is a time for the past. Action, thought, emotion are all made for the time called the present. And we have these. Because I was in a music-oriented mindset as I read these passages, the tension brought about by the use of present tense reminded me of the moment a bow is placed upon the string of a viola but has yet to be pulled so that we hear in this moment not the glaze of a first note but the ultimatum of silence this moment presages.
Another strength of this piece is its imagery. You use strong visual cues to alert us to key motifs, to set the mood, to paint the background so the foreground and the characters become more vivid in contrast to it. This ties in well with your ability to show when appropriate and tell when necessary. Additionally, it is the sharp imagery and the precise vocabulary which gives the story an authority it might not otherwise have had. Particularly, we the reader are given the sense that this was written by someone who knows the ins and outs of performance, orchestral work, and the world of high-class music in general. And not only does that someone know about this world, they care for it. You handles these passages with a tender delicacy. We get a sense for just how much you care about music and for a few short pages, we feel just how much you want to enmesh us in you world so that we can snatch a piece of your passion for ourselves. You do this well.
Finally, I would like to humbly draw attention to two specific areas to offer up for your consideration. Firstly, I noticed quite a few sentences that utilize colons or semi-colons as a means of conjoining two separate thoughts into one sentence. While, grammatically speaking, their usage was fine, there were a few places where it seemed to me more agreeable to the flow of the story to separate them into two sentences. What I mean is that when a colon or a semi-colon is used to separate thoughts, the reader must hold onto the idea of the first thought and carry it with them into the second section because there is some relation that connects the two. However, there were several sentences that I felt the pre and post colon or semi-colon sections were different enough from each other that it would have made more sense for them to stand on their own as separate sentences.
The second area I would offer up for your consideration revolves around particular word choices for certain passages in your work. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the word choice is spot on. But I’d like to show an example of a passage where a particular word choice pulled me away from the narrative somewhat. Below is the full paragraph in which this word appears:
“She leans against the door frame, knowing better than to interrupt him; he's hunched over the milling machine, making micrometer adjustments as the cutter whirls. Satisfied at last he eases the lever downwards, and the motor's revs drop slightly as the sharp steel kisses the tubing with an almost ultrasonic whine. Drops of lubricant catherine-wheel away, along with the precious shavings; the litter of them on the floor alone looks to be worth more than a month of her orchestral wages. But he's not profligate, never wasteful; he'll sweep up every last filing when he's done, and for pure platinum the marketplace is always full of ready buyers.“
The word I am referring to is “profligate”. It means to be “recklessly extravagant or wasteful”. It is not the definition of profligate that I am concerned with, however. In this respect, the word fits just fine. Rather, it is how this word associates itself with all the other descriptive words in the paragraph that I’d like to examine. Before it, we are given words like milling, machine, micrometer, cutter, lever, motor, revs, steel, tubing, ultrasonic, whine, lubricant, cahterine-wheel (which I love, by the way), shavings, platinum, etc. These are very mechanical words. They mesh well together to accentuate the imagery of Landon’s machining as a whole. But then we have profligate. When I put this word into the list of the others, it sticks out to me. I realize this might sound odd, but compared to the other words, profligate doesn’t have the right texture to blend in with the rest and should therefore be replaced. I realize that my argument is a stylistic one, but one that I’ll nonetheless point out because I think it could be well for you to see it. If you agree with me, then cool, we think alike. If not, it only helps you realize and refine your own style further. Its a win-win.
Another example, and my last one, actually occurs in the very first sentence of the story. The sentence goes as follows: The east wind moans across the marshes, and all the reeds bend low in serried waves of genuflection. Again, I think there are two words that are out of place, and this time not needed at all. I’m referring to “of genuflection” at the end of the sentence. Here’s why I think it’s not needed. I believe that the additional clarification of “serried waves” into “serried waves of genuflection” actually detracts from the imagery of the first sentence. This is because the last thought of the sentence is not a precise image but rather a modifier to a precise image. In this way, we are left not with the image of serried reeds bowing in the wind but instead, the last thing the sentence asks us to do is to hold that image in our head while simultaneously attaching to it a personified modifier which then incorporates another layer of interpretation we must decipher before moving on to the next sentence. I know this all sounds woefully pedantic and one hundred percent subjective, which it totally is, but, in my opinion, stylistically, the sentence is much stronger if it goes like: The east wind moans across the marshes and all the reeds bend low in serried waves. Serried waves gives us a clear, sharp image that doesn’t pull its punches. If I had to rewrite the first paragraph, I would do it something like this:
“The east wind moans across the marshes and all the reeds bend low in serried waves. Their stems, bereft of summer warmth, sigh out in a single mournful chorus.”
Again, this is my opinion, but I would toss out the genuflection all together, because genuflection implies a pious respect to a higher authority, but where is the elaboration on what this higher authority is? Is it the wind? Is it Maia? I think without further elaboration, the ambiguity of this imagery discredits the strength of the rest of the writing in this paragraph.
Take all this with a grain of salt. But these truly are the kinds of things I tend to think about when reading other people’s work and the kinds of questions I ask myself when I’m writing my own. It is completely fine to point at me and say “bruh, you’re wrong.” But at the very least, I think that these kinds of things are good to think about. Which is why I gave you the two specific examples above.
That’s it. I’m done for real this time. There were some other things I took notes on and if you’d like I can make a kind of follow-up to this but ultimately, I said the main things I wanted to say. I really did enjoy this story and it possessed the rare quality of being more enjoyable the second and third time I went through it. I got more out of it each time. I hope you’re happy with your story because I was. Thanks for reading this. How were the cookies?
Here is my first lit review. I tried my best!
What I think makes Syrinx such a standout piece is closely related to the way in which you use soft references to harmonize his story with the mythos surrounding the Greek legend Pan, god of shepherds, wilds, and music. While these references, which I will talk about later, give the story a verticality that elevates it above a typical snapshot romance, it is not the references themselves that owe to Syrinx’s overall quality. Rather, it is the way in which you use them to first construct and then dismantle our Classical assumptions of what the story is about and who these characters ought to be that highlights the strength of this piece.
I hesitate, however, to call this approach a subversion of expectations. I don’t think that’s quite right. Because while you do indeed square up our expectations early on – with both the title itself and through the imagery of reeds in the first sentence to color in motif, meanwhile also forging parallels between the first sections of the story’s narrative and classical mythology – you ultimately do not do away with these expectations all together as would be required by subversion. Like many classical retellings, you let the gravity of myth dictate the fall of the plot. However, and this is what makes Syrinx such a standout piece in my opinion, rather than recreating the landing, you have chosen instead to shake the fall.
The best analogy I can think of is that the myths of Pan are like the bones of an old house that you bought with the purpose of remodeling. The foundation is good, the outer walls and roofing is sound, and structurally, there’s nothing wrong with it. So, on the outside, you let what be, be. But on the inside, you took a hammer to the walls, opened it up a little, and lay down your own blueprint for how it ought to look. Outside, it is the same house. But inside– well, let’s just see. Take your shoes off at the door. I made cookies.
None of this makes sense without proper examples. If we are at all familiar with the stories surrounding Pan, then from the title alone we can guess that the story may have something to do with it. Additionally, within the first sentence, within the entire first section of the story, and within the last, reeds dominate the setting casting further callbacks to the nymph-turned-flute that would come to bear her name. Any lasting doubts about the mythological influence of the story are gently ironed out as we unfold further and further into the story itself. The name of the main character is a large giveaway, Thessalides being a direct reference to the naiad-nymphs of Thessalia, a central region in Greece. Ms. Thessalides herself is described as having “Grecian loveliness”. Landon Chèvre is a man described as having a “goat”ee (ha!), an “ageless face”, a womanizer, and of course, he is a flute maker.
By themselves, each of these is simply a small detail, placed appropriately within the story to provide context, to give texture. Unassuming. These soft references, perhaps better classified as allusion, I consider to be a strength because they give the moments in which they appear more nuance upon a second reading. They imbue the lines with a kind of deftness, a dexterity that bends the imagery down multiple paths. On their own, each allusion is like a single drop of water that drips through the paragraphs of their own accord. At the end though, each of these individual pieces has collected into a bucket that you use to splash us into realization upon reaching the denouement of your story: What’s this? This was a story about Pan? How did we not notice before?
The devil was in the details. Well – in this case, maybe not Satan but upon close inspection, the goat god of music certainly was.
Next, in keeping with and furthering the discussion of how your story parallels the myth, so I can then explain what I found to be so clever about the way in which it was twisted (but not subverted, remember!), I want to zoom out a bit and paint the broader strokes.
First, I think it’s important we look at which elements were directly taken directly from the myth itself. I’ll start with the characters. Ms. Thessalides is a flutist, independent, and prioritizing. She is beautiful, chaste, pursuant to the classical arts which we may take in the story as a kind of purity. So, not only in appearance, but also in ability and mannerism does Ms. Thessalildes bear the characteristics of the fantastical nymph. So we can check “nymph” off the list of things this story has in common with the myth. Next we have Landon the flute maker, ageless and obsessed, an enfant terrible, selfish in his profession to a fault, aloof or arrogant or both. All these things neatly pin him as the god Pan. Obviously, a story about Pan needs the goat himself, so he gets checked off the list too. Finally, by my estimations, there is a third character in the story of which you have dredged up from the past: Sylvia. By my interpretation, Sylvia is a representation of the nymph Syrinx, at least in part. By this, I mean that Sylvia was someone Landon (Pan) had great affection for, someone who died, and that in doing so carved out an eternal longing within Landon. While the details of her character have been altered – obviously Sylvia wasn’t turned into reeds like Syrinx and, unlike in the myth, Landon was actually able to “catch” her and try to have a child together – the underlying themes of love, pursuit, loss, and longing are similar enough between Sylvia and Syrinx that the character Sylvia bears mentioning. And not only that. The way in which she appears in the story, in my opinion, signifies the inflection point by which the story steps out of the classical realm altogether and into your hands alone. I can’t talk about that yet, but I’m almost there.
Apart from the characters and the obvious themes of music and chastity, there is one final element that has been taken from myth and it is this final element, less an object and more an idea, that is the code-red, critical bit you use to transform the story completely.
I’m going to borrow my house analogy from above. If a story is like a house and the framework it’s plot, then the foundation represents the most fundamental part of the story altogether: its conflict. Without a foundation, a house will inevitably collapse; there can be no home. Likewise, without conflict, there is no story.
Warning: I’m not an expert in Greek mythology. I probably should have stated this earlier. However, even from a superficial glance at the myths and stories that surround Pan, it seems a straightforward thing to argue that the central conflicts of these stories always fit snugly within the man vs. man conflict archetype. Most notably, it is Pan the chaser, going after nymphs and women in fits of lust. Or Pan the performer, challenging Apollo with claims of musical superiority (poor Midas!). Pan is always challenging, but it is never himself that he challenges. And why should he? He is a Greek god. Hubris is kind of his thing.
So this is the kind of backdrop I expected going into your story, as a necessary requirement for this kind of retelling. And for the first half of the story, this is exactly what I got. To the letter, this is how you set up the elements of your story, how you propose the conflict to us, the readers. We have Ms. Thessalildes, beautiful, musical, the nymph to be chased. There is Landon, the flute maker, praising her skills, imploring her service, chasing. He spurns greatness; it is beneath him. He asks only for perfection because his instruments deserve absolutely nothing less. He knows this. His hubris and his lathe are one and the same. Thus we have man vs. man: him vs her. The setup is complete. Let gravity do the work. And it does. But not in the way you’d think.
See, with the single mention of Sylvia, and, considering her likeness to Syrinx, the main conflict that we expected comes to a grinding halt halfway through the story. We see that, in actuality, the conflict that I’ve been talking about ran its course before the narrative of the story had even begun, and that ultimately, as in the myth this story is based off of, Landon lost. Syrinx became the reeds. Sylvia died, the myth is over. And next, we are told that Landon no longer goes after women the way in which he did before, the way Pan does. So this begs the question: is Landon in actuality completely different from the Pan of myth. Not necessarily, I say. This revelation doesn’t mean that he now isn’t chasing something, nor is his hubris in any way lessened with respect to his music. Our Pan is still Pan. But he has been retextured and we come to realize that the story has never been about the underlying conflict that we assumed it to be. So what is it about then?
I’ve arrived now, I think, at the place I set out to get to when I first started typing this a while ago. This next bit is why I really like Syrinx. In doing away with the expected conflict of the story, You give yourself the room to insert your own. And you do. In actuality, you had been openly presenting to us the real conflict of the story since its beginning and we just didn’t realize it. But that’s only half of it. The magic, the real magic of this is that after finishing the story, we realize that you built Syrinx using nothing less than the exact same conflict as the one you did away with!
I’m probably not making much sense. Let me try again. Imagine taking a room and applying paint remover to the walls only to repaint them the exact same color, but using a different brand of paint. That is in essence what you did to the central conflict of Syrinx. You took what we assumed to be the expected route the story, stripped it down completely halfway through, and then said, “Well no, but actually yes,” while slapping the same thing back up again. By my interpretation, the real conflict of the story still fits snugly within the man vs man archetype. We learn after reading the latter half of the story that it was still, always, fundamentally man vs. man, him vs her, Chèvre vs, Thessalildes. But, tactfully, upon this same foundation, you did some shuffling. You’ve given Maia some of Landon’s cards and Landon some of Maia’s cards. We’re playing the same game with the same people, but now, they have slightly different hands. Example time!
The same flashback which sees the revelation about Sylvia crash the stock market of our expectations sees also the idea that it is Ms. Thessalildes and not Landon who is the chaser of the story. This is where a diluted form of role reversal comes into play. Here, now, the nymph is chasing the fleeing Pan. It’s now backwards. Except that actually, wonderfully, this reversal of character interplay has been present from the beginning. During the opening scene, it’s an older Ms. Thessalildes searching through the reeds to find her lover, not the other way around. And while it was Landon who gave her the note after the concert, it she who first acknowledged him in the crowd, and later, wasn’t it she who chose, ultimately, to pursue his deal? And also he, later on, chooses not to be with her and to run away instead, leaving her to a life without him. And finally, the cherry on top is that in his absence, all she has left of him is a flute to remind her of him, just as Pan made a flute of Syrinx. So as Syrinx became to Pan, Landon’s flute became to her an “extended trial”.
And there we have it. The subtle and beautiful rotation of a classical myth. As I mentioned in the beginning, I do not believe this to be a subversion of expectations. Yes, the nymph chases Pan and not the other way around. Yes, Pan himself turns away from from his lusts (thus introducing a man vs. self character development sub-conflict with its own sub-resolution that I won’t get into because this is long enough as it is). But ultimately, I don’t think this necessarily constitutes a subversion because we know that the initial expectations of what we assumed would happen did happen, just not within the scope of the narrative itself. The myth had already played out in its modern context. Landon had his ego. Landon chased his lovers. Landon got his loss. Pan was Pan was always Pan and Syrinx, the story, both was and wasn’t his retelling. This is what I meant in the beginning when I said that you, Anhedral, let the gravity of the myth dictate the landing of the plot, but that you yourself chose to shake the fall.
I’m probably being very confusing even though I’m trying hard not to. This piece to me feels like a colorful film has been placed over a modern retelling so that it is multi-hued and fuzzy and cool to look at but difficult to describe. Basically, all the above has been me following my own tracks of logic in order to explain to the best of my abilities what it was about this piece that grabbed me. I couldn’t do it properly without first talking about all the references, the allusions. I couldn’t do it without first talking about which elements were direct transplants from myths. I needed both of those things to underscore how they built up our expectations so I could then explain just how it was that you broke them and then wonderfully pieced them back together. I’m terribly sorry it took this long. Also get ready to groan. I’m not done yet...
First of all, nothing I have talked about has had anything to do with the writing itself. Writing the monstrosity above felt very much like an exercise in theory, but theory alone is not what makes a story good. Solid writing must also be present and I’d like to make a few comments about the strengths of the writing in Syrinx as well as highlight a few places that stood out to me as places for consideration. While I’ve certainly taken some pains to talk about what I liked about the story, nothing that I’ve written yet feels either that constructive or critique-y and since a constructive criticism should probably have both, I’ll do what I can below.
The first thing that stuck out for me, or rather what didn’t stick out to me, were the little snatches of dialogue that peppered the story. That’s because, when dialogue is good, I tend to not notice it too much. It’s smooth. It just flows. This story is a good example of when dialogue is done right. Syrinx is a short story and the thus the writing must be economical. The dialogue, as well as the rest of the prose, adheres to this fairly well and yet, nothing is sacrificed within the story or the dialogue for brevity’s sake. This aspect of Syrinx stood out to me because I find dialogue to be the most difficult part of a story to write. So perhaps the greatest compliment I can think of is that in reading Syrinx, I learned something about the way in which I write dialogue for my stories. I love it when stories can teach me something. This one certainly has.
Also, in many cases when I read writing online, the choice of tense and point of view seem arbitrary. By that, I mean that it feels like an author picked either first or third, past or present without much consideration and headed on their merry way. There is nothing wrong with this approach. However, I think stories can gain an additional impact, they can have leverage with the reader, if the author can successfully utilize the strengths of the tense and point of view that they have chosen to write in. In Syrinx’s case, the present tense is used to excellence in the first and last sections of the story to create tension within each scene. The wind didn’t blow sometime in the past. The keening didn’t rise above the reeds some time ago. The wind is blowing now. There is music and lamentation coursing the marshland this second. Reflection is a time for the past. Action, thought, emotion are all made for the time called the present. And we have these. Because I was in a music-oriented mindset as I read these passages, the tension brought about by the use of present tense reminded me of the moment a bow is placed upon the string of a viola but has yet to be pulled so that we hear in this moment not the glaze of a first note but the ultimatum of silence this moment presages.
Another strength of this piece is its imagery. You use strong visual cues to alert us to key motifs, to set the mood, to paint the background so the foreground and the characters become more vivid in contrast to it. This ties in well with your ability to show when appropriate and tell when necessary. Additionally, it is the sharp imagery and the precise vocabulary which gives the story an authority it might not otherwise have had. Particularly, we the reader are given the sense that this was written by someone who knows the ins and outs of performance, orchestral work, and the world of high-class music in general. And not only does that someone know about this world, they care for it. You handles these passages with a tender delicacy. We get a sense for just how much you care about music and for a few short pages, we feel just how much you want to enmesh us in you world so that we can snatch a piece of your passion for ourselves. You do this well.
Finally, I would like to humbly draw attention to two specific areas to offer up for your consideration. Firstly, I noticed quite a few sentences that utilize colons or semi-colons as a means of conjoining two separate thoughts into one sentence. While, grammatically speaking, their usage was fine, there were a few places where it seemed to me more agreeable to the flow of the story to separate them into two sentences. What I mean is that when a colon or a semi-colon is used to separate thoughts, the reader must hold onto the idea of the first thought and carry it with them into the second section because there is some relation that connects the two. However, there were several sentences that I felt the pre and post colon or semi-colon sections were different enough from each other that it would have made more sense for them to stand on their own as separate sentences.
The second area I would offer up for your consideration revolves around particular word choices for certain passages in your work. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the word choice is spot on. But I’d like to show an example of a passage where a particular word choice pulled me away from the narrative somewhat. Below is the full paragraph in which this word appears:
“She leans against the door frame, knowing better than to interrupt him; he's hunched over the milling machine, making micrometer adjustments as the cutter whirls. Satisfied at last he eases the lever downwards, and the motor's revs drop slightly as the sharp steel kisses the tubing with an almost ultrasonic whine. Drops of lubricant catherine-wheel away, along with the precious shavings; the litter of them on the floor alone looks to be worth more than a month of her orchestral wages. But he's not profligate, never wasteful; he'll sweep up every last filing when he's done, and for pure platinum the marketplace is always full of ready buyers.“
The word I am referring to is “profligate”. It means to be “recklessly extravagant or wasteful”. It is not the definition of profligate that I am concerned with, however. In this respect, the word fits just fine. Rather, it is how this word associates itself with all the other descriptive words in the paragraph that I’d like to examine. Before it, we are given words like milling, machine, micrometer, cutter, lever, motor, revs, steel, tubing, ultrasonic, whine, lubricant, cahterine-wheel (which I love, by the way), shavings, platinum, etc. These are very mechanical words. They mesh well together to accentuate the imagery of Landon’s machining as a whole. But then we have profligate. When I put this word into the list of the others, it sticks out to me. I realize this might sound odd, but compared to the other words, profligate doesn’t have the right texture to blend in with the rest and should therefore be replaced. I realize that my argument is a stylistic one, but one that I’ll nonetheless point out because I think it could be well for you to see it. If you agree with me, then cool, we think alike. If not, it only helps you realize and refine your own style further. Its a win-win.
Another example, and my last one, actually occurs in the very first sentence of the story. The sentence goes as follows: The east wind moans across the marshes, and all the reeds bend low in serried waves of genuflection. Again, I think there are two words that are out of place, and this time not needed at all. I’m referring to “of genuflection” at the end of the sentence. Here’s why I think it’s not needed. I believe that the additional clarification of “serried waves” into “serried waves of genuflection” actually detracts from the imagery of the first sentence. This is because the last thought of the sentence is not a precise image but rather a modifier to a precise image. In this way, we are left not with the image of serried reeds bowing in the wind but instead, the last thing the sentence asks us to do is to hold that image in our head while simultaneously attaching to it a personified modifier which then incorporates another layer of interpretation we must decipher before moving on to the next sentence. I know this all sounds woefully pedantic and one hundred percent subjective, which it totally is, but, in my opinion, stylistically, the sentence is much stronger if it goes like: The east wind moans across the marshes and all the reeds bend low in serried waves. Serried waves gives us a clear, sharp image that doesn’t pull its punches. If I had to rewrite the first paragraph, I would do it something like this:
“The east wind moans across the marshes and all the reeds bend low in serried waves. Their stems, bereft of summer warmth, sigh out in a single mournful chorus.”
Again, this is my opinion, but I would toss out the genuflection all together, because genuflection implies a pious respect to a higher authority, but where is the elaboration on what this higher authority is? Is it the wind? Is it Maia? I think without further elaboration, the ambiguity of this imagery discredits the strength of the rest of the writing in this paragraph.
Take all this with a grain of salt. But these truly are the kinds of things I tend to think about when reading other people’s work and the kinds of questions I ask myself when I’m writing my own. It is completely fine to point at me and say “bruh, you’re wrong.” But at the very least, I think that these kinds of things are good to think about. Which is why I gave you the two specific examples above.
That’s it. I’m done for real this time. There were some other things I took notes on and if you’d like I can make a kind of follow-up to this but ultimately, I said the main things I wanted to say. I really did enjoy this story and it possessed the rare quality of being more enjoyable the second and third time I went through it. I got more out of it each time. I hope you’re happy with your story because I was. Thanks for reading this. How were the cookies?
I used to joke with my friend (and very good writer) Wirewolf that one of us would, someday, post a review that was longer than the story itself. Well, Wire finally broke through that barrier, but in somewhat unfair circumstances: my story was written for a prompt that had to be completed in exactly 365 words, and my kindly reader managed to find a little more to say than that.
Remembering our bit of fun, I did a quick tally. Syrinx is a bit over 3,100 words. Your eloquent, generous, and incredibly helpful review is a little over 4,100.
Just... wow. I've never received anything remotely as long as this before. I've never had a review that leaned so far into serious literary criticism, either. And this was your first attempt, you say? I see a new career for you beckoning!
This response will not be 4k words long. But I will try to cover some of the main points.
There was a peculiar serendipity that made 'Syrinx' come together in the way it did. First thing to note is that I first started playing the Debussy piece on the flute as a teenager, and have been playing it on-and-off ever since. This means that the music and its emotions have been a part of me for well over three decades – as has the original mythology. That's an awful long time to let a story sit and brew. I could never quite escape the terror of Syrinx in being pursued, her desperation in fleeing into those reeds. Nor could I shake off Pan's longing, melancholy, and – who knows? – regret. Above all, the mysogyny of the whole thing just stuck in my craw and never went away.
Second: I know a bit about flutes and flute-playing, and you correctly surmised that I'm quite passionate about these things. I've played in several orchestras and bands down the years, so I know how viscerally exciting it can be, as a performer. The audience can never really understand it, but the endorphin hit of being a performer is like the best drug ever. To be there amid that wall of sound, the raw physicality of it, creating and combining... words cannot capture it. And yes, platinum flutes really are a thing. They're heinously expensive, more so even than gold flutes. Maia, with the qualities you perceive in her, may very well be my idealised self, I think. At any rate she, like me, took up teaching the flute later on in life.
Third: the depictions of reedbeds and the use of a milling-machine were not a problem. I'm a biologist (well, zoologist) by training, so I know about reedbed ecology. I've seen those reeds move as described. And my father was a mechanical engineer. Accurate and evocative descriptions of things I have direct experience of come relatively easily to me, and for this I count myself fortunate indeed.
Fourth: by the time I wrote 'Syrinx' I'd been at this creative writing malarkay for a little while. If this had been my first dip into storytelling, I think it would have been a complete disaster! You're kind enough to say I use 'soft references', that I 'shake the fall', that I 'gently iron out' any doubts as to the mythological underpinnings. You also include the allegory of a house, to my 'repainting' of it while the base structure remains intact. I'm so happy that you choose to describe my story in those ways, because it means that I'm improving! We all know that writing is not an easy endeavour. At least one of the reasons each of us keeps at it, I believe, is that we are constantly striving to improve in what we love to do.
In short, I knew for a long, long time that I wanted to twist the ancient story of Pan and Syrinx. I knew that I wanted to withhold the mysogyny, but retain the story's essence. And so I thought: what happens if you swap the gender roles? Could I find an overpowering reason for the woman to pursue the man, and a better one than the raw lust that Pan possessed in the original?
I'm male, so I cannot relate directly to the craving of a mid-thirties woman, still childless, for offspring of her own. But I have come to learn that the yearning can be very, very strong.
Onwards!
Thank you for noticing the research I put in. You're the first, I think, to pick up all of the call-backs to Greek mythology that I tried to include. I meant to be subtle about it, if I could, and again, you're kind enough to say that it only really gets confirmed as a story about Pan towards the end. I count that as a win.
As for Sylvia... well, she was the turning point for sure, although I don't think I realised it as I wrote her part in the story. In fact there is so much of what you say about 'Syrinx', so much that in retrospect seems part of formal intent and construction, that gives me some gentle embarrassment – because a great deal of it came about organically, without formal planning. I've noticed this phenomenon before, both in my own writing and in that of our fellow writers, and I've come to group happenings like this as 'emergent' properties in fiction – specifically, the ones that have to be pointed out first of all by readers, but after that are obvious. I have started not to question the mechanism or process of it; it happens, it's magical, there is no relevant analysis to be applied. We simply swing along in time to its timeless beat, which is as ageless as that of Ovid's, and Gilgamesh of course.
Ahem.
You made some specific comments about word choices and punctuation, and I value them very much. Regarding colons and semi-colons: yes, yes and yes! I am trying to restrain myself in current works, but it is incredibly hard to do this when one has become inured into a certain usage.
"Profligate" – this one I have mulled upon, and still not come to any firm conclusion. I think perhaps I need to revisit it at a later time. Maybe its contrast to the 'mechanical' words is strength, and not a weakness? You are correct to identify the difference in texture, but perhaps this only serves to reinforce the respective modes? Like I say, I will have to dwell upon it.
"Genuflection" – well, this is a tough one. Long before now, I have wondered long and hard if that opening phrase might be over-described, if I should aim for simpler wording overall. But from the first moment I saw reeds bending before the wind I was struck with the notion of 'bending at the knee', and so this word was immediately attractive to me. In this setting, 'genuflection' does not connote any specific religious association. Rather it represents the actual movement of the reeds, plus an allusion to something supernatural 'in the round' – something that Maia has been questing for over decades but never attained, something numinous, something she will continue to seek out no matter what old age may fling her way. I think I will leave the word as is, to frustrate or please future readers as it may.
May I have my cookies now, please? Anhedral is hungry. And he is very, very grateful for such a detailed and considered review.
Remembering our bit of fun, I did a quick tally. Syrinx is a bit over 3,100 words. Your eloquent, generous, and incredibly helpful review is a little over 4,100.
Just... wow. I've never received anything remotely as long as this before. I've never had a review that leaned so far into serious literary criticism, either. And this was your first attempt, you say? I see a new career for you beckoning!
This response will not be 4k words long. But I will try to cover some of the main points.
There was a peculiar serendipity that made 'Syrinx' come together in the way it did. First thing to note is that I first started playing the Debussy piece on the flute as a teenager, and have been playing it on-and-off ever since. This means that the music and its emotions have been a part of me for well over three decades – as has the original mythology. That's an awful long time to let a story sit and brew. I could never quite escape the terror of Syrinx in being pursued, her desperation in fleeing into those reeds. Nor could I shake off Pan's longing, melancholy, and – who knows? – regret. Above all, the mysogyny of the whole thing just stuck in my craw and never went away.
Second: I know a bit about flutes and flute-playing, and you correctly surmised that I'm quite passionate about these things. I've played in several orchestras and bands down the years, so I know how viscerally exciting it can be, as a performer. The audience can never really understand it, but the endorphin hit of being a performer is like the best drug ever. To be there amid that wall of sound, the raw physicality of it, creating and combining... words cannot capture it. And yes, platinum flutes really are a thing. They're heinously expensive, more so even than gold flutes. Maia, with the qualities you perceive in her, may very well be my idealised self, I think. At any rate she, like me, took up teaching the flute later on in life.
Third: the depictions of reedbeds and the use of a milling-machine were not a problem. I'm a biologist (well, zoologist) by training, so I know about reedbed ecology. I've seen those reeds move as described. And my father was a mechanical engineer. Accurate and evocative descriptions of things I have direct experience of come relatively easily to me, and for this I count myself fortunate indeed.
Fourth: by the time I wrote 'Syrinx' I'd been at this creative writing malarkay for a little while. If this had been my first dip into storytelling, I think it would have been a complete disaster! You're kind enough to say I use 'soft references', that I 'shake the fall', that I 'gently iron out' any doubts as to the mythological underpinnings. You also include the allegory of a house, to my 'repainting' of it while the base structure remains intact. I'm so happy that you choose to describe my story in those ways, because it means that I'm improving! We all know that writing is not an easy endeavour. At least one of the reasons each of us keeps at it, I believe, is that we are constantly striving to improve in what we love to do.
In short, I knew for a long, long time that I wanted to twist the ancient story of Pan and Syrinx. I knew that I wanted to withhold the mysogyny, but retain the story's essence. And so I thought: what happens if you swap the gender roles? Could I find an overpowering reason for the woman to pursue the man, and a better one than the raw lust that Pan possessed in the original?
I'm male, so I cannot relate directly to the craving of a mid-thirties woman, still childless, for offspring of her own. But I have come to learn that the yearning can be very, very strong.
Onwards!
Thank you for noticing the research I put in. You're the first, I think, to pick up all of the call-backs to Greek mythology that I tried to include. I meant to be subtle about it, if I could, and again, you're kind enough to say that it only really gets confirmed as a story about Pan towards the end. I count that as a win.
As for Sylvia... well, she was the turning point for sure, although I don't think I realised it as I wrote her part in the story. In fact there is so much of what you say about 'Syrinx', so much that in retrospect seems part of formal intent and construction, that gives me some gentle embarrassment – because a great deal of it came about organically, without formal planning. I've noticed this phenomenon before, both in my own writing and in that of our fellow writers, and I've come to group happenings like this as 'emergent' properties in fiction – specifically, the ones that have to be pointed out first of all by readers, but after that are obvious. I have started not to question the mechanism or process of it; it happens, it's magical, there is no relevant analysis to be applied. We simply swing along in time to its timeless beat, which is as ageless as that of Ovid's, and Gilgamesh of course.
Ahem.
You made some specific comments about word choices and punctuation, and I value them very much. Regarding colons and semi-colons: yes, yes and yes! I am trying to restrain myself in current works, but it is incredibly hard to do this when one has become inured into a certain usage.
"Profligate" – this one I have mulled upon, and still not come to any firm conclusion. I think perhaps I need to revisit it at a later time. Maybe its contrast to the 'mechanical' words is strength, and not a weakness? You are correct to identify the difference in texture, but perhaps this only serves to reinforce the respective modes? Like I say, I will have to dwell upon it.
"Genuflection" – well, this is a tough one. Long before now, I have wondered long and hard if that opening phrase might be over-described, if I should aim for simpler wording overall. But from the first moment I saw reeds bending before the wind I was struck with the notion of 'bending at the knee', and so this word was immediately attractive to me. In this setting, 'genuflection' does not connote any specific religious association. Rather it represents the actual movement of the reeds, plus an allusion to something supernatural 'in the round' – something that Maia has been questing for over decades but never attained, something numinous, something she will continue to seek out no matter what old age may fling her way. I think I will leave the word as is, to frustrate or please future readers as it may.
May I have my cookies now, please? Anhedral is hungry. And he is very, very grateful for such a detailed and considered review.
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