Night of the Cello: A Rough Prose Poem

Sitting down, the chatter, red velvet seats, many people talking, a relaxed social scene. Hush, slowly, silence grows, waiting. Bursts of applause, they walk on stage. The cello, the piano, sing out, beginning a night of music.

The cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, plays, plays his heart. He plays softly, he plays loud. So impassioned, he practically leaps from his chair, his fingers flying up and down, his arm back and forth, his hair like a bat beating its wings about his head. So much energy and motion he seems to be convulsing. The music tears through the air. One stroke, so intense, vicious as if a sword slices through someone’s throat. The pianist’s fingers fly, blur, sing, whir. So fast, they form their own personal tornado of a whirlwind with the force to seemingly pull her fingers away, flying swirling away. The violence that flees up the ivory piano keys.

The piano and cello play together, at moments in close movement, together, touching, and yet with a tension, not unlike that of the tango. At moments intertwined, strands of a single thread, twisting together. The cello is the sound of the wind blowing through a spider web. The piano is the rain fall, dropping on the fallen leaves. The piano is the weaving of the spider’s web, each strand strung out delicately, connected precisely to the rest of fragility. The cello breaks my heart.

The cello is a kite tail, red, amongst fluffy clouds and penetratingly blue sky, dancing weaving in and out, away. A bird soaring up up and up to simply get away, as the song says, high above the sorrows. Soaring to escape. The need to deny. Just as the New York cabbie told the airplane passenger – from up there you cannot see the misery. The cello flies up high because it can, to leave this world behind, below, for just a moment.

The cello a sigh. It is a waltz, not waltz music, but the dance itself, the man’s strong guiding hands, the woman’s flaring skirt, harmoniously twirling across the dance floor together. The piano is hands gracefully leaping, ballerinas in slow motion, hanging for impossibly ever as they elegantly fall back onto the music, intertwining, caressing, loving. The music is spun glass. The music becomes a couple dancing under the moonlight, the light playing off the waters of a lake, sparkling in points. The moon travels between the clouds, mixing shadows and even deeper shadows. A question is asked, and a pause hangs in the air between them. A low female voice answers. They keep dancing, no more words are spoken.

The cello is the play of the summer sun piercing the leaves, dappling shadows and yellow light on the ground in the warm early evening with the hum of insects. Not the day, nor the insects, but the play of light itself from sun to shade in the warm air. His hands moving are lace along the long neck of the cello.

The music is loved. The cellist and the pianist are loved. And they love what they do. Yo-Yo Ma practically skips and bounces off stage. He eagerly comes back, he plays, one, two, three, yes even four encores. He doesn’t want to leave. This is what he loves, and the world loves him for it. The short pieces contain an elegance, a poetry and the succinct, sweet beauty of a miniature, of candy in its foil wrapper. They are play for him, and he plays with spirit and delicacy, passion and incredible tenderness, and he plays at times for the sheer fun that is running through his hands. He does not need his music. Often his eyes are closed. At times he tilts his head back receiving the benediction of the stage lights. Mostly they cause dramatic shadows on his face. He occasionally glances at the pianist’s music, checking where she is. Twice, in the entire duration of the concert, he turns the page to his own music.

One of the encores, I recognize from first note wavering in the air. So much more powerful than a recording, this time it is the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard. The note vibrates the air, so soft it is quieter than a whisper, merely a breath of wind. It is a caress, a fingertip’s touch, it delicately grazes the skin. So powerful it vibrates the core of my bones, I can’t breathe. My rib cage is paralyzed with the beauty. My hands tingle from applause. My body tingles from the music. Wow is the only verbal response and so pathetically inadequate it is not really worth saying. But something must expel the paralysis caused by the beautiful cello, the spell I was bound in by the notes that were woven through the air. Wow.