Your eyes see only passing fronds of slimy plants and black floating pieces. Some cold-water fish will drift by to look at the wiggling human package delivered from the Earth. The yellow goggle-eyes see that you have no gills, no flippers or fin. Why have you dropped in, they innocently wiggle on, why did you drop in?

Never panic while drowning; never look around for something to grab, don’t bring a towel – they will only disappoint you. Your hands and feet flail causing disorientation. The head will not be on top, wrongly navigating the way leading to a sun whose home you knew by heart. Try to calm yourself! To understand a few more seconds immersed in sheer, ocean terror.

You’ll begin processing water quicker than a colander. Gulp some, spit some out and then – just close down. While immersed, relax; understand the ocean as a vast black panic room, float; allow the sea’s sound to pressure your eardrums, listen; chose your movements carefully, life. This means your air will disband and disperse; you are a mere puppet tied to the demands of the ocean as jungle. The blood pools, bursts in synapses, then only black. You become post mortem, static ruin. Your head will not take the first pop-of-breath, no practices or trial runs, dressed rehearsals, just cold, cruel darkness.

****      

The violinist placed the pallet of the violin under his chin, and against his shoulder, to throw vibration near his ear. “I could make the cracking Artic Sea’s ice-like bones sound beautiful or the sound of a cracking human skull, that’s the magic in the placement of the pallet,” he said. The dull response to his “pitch-up” on the other violinists was barely heard by the generally tone deaf audience. He sat amongst the orchestra with several loose hairs from his violin bow hanging off the tip. When the music started, they were flying in the wind following the violinist’s violent strike against the strings and sound hole, the rosin powder softly dusting his tuxedo on the elbow.

He strolled across the stage during his small solo. The long horsehair of the violin bow was becoming barren, but that did not stop his wild strikes and rhythmic moves while playing. The sounds he grinded out, towards me in the cello section, were going directly into my sore ears that still felt the sea’s pressured sounds from my practice drowning earlier. The urgent signals of the Conductor wanting more sound from the strings moved the evening in a crashing sort of tender direction. When we finished, I was glad to pack up my cello and music and go home.