dissonant
The final story in Cranesong is a romantic story, but I donāt mean romance like wildflowers and silver coins. When I was fifteen, I was promised all these love stories -- airport chases, jazz dances, summer downpours -- but all I truly held was confusion, scraped elbows and knees, last monthās issue of Seventeen.Ā
In high school, Topaz Winters reached out to me to submit to her new publication -- a lovely music-themed place called Half Mystic Journal (@wearehalfmystic). I wanted to write a story about being fifteen and not quite in love yet. It became a short piece about Natalie and the new girl in her orchestra, called āDissonantā.Ā
When I was putting together Cranesong, I got the chance to revisit this story! It was so much fun to see this nostalgic snapshot of who I was and what I valued in high school. Stylistically, Iād grown a lot, so there was much revising to be done.
For example:
When Vera Fletcher joins the youth orchestra at the beginning of tenth grade, Natalie doesnāt know what to think. Vera is beautiful. Her eyes are dark and her skin is bronze like itās lit from within by candles and her glistening inky curls sweep her collarbone in the shy way that makes boys stare.
(Natalie imagines she smells like strawberries, or maybe mango. Something fruity. But she never gets close enough to know.)
More importantly, Vera is better than Natalie, and this is a problem because Natalie is second chair violin right now and after Rachel Wong graduates this year, sheās going to be concertmaster.
became
Vera was better than Natalie. That was obvious from the beginning. For years, the youth orchestra had been in Rachel Wongās palms, Rachel with her pre-college programs at goddamn Juilliard and private violin lessons since age four, did you hear she was the youngest student ever selected for concertmaster? But Rachel was graduating two years ahead of Natalie which meant first chair violin was going to be hers. She hated her own entitlement but she couldnāt help feeling that, after years of suffering through Rachelās performing at Carnegie Hall next month! and Rachel practices for four hours a day, why canāt you be more like her?, she deserved the position.
I wanted to increase the emotional stakes for Natalie -- to make it more obvious to the reader why exactly becoming concertmaster is so important to her, thus making her feelings toward Vera -- her musical rival -- even more complicated.Ā
I also realized I was all about imagery and physical descriptions in the original version -- dark eyes, bronze skin, inky curls -- but thought the story would be more interesting if I focused on Natalieās emotional landscape instead.
āDissonanceā might be the most romantic story in Cranesong, but itās a piece with an awesome best friend, too! Platonic relationships are so underrated.
She is a major Taylor Swift stan:
āYouāre always playing pieces by dead white men,ā Arianna said one day. āAs if they were the only ones who created anything meaningful when, like, Taylor Swift defined an entire fucking generation.ā
āNuff said.
Fun fact: I am not musical at all -- hi tone-deaf, Iām Dad!Ā
Wanna readĀ āDissonanceā in its entirety?Ā
Pre-order Cranesong here!
