#f-sharp minor

Adults scare me. I’ve always been scared of them. Not all of them, some of my friends are adults. My own parallel minor is an adult.

I like to play around the living room, make new friends, and avoid the occasional adult questioning. I don’t know why, but for as long as I can remember (which dates back to around the Renaissance period, I may be wrong), I’ve thought that adults were scary. Tall adult women who walked by me, no hint of a smile on their faces. Grown men who could easily knock me over, grab me, all that. Pretty much all my life, I’ve been scared of adults. And also older teenagers, 15-19 years old. If you think about it, that’s very odd, because I’m just one ‘year’ from turning 15, yet I have this fear of 15-year-olds. If you noticed, I quoted the word year because that’s how it is: I’ll never get older. I’m frozen at 14 years old forever.

My parallel minor, A minor, is in her late 20s. Maybe even her early 30s. I don’t know. When I see her approach me, I have to fight the urge to run away. She strides in, face set in an unreadable expression. Her eyes, empty. Her lips, made-up with lipstick, thin. She sighs a deep sigh, mourning that her best years have passed her by.

My relative minor, F-sharp minor, is not much better. She is a young woman, who in the eyes of human society is fresh out of college. She stays in her room and watches sad movies on her computer, stroking her cats. In the evenings, sometimes she’d appear for some ice-cream.

As for me? I’m not sure, honestly. I only know that I have different relations with the other keys. I’m glad that I’m older than C major, who will never turn 10 years old. I’m among the youngest, and it can get annoying. The other teenagers, G minor, F major, F minor, they’re all 17-19. I’m not sure who is what age. To me, they might as well be adults. F minor seems more mature than the average 19-year-old, yet she looks too young to be a full-fledged adult, which is why my guess for her age is the late teens.

It amazes me, the way C major happily interacts with anyone, regardless of age. He’s a young child, who likes to play with the skipping rope and build train tracks. He pretends to fight, using nothing but his fists. Nothing in the adult world seems too scary for him.

It is late afternoon, and I’m outside, enjoying the sunlight. I weave a crown of flowers, watching the butterflies chase one another amongst the flowers whose names I can never remember. As the sky slowly turns a deeper shade of blue, I sigh a sigh of contentment. Life is so beautiful. It can be hard, no doubt, but these evenings give me something to look forward to.

Gabriel Fauré: Pavane in F-sharp Minor, Op. 50. Performed at the piano by the composer in 1913. The performance was captured on a Welte-Mignon piano roll.

The Pavane is one of Fauré's most popular works, but is usually heard as an orchestral piece with optional chorus. The version played here by  Fauré is a version for piano. I'm not entirely sure if it is the original from 1887 or an improvised hybrid. Unfortunately, I cannot locate the original piano score (not transcribed by others).