#yoiencore

His earliest memory is music.

Before the shape of his mother’s smile, and the timbre of her voice. Before the knowledge of sunlight and warm skin, there it was – music, the sound of it shaping his world, molding how he came into it, and what he would become.

Sometimes, Viktor wonders if he’s made of it. If music can be made into flesh. If it’s in his bones and his blood, like the stuff of stardust. Wonders when he creates it, puts his fingers to the keys, and opens his mouth to sing, if he’s carving out parts of himself to share with the world. Putting it on display, on show.  

He was barely walking when his fingers first found the piano keys. Doesn’t remember it, not really – not the feel of the keys, or what he created, or the way his tiny fingers stretched and splayed against the ivory. Making a mess of it, and maybe finding it delightful – the bright, wonderful cacophony of it. Music.

He doesn’t remember what it sounded like, or how it felt. But his mother, he remembers. The warmth of her, there.

She was always playing, when he was small. He would crawl under the piano bench and lie there and listen, feeling the vibrations of music through the floor. The deep, booming bass keys like thunder under his palms. Treble notes like raindrops on the windows while the sun still poured through the clouds.

She carved out those tiny parts of her to share with him, even before he really understood what it meant for her to give him the gift of song, to teach him how to access the music in his blood.

By the time Viktor was four years old, he could already play Chopin as effortlessly as someone three times his age.

He remembers his first stage, the sea of eyes staring at him.

The piano seemed very large, the stage quite wide. His mother sat in the third row, next to his piano teacher. Her eyes were bright like the morning sun, and Viktor remembers being held by them, as he took his place in front of the piano.

You’ll play beautifully, Vitya, she told him that morning, and he did.

His first applause was a standing ovation.

How long have you been playing the piano, they want to know. How long – as though there’s a number there.

Viktor pauses for a long moment, considering. There’s a distant look in his eyes, something hazy. Something that feels like an ocean away, a lifetime ago.

(It was.)

“Well,” he begins, after a moment, “I suppose you can say that I’ve been playing piano from the time that I could walk. Music has always been in my blood, you know.” He pauses, looks right at the questioner. “As for being scared… I have a trick.” His face transforms with a brilliant smile, and with a wink, he says, “I simply just imagine everyone naked.”