Where rivers meet - the music student

All that day summer sulked and gathered
intensely over the university, and heat
shimmered on pavement.

I had at long last made it back to
where we were staying for the rest of
our project.

It had been so damn outrageously hot,
and it felt enormously reassuring to
be back in such a colossal volume of space

that had been constantly deenergised
for comfort. All of my fellow project
team members had dispersed into

their own retreats and I was on my own,
wondering if I should go for some ice cold
beers., or even hydrogen beers.

I then realised that a live piano performance
was starting right next to where I was
contemplating on my next move.

She appeared to be a student, although dressed
profusely and formally for the occasion I could
see that she was one, perhaps from a nearby college of
music.

I quickly abandoned the thought of going for
beers and decided to stay there for the next
ten minutes or so.

After all, I had been yarning to be able to
play those what might be described as screen
musics. She was playing good.

I was being entranced by what I was listening to
after all those long hours of work, first into
the heat and then out back into the heat.

It would have been a perfect combination of
heat and subsequent comfort, bar one thing I
was about to witness within the next few seconds.

There, to my sheer astonishment, I saw it
She did exactly just that, too! I could not
take my eyes off her very attractive hip,

that had so blatantly made such an unbeliebable
move, coming no doubt from hours of training
at the keyboard from morning till night,

which was a stark contrast to what
I could have afforded to myself.

My mind flashed back to the humiliation
I had suffered years earlier at a small concert
where I was supposed to be

playing, for the first time in my life,
Chopin's La Adieu, an Etude, op 10-3,
which is one of the most difficult by him.

I had gone over it, spending long hours,
for the occasion. There had not been any
significant problem with my playing it.

However, I must now admit that I had been
totally optimistic that I would be able to
perform it without hitches.

It was a grand piano I was sitting to.
My fingers flew, quite elegantly for the first
part of the score.

Then, soon, I realised that I was getting
quite a strong glare into my eyes. I had not thought
about the hypnotic effect of such a bright light source.

After all, it was a formal occation. However,
the worst was still looming over the horizon.

As anybody who plays La Adieu knows the
introductory slow start will soon turn into
frensic motions of fingers,

just like mixing mahjon pieces on the table.
It was that part my fingers could no longer
follow the score properly.

The reason was obvious to me as I tried to
continue. With my own piano, which is an old
Steinway, its chair is intended for tandem use.

I could occupy all of it to myself, gaining
all the space I needed to cope with the
most rigorous part of the score.

Alas, on the mini concert stage the chair
was intended for a single player only!

Where I would have normally moved my hip
around on the tandem chair I now had to extend
my arms and fingers to the limit.

I simply was not coping. There was no room
on that damn single player chair for me to move
my hip sideways.

Well, what she had was a tandem chair
She would have coped with a single player chair,
if that had been what she had to be content with.

After all, she was a student of music, and after all
it was not a contest of any kind. Who else would have
noticed except me anything extraordinary about her hip

movement during that pocket money earning performance
of hers!

Her fingers were happily dancing
over and across the keyboard.