It is an eerie thing—underlying the cries of children in the garden square, a sinister melody booming from an organ is seeping out of the Victorian church beyond my window. The only music I ever hear from there is new age Christian rock on Sundays, never an organ, never on Tuesday, never of that magnitude and fervor. Huh. It’s creating an odd atmosphere for me inside my old Victorian terraced home, I must say…the computer desk and bed are disintegrating from sight, along with a century and a half of paint as I start to envision the dressing table and hip bath that might have once stood in here, this room that I believe was once used as a dressing room. The unit we live in was once only the bedrooms of an entire four-story house, you see, which makes it quite laughable for me to think that what we now occupy as both our kitchen and reception room space was only the master bedroom. It is a place in which every petal in the ceiling’s floral moulding sends down whispers to me of all they have seen through the decades. Trees have grown tall around brick and stone that was once exposed, new, though sooty now and crumbling and left for fanciful folk like me to point to and sigh for a bygone era. But, my, how my feet would have pinched, my organs
been crowded and lungs bereft of a deep breath of air…the dust kicked up on my hems and the humid sweat on a sunny day bleeding into the tight-woven fibers of my sleeves to cake in my dead skin and bake my scent. No, though I used to lose myself in imagination of how much simpler, more romantic a life back then would have been, I peer through the wormhole to see it as it was and feel quite thankful I won’t be lugging tins of water up and down all those flights of stairs, past the pretty banisters, thank you very much. Burgundy velvets, trembling fringes, clinking china, flickering flames…all these and the incantations of a seance fade to ivory. My computer materializes back into my field of vision. The organ music is muffled beneath the waterfall sound of speeding autos. It diminishes into a pleasant tune or subtle nuisance, depending on which I will choose it to be.
15 June 2010
Mood Music Musings…
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6 responses to “Mood Music Musings…”
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Circe, by Madeline Miller
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The Fallen Monkey 
June 15th, 2010 at 19:13
I love Victorian houses and their atmosphere, I would never like to live in a modern house at all. A friend of mine recently moved into a house that’s only 15 years old and I thought “no way!” that’s just boring. Old houses have atmosphere but to be a Victorian housewife was a lot of hard work, so I definitely choose to stay in the 21st century. You have the best of both world, the atmosphere of your house AND your computer 🙂
June 17th, 2010 at 10:31
I’m with you there. When my husband and I talk about when we’ll eventually move back to the States, we both agree that we want an older home–some suburbs of Chicago have pockets of darling Victorian era homes that, though, smaller than their mammoth new construction counterparts, have so much more character and just seem more solid even despite their age. There was a different attention to detail back then, it seems…though as you say, it’ll definitely have to be suited up with all the modern conveniences!
June 16th, 2010 at 19:59
It’s simply amazing how melodies form an instrument can be so inspiring… I also love old Victorian Houses, whenever I see them on decoration magazines I start drooling 🙂 They have such a magical atmosphere!
I loved your free writing experiment, the mood and the setting combined with the music… It was wonderful! 🙂
June 17th, 2010 at 10:46
Thank you! I was in the middle of trying to dislodge thoughts on my story when the organ music overtook my concentration, so I thought I’d oil up my brain and warm up my fingers by dashing that lil’ bit of randomness off.
June 17th, 2010 at 21:46
I like this a lot. Usually, descriptions of settings make me skip ahead in a novel; but I would read this again word-for-word. Well done!
June 18th, 2010 at 23:36
I’m so flattered by this, thank you! When the music kicked off outside, I just typed what immediately came to me given my actual surroundings. I’m always paranoid when I write that I might be over or under-doing description, so your feedback is greatly valued.