10/26/04

A. Champion and the doomed concerto

According to his own testimony, he used this composition - written for the left hand alone - as a “dumping ground of dishonesty.” According to his later testimony, sworn under oath with hand on the alternative bible, the opening motif symbolized the pain he came to feel continuously in his genital areas. Its development signified its ironic relation to his humiliation-triggered rage - All in stark contrast to the suspected trigger of the pain - which was sexual arousal.

The rage was not discernible, according to critic Pretentious J. Idiot who attended the premiere. His view coincided with the consensus, and he claimed credit for this movement in interpretation, which became the popular and monopolized view. The Composer didn’t know it at the time, but this alleged indiscernablilty was to indirectly enlarge his already bulging rage and assist him in his next project, the “Symphony of Rage”, in which the rage generally was agreed to be discernible.

That dumping ground of dishonesty was not forgotten by its now abandoned champion though, one mediocre pianist by the name of: A. Champion. Having lost his right hand in a voodoo-related assault, A. Champion, a former pseudo-virtuoso, famous for his ability at faking stupendous virtuoso effects, had fallen into obscurity after this hand-loosing episode involving voodoo magic, and had become even more mediocre. What didn’t kill him was only making his already shabby technique weaker...You can’t play double octaves with one hand.

What restored his confidence and drive was his sudden flash of inspiration to commission a personalized concerto from The Composer. He had witnessed this composer’s ability to make use of pseudo-virtuosic effects, mediocre technique and senseless keyboard pounding in his highly controversial music, and was certain The Composer’s style would fit his last remaining hand like a glove.

Bad pianist and controversial composer collaborated together on the concerto. A. Champion began working rigorously to perfect his left hand octave technique, while exploring a transcendental right-hand stump method for perfecting his “senseless pounding” technique (see The Composer as pioneer of stump-music, article 7:889) and his confidence grew daily. The Composer made use of A. Champion’s technical innovations in his piano writing, at the same time waving off the morphine and alcohol offered by his roommates to dull the pain in his throbbing genitals. He was attempting to focus on this pain so as to express pure, undiluted rage in his most important work to date. As he later revealed in his autobiography, he had great difficulty focusing on the pain during this period, as his mind was still in the quasi-meditative state from the retreat he had escaped from in the mountains of the Newfront polar region. This inability to focus is most likely to blame for his expression of rage being said to be indiscernible when the work was finally showcased.

The Composer appeared to be euphorically pleased (despite his eternal cringing due to the genital pains) after the last note clump had been whacked out at the Carneggie Hall premiere, in 3087, however, the applause expected by the two collaborators didn’t come. Audiences held the work to be a shallow showpiece of pseudo-virtuism, and felt that the concerto was too heavy on the left hand octaves with not enough focus on the right stump thumping.

A. Champion continued, doggedly, to perform the doomed concerto on an American tour, but his inspiration, The Composer, fled this sad, critically-rejected caravan of performers in disgrace and turned up in Australia, renouncing his former praise of A. Champion’s formidably mediocre technique and denying any association with the man who continued to perform his left-hand work. The Composer went so far as to renounce the work itself, which reached ridiculous heights when, during the course of an interview in Time magazine, he denied he had ever written such a work, and it had only been attributed to him by rumour mongers. His current compositions, targeted at the mainstream drug users, were highly successful and earning him vast royalties, so he considered it artistically safe, at the time, to hide from the early accomplishments that had gotten him where he was today.

A. Champion and his small cabal of crazy Composer freaks, relentlessly continued to invade concert halls and force-feed the public the early and controversial music the Composer currently wished to forget...Until, one day, they walked into a trap.
The Composer and several members of the Establishment, determined to silence these renegades once and for all, lay in wait at a theatre suspected of being the next to be hijacked. Sure enough, A. Champion and his orchestra barged into the well-guarded hall, filled to the rafters with A. Champion’s loyal audience of drug-zombies awaiting the premiere of The Composer’s new ghost-written work: Divine Intervention. A. Champion’s band had come to play the old warhorse they had made their own: The Piano Concerto for Left Hand and Right Stump.

The Composer’s gunmen stealthily took up positions in the balconies and boxes while A. Champion’s armed orchestra got the rioting stoner-audience under control. They took up positions on the big stage before the public and as a show of good faith, dropped their weapons as the performance began. As soon as A. Champion began pounding out the opening flourish with his left hand, the snipers in the balconies began brutally picking off the conductor, first violinist and lead cellist, while the under-cover ushers, wielding flame-throwers, sprang from the dark corners of the hall and began torching Champion’s startled guards who were walking up and down the slanted aisles patrolling the audience.

Only two rogue bassoonists - who had illegally modified their instruments to include AR-15 assault rifles - got off any shots as the bloodbath began. Gunmen in the lower balconies were raining machine gun fire down on the orchestra, sending one-hundred and thirteen writhing players sprawling all over the blood-smeared stage in their torn black uniforms. The soloist, the immortal A. Champion, stumbled off the bench, trying to take cover under the legs of his instrument, but he was riddled with gunfire as he stood, helpless, in front of the violently splintering piano, blood and woodchips flying around to the sound of bullets ricocheting off its metal frame.

The audience was on its liberated feet, cheering their approval of the massacre. The screams of the crowd nearly overpowered the gunshots.

The Composer couldn’t help but stare as he looked into the eyes of his former champion, through binoculars, in his private box. He couldn’t help but lock eyes with the dying Champion, who seemed to meet his gaze as he dropped in front of the hobbled piano, wide-eyed yet uncomprehending. The last thing he saw was A. Champion’s exposed right stump, only recently ready to play, now inert and horizontal on the floor. Then he was rushed out of the building by his men, cringing due to his currently flaring genital ache, and fighting off the initial pangs of guilt that would eventually drive him to suicide, and ultimately - Hell. Eternal damnation.

The burning audience members - started from poorly aimed flame-attacks by the ushers, were lighting up the whole crowded inner sections of the seats. The cheers of unburning crowds now mingled with the screams of the burning crowds, the sporadic gunshots of snipers taking headshots at still-living orchestral players, and The Composer’s men rushing out of the theatre while beating any civilians in their path with the butts of their MP-5s to clear a path to the doors.

A. Champion slumped to the stage in three stages. First, the stumble back as he was hit with waves of bullets from multiple trajectories, then the sinking to his knees after he was done dancing, the a final fall onto his face as his brain went dead and his body, limp. His blood poured out of his chest, abdomen, arms and neck. Then his head was split open like a melon, from a sniper taking one last shot and he bled from that too, in addition to leaking out brains. It wasn’t long before his body was consumed in the fires that were now raging throughout the hall. He saw The Composer in Hell.

1 comment:

Dez M.E. King said...

BRAAAHAHAHAHA @ the bassonists with assualt rifles. You SO love carnage, don't you? But it's smart carnage. I think that's possible. I guess anything's possible in hippie craque land.

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