Eddy and being an Artist; across a decade
Eddy is 16 when he thinks that his life hasn't been hard enough for him to make good art. It's a childish thought but he doesn't know that yet, reading a biography of Beethoven, and thinking, well, maybe if I had experienced struggle, heartbreak, maybe everything would be easier
And it's a silly thought but he believes it, turns away from the struggles he's had to some idealized pain that leads to Art, with a capital A, the kind that makes people love you, respect you, want you
Eddy is 16 when he decides he needs to get his heart broken.
Brett is 17 when he decides to just let his best friend do whatever he wants, hey
So Eddy falls in love with the girl in his maths class, or he says he does, and brings her flowers and takes her out on little dates, and something grows in his heart, soft and tender and when he tells Brett that he understands Tchaikovsky now, Brett just nods along
And when she breaks it off for a basketball player, Eddy cries himself sick on Brett's shoulder, falls asleep with a soreness in his chest, and when he wakes up the next morning and he still understand Brahms the same as he did the morning before, well-
well he just needs to try again, he tells Brett over bubble tea, she wasn't his muse- clearly, he just needs to find that heartbreak that will make him an Artist, a real one. And Brett just nods along and writes a in his planner to start carrying tissues in his case
Eddy dates girls, pretty or quiet or athletic, some musicians and girls who like top 40 pop. And each one isn't right-- doesn't set Eddy's heart aflame the way it should, like the books say it will, doesn't make it any easier to play Bach when surely, with all this love it should be easy now
In uni he dates a boy as well, and when he rages his heartbreak at finding the boy's plans to move abroad in the early morning of Brett's kitchen he still can't play Debussy with the sensitivity that he wants, must still be looking for that perfect hurt that will lead to Art
He gets older. More mature, or maybe just more busy. His mum screams her worry at him with cutting words and the emails he get show only "we regret..." He practices It doesn't get easier, not the way it should.
There is not dramatic montage, no backlight scenes
its slow and he lives every second of it, each held for it's whole beat. Him and Brett start a YouTube channel
He learns how to spend a whole rehearsal playing the same A over and over again
He listens to Brahms on the bus, groceries between his legs, and it makes sense
He gets his heart broken again and again, in little ways, by girls who say no, by men who's eyes pass over him, by a video that doesn't preform, by the number on his scale and the answering machine on his sisters cellphone.
He loves, hotpot with uni friends, laughing himself giddy with Brett over an editing mishap, a old photobook of his family at their first house, a performance from a visiting orchestra, a flowering bush on his morning run raining pale petals down on him
He gets older, a single second at a time.
He starts making good art
There is no single moment when it happens, a light flashing, the swell of an orchestra. He learns to make his instrument sing sometime between the ages of 13 and 27 He learns to hear Shostakovich with a tender ear between 17 and 29 He learns to love and hurt and wake up again
In tender moments, when he has a mug of tea held to his chest, he muses that in past decade there has only ever been 2 constants Good Art, always ahead of him, always just out of reach, a constant journey forward in pursuit of it And Brett, always beside him, sharing the journey
And it isn't like the movies, it isn't like the books. His heartbreak, his love, doesn't transform him in a shower of tremolo into Artist His life, each moment of it does, a slow accumulation of little joys and little hurts
And Brett, always by his side, always with tissues tucked into his case, has been there for most of them, has grown with him, until the fall together down a phrase, easy as breathing, easy as morning coffee and late night ramen, and choosing smash instead of emails
--
Or, there is something very profound in existence as a form of practice for all of the rest of the existence you have to do. And Eddy has been practicing Existing with Brett for so long I can't imagine them existing independent of each other and i don't think they can either.
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