"It was dark inside the tower. The girl did not know why she was imprisoned inside the stone walls. It was just how it was, the way it had always been."

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To me one of the closest things to real live magic is music. Music: creating it, teaching it, performing it, has always been a significant part of my life, but it has never lost its magic for me. How is it that sound waves vibrating at certain frequencies can connect with our emotions so profoundly that they can move us to tears, or make us smile on the way to work on a Monday morning? Why do the combinations of frequencies that make up chords sound so right, and slightly different combinations sound so very  wrong? And what is it about that particular chord change in that particular song that makes the hairs on your arms stand on end?  

 

Like all beauty, music is a mystery. It communicates something quite profound. It gets underneath the covers of our rational minds and hits us right in the feels, sometimes telling us things about ourselves we didn’t even know before. 

 

No prizes for guessing that music sits front and centre in the week's story. Counterpoint is about music as magic, and music as language. The first half of this story was first published separately in Havok magazine in 2020, but it was originally written as the longer story I’m sharing here. Readers tend to be divided about whether the second half is needed or whether the true meaning of the first half should be left a mystery. I’m not quite sure myself. I am sharing the story here with both halves and I leave it to you to decide.

 

I hope you enjoy the journey and, as a good friend of mine is fond of saying, “May the music transport you!”

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Suggested listening:

A good morning melody: melodia na dzien dobry: Zbigniew Presiner