Something I concocted when half asleep two nights ago, fantasizing about meeting Woodkid, thus the title, from his Brooklyn - listen below. Can be read as rps with Yoann Lemoine as the male or as a standalone piece of complete and utter bullshit fiction.
I'm actually deeply dissatisfied with this piece, the style and language a far cry from what I'd like it to be, but I don't dislike it enough to trash it and forget I ever offended my hard drive with this document. Here's to hoping that if few years' time I'll be able to get back to it and write it properly, with language actually reflecting the fragile, contemplative atmosphere of the scene I originally imagined. Also, I don't know shit about Brooklyn other than what I gathered from the aforementioned song, Frances Ha and all those hipster!AU fanfics about Marvel's characters. //le shrug
word count: ~2600
Whether it was still night or the wee hours of day already, he was too tired and just tipsy enough not to care; huddled into his expensive wool coat under the huge black umbrella, he walked hastily down the oddly desolate Brooklyn streets, his gaze cast firmly to the sidewalk under his feet and the rim of his hat blocking the view of anything else. Water slowly soaked through his sneakers, cool spots against his toes urging him to walk more quickly to the cool loneliness of his flat several blocks away. He ought to catch some sleep before setting to work; he's been up for longer than he cares to count, running errands in the morning, working through the day on the latest commission and then letting himself be invited to an impromptu party that extended far longer than anyone anticipated; well past the hour the nightlife usually ebbed, last of the clubgoers drunkenly giving up on trying to find company for the night. The weather reflected his mood, the heavy rain beating steady rhythm against the ground for long enough that it became inconsequential white noise, too familiar and indifferently persistent to be inspiring, though he always found rain to be refreshing; his creativity drying up, losing vitality in long stretches of sunny days. Perhaps he was just tired, having been up for twenty hours, but the whole last month felt devoid of inspiration.
The sob startled him, and he raised his head, not sure if he was hearing it over the downpour or imagining things. But there it was, strained, helpless whimpering someone did their best to hold back but the tears overflowed nonetheless. It took him a moment to notice the figure curling up on the edge of the pavement in the gloom several yards ahead of him. He walked up cautiously.
"Are you okay?" he asked hesitantly, conscience taking the better of his unwillingness to tangle himself in a stranger's problems.
"Do I look okay to you?" came the answer, broken up with involuntary hiccups and sobs slipping past the remains of a calmer facade.
He crouched next to the figure, shifting his umbrella so that it covered them both. "What happened?"
The reply was a violent shudder and some pathetic sniffling. "Not your business. Go on, have a life. Somewhere away from me and my problems."
Was it because of this defiance despite clear distress or his own funny conscience still tugging at his heartstrings, he reached out and laid a comforting hand on the kid's shoulder. The dark-haired head turned, sizing him up with a half-incredulous, half-hostile look.
"Go away." She, because he decided it must be a girl, with shapely, if puffy from crying face and thick eyelashes clumped together with tears and soft lips bitten red, deadpanned, cut off by another uncontrolled sob. She tried to shrug his hand off and buried her face back between her knees.
"If you won't tell me what's wrong, at least let me take you home and give something warmer and dry to wear, you'll get a flu sitting out here in that rain all night."
"Won't you buy me dinner first?", and there was dry bemusement in her voice, though still on the verge of breaking.
"Too late for that, I'm afraid, and the Chinese joint on that corner is closed on Mondays," he admitted, "but coffee would do you good, or tea if you'd rather."
The crying calmed a little, the girl breathing deeply under his hand that he carefully started to rub in soothing circles on her back. The thin coat on her shoulders was completely soaked and he felt her shiver every so often in the pre-dawn October chill.
Finally, she rose to her feet, wiping her face with a sleeve inelegantly. "Fine. Let's go."
He raised his umbrella - she had a good few inches over him, not that it were an achievement with his meager height - and placed a had at her elbow, leading the way. She walked with the stiffness of someone too exhausted to care for grace, shuffling her feet - she had pumps on, stumbling like a newborn foal every so often - and wrapping her arms around herself defensively. He watched her, out of the corner of his eye, trying and failing to quell the surge of protectiveness the sight elicited in him. They carried on in silence for a while in the unrelenting rain, its omnipresent susurrus the only sound besides the drag and click of her shoes.
He suspected she let herself fall into the numbness always following the inconsolable grief; that she let the world around grow muted, distant enough not to hurt her like it had done to bring forward the weeping. It surprised him all the more when she halted unexpectedly in the middle of a crosswalk, turning to look down the vacant street. He looked at her face and was stricken by the serenity he found there. She hadn't blocked out the feeling; this was not a calm that resulted from denial - it was acceptance, tinted with resignation, but utter and complete. Looking at the mirthless smile tugging delicately at her lips, he realized she came to terms with whatever bitter fate had befallen her, and made a decision.
"Beautiful, isn't it," she said softly, her eyes locked on the horizon. He cast a glance that way, wondering what is it she saw in the familiar angles of the city he knew like the backs of his hands, worn with living and ordinary. The rain kept pounding down, flattening her short hair and meandering down her cheeks, washing tears away. Her eyes shone with a weary kind of wonder, strikingly vibrant grey in the first rays of sun casting horizontally across the steady downpour. Her eyelids quivered in the bright light and raindrops, and she blinked several times to shake them from her eyelashes, looking at him. "Light is the most beautiful thing in this world. It only ever boils down to this; nothing would amaze without light to play its games with shadow over edges and borders." She turns pensive for a moment. "Music must be the only exception; the only thing that can be beautiful without light, and what a world would it be without music? We all as well could be blind."
He kept watching her, unsure if what he heard was a revelation or nonsensical babbling.
"You should understand, being a musician and an artist. It's so simple, it sounds almost stupid, but there's so much we associate with light. Good, which is idiotic, but that's maybe the oldest archetype humanity knows; life, safety. Hope. And it works, though it shouldn't, look at me. This night, last night, I watched all I have - all I had - taken away from me, leaving me where you found me, useless and with nowhere to go, crumbling in the dark. Now... there. See?" she spared him a look, checking if he was following - he wasn't sure he did - but she seemed to find in his face whatever she was looking for, and continued. "The sun is rising, a new day begins, and it shouldn't be uplifting because it's just what happens every twenty four hours ever since this funny little chunk of rock first started orbiting a sphere of gas, or whatever, in this forgotten corner of the universe, but then again so few of us are up early enough to witness it, and maybe that's why we're all so decadent these days, because we watch the sunset rather than sunrise and it's just not the same... But, what I'm saying is, or I think -" she laughed, self-deprecating - "I'm prattling, sorry, I should stop."
"It's okay," he assured her, against himself mesmerized by the quiet passion in her voice. Belatedly, he realized she mentioned his profession and wondered, aloud, if she knew him.
"When I had little enough problems to busy myself with developing obsessions about others' creations, yes," and she hummed, off-key, several lines from one of his lesser-known songs, though one he cherished more than others for its sentimental weight. Something shifted in his chest. What an unlikely way of meeting a fan, he thought.
"But it's kind of irrelevant, now," she said. "I really have some big things to do, it'll be a while before I get to fret over whether to chase your gig halfway across the world or save for a new car or some other trinket. Today I'm just a troubled stranger who stopped you in the middle of a street to watch the first rays of the sun win against light pollution and talk at you about how absurdly good it feels to have this view for myself, because other than the clothes on my back that's pretty much all I can honestly say I own, metaphorically or literally speaking, and how crazy must I be to feel good about it?" Again, there was this sad smile on her face, but something happier sparkled in her eyes. She started towards the sidewalk, pulling him gently along. "I'm sorry I kept you standing there. You're tired."
He didn't protest, instead thinking about this strange monologue he witnessed as he led her to his place. His keys jangled cheerfully, uncaring about his thoughts, when he pulled them out of his pocket and slotted the right one in the keyhole of his front door. He turned when the lock clicked open and the old, heavy wing swung inside, letting the rain and the warm light in; looked at his companion. She stood in front of the few steps, smiling gently with her eyes, and made no move to take the unspoken invitation of the open entryway.
"Aren't you coming in? I promised you tea, after all," he asked, feeling out of place with his offer.
She shook her head, never breaking eye contact. "No. But thank you. For lifting me up." Then, after a heartbeat, "I never believed in that thing Florence Welch sings, this saying, it's always darkest before the dawn. It sounded so pretty, and I always wondered if she knows from experience. Maybe it's just pretty words, but they feel true enough now. I wouldn't get to see the dawn where I was sitting, mourning nothing. So thanks for that." She grinned at him, soaked to the bone, tired and likely a bit delirious, but stronger than he'd ever seen anyone be.
He felt he should be the one thanking her; through her words on that crosswalk, teetering on the edge of incoherence as they were, he found the inspiration he had been so desperately seeking, and he told her that. She laughed, a delighted, small sound, and shrugged one shoulder, shoving her hands in her pockets. "Write me a song," she said, "and see you around."
He watched her walk away, stumbling but unhurried, aimless and careless, with a pang of worry and strange lightness in his heart. Finally he lost sight of her as the city sluggishly woke to its usual hustle and bustle and the sun hit his eyes, blinding him.
The rain continued throughout the day, heavy clouds soon swallowing the sun. He woke in late afternoon, not particularly rested, but recovered enough from the strain of the previous day to focus on his work. Before setting to it, though, he looked over the messy sketch and lyrics haphazardly jotted down on a scrap of paper when he had finally got up to his apartment in the morning and felt compelled to capture his state of mind before allowing himself to collapse on the bed. It felt strange, looking at the slightly creased piece as though it were created by someone else, someone who walked out on silent feet when he was asleep, who never would return to finish the work in progress, leaving him to it with his crude tools that would never be adequate in bringing this stranger's concept to fruition. He exhaled angrily, knowing he wouldn't be able to craft anything good out of it unless that particular wave of inspiration came back, and isn't it known that you can't enter the same river twice?
See you around, the strange girl had said, and they both knew that was an empty promise in the vastness of the city that never sleeps, except for when dawn slips so serenely into its streets, unnoticed by those who don't know to stop and see it wash the darkness out. It would be long before he wrote her that song; not before she told him about light again. It would be long before she told him about that, too; not before she heard her words in his voice, sending the message that he understood, because he should, being an artist and a musician. But he didn't. Words failed him. He put the piece of paper down, abandoning it to be forgotten.
Music must be the only exception; the only thing that can be beautiful without light. She wasn't right, there were other things in this world capable of beauty even in pitch darkness, but when months after their incidental meeting he was sitting at the old, well-loved piano by the window of his living room and, whimsically, let his mind wander back to that crosswalk, trying to hear her words tumble across white stripes like notes on a staff, he felt this was the last media left to him. When visual art and poetry weren't enough, he resolved to explaining light in the language of music. Slowly, with effort, the melody took shape in his head. Hours passed, flowing quietly around him, and when he stood up with sheets filled with scrawled notations and notes, the song almost complete, it was long past nightfall. With a crick in his back, he stretched and looked out at the street. Dark sky stared back at him from the still reflections in the puddles on the sidewalk; first light trickling timidly up from the eastern edge of the firmament. It's just what happens every twenty four hours ever since this funny little chunk of rock first started orbiting a sphere of gas, or whatever, in this forgotten corner of the universe. A lean figure was strolling down the other side of the road, careless and unhurried, gaze cast to a distant point where night gave way to dawn; in the eerie silence he heard a short burst of laughter, the same that bid him goodbye on his doorstep months ago. He forced the window open, early spring breeze sending the paper in his hands dancing. The figure was gone. Was this a trick of a sleep-deprived mind? Was there ever a girl who, even burdened with troubles she refused to share, could look at the sky and see hope, unobscured by rain clouds?
But when he performed the song he'd written that night in one of Brooklyn's many clubs, a note was waiting for him, slipped inconspicuously under his door when he got home. It's nice, knowing that at least one of us understood something of that monologue in the rain. I'm still not sure which one of us it was, though; maybe neither, and I'm just making no sense, like most of the time. Maybe even both, and that's why I can afford being a fan once again, not a stranger with only a shared moment to call her own. Either way, thank you for the song. — the girl at dawn
I'm actually deeply dissatisfied with this piece, the style and language a far cry from what I'd like it to be, but I don't dislike it enough to trash it and forget I ever offended my hard drive with this document. Here's to hoping that if few years' time I'll be able to get back to it and write it properly, with language actually reflecting the fragile, contemplative atmosphere of the scene I originally imagined. Also, I don't know shit about Brooklyn other than what I gathered from the aforementioned song, Frances Ha and all those hipster!AU fanfics about Marvel's characters. //le shrug
word count: ~2600
Whether it was still night or the wee hours of day already, he was too tired and just tipsy enough not to care; huddled into his expensive wool coat under the huge black umbrella, he walked hastily down the oddly desolate Brooklyn streets, his gaze cast firmly to the sidewalk under his feet and the rim of his hat blocking the view of anything else. Water slowly soaked through his sneakers, cool spots against his toes urging him to walk more quickly to the cool loneliness of his flat several blocks away. He ought to catch some sleep before setting to work; he's been up for longer than he cares to count, running errands in the morning, working through the day on the latest commission and then letting himself be invited to an impromptu party that extended far longer than anyone anticipated; well past the hour the nightlife usually ebbed, last of the clubgoers drunkenly giving up on trying to find company for the night. The weather reflected his mood, the heavy rain beating steady rhythm against the ground for long enough that it became inconsequential white noise, too familiar and indifferently persistent to be inspiring, though he always found rain to be refreshing; his creativity drying up, losing vitality in long stretches of sunny days. Perhaps he was just tired, having been up for twenty hours, but the whole last month felt devoid of inspiration.
The sob startled him, and he raised his head, not sure if he was hearing it over the downpour or imagining things. But there it was, strained, helpless whimpering someone did their best to hold back but the tears overflowed nonetheless. It took him a moment to notice the figure curling up on the edge of the pavement in the gloom several yards ahead of him. He walked up cautiously.
"Are you okay?" he asked hesitantly, conscience taking the better of his unwillingness to tangle himself in a stranger's problems.
"Do I look okay to you?" came the answer, broken up with involuntary hiccups and sobs slipping past the remains of a calmer facade.
He crouched next to the figure, shifting his umbrella so that it covered them both. "What happened?"
The reply was a violent shudder and some pathetic sniffling. "Not your business. Go on, have a life. Somewhere away from me and my problems."
Was it because of this defiance despite clear distress or his own funny conscience still tugging at his heartstrings, he reached out and laid a comforting hand on the kid's shoulder. The dark-haired head turned, sizing him up with a half-incredulous, half-hostile look.
"Go away." She, because he decided it must be a girl, with shapely, if puffy from crying face and thick eyelashes clumped together with tears and soft lips bitten red, deadpanned, cut off by another uncontrolled sob. She tried to shrug his hand off and buried her face back between her knees.
"If you won't tell me what's wrong, at least let me take you home and give something warmer and dry to wear, you'll get a flu sitting out here in that rain all night."
"Won't you buy me dinner first?", and there was dry bemusement in her voice, though still on the verge of breaking.
"Too late for that, I'm afraid, and the Chinese joint on that corner is closed on Mondays," he admitted, "but coffee would do you good, or tea if you'd rather."
The crying calmed a little, the girl breathing deeply under his hand that he carefully started to rub in soothing circles on her back. The thin coat on her shoulders was completely soaked and he felt her shiver every so often in the pre-dawn October chill.
Finally, she rose to her feet, wiping her face with a sleeve inelegantly. "Fine. Let's go."
He raised his umbrella - she had a good few inches over him, not that it were an achievement with his meager height - and placed a had at her elbow, leading the way. She walked with the stiffness of someone too exhausted to care for grace, shuffling her feet - she had pumps on, stumbling like a newborn foal every so often - and wrapping her arms around herself defensively. He watched her, out of the corner of his eye, trying and failing to quell the surge of protectiveness the sight elicited in him. They carried on in silence for a while in the unrelenting rain, its omnipresent susurrus the only sound besides the drag and click of her shoes.
He suspected she let herself fall into the numbness always following the inconsolable grief; that she let the world around grow muted, distant enough not to hurt her like it had done to bring forward the weeping. It surprised him all the more when she halted unexpectedly in the middle of a crosswalk, turning to look down the vacant street. He looked at her face and was stricken by the serenity he found there. She hadn't blocked out the feeling; this was not a calm that resulted from denial - it was acceptance, tinted with resignation, but utter and complete. Looking at the mirthless smile tugging delicately at her lips, he realized she came to terms with whatever bitter fate had befallen her, and made a decision.
"Beautiful, isn't it," she said softly, her eyes locked on the horizon. He cast a glance that way, wondering what is it she saw in the familiar angles of the city he knew like the backs of his hands, worn with living and ordinary. The rain kept pounding down, flattening her short hair and meandering down her cheeks, washing tears away. Her eyes shone with a weary kind of wonder, strikingly vibrant grey in the first rays of sun casting horizontally across the steady downpour. Her eyelids quivered in the bright light and raindrops, and she blinked several times to shake them from her eyelashes, looking at him. "Light is the most beautiful thing in this world. It only ever boils down to this; nothing would amaze without light to play its games with shadow over edges and borders." She turns pensive for a moment. "Music must be the only exception; the only thing that can be beautiful without light, and what a world would it be without music? We all as well could be blind."
He kept watching her, unsure if what he heard was a revelation or nonsensical babbling.
"You should understand, being a musician and an artist. It's so simple, it sounds almost stupid, but there's so much we associate with light. Good, which is idiotic, but that's maybe the oldest archetype humanity knows; life, safety. Hope. And it works, though it shouldn't, look at me. This night, last night, I watched all I have - all I had - taken away from me, leaving me where you found me, useless and with nowhere to go, crumbling in the dark. Now... there. See?" she spared him a look, checking if he was following - he wasn't sure he did - but she seemed to find in his face whatever she was looking for, and continued. "The sun is rising, a new day begins, and it shouldn't be uplifting because it's just what happens every twenty four hours ever since this funny little chunk of rock first started orbiting a sphere of gas, or whatever, in this forgotten corner of the universe, but then again so few of us are up early enough to witness it, and maybe that's why we're all so decadent these days, because we watch the sunset rather than sunrise and it's just not the same... But, what I'm saying is, or I think -" she laughed, self-deprecating - "I'm prattling, sorry, I should stop."
"It's okay," he assured her, against himself mesmerized by the quiet passion in her voice. Belatedly, he realized she mentioned his profession and wondered, aloud, if she knew him.
"When I had little enough problems to busy myself with developing obsessions about others' creations, yes," and she hummed, off-key, several lines from one of his lesser-known songs, though one he cherished more than others for its sentimental weight. Something shifted in his chest. What an unlikely way of meeting a fan, he thought.
"But it's kind of irrelevant, now," she said. "I really have some big things to do, it'll be a while before I get to fret over whether to chase your gig halfway across the world or save for a new car or some other trinket. Today I'm just a troubled stranger who stopped you in the middle of a street to watch the first rays of the sun win against light pollution and talk at you about how absurdly good it feels to have this view for myself, because other than the clothes on my back that's pretty much all I can honestly say I own, metaphorically or literally speaking, and how crazy must I be to feel good about it?" Again, there was this sad smile on her face, but something happier sparkled in her eyes. She started towards the sidewalk, pulling him gently along. "I'm sorry I kept you standing there. You're tired."
He didn't protest, instead thinking about this strange monologue he witnessed as he led her to his place. His keys jangled cheerfully, uncaring about his thoughts, when he pulled them out of his pocket and slotted the right one in the keyhole of his front door. He turned when the lock clicked open and the old, heavy wing swung inside, letting the rain and the warm light in; looked at his companion. She stood in front of the few steps, smiling gently with her eyes, and made no move to take the unspoken invitation of the open entryway.
"Aren't you coming in? I promised you tea, after all," he asked, feeling out of place with his offer.
She shook her head, never breaking eye contact. "No. But thank you. For lifting me up." Then, after a heartbeat, "I never believed in that thing Florence Welch sings, this saying, it's always darkest before the dawn. It sounded so pretty, and I always wondered if she knows from experience. Maybe it's just pretty words, but they feel true enough now. I wouldn't get to see the dawn where I was sitting, mourning nothing. So thanks for that." She grinned at him, soaked to the bone, tired and likely a bit delirious, but stronger than he'd ever seen anyone be.
He felt he should be the one thanking her; through her words on that crosswalk, teetering on the edge of incoherence as they were, he found the inspiration he had been so desperately seeking, and he told her that. She laughed, a delighted, small sound, and shrugged one shoulder, shoving her hands in her pockets. "Write me a song," she said, "and see you around."
He watched her walk away, stumbling but unhurried, aimless and careless, with a pang of worry and strange lightness in his heart. Finally he lost sight of her as the city sluggishly woke to its usual hustle and bustle and the sun hit his eyes, blinding him.
The rain continued throughout the day, heavy clouds soon swallowing the sun. He woke in late afternoon, not particularly rested, but recovered enough from the strain of the previous day to focus on his work. Before setting to it, though, he looked over the messy sketch and lyrics haphazardly jotted down on a scrap of paper when he had finally got up to his apartment in the morning and felt compelled to capture his state of mind before allowing himself to collapse on the bed. It felt strange, looking at the slightly creased piece as though it were created by someone else, someone who walked out on silent feet when he was asleep, who never would return to finish the work in progress, leaving him to it with his crude tools that would never be adequate in bringing this stranger's concept to fruition. He exhaled angrily, knowing he wouldn't be able to craft anything good out of it unless that particular wave of inspiration came back, and isn't it known that you can't enter the same river twice?
See you around, the strange girl had said, and they both knew that was an empty promise in the vastness of the city that never sleeps, except for when dawn slips so serenely into its streets, unnoticed by those who don't know to stop and see it wash the darkness out. It would be long before he wrote her that song; not before she told him about light again. It would be long before she told him about that, too; not before she heard her words in his voice, sending the message that he understood, because he should, being an artist and a musician. But he didn't. Words failed him. He put the piece of paper down, abandoning it to be forgotten.
Music must be the only exception; the only thing that can be beautiful without light. She wasn't right, there were other things in this world capable of beauty even in pitch darkness, but when months after their incidental meeting he was sitting at the old, well-loved piano by the window of his living room and, whimsically, let his mind wander back to that crosswalk, trying to hear her words tumble across white stripes like notes on a staff, he felt this was the last media left to him. When visual art and poetry weren't enough, he resolved to explaining light in the language of music. Slowly, with effort, the melody took shape in his head. Hours passed, flowing quietly around him, and when he stood up with sheets filled with scrawled notations and notes, the song almost complete, it was long past nightfall. With a crick in his back, he stretched and looked out at the street. Dark sky stared back at him from the still reflections in the puddles on the sidewalk; first light trickling timidly up from the eastern edge of the firmament. It's just what happens every twenty four hours ever since this funny little chunk of rock first started orbiting a sphere of gas, or whatever, in this forgotten corner of the universe. A lean figure was strolling down the other side of the road, careless and unhurried, gaze cast to a distant point where night gave way to dawn; in the eerie silence he heard a short burst of laughter, the same that bid him goodbye on his doorstep months ago. He forced the window open, early spring breeze sending the paper in his hands dancing. The figure was gone. Was this a trick of a sleep-deprived mind? Was there ever a girl who, even burdened with troubles she refused to share, could look at the sky and see hope, unobscured by rain clouds?
But when he performed the song he'd written that night in one of Brooklyn's many clubs, a note was waiting for him, slipped inconspicuously under his door when he got home. It's nice, knowing that at least one of us understood something of that monologue in the rain. I'm still not sure which one of us it was, though; maybe neither, and I'm just making no sense, like most of the time. Maybe even both, and that's why I can afford being a fan once again, not a stranger with only a shared moment to call her own. Either way, thank you for the song. — the girl at dawn
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