Shostakovich: String Quartet No.7 in F Sharp Minor Op.108 [1960]

The composer is hovering suspended in the air well out in front of the performing space.

He wears a long gray green raincoat and as usual is armed with a cardboard tipped cigarette.

LIGHTING SUGGESTS THE DAWN OF AN OVERCAST DAY.

My first wife, Nina, was a nuclear physicist.

She died from radiation poisoning.

Long pause.

Do you really expect for me to join the Party?

This is still the Bolshevik Party.

I’m still not seeing true humanitarian Socialism

Haven’t seen it yet, have you?

Has anyone hereabouts?

Calling:

Has anybody here seen Socialism?

Glibly:

I’ve been waiting

He kicks a bit in the air, causing himself to gyrate slightly.

Look at the way

I’m floating

Over the surface

Of the street

Nothing makes me hover in this disconcerting way

Not touching the ground in spite of enormous gravitational pull

Nothing does me this way the way your Party does and always has.

Can you see why I never joined?

He drops his cigarette.

Shit.

A CHANGE OF LIGHTING SUGGESTS THAT THE SUN IS SHINING SOMEWHERE UP ABOVE THE CLOUDS

Here I will scribble my name and indicate exactly how I feel today.

If anyone has to ask what this means, I am very sorry.

He lights another cigarette.

Am I speaking to you right now?

What did I mean when I wrote the music?

Is there music right now?

Are there musicians?

What do they mean?

He shrugs.

Everything means something.

Didn’t Mayakovsky say so?

I cannot put it more clearly.

LIGHTING TECHNICIAN EMPLOYS A SOMEWHAT NAUSEATING COMBINATION OF COLORS AND RIPPLING EFFECTS, GRADUALLY BECOMING MURKY, THEN TENEBROUS, THEN STYGIAN DARKNESS.

If you wish to understand

I want you to look for the

Diminutive figure whose

Feet cannot touch the earth.

Wearing a raincoat and

Puffing a cigarette, reading

Pravda and wincing in the

Broad daylight, here I am.

Stalin is seven years dead.

Yet I am subject to his

Centrifugal anti-gravitation.

And try as I may

I cannot reach the ground.

© arwulf arwulf 2015