More Than This
ReducioDate: April 2nd
WC: 1090
Mentions: @Roland Domagoj Marin
With the approaching Easter holidays, Cirrus was more than excited to visit home again, where paintings didn't speak and staircases didn't move on their own accord. Where things made most sense. She was sure that when she got home, the first thing her brother wanted to do was duet. Only, she hadn't had much time to practice her guitar since being at Hogwarts, no matter how badly she wanted to stay ahead of him in terms of instrumental abilities. Between the twins, Cirrus was always the better musician. She had the drive and passion for it, finding meaning and purpose in music, whereas it was all just pleasant sounds to her brother. She refused to let him be better at her than something she had a true love for; it would be insulting. As such, she needed to practice.
The last time Cirrus practiced was in her common room, and she got caught by another student. She remembers being overcome with embarrassment, wanting the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Music was personal to her, something that spoke both to and for her, which defied her reclusive tendencies should anyone catch her playing. It meant her walls were completely stripped away, giving the viewer the power to destroy her and trusting that they won't use it. Her trust in that was fragile. She would have to find somewhere within the castle that there won't be any people at the optimal time for her to practice... a much more difficult task in practice than in theory. It was Hogwarts, for Heaven's sake.
Cirrus' usual leisure spots on the castle grounds were all a no-go, despite her selecting them because they were normally devoid of people. She did not wish to risk being caught outdoors for the wind had a cheeky tendency to carry sounds to where they were not meant to be heard. Her common room was out of the question, and she had no clue where else there was for her to practice. Did Hogwarts have a music room or something of the sort? That could work, assuming wizards didn't have much interest in music.
Cirrus then discovered the existence of a rehearsal room in the castle. A place that kept sound in and unwanted sound out would be perfect. She had hung around that area of the castle for many afternoons, watching who regularly visited and constructing a routine in her mind to find the best time to be able to practice on her own. She had preemptively scouted the shortest route to the rehearsal room so that when that perfect moment finally arrived, she would avoid any attention as she towed her guitar case over her shoulder - the one she usually kept hidden under her bed in her dormitory. Sadly, it had been collecting dust as of late, having become a song that no one sings anymore. But not today, today she would restore her melody to its former glory.
Passing through the corridors, the heavy oak door that had become the subject of her desire these past few weeks came into view. Cirrus' hand tightly gripped the strap of her guitar bag as her other reached to push the door open, only to freeze when she swore she heard the faint resonance of a piano when she'd cracked it ajar. Someone had beat her to it, clearly. It was not one of the regulars, she'd made sure of that. Not to say other people couldn't use the room, it was a public space, but that didn't mean it wasn't frustrating. This was not part of her plan.
Cirrus was about to leave and sulk, but something she didn't quite understand cemented her in place. Her deft ears had caught the keys being played and their vaguely familiar tune, an elusive thought that she couldn't quite formulate. She closed her eyes, honed her senses, visualising the harmony, and it soon came to her like an epiphany. She had heard this song before, a fleeting memory of her uncle's record player when she was littler rushed back to her. She couldn't quite remember the band, but she definitely had this song locked away somewhere in the reveries of her mind.
Cirrus focused extra hard to try and pick out the bars, found when the mysterious pianist got to the chorus, and quietly whispered the lyrics to herself amongst less coherent mumbling. "You know there's nothing... more than this..." Yes, she certainly knew this song. It appears the pianist had a muggle background. Or some strange intrigue in muggle music, which seemed much more outlandish.
However... it didn't sound quite right. It sounded uncoordinated in a way, like one hand knew what it was doing and the other was trying to keep up. There were stiff undertones, like the pianist was simply playing the keys but not the music. And there was the occasional discordant key that made her soul shudder. It was like the natural dreamy soundscape that original song painted had clashing colours bleeding onto the canvas. Cirrus' urge to flee had dissipated now, replaced by the strong desire to restore harmony and heal this shrinking song. She pushed the door open more and quietly stepped inside, spotting the boy at the piano in the cavernous room.
Cirrus let him play the rest of the song as she stood off to the side of the room, unsure if he'd noticed her presence as she silently observed his posture, his hand placement, and how he pressed each key. She could instantly pick out what he was doing wrong. When the final keys rung out, she gripped the strap of her guitar case to ground herself, straightened up and made herself known. She inwardly told her awkwardness to get lost so she could speak freely, for good music always overcame her distaste for socialising.
"You need to relax your hands when you're playing, you're not trying to fight the piano." She stated. She slowly stepped closer, eyes fixated on the glorious instrument he sat at. It looked a lot like her mother's grand piano, the one she'd spent many a day hunched over, receiving the same advice she now regurgitates to this boy.
"You're also pressing the keys like they all matter equally, they don't. Otherwise, there's no contrast between the soft and loud sections, then playing becomes less efficient and you make it harder than it needs to be." She said as she ran her hand subconsciously over the lid, finally locking eyes with the pianist.
Last edited by Cirrus Mooney on 5 Apr 2026, 03:58, edited 1 time in total.
back from holiday, taking a moment to get back into the hio flow
More Than This
| — |  —date. [ 02/04/26 ]——————word count. [ 934 ]— —interacting with @cirrus mooney — There were times when music ceased to be mere sound and became an unquenchable thirst. As the term swiftly sprinted toward the Easter days, Roland felt his thin lips crack with this holy drought, and the landscape of his soul resembled a barren wasteland deprived of rain for at least a decade. Nothing but the heavy, daunting crash of the notes could help him to soak the dry earth. The melodies, ringing faintly in the young lion's ears like a persistent siren, beckoned him to plunge into their realm. And Roland Domagoj Marin, only a green boy of twelve winters, was too thoroughly unseasoned a tourist of the universe to build a wall against that kind of call. Thus did he take his leave, unto the Rehearsal Room, that land long promised. By any mark of the word, Roland could hardly claim mastery over music. He was neither a stiff-backed posh boy under the heavy eye of a stern, post-Soviet piano governess, nor was he the offspring of a wild hippie couple who thrust a banjo into his hands at age three. If he could coax a tune or two from the piano, it was only through those stolen hours with the grand instrument upon the stage, surviving the totally random tutelage of his mother. His real connection with music stemmed mainly from being a much more adept listener than an instrumentalist. It was the sole sanctuary of art where his soul could drink without the burden of creation - not like the plays and the heavy words that always demanded a return of blood and ink. Thousands of black vinyl circles had spun round and round on the old brown Dual player in his father's study. His spirit had absorbed an eclectic universe thanks to the experimental echoes of '80s Yugoslavia alongside the damp grey rain of the British indie tracks. The Marin boy's musical repertoire was violently split up into two hardly reconcilable worlds, a reflection of the dual spirits warring within his own veins. Not many French-Croatian kids were walking the earth, and the music was playing out the same strange loneliness. The first part of his spirit leaned toward the grandeur of the classical music. He was by no means a terrifying wunderkind, tearing the keys apart with Rachmaninoff's mad math or decoding Liszt's dark scribbled madness. Only the sweet melodies were locked in the muscle memory. Then there was the other realm of his collection, his hands could not easily tame upon the keys, but still had a blast trying to figure it out. The two sides were handed down in the bone; the classical reverence descended from his mother, born to a lineage of French art patrons, while the rest was the fault of his father, a runaway son of a business dynasty who devoted himself to collecting the free art of the world. For whatever random reason, his spirit instructed him to put his father's legacy to the test. As he sat before the piano placed in the Rehearsal Room, its black surface polished to a dark mirror to meet his own gaze, he had only one goal: to play some Roxy Music. Roland had always found the band's blissfully inconsistent career rather inspiring. Consistency, he felt, was the heavy chain of the mundane. Twelve years were not enough to articulate and contextualise it, but the young lion intuitively grasped that life is far too ridiculous to be met with sanity. And the pursuit of perfect consistency only led to lives wasted. To his artistic soul, an unyielding, steely stoicism, motionless before the storm, was dull as the grave itself. So, his fingers started tracing out the melody of More Than This, a song practised two or three times before in the quiet. As the final chord decayed into the silence, Roland was satisfied enough since he had asked nothing more of himself. What he'd just played resembled the song a great deal, which was precisely the modest triumph he had aimed for. Drawing his feet back from the brass pedals, he let out a massive breath, leaning back into the air. Right at that second, a sound struck him. He was slightly startled1. He turned to the girl, blown out like a deer caught in the cold snap of the hunter's sight. "Oh, you scared me," he managed to choke out. Gathering himself, he tapped the open fallboard twice. "Did you hear that, buddy? Time to stop fighting." Having pivoted gracefully on the stool to face her, Roland folded his hands on his lap. "Thanks for the feedback," he said, a recovering smile spreading across his youthful features. "But watch yourself, the blood-status fanatics might start targeting you if they realise how much you actually know about Muggle music. The walls have ears here." Though he feared for a second that he was being unjustifiably flippant, he quickly let it pass with a surrender of his shoulders. "Never an A-class player, anyway." Crossing one leg over the other, "I don't know many people in this castle who can actually analyse a Roxy Music song," the boy added, "I still don't have the faintest idea what those with wizarding ancestry listen to, and the Muggle-borns, well, half of them are deafened by the AI-generated music." He offered a crisp nod. "I'm totally looking forward to the rest of your critique, but it'd help you to know your student's name, which is Roland." 1 No, not slightly. We can't allow Roland's main narrator to distort the facts. The sound, albeit momentarily, left him unmoored. - The Committee of Alternative Narrators ═════════════════════  ═════════════════════( codes & banner by harlan ! )— | — |
Last edited by Roland Domagoj Marin on 16 Apr 2026, 00:24, edited 1 time in total.
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |
More Than This
ReducioDate: April 2nd
WC: 882
Mentions: @Roland Domagoj Marin
Cirrus felt a minor rush of self-consciousness when he said she scared him, regardless of the fact he appeared somewhat composed. After all, he never asked for her to critique his playing, nor for her to have to watched him without his knowledge, mindlessly intruding on a sacred moment. If the roles were reversed, she knows she'd be incredulously offended. She's guilty of the world's worst crime; being a hypocrite. But we bury what we fear the most and dress it in the language of reason. She thinks a fright is what he gets for tainting a beautiful song like that. Nonetheless, she was compelled to utter an apology by her sudden appearance, she could retain some civility.
When he'd feigned scolding the piano as if it were sentient, Cirrus almost cracked a smile from how silly that was. It seemed her new acquaintance embodied a pinch of cheek. It was not something she was particularly fond of in a person, but at least he didn't seem to be like most presumptuous people she knew. Obnoxious, ignorant. She thinks that perhaps if he talked less, he'd play better, if that was his goal.
She then stared blankly at his blood-status comment. Watch herself? It was ironic that he was the one playing such a song if he was so worried about discrimination. Regardless, Cirrus never cared too much about being muggle-born, nor what pure-bloods from wizarding families thought much of her. Their judgement said more about them than it did her, and she knew how to choose her company. She'd simply disappear when they'd show up, along with being generally unmoved by anything they would have said to her. She faced the same thing even in the muggle-world, being biracial. It was all so trivial. Such words would only hold power against her if she'd let them, and she wouldn't let anyone who didn't care whether she lived or died to define her. As such, she chose not to comment. She didn't stay because she wanted to discuss generational conflicts as much as she wanted to fraternise. She stayed because the boy across from her had a taste in music that was much more refined than his ability to replicate it.
"Ah, Roxy Music. That's it..." She muttered to herself with a light tap on the lid of the piano in recognition. She'd finally formulated that fleeting thought. "They're a 70s band, aren't they? My Uncle's a major fan of the glam rock era, I believe he's got some of their records. I enjoy the whole self-invention thing they had going on, but I'm more into the heavier thrash metal and grunge era that followed." Her hand dropped back to her side, digging into her pocket as her eyes drifted elsewhere in a reflective manner.
Cirrus again chose not to comment when he mentioned AI generated music, for she'd simply talk herself into a pit of self-inflicted irritation and spoil her mood for the rest of the day. She could go on for a millennium about how much she despised artificial music, how discrediting it was to people like her. AI had its uses, but to replace people who had a creative drive was certainly not one of them. To her, it was all the same for most mainstream music that polluted the radio. Each song blurred together into one big formulaic soundwave shaped by expectation for immediate impact rather than lasting depth. Chuck some conventionally catchy sounds into a computer, slap on some autotune, and watch the numbers exponentially rise. It was so incredibly listless to her. Whatever happened to the day where people actually played the instruments? Or, more so, when lyrics had meaning? If it exists anymore, it is certainly less visible than the kind of slop her brother listens to. Music was so much more than complementary sounds, she tries to tell him, but he was unfortunately one of the many that lacked any individualism to care more than what was presented to him at face value. She simply continued as she gazed at blankly at the dark stone wall.
"I do, however, find it amusing how the following generation's rock sought to rebel against their predecessors - who constructed their music around identity as if it were a performance - to strip it back to what was left when the performance was gone, all to fall victim to the system of commercialisation themselves. Kinda makes you think about authenticity of identity itself extending beyond merely what we can produce, who we are versus who we're expected to be." She paused, staring off into space like she'd momentarily been deprived of her ability to feel anything, before turning back to the boy with the faintest of stifled smiles that was betrayed by her dimpled cheeks. "And it just sounds better, in my opinion."
Cirrus stared for another moment before shrugging her guitar case off of her shoulder, showing no motive to unveil the instrument for her main priority was to aid Roland's extra ordinary piano playing. It was almost incumbent on her to do so. "Cirrus, by the way." She stated as she placed it carefully on the ground beside the piano then gestured inquisitively to the ivories, silently asking if she could join him at his side.
back from holiday, taking a moment to get back into the hio flow
More Than This
| — | —date. [ 02/04/26 ]——————word count. [ 1283 ]— —interacting with @cirrus mooney— Entirely unaware of the rather saddening fact that a human life is ultimately nothing more than a prolonged lament for childhood, Roland and Cirrus, two kids, stood weighing one another in the silence. The light in their eyes kept flashing, the kind that only flashes to life when kids observe each other, like white, languidly white moonlights upon the darkest waters. Roland silently noticed that the majority of his comments were met with silence by the girl. 'She's not much of a talker,' he initially thought. Roland had always found this temperamental defect deeply baffling in his peers - this tendency to summon an iron-clad resistance, or perhaps just a bovine indifference, to the all-captivating lust of speaking. He, in contrast, felt an unyielding compulsion to ramble. If he could not find a person, he'd talk to a mirror, even to his own reflection in the windows of the car parked along the road. That entire universe of words -twisting them, flipping them, tearing them apart just to see how they operated- had ensnared him from the very moment he uttered his first word as a crawling baby. (His mother, acting as the strict annalist of Roland's personal history, claimed that this word was 'tata'; while for his dad, who was a way more passionate storyteller but basically treated facts like an ancient Greek chronicler, the first word slipped through Roland's gappy baby teeth was absolutely 'dada'.) As Roland continued to observe Cirrus, he began to figure out that she wasn't ignoring him because she detested talking. It was because she was somehow hyper-fixated on talking about a very specific set of things. His earlier remarks regarding the blood status, that eternally tedious yet fashionable hot topic of the Wizarding World, and which he had delivered with what he considered remarkably sassy indication, had flown entirely over the young badger's sphere of interest, seemingly. Having learned early that to ask, "Are you a pure-blood?" was universally regarded as a massive faux pas, Roland had devised a quiet artistry for ascertaining if a new person was, like himself, a Muggle-born. Using the fact that he was playing a Muggle piece on the piano was just one of those tactics, its latest example. The dreary sociopolitical architecture of his new world would hardly be his preferred topic of conversation either, especially with a grand piano in front of him. The Marin boy's observant quietude violently evaporated only to be replaced by an unfeigned illumination upon his still-developing features upon hearing the girl's words declaring her knowledge of Roxy Music. It was -pathetically- obvious that the residents of the Wizarding World (or rather, the Wizarding 'ghetto' where their playlists were just as mysterious as their ability to teleport using the most commonplace of objects) had absolutely zero clue that such a band existed. Yet, even in the Muggle school Roland had briefly and -thanks to his parents- 'flexibly' attended, it was practically impossible to find a soul who knew the band, either. Roland's oldest buddy, Nate, only listened to rap, a genre that unjustifiably provoked the boy's eyes to roll themselves with violent exhaustion. Time and again, when he had tried to lay the offerings of his musical taste before someone he favoured, he was met only with total apathy. And, alas, the young lion was one of those who fully expected the rest of humanity to appreciate true art right alongside him. Even the mere idea of quietly admiring a fragrant and blood-red rose was fundamentally against his nature. He wanted to be part of a collective choir devoting itself to serenading anything truly beautiful. His eyes, therefore, almost periwinkle blue, widened with sudden life. He suddenly resembled an overeager tourist - you know the look, holding his breath as he mentally translated his thoughts, waiting with agonising impatience for the blessed moment the word would finally be his, or at least, that's how he imagined he looked. "Wait, you actually know Roxy Music?" Roland blurted, his astonishment overriding any semblance of tact and his zeal hardly veiling the possible insolence of the question. (After all, Cirrus might well have answered, with justified ice, 'Do I look like someone who lives under a rock?') "Yes, yes! Well, not just a band from the seventies, the best seventies band. Okay, maybe one of the best. Gosh, there were so many giants back then." And he meant every word. He was not one of those modern hipsters who fetishised the retro, draped themselves only in thrift-shop cast-offs. He was genuinely enraged by how they all thought they were being so 'different', only to end up literal carbon copies of one another because they were all 'different' in the exact 'same' way. Besides, unlike the authentic hippies of the bygone times who actually bothered to mount a proper critique of consumerism (an order to which his own parents, albeit loosely, belonged), Roland held no respect for these modern pseudo-bohemians who swam in consumerism while pretending they were above it. Not that he spent a great amount of time brooding over it, but still... "Here's where we part ways, then," Roland resumed, a gentle smile on his thin lips. "Taste is taste. But heavy thrash metal gives me a migraine, and I don't want to get hooked on Panadol Extra at my age." A thoughtful expression danced upon his features. "Honestly, though... Don't you think that the grunge and thrash guys basically just as performative as the glam rockers? Putting on ripped flannel shirts and keeping your hair greasy, while acting like you're not trying to build an identity at all - that's a pretty intense performance, actually." As he processed the Hufflepuff's unexpected discourse on the history of music, his eyebrows arched toward his hairline, his forehead wrinkling in surprise. "Phew," he teased, "And people say I'm too verbose. Please, send my hardened regards to your Language Arts teacher. Solid vocabulary." Now, this was quintessential Roland - every subject required a dusting of levity and leavening grace of wit. "You're right. They wore a mask. Obviously. But that's exactly why I love them. The glitter, the massive platform heels, the grotesque makeup... I don't know." He sounded much older than twelve all of a sudden. "Maybe sometimes, just maybe, the most honest version of ourselves is the one wearing the mask we built with our own two hands." He held his palms up to Cirrus, almost instinctively. "Sometimes, covered in feathers and glitters, like Jobriath, we're way more real." But Roland was no fanatic, nor did he possess an inclination to stubbornly entrench himself in his own convictions. He had always maintained a silent respect for the gray, uncharted realm of the unknown. "Cirrus," Roland half-pensively echoed, "Cool name." He slid over the piano bench, gesturing to the newly vacated 'real estate' on it. "Hope you're a better teacher than my mom," he said, his feet dangling and kicking the air. "Her father is an orchestra conductor, and I assume it's driving her crazy that she couldn't pass the familial talent down to her only child." He offered a wry smile. It was rare, actually, to find an encounter of such immediate value. Hogwarts was infested with people who asked to be your 'best friend forever' after talking to you for ten fleeting seconds. Or others who waged absolute war on each other for reasons that even Freud would need a nap trying to psychoanalyse them. Cirrus wasn't like that. Mercifully. Driven by an almost puritanical work ethic, she apparently harboured no ulterior motive beyond executing More Than This exactly right. And honestly, right in that moment, that was a level of dedication Roland Domagoj Marin had no choice but to respect. ═════════════════════ ═════════════════════( codes & banner by harlan ! )— | — |
Last edited by Roland Domagoj Marin on 16 Apr 2026, 00:24, edited 1 time in total.
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |
More Than This
ReducioDate: April 2nd
WC: 2067
Mentions: @Roland Domagoj Marin
Wow, this Roland kid talked a lot, was Cirrus' initial thought. She wasn't inherently good at reading people, but she could certainly notice when the only person within her immediate vicinity was filling her ear with noise that wasn't music. Most people she knew whose mouths moved faster than what their brains could keep up with were insecure, 'most people' being her brother. He simply would not shut up sometimes, she had no clue how they were related, much less shared a womb for 9 months. But it was usually to overcompensate for the fact that she was better than him at, well... everything. If she had all the talent, he could have the charm. Cirrus had the potential to talk a lot herself, but only when she had such an unsatiable passion for the topic and the knowledge to drive it, otherwise she was selectively quiet. In contrast, her brother just talked for the sake of talking. She liked to let people who liked to talk, talk, then she could find out how full of it they were. She wasn't entirely sure she got that with Roland, for all he'd said wasn't easily lost to the air. What she saw in him was a mirror, someone who just directed his need for connection in a different, yet complementary, way than her.
"I know a lot of bands." Was all she said. Although, Cirrus resonated quite a lot with his flamboyant excitement. She reflected that same sparkle in his eye whenever she talked about her favourite band, as little as that was - The Butterfly Effect - some niche local Australian hard rock band that no one in her minuscule circle had heard of. She wished not to look down over her nose at anyone for the music they listened to (she was well aware that the screamo metal half of her playlists was a bit of an acquired taste), but she really couldn't help it when she had a little slice of the world's allegories almost entirely to herself. But she understood what it was like to not have anything in common with anyone, to be wrongfully perceived, that's why she generally didn't have many friends. At that point, it was less about having original interests and more about finding someone much like oneself to share that little slice of the world with. Within itself, it was not an original experience, but it was what invigorated her each day given she never sought out social interaction to look forward to the next day.
Cirrus only talks with people if they are lucky enough to pique her interest. She remembers encountering a homeless man once while on a walk around her hometown. His socks were gone and the world had drained him of his mirth, but he had his guitar to breathe life into him, even if the signs seemed to tell him that he was simply the hollow shell of a human. She'd asked for music, and he supplied a bittersweet folk song that, to this day, she finds herself humming under her breath on occasion, the memory still very vivid in the reveries of her mind. In return, she placed a penny in his blistered palm, which somehow bought her the single most mind-expanding conversation of her short life. That interaction is what Cirrus considers to be a pivotal moment, one that drastically shaped her outlook on music, that songs contain memories, ideas, feelings, which was something she came to crave as part of her daily diet. Music wasn't about being heard, it was about saying the things that need to be said, even if no one was listening. She aspired to be like that one day - not homeless (although, some might argue that pursuing a career in music often left one financially unstable) - profound. One might teach their kids to never talk to strangers, but that guiding principle was nowhere in the book of 'Cirrus: The Curious Edition'. After all, that's what led her to this very moment, sitting beside Roland, another kid with a mentality that far exceeded the extent of their biological development, and discussing the bigger picture of these buried gems in the music industry. And apparently, that rendered her verbose.
"My language... what? I don't... have a..." She trailed off, shaking her head and thought off with it. "I just read..." Cirrus genuinely couldn't tell whether or not Roland was mocking her with his jokes. Whenever people would try to joke with her, she'd have to navigate a labyrinth of social nonsense. He was the incarnation of everything akin to the word 'impish', and she thought his idea of humour was far more obscure than what was to her liking. She was most tempted to scrunch up her nose and just get on to instructing with an iron fist. With her superficial comprehension of Hogwarts culture, she wondered why this kid wasn't in Ravenclaw with an attitude and searing wit like that. Then again, she wasn't entirely certain she suited the qualities of Hufflepuff as she was, by general perception, a bit of a recluse. But what we see in ourselves is not necessarily what others see in us.
But Cirrus fundamentally understood what he meant. To say she didn't enjoy theatrics while saying she liked metal was a bit of a juxtaposition. After all, she was a walking contradiction - she hated talking to people but had a lot of vaulted words to say about them, she hated loud spaces but loved loud music, she hated being criticised but usually had no issue in pointing out what other people were doing wrong if she cared so much about it.
The grunge aesthetic was certainly a statement; she only meant that it was a byproduct of rebellious tendencies. She felt it was more like their authenticity was robbed from them after they'd lost their novelty rather than asserting themselves to be a pawn of the market. Most bands she liked really didn't have a gimmick, just an infectious spirit and feelings no one but their sheet music was privy to, the rest was merely salad dressing. Especially the very specific finger they had to personally stick up to The Man. She can't say the same about a number of modern bands... anonymity, masks, costumes. She wasn't much of a fan. She listened to music because it meant something to her, made her feel something, not for what it pretended to be... But she didn't need to explain herself further. He didn't like metal, simple as that.
"My Mum's the same, though, I can't blame you. I inherited her face, certainly not her taste in music. She's a jazz nerd, imagine her horror when I asked for my first deathcore record at the ripe age of six. I swear, she started praying for my soul that day, and she's atheist." It was the first time she'd chuckled, less because she found it funny and more for sentimental value. It was clear to her that he valued the idea that identity could be a fluid construct made into a tangible idea through style and expression. Even though her own ideals didn't quite align with that, she respected the individualism, punctuating it with a little shrug and tilt of her head.
"I get what you mean. I've just, personally, never been one for theatrics. I believe what you say and do have infinitely greater meaning than how you choose to appear, it's more raw and instinctual. And I think acting is just lying to yourself. But aren't we all acting, when you really get down to it? Almost every ounce of what we consume on a daily basis, is just... lies. Who are we to say what good music is, 'good music' doesn't exist, it's the pinnacle of human opinion. And opinion is, inevitably, a lie." Her eyes had gone distant again, sucked away into that in her head again. It was a conscious effort to keep herself focused. "Sorry, I'm thinking too much... I like to think, though, a lot of people don't think enough."
Cirrus focused back on the task at hand, ready to shed the previous topic and teach this hopeless kid some piano. However, a silent wince became of her at the mention of 'orchestra conductor'. While she had a profound respect for John Williams, she'd rather go into manual labour like her father than flick a stick at people who were doing what she'd much prefer to be doing. Holding power and command over people was nothing of interest to her, especially when the object of her desire would be right in front her face, only she wouldn't be able to grab it. It was insulting. Like when her brother finally grew an inch taller than her then decided it'd be funny to exercise his newfound power to steal her belongings and hold them just that one inch out of her reach. She shook her head disapprovingly.
"Yeah... no. I'll show you how to play properly, you've untapped potential and you'd waste it by spending your life waving a stick about. Now, if you're capable, I need you to focus." She had moved in next door and placed her dominant hand over the keys with conviction. Her own mother used to be a producer before the record label went under and she became a music teacher, so Cirrus was basically born in the studio. She got to meet all sorts of musicians, play all sorts of instruments, learn all sorts of techniques. Surely, it wasn't that hard for her to pass on her teachings.
Cirrus hadn't played piano in a while; her guitar had held her attention captive for the last couple years of her life. Ironic that it was now discarded by her feet, generally forgotten by now, while she returned to an old friend. But she played many instruments, her mother had her on the piano the moment she'd shown an inkling of developing motor skills. It was like breathing to her, she didn't think too much about it when she did it, but it came so naturally that it was simply an extension of her person. If she were not at Hogwarts with a new and intense fascination in the wizarding world and everything magical, she'd absolutely still be investing every ounce of her energy into music. She'd always dreamed of having a band of her own, releasing her own compositions and sharing them with people who found meaning what she had to say. She'd despise the celebrity skin, but she'd adore legitimising her creative vision.
Cirrus experimentally played a few chords on one of the octaves, having to summon her piano playing abilities from the depths of the past, as she reoriented herself with the grand instrument. She would hum and mutter things to herself under her breath as she tried to find the chords she was looking for. She'd never played More Than This on any instrument before, she'd have to pick it out by ear, staring at the ceiling as if to seek guidance from a transcendental force, mouth slightly agape only to let slip the faint whispers of 'F sharp, no... G sharp... C...' To the untrained eye (or ear), it looked like she was learning piano for the first time, or just plain insane, but it was quite the opposite. She was tapping into a memory bank of musical genius, invoking the greater vigour that tread the threshold between muscle memory and pure talent. Once she'd nailed the first bar, the uncoordinated keys magically falling into harmonious place, she played it again once, twice over. The keys rung throughout the room with a much more pleasing resonance than Roland's earlier attempt and she turned back to look at him with this startlingly focused glint in her eyes. It was an intense flame of impetuous fervour.
"See? Like that. Here." Cirrus had instinctually taken his hand and placed it over the same keys she'd just played, encouraging him to adopt much more fluid and elegant movements when he played. "You get what I mean by you've got to relax your hands first? It makes a big difference. It's like when you're writing an essay for an exam and you're gripping your quill too tightly, your hand cramps and it gets harder to write. Relax and the music will come to you more naturally."
back from holiday, taking a moment to get back into the hio flow
More Than This
| — | —date. [ 02/04/26 ]——————word count. [ 946 ]— —interacting with @cirrus mooney— O le le! Roland found his mind engaged in determining whether he truly liked the presence of this Cirrus girl. The twelve short years, however, he had thus far spent upon this spinning globe had not yet deposited enough wisdom into his mental treasury that this questioning was just a way to avoid the real issue. The true dilemma lay not with Cirrus, no, but the heavy feeling of standing before the reality that every human soul is a distinct realm, and how vastly different the nature of those realms can be. Roland was, at least in his own way, a boy rather stuffed with himself, to be otherwise would have required the time spent with those who mirrored his own spirit. Yet, when all is said and done, and when the dust of these social crossings settles, how genuine is this much-lauded experience of rubbing elbows with a diverse multitude? Everyone, deep down, feels a piece of longing for a universe populated by replicas of themselves. To sit as the grand prince-bishop of a fairy realm full of companions singing praises to the same virtues, hating the same things, and chuckling at the same witticisms - is not that the desire resting at the bottom of everyone's heart? Let the tyrants of self-improvement preach till they are blue in the face about escaping our echo chambers, no one actually enjoys standing in a flea market of voices they cannot stand; one merely endures it. Every time Roland felt his little barbs had failed to pierce the armour of his listener with quite the desired depth, his features would swiftly adopt the faint expression of a thespian who has just performed the most striking scene of a play and received nothing but the frail applause of a bored gallery, or God forbid, complete silence. "Good to hear that you read," he said, gathering up the scattered skirts of his energy. "I seriously doubt that most of the people here even know how to read and write. The other day my eye chanced to fall upon the parchment of a fellow housemate. It made me think of suicide. Even if he'd written lines that'd revolutionise the field, if I'd been the professor, I would've given him a massive T. I'd also have sentenced him to detention. You know, a thirty-six week education where he'd spend every day just writing out the letters." Naturally, the realisation that Cirrus was less than enamoured with his stream of prattles, well, was hardly going to dam up the river. Roland could not help but echo the slight chuckle that trailed the girl's words about her ma. And it brought him a sense of relief as well. Well, apparently, Cirrus had a modicum of humour, a lightness that could be triggered if she allowed herself to step down from the pedestal of solemnity, or she simply chose to, or if a moment caught her unguarded. This was recorded as a positive trait to add the young badger's imaginary character sheet. "Jazz?" he asked, "Did your mother grow up in a lift?" Roland's mind, generally steeped in good manners, offered no warning this time that one doesn't make light of the parents of the people, especially if you've only just met them. "In that case, I'm not surprised to hear that she's an atheist. Jazz... is just like maths, right? Expose a soul to either, jazz or maths, for a sufficient time, and their imagination could not summon the image of harp-strumming baby angels any longer." Then Roland found himself being subjected to the thing the girl was truly passionate about: a lesson. Ordinarily, he had a rather profound distaste for being instructed, and the rebellious little imp inside wanted to cry out, 'I just want to play lunatic songs in an absurd troupe where only fifteen people can fit! I don't need this solfège!' But something stopped him. A sneaking suspicion that Cirrus was a sincere girl, and that he might actually have learnt a thing or two from the ordeal. As the girl deciphered a song she heard for the first time, the Gryffindor's eyes widened in awe. Well, if Roland was not quite driven to the sort of soul-scorching envy Salieri had reserved for Mozart, a bright respect, nevertheless, settled over his face. "This... this was magnificent, to be honest..." he managed to say. "Don't get me wrong, but you should've torn up your Hogwarts letter. Any proper conservatoire would've snapped you up!" (This was a confusing theme for Roland. Could his own father, for instance, have just said, 'No, I don't want to send my boy to this school'? Did such a 'right' exist? Or did the Ministry simply abduct such children in the middle of the dark, fearing they might blow the globe to smithereens with their untrained magical prowess - a rather unchilling idea.) "Thank you, I suppose, I can, well, work on it," Roland said, his voice caught between a murmur and a spoken word. "But I warn you, I'll never strive to be a virtuoso or something like that. A little bit of lack of talent, or a lack of discipline is always cool." He lightly beamed at the girl. "Perhaps you might show me a few more tricks from time to time? If it suits you," he asked her. "And if, perchance, something outside music should ever catch your fancy... maybe we can talk about it, too. But two years later, when we get permission to visit Hogsmeade, over a butterbeer. Sounds good? In two years, I'm guessing, the people here will give you such a headache that you'll end up becoming quite over-friendly." ═════════════════════ ═════════════════════( codes & banner by harlan ! )— | — |
| sta • 6 | eva • 5 | str • 2 THEATRE KID wis • 9 | arc • 7 | acc • 6 | the muggle condition THROUGH⠀THE⠀YEARS every step a scene worth watching |
More Than This
ReducioDate: April 2nd
WC: 909
Mentions: @Roland Domagoj Marin
Cirrus had always found compliments to be rather peculiar things. They were often spoken like objective truths - which was objectively wrong within itself, truth is tainted when clashed with opinion - confidently presented by people who could not possibly possess enough information to make such declarations about others. It was especially peculiar, in Cirrus' opinion, when such compliments came from near strangers. She had known this Roland boy for what? Half an hour? More or less. That was hardly enough time to make meaningful judgements about a character, much less to determine whether they belonged in one place or another, at some prestigious conservatoire she'd never even heard of. And it was most peculiar that it was intended for her; she never considered herself particularly deserving of such sentiments. The suggestion was so dramatic she'd almost laughed. Just almost. Instead, she simply stared at him for a moment before raising her brow slightly.
"You're seriously overselling it." Cirrus stated flatly, though not dismissively. She wasn't trying to deflect the compliment like she normally would as much as she simply didn't know what to do with his words. Music was always that one thing she measured against herself. No matter how good she got, there was always another musician out there that was better than her, different techniques to master, another song she couldn't yet play. Though she was only a pre-teen, age never hindered, for example, Mozart, who was infinitely greater than she currently was and at a much younger age. To be told she belonged in the same category as such figures was like being congratulated for climbing a hill while standing at the foot of a mountain. Peculiar indeed.
"I just practice." Cirrus stated. Although, she knew that wasn't entirely true, she knew that. Practice was indeed important, her mother drilled that into her the moment her hands could reach a piano octave. But she met enough musicians in her life to know that practice was in no substitute of raw talent. Some people could spend a century learning an instrument, but they'd never truly understand it, her twin brother was proof of that. He was raised on a drum kit yet couldn't keep a beat to save his life. Her youngest brother was proof of the other side of that truth. 3 years old and already playing the standard paradiddle on the edge of the dining table with his utensils. Practice nurtures skill, but some people are simply born with it. Cirrus, however, preferred not to ponder too hard about which category she fit into.
Her attention drifted back towards the piano before something else he said finally registered in her mind. 'Perhaps you might show me a few more tricks from time to time'. She blinked once, twice, seemingly perplexed. Not because the request was unreasonable, it wasn't. It was just that most people tended to leave her alone. And she was quite fond of that fact. Some found her strange, unapproachable, or the majority seemed unsure what to do with a girl who spoke with more fervour about inanimate objects than people. Yet, Roland skipped past all the usual uncertainty and suspicion and assumed that they would simply continue speaking beyond this interaction. As though that was the most natural thing in the world. To him, maybe. To her, quite the opposite. Then came the butterbeer comment, 'what is butterbeer?' More exchanging of pleasantries, she assumed. It was strange. Very strange.
"Two years is a long time." Cirrus stated, observed, with quiet sincerity. She could barely predict what she was going to do next week, let alone make plans for years in advance. Her eyes narrowed at him slightly. "You seem confident we will still know each other by then."
People were something that came and went all the time. People changed, interests shifted, friendships turned stale. Human beings were unpredictable creatures. Perhaps that's why she loved music so much; a song never decided to have a different sound when she decided to listen to it again the next day. As unpredictable as a song could get was a tempo change or an unusual instrument thrown into a verse. She would get used to it after a second listen and find most enjoyment in it, it was what she had in mind when she thought herself as 'adventurous'. That was tolerable for Cirrus. She couldn't get used to the way people seemed to change like the weather. But perhaps the inconsistency of change is the one consistent thing she can count on to remain forever unchanging. She entertained the paradox for only a moment before pushing it aside with an almost imperceptible shake of her head. There were much more important matters at hand, or bigger fish to fry, as she thinks might be something Roland would say, even if such phrases were not much to her taste.
"Tell you what," She started, nudging his shoulder a little with her own before nodding briefly towards the keys. "I will take you up on that offer if you can play it for me again, the first bit, no help this time. Show me you actually learned something and I'll teach you some more things another time."
Cirrus even scooted over a little to give him space to command the grand instrument, gesturing to octave where she just played the starting bar moments earlier, watching him intently. He was the chief of the ivories now.
back from holiday, taking a moment to get back into the hio flow