After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by 222333 »

{ok, no fetching}

*
The solid expanse of the iron sliding door was finally in front of him. He took a deep breath, and his hand reached for the opening lever.

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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

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The curve of the wall hid its shadows, almost as well as it hid its occupants. For a moment, Vincent actually wasn't sure anyone was there. But like carrion and a meal gone over, Rolley could be smelled before he could be seen, at least by Vincent. While the smell would have been missed by anyone else, Vincent's heightened senses discerned them, and discerned them as the particular odors they were. Rankness. Perspiration, sickness, and... something else Vincent couldn't quite name - the smell of narcotics leaving the system through sweat, trailing an almost tangy aroma of poison as it lay against the skin. He was sitting against the wall much the same way he'd sat against the one on MacIntyre street. Back to it. Knees drawn up. Hands resting on them, shaking a little. The face was shining with sweat, even though the evening was pleasant. The dark eyes, when they looked up at the sound of the opening door, were clear, however. Or nearly clear. Pain wracked them. It took Vincent a moment to understand. Withdrawals. Rolley was going through it, or had been, for the last few days.
Last edited by cindyrae77 on Sun Jan 18, 2015 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by 222333 »

*
{now, how do we deal with Robert not having seen/smelled him when he found the half bill and note? Let me think a bit... }

S
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by cindyrae77 »

When people detox, there's a lot of vomiting involved. And a lot of 'maybe this isn't worth it.' Maybe he was either off getting sick, or changed his mind, then changed it back?

Or, if I've thrown us off again, I can change it, as always!

Cindy
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by 222333 »

*
It's only that that kind of details bother me. As a reader, I'd immediately ask: Why didn't Robert spot him? And as a writer, I'd prefer to reply myself, not let the readers find a reply on their own.
But I very much like what you wrote and the plot possibilities you opened.
Could you change just a bit your paragraph involving that it was V's superior sight and especially sense of smell that made him track Rolley, in one of the many corners of that large junction room?

s
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by cindyrae77 »

Rats! I wrote a reply then lost it. Let me try again! (smile)

See if that doesn't fix it.

Another possibility is that Rolley 'hid' a bit from Robert, moved farther back, or what have you. Perhaps it's Vincent he wants, specifically. Any 'careful dreaming' Rolley MIGHT be about to undertake has to do with Vincent, therefore. Vincent who knows what it is to 'dream carefully.'

If Rolley wants 'in' it may be that he doesn't feel like he can walk through that door with Robert, or Jacob or Jamie or Eli. Perhaps Vincent, who knows what it is to be so very 'different' is the one who has to be able to guide him in so he won't run back out, and he knows it. They're both 'outcasts,' and even though Rolley's version of that is self imposed, it 'feels' just as permanent and damning as Vincent's is. It 'feels' like you're the only one, the lowest one, the one who is a pain to others, a bother, a chore, a disappointment,... what have you. If he IS there to get help, it's Vincent's brand of help he needs, perhaps. (Just another way to explain why he's not 'there' for Robert, but he is for Vincent.)

Also, I remember a touching scene in CM, between Rolley and Vincent, when young Rolley is practicing at the piano. Rolley has skipped supper, and Vincent's asking him 'Didn't you want your supper?' Rolley's sitting at the piano, practicing over and over, and he tells Vincent, "I have to practice. I have to get good. So they'll let me stay." Vincent puts his unique hand over Rolley's as he's playing, (to get him to stop for a moment) and tells him, "The music that you bring us is... beautiful. But it's you that we love." In other words, Vincent is the one who told him that he could stay, music or no. (Of course, it was always true, but Rolley apparently didn't realize it until just that moment.)
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

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*
Yes, be careful. I noticed that if you spend more than a certain time writing in the box, it loses it. Better to write elsewhere and copy-paste.

As you changed the paragraph fixes it for me. What else you wrote can certainly be included in the development of the story.

Except that... I just don't know anything about addiction and withdrawals...

Oh, just a question: your paragraph opens with "The curve of the wall hid its shadows, almost as well as it hid its occupants." ITS - > possessive pronoun of what?

------------>

His own eyes fixed in those desperate, clear eyes, Vincent opened the gate, and slowly approached the dark corner. With cautious, reverent moviments, he crouched and knelt. He knelt in front of agonizing pain and misery. He knelt in front of courage. He knelt in front of hope. And then opened his arms wide. Those clear eyes filled with pain widened, and after a suspended moment, a wracking sob shook Rolley, and he came to rest onto that welcoming chest, into those loving arms. The anguished wailing filled the junction room. From the opening to the Park, undetected and silent, Catherine watched this re-creating Nativity, her own eyes filled with tears.

S
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by cindyrae77 »

Its - the shadows belong to the curve of the wall. So do the occupants.

Loved your paragraph!

Possible correction. "His own eyes fixed 'on' (not 'in') those desperate, clear eyes."

Rolley wailed. For all he'd lost, and all he'd needed, and all he had, he wailed. For Miss Kendrick. For Anthony. For Vincent. For himself, and for the promise of the music that had been too long gone from his life. Vincent held the shaking body, realizing that the shudders were not the tremors of more withdrawal symptoms, but of a grown man simply continuing to sob into the arms of another. When Rolley could speak, at first Vincent didn't understand. Then he did. The wailing gave way to words, and the words were almost as tragic as the wailing had been: "I can't hear it no mo'," he said. "I can't hear it no mo' Vincent. I could always hear it. Played it by ear. Miss Kendrick said 'You can't be Rolley Parrot no mo', so I didn't. But I could always hear it, hear the music. Could play anything if I heard it." He shook his dark head and wiped his glistening cheeks with his battered hands. "I can't hear it no mo.'"
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

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*
“Rolley…” Vincent whispered, “Remember? You are the one that we love. Not the music you can bring us. You. Will you let us love you?”

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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

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Rolley rose shakily, nodding his head as he continued to wipe his eyes. Vincent steadied him as Catherine stepped forward. She held the gate open as the incredibly diverse pair went inside, ahead of her. Vincent's arm was wrapped protectively around Rolley's bent shoulder. Rolley's dark eyes cut toward her, then away. He was concentrating on his feet, and moving them forward. One either moves toward love or away from it, Catherine.] There is no other direction. Vincent's words echoed in her ears.
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by 222333 »

*
She closed the gate and the sliding door behind them. And they all moved toward love.

---

If it was me, at this point I’d “cut” to sometime in the future, after the worst is over. As I said, I'm unable to imagine/describe Rolley in these conditions in a credible way.


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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by cindyrae77 »

Okay, will you start us off, so I can see where it is you want us to 'pick things up?' I'll jump in, after.
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by 222333 »

*
Well... okay. I tried. But I'm not up to it. My palette is limited. Like trying to play Chopin in a two-octaves keyboard. Will you do it for me and start the scene yourself?
I want Rolley leisurely sitting in the Pipe Chamber, listening or talking to Pascal, surrounded by the occasional tappings. Enough time after the last scene to have him more or less in one piece, "normal" again.

S
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

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His hands had stopped shaking. Finally. More than the passing of the abdominal cramps which left him curled in half, the nausea that had ridden him like an animal or the sweats that had left him in a constant state of wet discomfort, the fact that his hands (and by extension, his fingers) had stopped shaking was the thing he was waiting for.
Except he couldn't admit that to anyone, yet. They might ask him if he wanted to sit down at a piano if they knew that, ask him if he wanted to play.

He liked Pascal, liked the busy-ness of the man, the way he never stopped listening, the way he kept his finely tuned ear always fixed on the sounds coming along the pipes. He could catch the slightest change in rhythm or pitch and identify its location, when a new message overlapped an old one. In another life, he'd have made a fine concertmaster. He had a most discerning sense of hearing.

They'd asked nothing of him. Pascal had asked nothing of him. He'd been left to wander where he wished. So he'd wandered in here. No one seemed to mind. No one seemed to think it odd that the now cleaned up junkie ("ex junkie," Rolley's mind insisted with a kind of desperate hope) had spent the last few days in the pipe chamber now that the worst was past.

Something like that?
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Re: After "Chamber Music" DRAFT

Post by 222333 »

{yes! thanks}

*
The incessant tapping sort of filled the ghastly silence in that part of his soul which he had came to consider his very core. No more. No more music in it. Even in the most terrifying, anguishing moments of the wreck that his life had become, his head was full of heaven, and he took rest in it. No more. It was the darkest moment of all, when he realized that. No value in him any more. No music. Just garbage, like all the others. “Too late”, he had said to Vincent on the rooftop. “Too late?” he silently wondered now, listening to this different music that filled the huge pipe chamber, and watching the odd brisk director, two levels away, playing his unique tunes.

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