Work Text:
It's a picture of a piano, the wood of the upright case scuffed, hints of scratches on the legs, an occasional stain from a glass of wine or a hot cup of tea. The keys are no longer pristine white, aged with the years of its owner.
It's not this piano where Viggo first began to play, but it is the first that he began to love. Sometimes they played together, side by side: Sean on treble, Viggo on bass. Sometimes they played alone, still side by side, warmth easing tense muscles and soothing frayed souls. Sometimes the notes are quiet and the voices loud, sometimes no words are heard yet everything that can be is spoken.
The picture is spare: the piano, a vase of cornflowers on top, a small collection of ceramic instruments to one side. The background a weathered sheet, stained green, splashed with sunbursts of blue. There is no bench but the floor is worn, parallel scrapes from years of use.
Over the years children have battered the keys with enthusiasm, friends have absently picked out tunes over snifters of brandy. Months can pass without the cover being lifted from the keys, but it's tuned twice a year every year. Middle C sticks slightly and the sustain pedal doesn't work, but Sean's never fixed them and Viggo never asks why. There's history here, and memory.
They are invisible in the picture yet their presence is not subtle. It's in the vibrant colors, the distressed wood, the age of the instrument. It's in the careful composition of the painting and the abstract pattern of wear on the keys.
Many stories are locked within its wooden frame, etched in the strings and hammers. Each day they create new ones, harmonic and dissonant, kept safe in its musical chamber. It is part of them, an emblem, a totem, to be cared for as they care for themselves. Lives drawn apart and together on the vibration, the resonance of partnership. Two pairs of hands - one more elegant, the other more restless - sharing the arc of the notes, scaling and descending the path of the keys wherever they lead.