Oboe

[Totally Optional Prompts this week encouraged us to be surreal. I'm working on another piece that may or may not turn out, but I couldn't get this out of my mind until I wrote it down. It is largely true and perhaps one of the most surreal experiences of my life. In the footsteps of the surrealists, I ask you to draw your own conclusions.]


Oboe

Yesterday they were inside the blue glacier.
Today one hundred teenagers filled
the aerial trams cars above Chamonix
ascending in the bright morning light of summer.

The girls' smiles flashed bright
above long, formal black dresses.
Warehouses of paisley Victorian sofas
had provided the synthetic material
for the boy's tuxedo jackets,
some in dark blue, some in dark red.

From the tram they walked on
the dusty path carved for skiers, not
black dress shoes. Each person carried
one box: this one for flute; that one
for trumpet; over there one pushed
the giant timpani case on wheels.

By ones and twos they rode
up the chair lift, even the ones with
acrophobia, hands gripping tight
to the saxophone and the frame,
as they rose up the green hillside.
Up and up into the clouds until their feet
touched down near the hut.

Instrument containers littered the grass,
yawning next to the large wooden platform.
In the cold, sunny summer air
the cows looked up in surprise
as the warm-up began.

The brass and players were too cold
to hold tuning as one hundred teenagers
played the concert in the Alps for
thirty or forty hikers and the herd of cows.






[Note: When I was editing this piece, I tried to enhance the dream-like hyper-reality of it. I tried to cut transitions that didn't have impact themselves. I removed or changed every occurrence of the word "a". I often used the word "the" instead. I think doing so added to the immediacy and removed potential ambiguity (what hut? oh, THE hut). What do you think?]