#735 My First Concert- Felisberto Hernandez

#735 My First Concert- Felisberto Hernandez

You can practice all you want, for years on end. Your technique could be perfected and your understanding of the music impeccable.  In the comfort of your own studio you may be the greatest musician ever, but unless you can overcome the nerves of stage-fright, you will never be as good as you think.

This is a charming and all-too realistic look into the fragile nerves of a first time performer. Having been a musician myself, I am very sensitive to these feelings. The days leading up to the performance is a steady roller coaster of emotion that Hernandez writes perfectly. Here are just a few of the telling quotes in this story:

“Rounding a corner I saw my name written large on two huge posters stuck on either side of a cart, and felt even more miserable. If the letters had only been smaller, perhaps less would have been expected of me.”

“I distrusted myself that morning and started going over my program like someone counting his money because he suspects it has been stolen from him during the night, and I soon found out I didn’t have as much as I had thought I did.”

We see the performance, and thankfully is wasn’t a disaster. The lighter moments on stage make for a great tension/release. I love using both a coffin and cannon as metaphors for the piano.

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 34

#616 The Balcony- Felisberto Hernandez

#616 The Balcony- Felisberto Hernandez

I am utterly taken with the beautiful writing in this collection. Hernandez is just as much a musician as a writer, taking an extraordinary person and building a magical setting around her like a composer builds strings around a piano soloist.

A pianist is invited to visit the home of a father who’s daughter cannot leave her house. She is afraid of going outdoors and has created a world around herself. Her friends are the objects she sees, the colors of parasols she adorns the hallway with, and the balcony she spends most of her time. Her anthropomorphic eye extends to more elusive things like shadows:

“As the light faded we could feel them nestling in the shadows as if they had feathers and were preparing for sleep. She said they develop souls as they came in touch with people.”

Silence is another theme that gets a lot of attentions here. Like the shadows, silence is seen as something alive with not only personality but emotion:

“I could see it growing on the big black top of the piano. The Silence liked to listen to the music, slowly taking it in and thinking it over before venturing an opinion. But once it felt at home it took part in the music. Then it was like a cat with a long black tail slipping in between the notes, leaving them full of intentions.”

-I was sinking into something like the bowels of silence

-the silence was a heavy animal with a paw raised

These are the types of stories that makes reading more than just entertainment. Enough of the stories that try to relate to everyday life. We see everyday life, exist in it, I don’t want to read about it. I read to escape from everyday life, go somewhere only the author can imaging. I’m glad people still write like this, although that’s not entirely fair…nobody writes quite like this.

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#525 Just Before Falling Asleep- Felisberto Hernandez

#525 Just Before Falling Asleep- Felisberto Hernandez

In the introduction to Piano Stories, Italo Calvino says this about Uruguayan author Hernandez:

“Felisberto Hernandez is a writer like no other: like no European, nor any Latin American. He is an ‘irregular’ who eludes all classification and labling, yet is unmistakable on any page to which one might randomly open one of his books.”

And the first piece in this collection is called How Not To Explain My Stories. Where beautifully describes the creative process:

“At any given moment I think a plant is about to be born in some corner of me. Aware of something strange going on, I begin to watch for it, sensing that it may have artistic promise.”

So, I will read this collection with enthusiasm and will try not to think too hard about what they mean. We start with a small vignette, or a dreamlike Just Before Falling Asleep. The man has a recurring vision as he sets off to bed. He sees his family sitting around a table, and he fears that they have forgotten him. But he finds more comforting thoughts and his mind is calmed.

This is more poetry than short story, but it is easy to underestimate how difficult it is to create a short piece. There is no room for error or explanation. Each word must be perfect, each phrase meaningful. An orchestra may cover the broken string of a single cello, but not during a solo.

Notable Passage: “At times when the memory has followed me and caught up with me at night, the colors of the day were like those of an ordinary postcard, but their smiles were unchanged.”

Rating: 10-7-8-7 Total= 32