Cello Black and White Jello

More about Cello Black and White Jello

The cello is the problem.

Or the answer.

Or the unpaid bill that keeps crawling back under the door.

It stands there in the corner like a wooden animal waiting for the weather to change. Four strings. Two hands. One enormous question mark wearing a coat of varnish.

You think you play the cello.

The cello thinks otherwise.

There’s a negotiation going on between the bow and the bone, between horsehair and gut, between the thing you meant to say and the sound that came out when the basement flooded.

Every instrument has a grudge.

The cello just has better posture.

You drag the bow across the string and suddenly the room has a basement. Suddenly the floorboards have opinions. Suddenly some black-and-white moon is melting into jello on the kitchen table, and nobody knows who left the spoon in it.

Fundamental frequency.

That’s what they call it.

A respectable name for the animal underneath everything.

Vibration pretending to be matter.

Matter pretending it isn’t vibrating.

The cello knows this.

The cello has known this since the first tree fell and nobody was there to hear it.

I keep getting distracted.

Back to the cello.

It is nothing.

It is everything.

It is a coffin for a forest and a bathtub for four trembling wires. It is a question you can lean against. It is a chair that learned how to sing. It is a black-and-white photograph soaked overnight in white jello.

And when the bow finally finds the right place—

the whole damned room starts telling the truth.