The Operatist

Eat your heart out, Kinkade

The village was nestled high in the Bavarian mountains. Its stunning beauty was the kind travel agents hundreds of years in the future would rave about, bringing sticky fingered children and gawking tourists who would absorb the beauty, digest it and look for the next edible bite to consume and eschew. The surrounding forest was magical in its reflection. Passing through its inviting trees, one kept expecting to find mischevious elves or gleeful fairies or even a gingerbread house to eat. Among the brooding, dark Germanic forests, this one glowed bright - and the source of that light came from the luminance of this isolated and untouched village.

Fate had curiously blessed this mountain oasis with opera - or rather, one could say opera made this secluded retreat an oasis. As the rest of the world worshiped hard steel and punctured chain mail and the charge of snarling horses into battle, the lives of the villagers centered around the release of grand, soaring operas, written as if they had their own personal channel from God. Like a beam from the heavens was their "Operatist", as he was dubbed. And though his operas would never know the light of day of the greater world, it made them no less true or wonderful.

This ray of light I shine on thee

"Opera day" - the day new music was announced - was more eagerly awaited than food, water or air to breathe. Rumors circulated on how close the latest masterpiece was to being released, a communal orgasm shared by every living soul. Solos and riffs echoed in the villagers' voices for weeks afterwards, amazed at their good fortune of hearing the true word of God. Can it be? they wondered. Can what we hear really be true? In a world that trained for war, the Operatist's burg trained for dance. Hearing the driving beat and infectious rhythms, the tears and laughter of exquisitely expressive violins, the sheer triumphant joy of that exact moment, they were helpless to do otherwise. "Stupid smiles" were the facial norm - yet only to an outsider was any explanation required.

Perhaps these operatic flights were a delicacy for which this dark age was not yet ready. Over the centuries, guilt had swept the world into despair, recoiling in slow motion horror with the realization of having crucified its savior. These diseased and dirty people imagined witches and heretics in every corner, figments of their own guilty souls. What meaning could life have now? Oppressive religion hammered itself into the land in arrogant mockery of the true Word, but its false hope for redemption only gave rise to mad priests with mad souls. It was a time of sorrow for an inexcusable act - but even sorrow can't last forever.

A song from the edge of time

Funny how sometimes something everyone knows is true is never said. There was no special beam of light shining down on the village the naked eye could see and yet every villager knew it to be there. Its portal lived in the great white ivory tower on the edge of town. The Operatist never claimed to write any opera but merely recorded what he heard in his ear. He said the trick was to never insert any of his own notes. But to hear this dictation from God, the noise of the world must be kept out. So only in this remote refuge did light creep tentatively back into the world, making the forest around it glow and the eyes of its inhabitants bright in the reflection.

Sadly, the Operatist who brought joy to the world could not bring that same joy to himself. To no villager could he speak his name, forced to remain unknown in a world not yet ripe for living. And though his music was pure, he himself was not, lusting after the teenage virgins he spied through the third floor window of the insular tower his art demanded. Despairing of love, unable to communicate freely with a hostile world, he turned on himself, ending his life of beauty and horror. Ultimately, his flower never took root - maybe in a later time he'd find a more receptive globe.

Songs from times of pre-history remembered once more

Alchemists thrived during this time, claiming to turn lead into gold - never understanding that if true, then gold itself would become worthless with its abundance. Alchemy sprang from the vain hope of finding good from evil and then to undo the harsh fate of their withering lives. But it also spoke of a belief in a magic unarticulated, a distant echo just out of reach of hearing ("Do I dare believe such a hope?"). That even with the despair of their deadly deed, life still held out an olive branch, calling them back, praying they would listen and stop breaking the heart of their Maker. But letting light back in the world would not be so easy.