A witching melody

The voice of a witch was believed to set the world on fire.
The melody escaping those lips was feared to be the final melody, the very last frequency the universe would vibrate on, before eventually falling apart.
Were witching melodies so awful? A sound to tear a wound into this world?
„Maybe, they were so wonderful that nothing good could ever come after“, my witch giggled.

Right before the first lockdown last year, I had been visiting the city were I grew up, helping in a music project with children, as I had done every spring.
I had sang as support in the choir, or played my violin to support the orchestra. Helping out in that orchestra had also always been a person who still played the first violin that I had ever seen and heard and which was the reason for me to want such an instrument.
20 years later, playing next to that same person still felt special. I knew the sound, the feeling. I knew how the sound would catch me, if I lost my rhythm.
It felt so good that after the concert (and a night full of nice people and ice cream and wine), I did not want to leave for the first time. This was weird, because I had left to study and work elsewhere for my very own reasons and really had liked the life which I had built up for me. And still, there was a painful second of hesitation before stepping onto the train to bring me back, and that without having an idea of the kind of silence I was driving into.

A witching melody does not even have to be a song or a piece of music.
It can be words to cause a daydream which had not been there before. Or a sigh, or a giggling, a passionate breath. Anything that makes someone want to listen twice.

We have not yet been back together like this, and after all this time the people supporting the project have become old and sick and without a chance to gather there is no one preparing to take over.
This summer, when visiting my mother for the first time in 18 months, I had to learn that those days were over for good.
So, I went to the place to say goodbye.
A place which I had known longer than I can even remember.
Finding it in absolute silence caused something deep inside of me that I was only partly prepared for.
There were no colorful posters to announce future events, as I had last seen it. Only one orange letter announced a summer meeting for those who had lost someone in the long winter lockdown and had not said their Goodbyes yet. I had to think of all the elderly people who used to go there to drink coffee together or play cards a few times a week and who I sometimes met in the hallway after rehearsal, and thinking of them dying alone hurt me. Many of them used to come there because they did not have a family of their own, and these meetings were an important part of their life.
I once again felt as if anything human was taken away from us by this disaster, and there I had an idea. I took a photograph of the place and sent it into an old group chat for anyone who had ever joined that project, and I wrote under the photo that I was visiting the place for the first time since all of this started and that I was missing all of them. I felt so disconnected from the world, I did not even expect a response, but it took less than five minutes for the responses to come in. Some of the other volunteers of that project, as well as some children now in their early teens who had grown up in that project as I once had wrote how much they missed it too. In the end, we even exchanged photos of our cats. It gave me a moment of relief. Getting a response and reading about them missing it too made me feel as if parts of my humanity were restored for a second.
While I was sitting there, other memories came to me as well. Memories of being very shy and insecure and turning to different people for support, but not really finding it. I remember enjoying to sing. I remember reading my own texts on different stages. I also remember the critical eyes of my mother and the disinterest of my father, and how I slowly stepped away from these things, thinking that if I was good enough, they would approve more.
Maybe, what I am feeling ever since is regret about having stopped things out of the fear of failure.
While sitting there and being overwhelmed by all of this, I wrote this poem.

„It may seem absurd“, my witch giggled, „but if you think about it, it makes sense to fear a melody for setting thoughts on fire and bringing two people breathing so close they may become one. In a world that feels threatened by dreams, this is hell.“
This made me remember that I was living centuries after her time.
I don‘t have to fear to be executed for singing out loud with my window open, I just have to find crazy ways to survive these dark and silent years.
Saying Goodbye to places and people that have meant so much to me for the first 25 years of my life, I have to start looking for new ways to restore this feeling with everything that is still here. I have people ready to play music with me again as soon as it will be possible. I practice the violin almost everyday again, and I dream of doing things with my instruments and my poetry at stages in questionable bars one day again.

One day, we will have to make up for these years of darkness and silence.
For experiences never made and memories to never have happened.
Since witches are known to send witching dreams out into the world, I will be ready.