“Well, that was crap.”
Octavia sighed, turning to her companion as the two mares made their way out of the concert hall. Vinyl walked beside her out of the doorway as the dull roar from the socialites inside began to grow. Instead of bothering with an immediate retort, the cellist merely closed her eyes and shook her head continuing out into the foyer.
“What?” Vinyl asked, flipping her signature glasses up above her horn, “Come on, Tavi, you know that was a weird show, even for a minimal show.”
“Minimalistic,” Octavia corrected.
“Huh?” Vinyl stopped in her tracks, raising her eyebrows. Octavia turned around to face her friend, and cleared her throat.
“Minimalistic, Vinyl. It’s the style of music, pioneered only in the last twenty years. I figured that of all the ponies I could have invited to see the Royal Symphony, you, at least, would appreciate one of the more modern concert arrangements.”
Vinyl’s eyebrow arched for a moment, then curled downward in thought with its partner.
“I still don’t get it.”
Octavia sighed again, and Vinyl quickly worked to amend her statement. “I mean, hey, some of it was pretty good, and most was okay. Like that one with the bells at the start, what was it, ‘Rumble Road’?”
“‘Rocky Road.‘“
“Yeah, that one. I liked it. It had a good beat going to it. Nice, percussive stuff.”
“There’s more to music that a double bass kick at one-hundred and fifty beats per minute, you know,” the grey mare retorted, stepping towards the front door and her waiting carriage.
“Yeah, Tavi, I know. I just like the noise of it. It’s comforting for me, ya know? I mean, that song in the middle, he just sat there. Fancypants Conductor Guy just lifted his baton, counted off, and then set it down. For ten. Freaking. Minutes. ”
“Four and a half, actually,” Octavia corrected again.
“Whatever. He still just sat there. Doing nothing. It was stupid.”
Octavia ignored her completely and stepped into the carriage, careful not to catch her black, silky dress on the steps as she ascended into the waiting transport. Vinyl followed close behind, glasses still on her head, her bright violet “dress” jacket hanging unzipped over her shoulders.
Those blasted glasses. It had been a losing proposition to try and get Vinyl to leave her violently colored glasses at the flat the two shared. She had tried it once before when taking her marefriend out on the town, and it hadn’t ended well then either. Sometimes, the stubborn DJ would flat out refuse to leave her eyewear; on others, she would merely smuggle the reflective magenta lenses in her jacket pocket, which would then reappear suddenly in the middle of the outing. Of course, the unicorn would claim that they were an essential part of her “public image”, but Octavia had a sneaking suspicion that they were more like a safety blanket to the infamous ‘Bass Cannoneer’. It was all utterly silly, but she let her DJ have her way with this. After all, relationships were about sacrifices, and she had gotten Vinyl to agree to come with her in the first place.
Seemed like she was the one who made most of the sacrifices in their relationship.
The two sat down, adjusting their rumps in the seats as the carriage pulled away. It was hard to get physically comfortable. Octavia fought the urge to shift in her seat as the carriage fell silent.
“Have you ever thought that music might be about more than comfort?”
“Huh?” The unicorn snapped her head around, suddenly drawn back to the conversation.
“You said that the beat was comfortable to you. Have you ever thought that some music might be about trying to make you uncomfortable?”
“Yeah,” Vinyl slouched back in her seat. “Have you heard Starshot’s latest? There are some moments there where I nearly wet myself when the drops hit. Hey, I even try and do that with my jams sometimes, keeping ponies on their toes and all.”
“Yes, but you do it with shifts in music, or in volume.”
“There something wrong with that?”
“Not at all, but...”
“But what?” Vinyl leaned forward, concern in her eyes. Octavia knew this look. It was the one that she got last week when she had gotten through talking to her producer. The stallion had been less than gentle in giving his thoughts on her most recent work.
“I…oh. How do I say this…” Octavia rubbed her hoof into her forehead, knowing that she had talked herself into a sensitive spot. For all her big talk, she knew that Vinyl’s ego could be as fragile as fine crystal.
“The elements of music are sound and silence,” she began, “Alone, they’re just that. Together, they make music. Integrating them is composing. But they aren’t just mutually exclusive. I mean, what is sound but the absence of silence?”
“Tavi, I haven’t had near enough to drink tonight to discuss philosophy.” Vinyl quipped, still riding the edge of her seat.
“I know, but bear with me here.” At a nod from the DJ, Octavia continued.
“The idea behind ‘Four-thirty-three’, the silent bit,” she amended quickly for Vinyl’s sake, “is that there is never truly silence. The music is made up of the ambient noise from around you, and from what you do. Instead of music like we normally know it, the music is made up of what is all around us, surrounding us in life.
“It’s like when you’re up in the DJ booth spinning for a show. Your music has its own life. It moves in its own way. You just tell it which way to go. The crowd, though, they have a life of their own. They dance as they will, and sometimes it will be the beat the song is on. Most of the time, though, the crowd goes its own way. They have their own noise, their own beat. They hear yours, but there is more around them.”
Tavi kept her magenta eyes locked with the ruby red of Vinyl’s as the carriage bounced along the road. They passed under two street lights before Vinyl broke the silence.
“I still don’t get it.” The DJ flipped her glasses back down onto her face, obscuring her eyes, and slouched back in her seat with an audible thud. Tavi sighed once more. The rest of the carriage ride passed with only the bumps of the wheels on the cobblestone road to keep the two mares company.
***
The flat Vinyl shared with Octavia was a cozy place in the eastern section of Canterlot. When the two musicians had first looked at the place a few months ago, it was little more than a newer building in an old section of the town. There had been a lot about the place that needed help—new paint, broken plumbing throughout, wiring issues, among other things. Didn’t matter to them, though; the two musicians had fallen in love with the flat.
As they walked in now, however, the old space was nearly unrecognizable. The light was on with the flick of a hoof, revealing pristine white walls adorned with colorful, tasteful prints of artists. In an adjoining room, Vinyl’s plethora of keyboards, computers, mixers, and turntables sat side along Tavi’s lone cello and music stand.
The house was silent on their entry, which wasn’t entirely unusual to them. Vinyl couldn’t stand it tonight, though. She needed noise. The entire ride after Tavi’s speech had been silent. It made her want to scream, if for no other reason than to have something filling her ears. Even the trip into the building had been deathly silent except for the sound of hoofsteps resonating in the corridor.
Vinyl stretched out on her hind legs, popping the joints in her shoulders and neck as she rotated her forelegs and head around. The resounding crack loosened her up a little, but didn’t entirely remove the discomfort from the night. Pulling her jacket off, she glanced over at the clock on the wall. It wasn’t past midnight yet.
“You want something to eat?” Vinyl broke the silence as Tavi moved past her. The words sounded forced to her ears, half hearted even.
“I’m fine, thank you.” Tavi’s voice was neutral, but her body language wasn’t. Vinyl had known the pretty mare long enough to be able to gauge when she was hiding an emotion, and right now she saw some frustration lingering in Octavia’s eyes. It killed her.
Vinyl was used to being the kind of pony who did dumb things, said something completely moronic, and then laughed it all off later over drinks, letting bygones be bygones. She could do that all day and all night with anypony, charming them back down to a certain level of coolness even after drawing the entirety of their rage. When it came to Tavi, though, Vinyl could never bear to see the mare hurting in any kind of way. It was almost as bad simply to see that she had had a bad day. Something in Vinyl didn’t just want to make the problem go away. It made her want to fix it outright.
So she watched her marefriend go back into the bedroom and sighed, knowing that whatever it was that had gotten Tavi all worked up, it was probably her fault. Instead of following her back towards the bed, Vinyl trotted half-heartedly into the kitchen and made herself a sandwich. She couldn’t take two bites before setting it down. Her appetite didn’t disappear so much as it had never been there in the first place. She slid the plate away with a rattle as the porcelain skimmed across the table.
A glance at the doorway to the bedroom showed light creeping between the cracks, and Vinyl could faintly hear the sound of running water. Tavi would be showering, and that meant it would be a while yet before Vinyl saw her again. With a forlorn glance towards the door, the DJ turned away from the bedroom and trotted towards the balcony. As she wove her way around the enormous black couch that dominated the living room, her horn began to glow with an incandescent blue. Two pillows levitated up from the couch, soon joined by a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, and a lighter from the coffee table. A final burst of magic opened the sliding glass door, and Vinyl stepped out onto the balcony.
With a huff, the DJ dropped the pillows onto the ground before falling on them herself, rolling onto her back once she landed. She took her glasses off, laying them beside her with a level of gentleness she usually reserved only for Tavi, and crossed her hind legs as she stared up at the night sky. With practiced precision, she levitated a cigarette out of the pack and placed it between her lips before flicking the lighter to life. Tavi hated her habit – vice, really – but tolerated it as long as Vinyl kept her smoking confined to the outside. Vinyl knew it was a disgusting habit herself, but she really didn’t care too much after feeding the addiction for so long.
“The good die young, anyway,” she had always told Tavi. The grey mare usually just snorted at that, bringing out that high society indignation that Vinyl got such a kick out of seeing. But the indignation could easily go both ways, as prior events had reminded Vinyl that night. As the clouds drifted in the sky, the DJ took a long pull on the cigarette and exhaled, making her own little stream of cloud. As the puff floated away, she wondered what she had done to set Tavi off so much tonight. Sure they had their musical differences, but those were usually just small bits of verbal jousting that they used as an excuse to “make up” later on.
The issue at the concert had been something different, though. It had to be.
It wasn’t like she had done anything during the performance. She’d gone with Octavia up to the booth, sat through the whole show without complaint, and she didn’t even fidget that much.
Lunadammit, she thought, I even left my flask at home this time!
Unsatisfied with her analysis of the night, she took another pull, this time exhaling a bit more violently than before, blowing the cloud of smoke away before it could truly form. Her thoughts turned to the carriage ride and the debate that had preceded it. Octavia knew that Vinyl didn’t get a good bit of the metaphysics, or whatever it was, that she liked to discuss on occasion, but she had never looked down on Vinyl for it.
Vinyl idly flicked the ashes into the tray beside her.
She had that little rant about ‘composition’ with silence, the white mare thought as she sat in the night. Maybe it’s something to do with that. But why in Equestria would she get holy about that? Vinyl shifted her legs around. She considered the possible causes, none of them likely to be the reason. She knew that Octavia was critical of anything she could find, but she wasn’t a music snob any more than Vinyl was a flowery little princess.
She said my music was just noise, though… Well not directly, but it’s what she meant. I know Tavi doesn’t dislike it, but does she really just think that it’s only noise? Vinyl snubbed out the embers of the spent cigarette and lit another. She wouldn’t be the only one to think so. That stuffed up little puff in the office, what did he call it? “Disjointed. Incomplete.” What does he know? Just sitting up in his office. He isn’t down in the trenches, pouring his soul into the music. Tavi, though… She knows her music. And she called it noise.
Vinyl sank deeper into her pillows, more sullen than when she started, and just laid there on the balcony. No way was she going to continue that train of thought further.
Below, one of the street lights cycled on, bathing the balcony in a soft, warm glow. There was a buzzing that radiated out from the magical circuits within. It was faint, but it broke the deathly silence of the night with its regular hum. Vinyl ignored it, taking a pull on the cigarette and exhaling audibly. She watched the smoke curl up into the Canterlot skyline, content to lay in the semi-darkness of the night. A brief gust of wind whistled in her ear for a moment, whisking the smoke awake. It made her shiver, but not because of the cold.
In truth, Vinyl could tolerate quiet as well as anypony, but there had always been something about it that gave her the chills. It always seemed to be a little too quiet, ominous even, almost as though something was about to slip up behind her and drag her down. As fillies, most ponies had been scared of the dark, of tales of Nightmare Moon, timber wolves, and manticores. Vinyl Scratch had been, however, completely at home in the dark. Rather, the unicorn had been afraid of silence. To her mind, silence was death. Truly it was a wonder that she had stayed outside in such quiet as long as she had.
But it wasn’t really silent, in truth. The DJ’s eyes widened slightly as she recognized the buzz of the lamp and the gentle whistle of the wind. Her ears perked up from where her head still lay on the pillows. To anypony not listening, there was nothing to the night, but to the musician in her loft, a veritable symphony appeared.
It began with the steady pounding of hooves on cobbles as a carriage drove by below, setting the tempo. Raucous laughs echoed up from the carriage, like bell chimes echoing across the streets. The carriage faded away into the streets, leaving room for the wind to play its steady song. The breeze picked up suddenly, as though at the cue of some invisible conductor, rising in pitch as it shifted direction only to drop off as it was cut off by the corner of the building. The light below ended its cycle on the same cue, its constant buzz fading away. For a moment, the only sound was that of the beating of Vinyl’s heart.
At least, it might have been a moment. A whistling rose from the street as a drunkard staggered home, a glorious soloist in symphony of the night. As she listened to the stallion below stumble about in the dark, it struck Vinyl how like the boxes in the orchestra hall her balcony was. It was almost the same dimensions as the box that Tavi’s friend had gotten them tickets for that night. As she looked out on the street, she felt that she could almost see a stage in the architecture of the street. It didn’t matter what angle she looked, rooftops became stages for performers, and streets became orchestra pits. All of it was a performance, yet there was nothing more than the typical dullness of a windy night.
Vinyl shook herself gently, letting her ears and her brain relax, and realized that she was suddenly upright. Briefly, she wondered when she had stood up to gawk out at the street like a filly, but then dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter. Regaining her normal senses, the unicorn turned about on the balcony and looked back into the flat. The kitchen light was still on, but the doorway to the bedroom was pitch black. Some part of her heart tensed guiltily.
Gingerly, she stepped through the door and into the living room, checking the time on the wall clock as she went. Her eyes widened in shock as she realized that she had spent two full hours on the balcony. It felt like she had only been out there for twenty minutes tops, not until one in the morning!
Again, she shook the thought away. Time was irrelevant right now. It could have been two days or two minutes for all she cared at the moment. Right now, she had thoughts churning in her mind, thoughts that refused to pack up and leave. So Vinyl kept walking, as loudly as she dared, not wanting to wake Octavia; the grey mare was a notoriously light sleeper. But Vinyl needed to get behind the keyboard—it wasn’t noise that she needed right now, it was music.
As softly as she could, she closed the door to the soundproofed room and powered up her equipment. Maybe it was the hour, but Vinyl had to take some time at the keyboard to remember where the setting she wanted was. Then again, it had been quite some time since she had gone out of her way to use a traditional piano sound in her music.
In fact, the last time she had been required to use it had been in her piano recital for her final class at Canterlot’s Academy for the Arts. She easily remembered the piece she had played—it was a dark, brooding piece by Trotkovsky. She remembered how her favorite part of the piece hadn’t been the theme, but rather the gentle progression which led up to the theme. In and of itself, it was one of the bits that had influenced her opinions of classical Equestrian composers, convincing her that not all of them were focused on leaves gently floating in the wind. Trotkovsky had been one for wonderful crescendos followed by shocking sforzando piano sections. It was dramatic, and Vinyl had liked that style during her school days. It suited her then, and she felt it an appropriate starting place for now.
She sat back on her composing chair, rolling her shoulders once more in preparation. Ideas continued to bounce in her head. It was one in the morning, but time was irrelevant. Her hooves hovered over the keys, prepared to breathe the life of music from the nothingness of silence. For another moment, Vinyl closed her eyes. All that she could hear was her own breathing, slow and steady, like a metronome, punctuated briefly by the rhythm of her heartbeat. She let her hooves fall into a gently ascending arpeggio. She had nothing to say, but she began to say it. She began to compose.
***
There were, Octavia decided, definite advantages to having a large bed. As the grey mare picked stray mane hair out of her eyes, she also came to the conclusion that there were equally as many disadvantages. While the bed left plenty of room for a pony or two to…sprawl out, it felt decidedly wrong for one mare to fall asleep in it alone. The night before, Octavia had struggled to get to sleep, tossing and turning in the sheets. It was almost as if she was unable to be comfortable anymore without another presence in the bed. She turned over to look where Vinyl would normally be snoring away the early morning hours only to see an empty section of mattress.
Suddenly, sleeping alone didn’t seem to be so much of a problem. No, it was far worse to wake up alone. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she sat up in the bed. Normally, this would be the part of the morning where she tried – to no avail – to wake up Vinyl. Instead, the slender cellist slid out of the bed and moved to the closet. She selected one of the two bathrobes hanging inside, and pulled it on. Shielded from the morning chill, Octavia yawned one final time to usher sleep away before striding into the living room. As she looked about, Vinyl was nowhere to be seen. Tavi would have expected to see her on the couch, sprawled at some impossible angle or another.
Maybe she went back out in the night. Lyra did mention something about us meeting her to go clubbing sometime while she was in town.
Octavia pushed the worry to the back of her mind as she made her way into the kitchen. Vinyl would do what she would do, and Tavi trusted her to be relatively smart about it. Her last worry was that her marefriend would go running off for a fling with some stallion in a bar. She poured herself a cup of coffee—lightly sweetened and creamed, her usual—and a bowl of oats. The mare inhaled deeply, smelling the familiar warm hazelnut aroma from the cup before she took a long draft from the mug. As the need for caffeine subsided, Octavia’s mind began to stir once more, bringing thoughts of the previous night back to the forefront of her mind.
“Guilty” would be a good word for what she felt. She had known as soon as the words were out of her mouth that she’d offended Vinyl, but there had been little that she could do to rectify the mistake then. When it came to talking with the DJ, Octavia had found that Vinyl could read almost too easily into situations, taking comments in drastic ways. With the stress that her studio was putting on her for the album, an as of yet unnamed follow up to Supernova, her debut, it should have been no surprise that Vinyl was on edge. The trip to the symphony had actually been with the intent to let them both unwind a little before launching herself back into her project. Octavia realized that it could have gone better, but sometimes the unicorn could be difficult to deal with. As she crunched on the oats, Octavia determined that – barring something unbelievable and stupid, both of which were always looming possibilities with the ‘infamous DJ-PON3’ – she would have to find some way to make it up to her marefriend.
She sipped on her coffee once more, thinking of ways to eliminate the tension between her and Vinyl, whenever the latter returned. From her perch in the kitchen, Octavia caught a peculiar glimmer out of her peripheral, and turned to look out for its source in the morning light. It didn’t take long to find it, but she was utterly surprised when she saw it. There on the balcony, completely alone and unprotected save for a pair of pillows and a half smoked pack of cigarettes sat Vinyl’s prized possession: her deep purple sunglasses.
A jolt shot through Octavia’s mind, no longer courtesy of the coffee. There was no way in Tartarus that Vinyl would have left her eyeware behind if she were going clubbing, nor would she have willingly left them out in the open like this. A pang of worry welled up in Octavia’s mind at the irregularity as she stepped out and picked up the glasses. Where would her DJ have been willing to go without these?
As she stepped back inside, Octavia realized that there was only one other place in the flat that Vinyl could possibly be if she had, in fact, stayed in last night. Careful to be quiet, Octavia pushed open the door to the music room. As she looked inside, she let out a breath that she hadn’t realized that she had been holding. The DJ was, somehow unsurprisingly, sleeping face down on the keyboard, a faint snoring issuing from her mouth. Octavia was also certain, as she approached the sleeping mare, that there was a thin layer of drool running along the C octave keys. She merely smiled at the sight, brushing the unicorn’s azure mane out of her face and whispered in her ear.
“Vinyl, wake up.” She gently shook the DJ’s shoulder, careful not to dislodge her from her seat.
“Huh…” the mare groaned back, straining to wake up, “Whatsit to it, Tavi?”
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
“Ugh. Morning…” Vinyl made an effort to get up, but only succeeded lifting her head up. Satisfied with her progress, the DJ looked up at the mare behind her. “Hey, Tavi?”
“Yes?”
“Sorry about last night, I got stubborn and dumb. That was bad of me.” Tavi’s eyebrows shot skyward. This had not been at all how she had expected this to happen, and not nearly as fast. First, she had expected to be the one making the apologies. Second, Vinyl never apologized unless there was empirical evidence showing that something had been her fault. She would admit wrongs immediately, but never apologize for something small like this.
“What?”
“I said ‘I’m sorry’. You not clean your ears this morning or something?” Vinyl deadpanned, clearly not too sorry or sleepy to be sarcastic.
“No, it’s just that… you…never mind. I’ll just end up looking silly if I keep talking.”
“Too late,” Vinyl quipped. Both mares grinned a little at that, and Octavia ruffled Vinyl’s mane.
“True, but I forgive you anyway.”
“Good,” Vinyl finally made the monumental effort to assume an upright position and flicked her keyboards back on, “Now, I have something for you.”
Octavia’s eyebrows arched again in question, but she let Vinyl go about setting up her rig. Several clicks later, and the setup was running with an almost inaudible hum. Vinyl tapped a few more buttons on her screen, pulling up a track on the music player. As if to signal that she was ready to show off her gift, her horn surrounded itself in an aura of blue, bringing her favorite pair of headphones across the table to land in Vinyl’s hoof.
“You remember what you said last night about composing with silence as well as sound?”
Octavia nodded. Vinyl was visibly pleased and continued. “Well, I’m still not sure what the whole thing about it is, but you were right about a bunch of it. Last night, I figured out some of what I think you meant, but I put my own twist to it. Would you do me the honor?”
“Of course,” Octavia reached out to take hold of Vinyl’s proffered headphones, placing them over her ears.
“Alright, and be gentle on the review. It’s only a demo for now.” Vinyl clicked the play button on the screen, and Octavia closed her eyes to listen.
The playback started with a surprise, especially for Vinyl’s usual work. A dark, ascending piano run led up into a peak of… nothing. The music cut off entirely as the run neared the end of the scale. For a few moments, there was nothing.
In the back of the song, almost the back of the mind, strings began to well up. Tavi recognized them instantly, and determined to have a talk with Vinyl about using her cello later, but continued to faintly bop her head with the music. Drums began to rise in the background, building slowly to a percussive climax as synth tones began to dance throughout the beat. Three light tones struck into the dead silence left as all of the other voices were silenced.
It was then that the Vinyl that Octavia knew announced her presence with a series of disc scratches as the synth picked up the initial theme. The song shifted from a sorrowful, dejected mood into a riotous dance tune all at once, somehow maintaining the balance between the two styles. Rising themes dropped off into mere moments of silenced, the lull ended by a wub and a reiteration of the theme, all carried through by a steady snare and a growling bass. It was lightning in a bottle. It was a work of art.
“Vinyl,” Octavia pulled the headphones off as the song ended, “that is something else.” And even that doesn’t do it justice, she added inwardly.
“Yeah, I know, it needs some work. It’s a little rough around the edges.” The tired DJ managed to comment around a yawn.
“It’s perfect, Vinyl.”
“Huh?” The DJ’s eyes went wide at the word she didn’t know was even in the cellist’s lexicon, “Say what now?”
“Perfect. Needing nothing else. Vinyl, it’s a masterpiece.”
Vinyl’s jaw nearly hit the floor at the compliment. Octavia was one of the most critical ponies that Vinyl could think of, and she had never in the DJ’s memory called any one piece of music anything more than ‘excellent’ or ‘wonderful’.
“Perfect? Is this the same mare who called Beethoofen’s Ninth a ‘valiant effort’?”
“One and the same.” Octavia smiled a wicked grin at her flabbergasted marefriend as she sputtered to get words to form. Finally the white unicorn managed to force her mouth to cooperate with her mind to voice a single, coherent thought.
“It’s too early in the morning for life shattering conversations. I need coffee.”
Author's Note
So this came about after a discussion of John Cage's 4'33 and the concept of silence as noise, and therefore music. Its a weird idea, but I ran with it and popped this story out. If you want to give it a listen, here's my favorite performance of it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUzI3Ui1Eok
Thanks to my awesome editors, KitchenWitch1994 and Cynewulf for keeping me from writing in circles and looking dumb with this!
Minor Edit: Somehow the first edit got put up rather than the final edit. Any formatting issues and typos should be fixed now. If someone spots more, then please tell me!
