Dancing to Mozart

Edward Eriksson

Description

The culture is out of control, everyone knows it, and Dancing to Mozart is an imaginative satire that will appeal to readers who sense that the best way to deal with the situation is to have a good laugh at its expense. Personal relationships, silly behavior, Hollywood movies, extremes in politics and religion–eccentric characters and other wacky stuff offer the reader a good deal of amusement in colorful worldwide settings that include Europe, Africa, Asia, and New York City. Of course, there is a plot to the story, and it carries the reader along to the final and sensible ending, where all is resolved and the characters come to a common sense view of themselves and the world around them. 

Sujets

• Humorous
• General officer
• General
• Fiction
• Satire

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 13 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977266682
• Langue: English

Extrait

Dancing to Mozart All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 Edward Eriksson v4.0

This is a work of imaginative fiction. Any resemblance to actual people and events is laughably coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com

Cover Photo © 2023www.gettyimages.com. All rights reserved - used with permission.

Outskirts Press and the “OP” logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NOVELS Moonbeam Slyder

Dancing to Mozart

Flamingo Desires

PLAYS Good Citizenship

Passing Passions Déja Who? 6 Actors in Search of a Character Proposing Paradise Cooking with Germs

AMUSEMENTS The Wisdom of the Master Reality Slows Me Down and 30 More Theatrical Auditions

CHILDREN’S STORY

Orlando the Archer and the Princess of the Four Win ds

This book is dedicated to my children, Eddie, Jennifer, Liisa, Eve, Michael, and Xanthe “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” -Friedrich Nietzsche- Acknowledgement I wish to thank Alan Margolis for all his technical work on the design of the manuscript.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Dancing to Mozart

Chapter Two: Simón Sez

Chapter Three: Olson Mendoza

Chapter Four: Pygmies at Large

Chapter Five: Blossoms in Winter

Chapter Six: A Timely Rescue

Chapter Seven: Mohammed Saves

Chapter Eight: Echo-Space

Chapter Nine: The Bhagavad Burrito

Chapter Ten: Touching Down

Chapter One Dancing to Mozart

As fate would have it, Brenda and Hugo Cranston vaca tioned in the Catskills in a cabin they’d rented for a week. Once there he begged her to go with him to a classical music concert in a little auditorium in a half-deserted v illage in a valley between two enormous mountains. Hugo’d gotten pretty fudgy in his old ag e—he was six years older than Brenda—and began to eat purple ice cream with raisi ns while watching movies on the Disney Channel. He’d also developed a crazy devotio n to the music of Mozart and would listen to almost nothing else. The program fo r the evening offered the Korean virtuoso, Kim Jong Park on the piano, playing piece s by Mozart, Chopin, and Brahms. Hugo begged and begged, and reluctantly Brenda agre ed to go. This Kim Jong Park (known to his Facebook friends a s Chunky) was famous for a father who trained him as a pianist by standing beh ind him and slapping his ears with a ruler whenever he struck a wrong note: So that at t he age of forty-six he played like an angel and then drank like a fish and got himself ar rested occasionally on charges of disorderly conduct. As usual on this night his exec ution was marvelous; and its effect on Hugo Cranston was visible on his face, his eyes dreamy and his body practically limp.. Unlike many accountants who punch away at numbers w ell into their seventies, Hugo looked forward to retirement in a year or two; and then instead of working at figures, he planned to work on himself. His choices as a younger man had been, in his own assessment, couched solely in material things; and now having over the years bought himself and Brenda a two-bedroom apartment o n the upper West Side of Manhattan, a condo in Florida, a German automobile, and a dozen or so meretricious chochkes from boutiques on Madison Avenue; in addit ion to yearly subscriptions to six popular magazines, ten or so tickets a year to the Yankee and Knick games; and additionally empowering Brenda with thirty-eight cr edit cards for impulse shopping and other urges, along with Broadway shows and popular restaurants; as well as for occasional cruises in the Caribbean and Mediterrane an or tours to the Southwest, Rocky Mountains, or Alaska: having achieved so much in forty years as a humorless drudge bent over calculator, paper, and pen with er asable ink, in a maelstrom of forms and digits, Hugo needed more from life, more, more in what he came to understand as soul-stimulation. Now there was the chubby Kim Jong Park on the stage , and here were Brenda and Hugo in the first row on the left, where they could comfortably view the performer’s fingers fly trippingly over the keys. Hugo kept mut tering, “Marvelous,” entranced by this animated gentleman’s performing Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto in a solo rendition scored by Mr. Park himself. What he felt as marvelo us was hard to explain. He could not have found words; rather, he understood in the depth of his soul in the midst of the painfully beautiful second movement, as the pianist ’s fingers now glided slowly over the ivories, that he had two choices, either to weep or to dance. For him, however, weeping in public was out of the question; yet it became im possible for him to hear the music and watch Chunky Park’s fingers caress the keys–his head bowed forward and then swung back with its raggedy mop of prematurely gray hair springing up as if in the throes of an electric shock–without standing and da ncing, bare hairy legs and all, up and down the two aisles. Yes, bare hairy legs. Like most men in the audience who sat with their wives next to them, he wore tan baggy shorts and a loose-fitting short sleeve shirt. The house had a hundred and fifty seats, with at least fifty left e mpty, the rest being filled by classical

music lovers of the average age of seventy. Hugo ha d paid the senior citizen’s price, but still, given the aging crowd, he actually felt young. And delighted. And that is when he rose and began to dance. Of course, he provoked hard stares; and his wife, t oo embarrassed to turn and look, several times said aloud to herself, “What is this idiot doing now?” while the entranced Korean played on unperturbed; and as Hugo blithely, goofily, yet gracefully tossed his body here and there in a dreamy two-step punctuated with pirouettes, his arms swinging above his head with flapping hands and the n outward like wind-borne wings; his feet, as he felt, daintily keeping time to that second movement, the painfully evocative andante that gave such beauty to the rapt urous inanity of the movieElvira Madigan. But, oh, he felt younger than young, strangely libe rated, cavorting about in delicious serenity; as all the while Kim Jong Park played on undisturbed, moving back and forth in his sensual affair with the satiny black grand p iano. Soon enough, however, two ushers, teenagers, one ma le, one female, in uncreased brown chinos and black t-shirts, came from the back and escorted him out of the auditorium and into a private office, where they sa t him in a chair and began to badger him. “You did understand,” said the boy sarcastically, “that this was Mozart?” “I did,” replied Hugo, catching his breath. Was thi s kid serious? “I can read a program.” “This isn’t a rock concert,” said the girl, smirkin g. “Duh.” “The audience didn’t come here to be distracted by some old guy’s gyrations,” added the boy, looking humorously deadpan. “Nor the pianist.” “Nor your wife, for that matter.” Except for their gender, the two were indistinguish able, both with darting eyes, acned faces, and lots of teeth, except that the gir l had black hair and the boy had blond. Both were perhaps seventeen years old, and s melled of cologne, for men or for women or for both. Insulted and embarrassed, Hugo c ould barely believe their jaunty, mocking manner. He felt lost, helpless. He was agai nst two jokers, high school seniors ready to begin their final year of no work and all play. Why couldn’t he simply stand and walk out of the room? His head spun. He couldn’t be lieve that he didn’t start slapping one of them silly. But he was winded from his frolicking about, and he felt suddenly very old. Then, out of desperation, even though he knew they played him for a dithering imbecile, he decided to appeal to what he supposed was their artistic sense of things: “You work here? You know something about music?” He looked but saw no response. “Then of all people you kids should understand that music is feeling.” “Wrong,” said the black-haired girl, cocking her he ad to the side. “Not always.” “You need to cool down,” continued the blond guy pe aceably. “If this were a rock concert, it would be another matter. But, you need to understand—and both my friend and I know this–with Mozart this kind of behavior is out of the question.” “We have a responsibility to the public,” added the other standing straight with her nose in the air. “And of course so do you.” She loo ked down at Hugo, putting her hands on her hips. But her eyes were dancing in her face, and it seemed as if she was about to burst out laughing. Unable to restrain himself, Hugo cried, “Doesn’t an yone understand? Doesn’t anyone see the issue here? I was dancing because I felt inspired.” Both ushers, however, acted as if they didn’t hear him. “Okay, sir,” said the young man, after a long pause , during which he and the young lady looked back and forth between themselves and H ugo, “the management politely requests that you stay here with us until the polic e arrive.” “The police?” asked Hugo. “Why?” “Then you can go with them,” said the dark-haired g irl, not answering Hugo directly.