Orpheus (orphic) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2009-04-03 19:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | athena, castor, hecate, orpheus, pollux |
Who: Orpheus & All Who're There (narrative is finished as is, but if any of the others who were there want to respond to the concert or start something with someone else threaded in comments, that's excellent!)
What: Concert
Where: A club/venue in Manhattan
When: Tonight, 8 ish
Rating: TBA
The opening band was not bad, but they weren't right either for the mood that Orpheus wanted. They were average, mediocre, and he remembered the ethereal mortal boy that was the drug-god Harmony's friend again, and his band, but mostly him - the singing and soulful eyes toward heaven. He would have to speak to the executives about them, too. If tonight went well.
He smirked at that last thought - one of the men, Marty?, had said it no less than ten times to him during the course of the day. If the night went well. If he could be successfully brought out as a new artist and broken down for the mass into an understandable thing. He knew that he could not. He also new that it would not matter, one way or the other. When he was lost in the old songs, the people would be lost as well. Losing themselves in the need and the emotion that the songs pulled to the surface. In the feeling that they should be living fuller, should be worshiping better. Should be worshiping something older than the knew, and which would feel far more real to them while he was singing than most of them had known before. It was not his goal entirely, but it would happen - and Morpheus would walk among all of them, waking and calling up dreams for the night. It was unfair, perhaps, but Orpheus couldn't see it that way. Not when, for the first time since he had been man, he looked out at the crowd and knew that he was about to do the only thing he was truly called to do.
He took the stage alone, with his guitar and a stool and a microphone. When the spotlight hit he couldn't see the crowd any longer, and that was fine, because he could hear them mumbling, surprised, uncertain. And he could feel the moment when all of those things fell away.
He began with songs that had no power. Those he'd written for street corners when he wanted nothing more than money. The shift to the old songs was so subtle that even he hardly noticed when the harvesting songs began - his music the even monotonous swing of the scythe and the labored hearty sweat of the harvesters - and the power started to build. With a crowd this size, he would have to be careful. Have to stop before they were driven mad with longing or before the moment where they would long only to listen for eternity, would give up food and love for the music. Mortal minds were so weak.
He sang of Zeus without wanting to - Mighty father, holy, splendid light, with aerial, dreadful-sounding, fire bright; - He sang of Athena, and Poseidon. He sang new songs filled with power for Deimos and Phobos and Triton, a song old or new but all infused with the power to call up worship for every Greek who had a hand in rebuilding his temple. He sang a rewritten Roman song for Castor and Pollux and made it his own. Somewhere in the midst of it all the music was the sweet, inspired vision of an artist, the riotous race of the innocent being chased, the pain of death, the glory of the conqueror as he returned, unblemished. Most of the songs called on inspiration, he left out none of his dear Aunts and sang most of his mother and of Athena and he hoped they both pulled as much power from his worship as they could.
The mortal minds listening were batteries, powering his music and his own haze as he lost himself in it. Most of them couldn't recognize the words, he shifted between Greek and English as if they were the same language, but even still they were enthralled and they gave him back their energy so that he could keep going. They cheered along with the heroes in his songs for his mother, wept at the fall of Icarus and the madness which caused Heracles to slaughter his children. Laughed at his songs for Thalia and Dionysus. And when he stopped playing, hours later, many collapsed, exhausted, but satisfied.
And Orpheus left the stage, collapsed against Pollux because he was nearest. There was a car waiting to take him an afterparty, the suits looked dazed but ecstatic. Orpheus was spent, drained, gutted. But he would go.