Dear Antonio,
No, wait…
My Immortal Beloved,
Ah, crap. That’s been taken by that other composer dude. Here:
My Dead Red Priest,
How you tease and taunt me from beyond the grave as your bow joyously rubs my heart strings! Your decadent arpeggios dance around my aural sweet spot. And the unbearable longing in your bleak strokes and trembling minor chords — it’s enough to drive a girl mad, I tell you!
Please return tonight for a repeat performance. My balcony is still heavy with a beard of ivy in which you can entwine your bony fingers as you climb. I’ll leave the balcony door open…
In lyrical lust,
Maria
What is WRONG with me?
When I was 13 years old, while my girlfriends all had crushes on Bowie, I had a crush on Mozart. I also loved Vivaldi — known as “The Red Priest” because of his bright gingery hair — but it wasn’t until later, when I hit my so-called sexual “peak” years, that I slavered whenever I heard one of Vivaldi’s continuos. I felt tympani drums booming between my legs like the 2001 theme whenever I heard damn near anything from his L’estro Armonico. To this day, anything he wrote in B Minor makes me swoon so hard, smelling salts barely stir me. I write to his music a lot when I’m writing scenes that are bursting with erotic tension.
His music always seems to be playing within earshot of big moments in my life. The judge who signed my disability settlement invited me into her chambers, where Vivaldi played on the speakers. Although I was distracted by the circumstances and couldn’t name the exact movement, I recognized it immediately from L’estro Armonico.
For the record, I no longer listen to his Le Quattro Stagioni. I’m thrilled that it introduces people to his music, but it’s stale. Done. Heard. Overplayed. I won’t say overrated because it’s too brilliant, but I don’t need to hear it again for some time.
I revel in the idea that he suffered endless temptation as a priest teaching budding beauties abandoned by their mothers who were the drop-dead gorgeous mistresses of Italy’s richest men. How it must have pinched and burned, the desire for something he could never have. Yet he wrote music for those girls of Ospedale — music that brought both him and them acclaim. He even lived with two of them later. In purity, of course! ::cough::
My poor, tortured red priest.
It’s a good thing I don’t have a T.A.R.D.I.S.