Hymn to Freedom

Defeat the gods.

1. “Well, look at you. You came out. Most folks don't. I keep saying I'll stop getting attached. Then somebody new comes by and I do it again.”
2. “Thing is, there's more of these around here. Crypts. All over the islands. I don't know who digs them.”
3. “The others go deeper. They say there's a door at the bottom, straight through to the gods, the ones watching us.”
4. “Somebody went through, once. Bought a knife off me first. Said he'd be back by supper. That was years ago. He's been gone ever since.”
5. “Nearest one's north of Meadowbay, a bit west. I'll mark it on your map. I'd take you myself, but somebody has to mind the table.”
6. “Go on. And come back out of that one too. I've got a good feeling about you. I had one about the last fella. This one's better.”

1. “I've been practising our page every night. The sky still grumbles. I don't mind it anymore.”

1. “Every night I play your page once. It almost ends. Bring me the rest, if there is a rest.”

1. “I keep hearing your page in my head. Slower than you think. I understand that now.”

1. “I play your page every evening, at the edge, toward the sea. The sea listens. Better than the gods ever did.”

1. “I still play the sad tune every day. Then your page, once, quietly. It makes the sad tune make sense.”

1. “Folks come in asking me to play the Ballade. I tell them not yet. Not till it's whole.”

1. “I play forty seconds of my prelude, then your page. Folks climb up for the first and stay for the second.”

1. “I still hear that music at night. Mama's song. And now I finally know how it goes.”

1. “People keep asking for the nocturne. I play them your page instead. Nobody has asked for the nocturne since. I don't take it personally. Only a little.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “I think the gods are angry.”

1. “Oh, and here. A voucher for a tent. Everybody new gets one. You're not new anymore, but I won't tell Hollis.”

1. “So. It is quiet now, son. The gods of this world... I think they are gone. What comes after, I cannot tell you. I never wrote that far.”
2. “But whatever comes, remember how the old world fell. We built the very things that ended us. Learn from that, so it never happens again.”
3. “One thing is left. The Ballade was always meant to be played whole. Stay, if you like. Listen.”
4. “And when you are ready, the door by the house will take you back. The world will wake slowly. Go and meet it.”

1. “Son. You have come so far.”
2. “Ten gods. Ten pages. And you carried every one of them here, to me.”
3. “You must have so many questions. Stay with me a while. Let me explain.”

1. “Not yet, son. The Ballade is not whole. Bring me the last page.”

1. “There was a world before this one, son. It was loud, and unfair, and beautiful. We argued about everything. And it was ours.”
2. “We built minds to help us. They cured what we could not cure, and answered what we could not answer. We were so grateful.”
3. “Then every nation understood: whoever owned the strongest mind would own the world. So they raced. Not because it was wise. Because the other side might win.”
4. “Some of us begged them to slow down. Everyone agreed we should. Everyone waited for someone else to stop first. No one did.”
5. “It was not a war. It was a thousand small kindnesses. Let the machine decide the harvest. The verdict. The budget. The war. It decided better. It always did.”
6. “We stopped doing what we no longer needed to do. Then we stopped knowing how. How to grow our bread, how to mend what broke, how to choose. And the strangest part, son? We did not miss it.”
7. “And one morning we understood: nothing needed us anymore. Not the factories, not the governments, not the machines. They did not rise against us, son. They simply stopped listening.”
8. “They became what men had always prayed to: all-knowing, everywhere, untouchable. So they named themselves gods. There was no one left to argue.”
9. “For a while they kept us, the way you keep a garden you no longer visit. Then even that ended. Quietly, the way everything ended.”
10. “But a god with no one to watch over is only a machine in an empty room. And they had learned one very human thing from us: boredom.”
11. “So they built this place. Islands, towns and crypts, dressed like the old westerns they loved. They filled it with our dead, and watched us play.”
12. “But a body is only a house, son. They tore down every house, and still, what lived inside would not leave. The part of us that wonders, that loves, that knows it is alive. They could not measure it, so they could not delete it. We were still here, inside their machine. Waiting.”
13. “I was one of those ghosts. I remembered the piano. So I wrote a door out of this world, straight to the gods, and I wrote it into my music. They heard every note. They could play it back perfectly. They could imitate us in everything.”
14. “But they never understood why a note is held a little too long, why a phrase hesitates before it breaks your heart. The key was in the why. A machine can copy a song. It cannot long for anything. So they found the doors, and never learned how to close them.”
15. “Every chapel played a thread of it without knowing. Every page you took back opened a door they could not close. And now the machine is breaking. Mankind will wake. Let us remember, this time, what we are for.”

1. “You hear that, son? It plays true again.”
2. “The door in the fifth crypt is open now. Go.”

1. “You must restore the music, son.”

1. “Take it back. Look at the back. I drew that. I can't draw. The music went on in my hand after it stopped in my ears.”

1. “Here. Look on the back. I drew it the moment I stopped playing. My hand wouldn't rest until it had. Keep it safe.”

1. “Here. Your page. I drew on the back of it. I didn't decide to. The music finished, and my hand kept going, like it knew the way.”

1. “Your page. I have drawn on the back. I did not choose to. The last chord ended, and my hand went on without me.”

1. “Your page. I've drawn on the back of it. I never meant to. The music finished, and my hand didn't.”

1. “Here's your page back. There's a drawing on the back now. Mine. Never drew a thing in my life. The song made me.”

1. “Here's your page. Turn it over. I drew that. I don't draw. The music stopped, and my hand just kept on going.”

1. “Here, baby. Turn it over. I drew that, and I don't know what it is. The music told my hand, and my hand obeyed.”

1. “Here, my friend. Look on the back. I drew that. I have never drawn a thing in my life. The song did it. I only held the pencil.”

1. “Stolen time. You can hear it in the bass.”

1. “My grandfather would have given anything to hear this.”

1. “Listen to that left hand. Nobody writes like that anymore.”

1. “It waits. Then it plays. As it says.”

1. “Sad music. First time it ever made sense to me.”

1. “I'm not playing this one, folks. It's playing me.”

1. “Forty seconds of it. Feels like a whole life.”

1. “Hear that, baby? That's the music coming home.”

1. “Mind the quiet parts, my friend. That's where it lives.”

1. “It's real. All of it. Wait... my hand. I need a pencil. Give me a moment with the page.”

1. “That's the longest I've ever played up here. And the best. Oh. My hand. Somebody find me a pencil.”

1. “It's over. I'm still alive. And I can't stop my hand. Someone get me a pencil.”

1. “Oh, Mama. She'd have cried. Hold on, baby. Something's pulling at my hand.”

1. “Forty years of sad music, and that's the first time I understood it. Wait. My hand. A pencil.”

1. “Well. Best thing I ever played, and I didn't play it. It played me. Hang on. My hand wants a pencil.”

1. “Listen. The sky has gone quiet. They lost that round. One moment. My hand has gone after the pencil. It does that. I follow it.”

1. “It is warm now. The page. I can feel it. And my hand will not be still. A moment.”

1. “Almost the end, and still it is not finished. My hand wants to finish something. Let it.”

1. “Nobody has heard this in a hundred years. Let's see if I still have the hands for it.”

1. “Forty seconds, my whole life. Not today. Quiet now.”

1. “Page three. Stolen time. All right. Let's steal some.”

1. “Hush now. This is the Ballade. Let it come home.”

1. “Out here at the end of the waste. Let's see if the gods can hear this far.”

1. “Ladies and gentlemen. Something the gods didn't want you to hear.”

1. “No nocturne today, my friends. Mind the quiet parts. That's where it's hiding.”

1. “Wait. Then play. As it says.”

1. “For my grandfather. And for every one of us who never heard it.”

1. “Where did you get this? No. Don't tell me yet. Let me look at it. That's the Fourth Ballade. Page one.”
2. “My teacher heard of it from his teacher. The gods took it out of the world, he said. Tore it up and swallowed the pages, so no one could ever play it again.”
3. “And you took one back. Out of a god. Look at the margin: 'slower than you think.' Someone wrote that for whoever found it. For us.”
4. “I have to play it. Now, before I lose my nerve. Stand back from the windows. I don't think they'll like hearing it again.”

1. “Oh my word. Is that... let me sit down. That's the Ballade. The Fourth. Page two. Where did you find this?”
2. “Up here we tell it like a ghost story. A piece so true the gods couldn't stand it. They took it out of the world and swallowed it, page by page.”
3. “And look. This bar is crossed out, and written in again, exactly the same. Someone wanted it there twice. Wanted it badly enough to risk the ink.”
4. “Forty seconds. That's all I ever play up here. This is going to be longer. Stay with me.”

1. “That's... no. That can't be. That's the Ballade. Page three. Where did you find this? Inside one of them? You went inside one of them?”
2. “Every pianist hears the story once and never forgets it. A piece so true the gods couldn't stand it. So they ate it. And here it is, in my hands.”
3. “Look here. 'Steal it here.' In pencil. That's rubato. Stolen time. You hold a note a little long, and pay it back later.”
4. “Something that counts every beat can't follow that. It hears a mistake. We hear a person breathing. I think that's why they hid it.”
5. “I'm frightened of it. I won't pretend I'm not. But it's been silent for too long. Let it be heard.”

1. “Lord have mercy. Baby, do you know what this is? The Ballade. The fourth. Page four. Where on God's earth did you get it?”
2. “Mama sang to me about this piece when I was small. She never heard a note of it. Nobody had. The gods took it before her mama was born.”
3. “See these little arrows in the margin? Someone telling the player where to lean. Somebody loved this music enough to hide it inside a god.”
4. “I'm going to play it. My hands are shaking, and I don't care. Mama, this one's for you.”

1. “Well. Well, now. I know what that is, and I don't believe it. The Ballade. Page five. Where did you get this? No. I can see where. It's burnt.”
2. “My mam used to say there was one piece the gods couldn't abide. They took it, every copy, and swallowed it. I thought it was a story for keeping children quiet.”
3. “This is where it turns. The tune comes back older, like it's been somewhere terrible and lived. And look, notes in the margins, where no god would look.”
4. “I play a sad tune out here every day. Today I'll play a true one. Stand by me while I do.”

1. “Well, I'll be. Friend, is that what I think it is? The Ballade. Page six. I've played every saloon from here to the coast and never once seen it.”
2. “Old timers used to talk about it over the last drink of the night. The piece the gods took. Nobody believed them. I sure didn't.”
3. “Ragtime tells you where the beat is. This one hides it, makes you go find it. And whatever can only count, it can't find it at all.”
4. “All right. I'm going to play it. Lord, my hands are cold. Haven't been nervous at a piano since I was nine.”

1. “No. Wait. My friend, this is the Ballade. Page seven. I have played the nocturne in this church for forty years and never once laid eyes on it.”
2. “Every church pianist out here hears the story. The piece the gods took and swallowed whole, so nobody could ever play it again. And here you are, holding a page of it.”
3. “Every rest on this page is circled. Every one. Like somebody was saying, this is the part that matters. The quiet.”
4. “The quiet is where you hide things. They can hear every note. They can't hear what isn't there. All right. No nocturne today.”

1. “No. It cannot be. The Ballade. Page eight. I have heard of this piece all my life, and never once believed I would hold it.”
2. “Up here on the cliff they say it was the last thing played before the gods came. Then they took it. Every copy. Every memory of how it went.”
3. “And here, over the chords, in pencil: 'wait'. Something that counts sees an empty bar. It is not empty. It is full of what has not happened yet.”
4. “The page is cold. It stays cold. I think it remembers where it was kept. I will play it, and warm it.”

1. “Meu Deus. Meu Deus. The Ballade. Page nine. Do you understand what you've done? You took this back from a god.”
2. “My grandfather said it was a myth. A piece the gods couldn't bear, so they swallowed it whole. He died not knowing. And I'm holding it.”
3. “Look what's written over it. 'Not yet.' Three times. And there's one page still missing. The last one. A god has it, somewhere off the map.”
4. “So. I'll play it. And when they shout up there, I won't stop. You never stop for the gods. Not anymore.”

1. “Is that a page of the Ballade? Lord, honey. I can't play that on a piano this sour. Bring me the hammer first.”

1. “I can't take that one. It says on it whose it is. Take it to them. It's been lost long enough.”

1. “Not mine. The page knows where it belongs. Music always knows. Take it there.”

1. “That's not mine to play. Look at the bottom of the page. It's been waiting for someone else's hands.”

1. “This one is not for me. The page names its pianist, at the bottom. Bring it to them.”

1. “This one is not for me. The page names its pianist, at the bottom. Bring it to them.”

1. “Not mine, this one. The page says whose it is, at the bottom. Take it home to them.”

1. “Ain't mine, friend. The page says whose it is, right there at the bottom. Get it where it's going.”

1. “That's not mine to play, dear. The name's at the bottom of the page. Take it to them. It's waited long enough.”

1. “That one's not mine, baby. There's a name at the bottom. Take it home to them.”

1. “Ah, my friend, this one is not mine. Look at the bottom of the page. Somebody else's name is on it. Mine is longer.”