May 3

Zaffre is a prescientific pigment. That is, it is an alchemical substance, made by roasting cobalt ore, and it has its first recorded use as a color name sometime in the 1550s.

“Done” is an unthinkable word. “Done” feels blue. It contains an explosive energy that belies the thunderous silence and drop that follows. I am still reconciling the two. Done does not feel done, but even so, I am eons lighter, floating around on blue mouse ballet flats as I turn in the last (very big) paper of my undergraduate career. Free time is not a concept, and I feel almost in a daze as I trundle back to the music building. I have not touched a harp since my recital and I have a concert tonight.

Time operates differently backstage, flitting about like some anxious hummingbird – at once passing too quickly and too slowly. It’s too noisy to be sacred, but it feels sacred nonetheless. These are the things I know:

It is too cold backstage, always; I worry for the pianos.
During the Victorian Era, zaffre was used to prepare smalt and stain glass blue.
I am the first piece after intermission.
Zaffre is made of an impure form of cobalt oxide or cobalt arseniate.
I am six performances away from graduating.
I wonder how often pure and holy things derive from artificial, tainted origins.
The harp is tuned, but I’ve left the spare strings up in the harp room.
I have a fear that after I leave, I will never play again.

listen: Olivier Messiaen, Quatuor pour la fin du temps 
read: Jorge Luis Borges, Library of Babel