xp_logs | Jono meets Jan

It seems to be Jono's week for meeting people in the music room. You would think he spends all his time there or something...

Jan hummed to herself as she flitted from one instrument to the next. She poked more than a few of them, noting the difference in the instruments' appearances when she was tiny versus how they looked when she viewed them while over five feet tall. Every so often, a note would be made as she semi-gently hit, kicked, pulled, or pushed something. Hunting around the room, she found a few guitar picks and, completely oblivious to the fact that she wasn't much bigger than the picks at this time, selected one. Grinning to herself, the tiny girl jumped off the shelf, pick in hand, and proceeded to land on one of the guitars in the room. She plucked at a few of the strings in an experimental manner, than dragged the pick over all of the strings a few times. Making a face, she dropped the pick next to the guitar and hovered in the air, frowning slightly as she surveyed all of the other interesting toys. Her gaze fell upon a piano, and her eyes lit up. Zooming over to the piano, she grabbed the keyboard lid and opened it, revealing the row of keys just waiting to be touched. Or jumped on. Yes, jumped on.

Jono stopped with his hand by the doorknob of the music room. Someone was... well, to say "playing" the piano would be inaccurate. It sounded more like someone had let their cat out and the beast was walking over the keys.

Swinging the door open, Jono stomped one booted foot as he entered the music room, exclaiming "Gotcha!" in a widespread psionic call.

"SHIT!" Jan screamed as Jono's "voice" resounded in her mind. The two-inch girl tumbled back and tripped over a couple of keys, resulting in more notes of discord. "Tune it down a bit, will ya? There's no need to yell at me, you know!" Remaining in her fallen/half-seated position, Jan looked over at Jono crossly, not that he could see the look on her small face from that far away. Not that he would have heard her, either, as she'd left her voice amplifier on one of the shelves in the music room.

Now that was odd. Jono definitely could hear something non-feline responding to him, but couldn't see anyone. "All right," he said as he walked into the room. "It's bloody rude to be hiding around here and..."

He stopped as he walked around the piano and saw Jan sitting on the keys. "...well hello now," he said with a quieter tone to his mental voice, "what have we here, then? Our very own Tinkerbell?"

"Yep, that's me!" Jan beamed, sitting up. "Except I have to make my own pixie dust with glitter or colored sugar!"

Oh god, another glitter pixie... Jono thought to himself before sitting on the piano bench to peer down at Jan. "Er," he began, "this might sound a bit odd, but you actually are a two-inch tall girl jumping on the piano keys, right? Because if I'm not hallucinatin', that's got to rank up there with the weirdest things I've seen in the past month, and I'm the bloke who's missin' half his bloody face, which is saying a bit much."

"Well, right now I'm a two-inch girl sitting on the piano keys, but yeah!" Jan grinned. "I can jump around on the keys again if you want! Want to see?" Without waiting for an answer, she jumped up and started hopping on the keys again, this time in a semblance of order as the notes for one part of 'Heart and Soul' were heard as she sang along. "Heart and soul! I fell in love with you, heart and soul! The way a fool would do, madly! Because you..."

Gingerly, Jono reached out with two fingers and lifted Jan up by the collar of the tiny shirt she was wearing. "See here now," he explained, "that an' 'Chopsticks' are absolutely outlawed in this classroom. Forbidden, banned, diabolus in musica, understand?"

Jan's wings buzzed in protest as she was removed from the piano, then she stared up at Jono, her wings completely still. "But... why?" she asked in astonishment.

"Because they are insipid little ditties meant for five year olds being shown a musical instrument for the first time," Jono explained, setting Jan down on top of the piano. "There's simpler bits to learn on, an' the young ones seem to be taking to them."

As if in explanation, Jono used one finger to quickly play the first measure of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on the piano, using the sustain pedal to keep the last note hanging in the air. "It's not music," he protested, "just a collection of notes. Teaching that to the kids wouldn't be any different than... than shop class."

"What's wrong with shop class?"

Jono shook his head, fingers continuing to play a smooth melody, something he'd been teaching his class from the early ragtime era. "It's just putting A and B together to get C, and everyone does it the same way. Music... music isn't like that. Music is art. You can't just break it down to the same notes every time."

Jan moved to sit on the edge of the top of the piano, dangling her legs over the edge. "But... aren't you supposed to play the same notes for songs? I mean, if you play different notes each time, it'll sound pretty awful and it won't be the same song, it'll be all of tune and horrible."

Jono raised an eyebrow artfully. "Bite your tongue, oh ye of little... well, everything. Observe."

Shaking his fingers out, he began to play a recognizable piece, one that his parents had paid a piano teacher to drill into him repeatedly in his younger years living in suburban London. Nearly tone-perfect, he coaxed the piano into the strains of Mozart's 'Requiem'. After a few measures, he paused, then started over. But this time, he picked up the tempo, adding a flourish here and there, reminiscent of the ragtime he'd been playing earlier. His feet were tapping on the floor, and he occasionally used the heel of his hand to slide down the keys in a long descending series of chords. But through all the elaboration, the melody was the same.

"That," he said when he finished, "is music. Not bleedin' Chopsticks."

Jan broke out into applause. "Pretty! A remix!"

"Call it what you will," Jono said, "but you've got to feel it. Or it's not music, it's just... just sounds."

"Well, some people like 'just sounds'," Jan pointed out cheerfully. "Not all of us are great musicians, you know. Some of us just like to make the sounds we can, great music or just a bunch of notes put together."

Jono thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "To each their own, you're saying. That's fair. So long as I don't catch anyone trying to sing along with their Alison Blaire CDs in here. That's a capital offense, it is."

Jan wasn't one of Jono's students, and this wasn't a class, but the teen had learned enough in the past few minutes to realize that asking what was wrong with Alison Blaire really wasn't going to get her anywhere. It would probably earn her a lecture, and that was something she could do without. "You won't catch me singing along with any Alison Blaire CDs in here or anywhere else in the mansion, I promise." Did anyone actually listen to CDs anymore?

"Well, then that's ten points to Gryffindor, Miss...?"

"Van Dyne. Janet Van Dyne, but most people call me Jan." Bored with sitting for so long, Jan flicked her wings a couple of times and jumped down, landing on one of the keys. Not quite sure what Jono would do if she started playing 'Heart and Soul' again, and not really wanting to find out, Jan flew into the air and landed near the guitar where she'd left the guitar pick. 110% sure that Jono wouldn't appreciate the way she played guitar, she put the pick away.