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Hometown - - - Bonn, Germany
A G E
24
H E X
#7a9d96
Role - - - Ludwig van Beethoven
Occupation - - -Part-time Librarian
i. für elise- ii. pathétique - iii. große sonate für das hammerklavier - iv. concerto no. 5 mvt 2
Z O D I A C
aries
E R A
classical
M B T I
isfp
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Appearance
hair | dark brown eyes | umber
height | 185 cm weight | 76 kg
Likes
flowers | grocery shopping at 3 am and similar hours | twenty four
hour convenience stores | when people ask for composition advice
or for his opinion | recognition | lightly sweetened tea | dogs and
similar furry creatures | early morning runs | trying new restaurants
or new items on old menus | working the dead shifts | comfortable
pajama pants | scotch | watching the sunrise | mac and cheese |
cat videos (quietly and secretly) | foggy days | cinnamon | writing
letters back home | symphonic revelations | breakfast foods, at
any hour of the day | down pillows | good quality bedsheets |
structured poetry | goethe | mozart | harmonies | wildflower
bouquets | cooking | olives | violin solos
Dislikes
when headphones lose sound in one ear before breaking |
weird pizza toppings | going to see a movie in theaters—no
captions | being bothered when he’s composing; respect the
locked door | when people cry at his improvisations, which
happens more than he cares to admit | his hearing loss | going
out to social functions | texting—the tone never comes across
right, and they tell him he always sounds vaguely angry |
creative blocks | babies | espresso, five hour energies, and similar
ways of getting too much caffeine | bad jokes | overly sweet
cocktails | wasting his time | romantic/dramatic movies | being
compared to others | italian opera | colds | math | giving lessons,
unless he finds the pupil talented | blind dates
Strengths & Weaknesses
dedication | he can and will spend sleepless night after
sleepless night working on a composition, neglecting all
else to finish. x perfectionist | he is not scared of revision,
spending weeks and sometimes months making absolute
sure every note is the right one x devoted | he is not an
easy man to love and not an easy man to gain love from.
nevertheless, once his love is given, it is given in spades,
and his affection is bottomless x backbone | self doubting
as he is, he does not allow others to doubt his work, does
not let criticism deter him, often biting back
absent minded | he is prone to drifting away to a world of
his own making, removing himself from any worldly ties,
and in the process, forgetting about many things or not
paying attention to others x stubborn | he does not care
for changing his line of thought and will on occasion refuse
to back down even when he's been presented with evidence
proving him wrong x short tempered | he is notorious for
his impatience and cantankerous nature. prone to lashing
out even at his friends, leon often finds himself alone due
to his irritability x temperamental | additionally, leon can be
picky about the oddest details, can vary wildly in mood from
hour to hour. he's been known to cancel appointments or
performances with very short notice or sometimes just walk
out in the middle if something isn't to his liking]
Miscellaneous
far too mulish and proud to get a hearing aid. denies he even
has hearing problems, in fact | his room is an absolute disaster
most of the time, and he’s gone stretches of time without
showering when working on a new piece. cleanliness is not at
the very top of his list of priorities | he spends much of his
waking hours in pajamas, save for when he’s forced to be a
normal human being by societal standards. sometimes, even
then he’ll still step out into the world in his pjs. at least he throws
a shirt on. could be worse | for three whole years, he believed he
was two years younger than he actually is | sometimes dips his
head in ice cold water before composing if he feels he needs a jolt |
doesn’t know his multiplication table | he also plays the violin,
though not to the extent of the piano | he far prefers improvisation
on any instrument to playing from the scores of other composers •
"I was just occupied with such a lovely, deep thought, I couldn’t
bear to be disturbed." | decaying building filled with the beauty
of transience. | "Whoever sees Beethoven for the first time and
knows nothing about him would surely take him for a malicious, ill-
natured and quarrelsome drunk who has no feeling for music." |
a lukewarm cup of coffee, drunk out of sheer nihilism. | staring out
the window when only the streetlamps light the way, slowly growing
unsure of the reality of existence. | "… i wonder if i will ever find a
language to speak of the things that haunt me the most." •
shut the fuck up, carl | a trick of the eyes | gotta play what you
feel | self imposed isolation rocks | remembering? what's that? |
some things don't change | nihilism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ | life's just like
that | there are more important things, okay?
"Don't only practice your art, but force
your way into its secrets; art deserves
that, for it can raise man to the Divine."
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calcium does not strength make and though
his bones have not cracked, his being is brittle
behind the splintering masque of biting teeth, sharp
tongue. time has not been kind and he asks no
kindness from it. he knows better. now
he has learned to be grateful just for
its presence. to take what he can get.
His father staggers into the house well past midnight, cheeks rosy but eyes malicious. Leon feigns sleep, clutches his younger brother closer to his chest. The boy’s body shakes with a sob, and Leon can only shush him quietly.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice quivering. Over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” To his brother, then, as he is shaken and torn from the covers, to his father. His fingers dance over ivory keys and still the apologies fall from his lips. Over and over until the words mean nothing. Until he can say them without crying. Dawn breaks to the sound of the first three bars of Nocturne in G minor played on repeat, broken up by a sharp cry of pain.
He is raised on a diet of violence and poison; he bruises easily until he learns not to, until he can ignore the ache in his bones without shaking. His eyes turn hard under the disapproving gaze of his father.
In the sick heat of the summer sun, Leon watches his father caught in a grotesque time loop, cycling in and out with a slam of the wooden door, and their house is caught in a state of decay. Bills in crisp white envelopes pile up on the table, the only spot of an untouched purity within their crumbling walls. Leon turns to the monster of his childhood, needing something to scream into, and what better than the leeches sitting at even intervals on the dingy keys? He practices bloodletting the venom from his veins.
His brother sits for three hours by his side before he notices, and even then it is only because his arm is pulled away from the melody he is crafting.
“I’m hungry,” he says, and Leon watches his mother sit at the kitchen table, biting into a rotting apple. The words coating his tongue are toxic: This is an ache I have already learned to ignore and I know, I know, I know and The overripe fruit in the cabinets tastes more like poison than sugar and Can we please just agree to let me disappear and Hasn’t this house already stolen all I have given it and I have dreamt of dissolving into black smudges of ink on score paper for the past three weeks, and every time I wake my body feels like a prison I am festering in. He closes the lid of the piano and says, “Alright. Okay.”
He finds a paycheck and leftovers working late nights at a hotel lounge, sometimes playing Beethoven, sometimes playing his own work, ignoring how ugly his notes sound in comparison. He plays and thinks, if he plucked his own heart from his breast, raw and bloody, and threaded the strings of the piano through its valves, he still wouldn’t be able to squeeze a worthwhile song from its writhing flesh.
Coins in his tip jar become tears and curled up bills, and a quiet annoyance twitches in his joints. Don’t cry, he thinks, hammering away at the keys, when there is nothing to cry for. When the sheet music runs out, he lets instinct and emotion carry his fingertips over the keys, scoffing when a woman with tears hanging on her lashes slips a hundred into his jar and asks if he can spare Saturdays, two hour lessons for her niece.
He is tempted to say no, but Spring carried disease in her pollen, and his mother hasn’t left her bed in over a week, and dust is beginning to gather in the divots of her duvet.
“An hour and half,” he says. She shakes his hand.
(He shows up almost an hour late the first day, half hoping to be dismissed, still wearing the pajamas he hasn’t actually slept in, proof of exhaustion hanging like bruises beneath his eyes. His skin doesn’t look normal without some kind of discoloration anymore. But the recoil from the pretty young girl is a sharp reminder.)
“But the marking is fortissimo,” she says, frowning. It has been four weeks, and she now answers the door and faces her haggard looking instructor without batting an eye.
“My copy says forte,” he insists, crossing out the issimo with a black sharpie. He pauses a moment, then adds an e over it. She prints out another copy from a different source, and he crosses out the marking on that one too.
“How come you’re always late?” she asks on the fifth week.
“Because,” he says, and plays a gentle melody in answer. When he looks up she is crying, and he ends abruptly and discordantly on an F sharp. “Okay,” he says. “Little Fugue, from the development.”
“Do I annoy you?” she asks, and he answers “Yes” without glancing up from the sheet music he is flipping through. “Sorry,” she says, cracking her knuckles.
“Just applaud next time,” he says, doing the same. “Like normal people.”
“Why are you sitting on the left this time?” she asks on the eighth week.
“Because,” he says. He breathes a quiet sigh of relief when the notes come through much clearer than the week before.
(The world is beginning to come through hazy and muffled on his left, and it is another ache he will grow acquainted with, will learn to ignore.)
On the eighteenth week, she knocks on the wooden door that no longer slams but still will not stop decaying. She wants to know where he’s been for the past four weeks, and his brother takes her to the door of Leon’s room. It hasn’t been unlocked for days, he tells her, and the walls will not stop seeping music.
“At least the duvet is clean now,” he tells her when the door opens with a screeching creak. The floor is littered with clothes and books and paper, some shredded, some crumpled, all with scratches of hastily made ink marks. He snaps at her to leave when she tries to speak. She leaves a basket filled with various fruit on the corner of his desk, and a week later his room smells like honey and rot.
When he leaves, it is quietly.
(He remembers the dream he used to have about dissolving into key notations and dynamic markings. He feels half gone but still imprisoned.)
He sends her a letter five months later. Enclosed is an eight page sonata, nothing more. He knows she will weep when she plays it.
Face Claim | miura haruma
Played by | epimetheus
Created by | verix
Inspired by | onyx & cinders on jcink