Interview with Bruna

In the spring of 1998, she grew her nails out too long to play guitar any longer. That was when she quit making music, and quit the piano, too. "Because the sound of tapping on ivory with every note became too loud in my ears," and overrode the songs. Her fingertips hurt on the frets, and she couldn't feel the keys when she played. All at once, she put it down.

Ten years later she asked herself why she didn't file her nails to some less stylish length, and go back to her one saving habit. And this morning she answered the hanging interest, hanging like the cummerbund in her only love's closet, untouched since his prom. "I didn't go back to music, because I wasn't ready to love it." She told me it wasn't that she was ready to be without music, exactly. But she wasn't ready for the spotlight that came with it. She wanted solitude, solace. Eventually, even from her music.

Every now and then, she would say, she woke up and realized that she would have wanted to love. But she would never find anyone if she was home all the time. "No man would walk up to my door and ring the bell, looking for me." No one knew her. She said. Music, her one introduction, was gone, and now there was no prelude to ask for a name, a number. But that dawning thought would always go dim in the glow from the television, when she put her mind somewhere else.

The music was an expression, a call for anyone to listen. A solicitation, maybe. Singing, come listen to me. She would sing the songs, leaning forward over the guitar, or over the upright, leaning into an imaginary microphone. And people had come to hear her.

In the summer of 1998 she picked up a cigarette lighter. She put it near my face, and sparked a flame, and inhaled the heat. "The smoke burned in me, deep into my chest." She said it lovingly. And on the way the smoke would singe her throat, blackening her voice. She drove around in the afternoon and sang as dark as midnight.

"Over the following ten years, I sang alone, until I couldn't hold a note. Ate until I couldn't hold a gaze. Shrank until I couldn't hold a conversation. Put it down until I couldn't find it anymore."

She quit until she couldn't start again. Until she had to begin all over again, with baby steps. Just going out to get the mail was hard until recently, no matter how sunny and inviting it looked outside. Baby steps, just playing scales, or the simple chords. She'd keep exercising every day. Small moves, and small progressions up the octaves. Small fingernail clippings. Small victories.