My return to earth was not the grand pomp and circumstance I had imagined, but a quiet love affair, something unexpected but immediate. It happened so quick, before I got the chance to properly think it through, it was over. I succumbed to the tears. The pressure coils and tightens in the chest, leaving nothing special to the imagination. Sound waves vibrated in the blur of the duress, in the important veins of the neck. The music returned like liquid, a tideline of mirrors into infinity. I hear soft violins in my ear. Perfect fifths in tune, moving seas, prehistoric melodies. Captured in the beauty of paintings in museums, in the intonation of angels softly playing violins. Semitones linger in each octave. The brazilwood delicately strokes the Perlon, delicately strokes the catgut, the birth kind. At the moment of a lonely realisation I fade with wisps of cigarette smoke vanishing into the air, into the existentialism of Ysaÿe, into glowing manifestos. I check back out of earth, all before the strike of a clock. Hesitant to speak, ship in the anchorage, the violins talk for me.