I'm an Organ

If I were an organ I wouldn't be a huge cathedral pipe organ made by a master craftsman. I wouldn't be played by virtuosos to the envisioned glory of the omniscient. My sounds would never shake the stained glass saints and chill the spines of the devoted with awe-inspiring infrasonic rumbles.

Instead, I'd be a calliope organ built in the back shed of an incorrigible tinkerer. I'd have pipes, bells, whistles, triangles, cymbals, pipes, snares, sirens, castanets, and more pipes. I'd chuff and toot my tunes in the park and watch the wide eyes of enraptured children, but my magic wouldn't be limited to the young.

My de-tuned waldflutes would tug at circuses from childhoods past, long forgotten clown-fears and the smells of ice cream and peanuts. My reeds and cymbals would conjure the sensual orient and invoke mind mirages of moonlit oases. My strident prinzipals would bring back showers of rice and white-veiled hopefulness in some; cobwebbed crypts with satin-lined coffins for others.

My inventor didn't shy from impractical ideas, for within my frame he has found room for carefully tuned strings. They have no jacks or hammers. They resonate in sympathy with ambient sounds and add their barely perceptible overtones to the concert. There are few voices that fail to find some reflected whisper of recognition.

People may curse my brazen swell. They may hear only an antiquated cacophony as they hurry past. I expect very few will wait and listen for the introspective vox humana pathetique. Fewer still will find the patience or desire to learn to play. As an instrument I'll remain an entertaining curiosity for Sunday afternoons and a monument to dedicated eccentricity.