CW: None.

TO: Andrew Thompson in Baltimore, Maryland

FROM: A music student in Stillwater, Minnesota

November 1, 2030

Dear Andy,

The day I was arrested, someone bought the winning Powerball lottery ticket that was worth 1.2 billion dollars. I remember dreaming what I would have done if I had won. You might not believe me, but I’m being serious here—I’d open up a phone book and randomly pick out a name, and give the person half of my winnings. This was my last daydream as a free man.

Just the thought of a complete stranger receiving all that money for no reason brought a smile to my face.

Of course, there is no such thing as a phone book anymore and Andy, I hate to tell you this, but I didn’t win no lottery.

They are going to execute me tomorrow morning, and they gave me this evening to write a farewell to a loved one.

I decided to randomly pick out a name and write to that person. I’ve never been to Baltimore and I don’t know anyone named Andrew Thompson, but I figured there is bound to be at least one Andrew Thompson in Baltimore. I’m sure the authorities will find you and give you this letter.

I’ll begin at sentencing because that really is the first time I died. It’s when one life ended and another began. Tomorrow will be my second and final death. But don’t worry. This isn’t a confession. I already confessed to the cello.

• • • •

I was sitting there next to the public defender. He was thirty-nine years old, but he looked much younger, healthy and in shape, and I didn’t feel that way at all and so one of the first questions I asked him was what did he do for exercise. Looking back, that was a really strange question to ask. It had nothing to do with my case but I’m only telling you this now Andy because when you get arrested, you go into shock and you ask bizarre questions for no reason.

“I run in the evenings on the treadmill,” he answered. That really is the only detail I remember of him. That and his kindness. He patted me on the shoulder the moment before the judge sentenced me and he didn’t have to do that.

The judge asked me to stand.

I did.

“Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major,” said the judge, and there was a pause, and then, acting as if he was granting me a type of mercy, added: “but only the prelude.”

The public defender let out a barely perceptible groan. Then it was my turn to pat him on the shoulder.

It wasn’t the music we’d been hoping for.

We thought maybe all I would be sentenced to was a guitar chord or maybe a scale on a flute. Or maybe the worst thing the judge would sentence me to would be “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on the violin.

But Bach?

That meant I would be sent to a maximum-security prison.

When I arrived at my cell there, there was the cello . . . waiting. You would think they would have issued me the cello when they issued me my one set of baggy prison clothes but if they had, it would have been less dramatic. There was no desk. No pillow. No books. No paper to write on. No shelves.

Only a simple chair, a brown-varnished, stained cello with its bow, a mattress, and a cement floor.

I took a few steps towards the cello, held it, and then took a deep breath. For the moment, the wooden scent of the cello relaxed me. That hollow space within the cello was where notes lived, and I tried to breathe it all in. I figured it was the first step.

I knew nothing of music. They didn’t teach music to people like me. But in that moment my mind was open to the possibility that I would master a language I never had the opportunity to hear, to really and completely hear.

I don’t want you to think that this was a dark cell or that it was a dirty cell that never saw the light of day. It is a very modem prison. The cells are really small soundproof rooms. It is true that there was no window, but there was a single low voltage light bulb that never shut off.

All I had to do was play the prelude in Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major.

Andy, I’m not sure how old you are. You might be older than me, but just in case you are younger, much younger, you might not be aware of what a prison sentence used to be like. If a person committed a crime, then they’d be sentenced to a fixed amount of time—two years, five years, twenty years, and everything in between. In some cases, about ten percent of them, the length of time was much greater than twenty years—life. The person would die in prison.

Thus, the saying went that to serve a prison sentence was to do time.

Now, we say to serve a prison sentence is to do music.

That first night in the prison cell with the cello, I’ll admit, I did what almost all prisoners do their first night. I talked to it. I told the cello my life story. Thinking that my honesty would somehow save me or make the cello easier to learn. I didn’t try to play any music on it. Wouldn’t even touch it because I was worried that I would break it. And besides, even though I knew this would not be the case, I thought that someone would give me a music lesson in the morning. Sort of as an orientation.

At some point, I must have stopped talking and fell asleep.

A short, efficient knock woke me up. I opened the door. An officer peeked his head in, looked at me, looked at the cello, and then said, “Very Good, Brian.”

And those were the same three words I heard every day for I don’t know how many months.

Each time I heard them though, they always made me feel a little bit better about myself, my situation. It was as if I had just received a blessing from the officer. From the Department of Corrections. Even from the judge who sentenced me. Those three words let me know I was right on track.

After I heard those words the first time, I was all ready to start practicing, like I was pumped up, but yet, I didn’t really know what Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major sounded like. I knew of it. Everyone knew of it. I didn’t have to wait long.

The single light bulb in the cell started to flicker on and off. Deliberately. Then the locked door automatically opened. I walked out. All the cell doors had opened. There was a long line of incarcerated humans stepping out of their cells. Everybody looked at their feet as they walked. I was surprised at how quiet everybody was. No one knew each other. All the bodies walking together could have all been one body. One long caterpillar. Then I looked at the tiers above and below me. Everybody walking silently.

Looking back on that first day, Andy—and now that it is my last day—I can honestly ask myself: Why were we so quiet?

Sure, we were instructed to be. First rule in a Bach prison is no communication between prisoners. Told if we made any noise or even a gesture, they’d take away our cello for a day, a week, a month.

Another reason was that everyone was really trying to focus on what they were about to hear. Get into a certain state of mind of pure receptivity.

We should have rebelled, even if the only form the rebellion took was in whispers. What did all that focusing and compliance really get us?

I found a seat in a large auditorium and looked around. Most of the incarcerated were staring very intently at the stage. Some had their eyes closed. The young and old alike fidgeted. No one’s body was like the public defender’s. Not exactly obese. They didn’t feed us enough calories, but if anyone had had any type of muscular structure, the days in the cell wore it away. When I watched people sit down, there was an awkwardness to the physical movement. Spatial awareness had diminished. It was like people weren’t comfortable in their own bodies, as if their bodies were no longer theirs. Afterwards I didn’t notice any of it because I became it.

On the stage was a chair and a cello. Officers were walking up and down the aisles like ushers, but the opposite—ready to kick people out who made the slightest noise. Never before had I seen such a large number of officers as I did at the concerts.

An old man walked to the stage wearing a tuxedo and sat down. As he reached for the cello, the lights dimmed in increments, until it was completely black, and he started to play the prelude of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major.

The sound filled the auditorium and bounced off the walls, causing a shift in everyone’s presence. It was like the music shredded that first layer of prison off us. Every inmate automatically concentrated as hard as he could and this concentration was something that could be felt. It radiated from each of us. If you could take a cup and fill it with all the concentration in the room and drink it down, you would turn into some type of god.

In about three minutes it was over. It was the most beautiful sound I ever heard.

I realized why that particular suite and prelude were chosen. The energy, the hope, the uncertainty, the resolution.

Afterwards my brain felt different. Like everything had been reorganized in a different order, a divine order, an order that was missing from me, missing from all of us during the moments of crime, but this piece of music . . .

When the music was finished, the lights turned back on suddenly, not in increments. The old man was hesitant to leave. He looked across the room and tried to make eye contact with a few prisoners. The next evening, he would do the same, except he’d choose to look at different faces. It made me feel as if the old man was looking specifically for me, and I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of love right at that moment, which I believe was his goal.

Then he walked off the stage and I became acutely aware of the silence that followed.

I went back to my cell and tried to play a note on the cello, but couldn’t even get a single reasonable, clear sounding note. I told myself not to worry about it, and that I’d hear the same concert again tomorrow.

I fell asleep. A short, efficient knock. A guard peeked his head in, looked at me, looked at the cello, and said “Very Good, Brian.”

Then a little bit later, the light bulb flickered. The walk to the concert. The concert. The euphoria. But then a crash. The despair of not even coming close to being able to play it.

Repeat.

A year went by.

I woke up one morning, and before I had even opened my eyes, I knew we had company. Still laying on the mattress, I turned my head and noticed an envelope on the floor that someone had slid underneath the door sometime during the night. When I picked it up, there was my name on the front, handwritten in calligraphy.

Andy, if you have never seen your name written in calligraphy, then you’re really missing out on something. Everyone at least once in their lives deserves to see their name represented in such a way.

The calligraphy and the cello seemed to go well together. It was as if there was a conversation going on between them throughout the night that I was completely unaware of. That was my first thought. But my second thought was even more irrational: maybe someone from my long ago past had written me a long letter. Maybe this person even learned and studied calligraphy just so they could write me this letter.

I opened the letter and there was a single sentence on a single page.

It read:

You are invited to play Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major in front of the parole board at noon.

I should have fucking known.

I’m sorry for the swearing, Andy, but I really had to add it just to show you my frustration. I hadn’t learned one note of Bach. For the first week, I tried a couple times, but I didn’t even know how to tune the instrument. And so I spent a year trying to sleep as much as I could.

And when I wasn’t sleeping, I’d stare at the wall and try my hardest not to see the cello, but that was impossible. If my eyes were open, I couldn’t position my face where my eyes would not see it, even if it was only from the comers. Maybe that is why for a life sentence, it is always the cello. I thought at first perhaps it was the richness and depth of the sound. A sound that needed to be restored to the very core of a person. But maybe it was only because they wanted a large instrument you could never not see.

Andy, I’m going to have to take a break. That Parole Board . . . I can’t write about it at this moment. Give me an hour or two to calm down.

• • • •

Around 8:00ish now . . . probably . . .

I have no idea what time it is, Andy. This is the first night that the light bulb hasn’t flickered and the cell didn’t automatically open for the nightly prelude concert. And I’m missing it. I’m really missing Bach and I want to hurry and finish this letter so I can think more about the music. Before I know, it will be all over.

The Parole Board. I had to carry the cello to what seemed like the other side of the prison, into a room much smaller than where the concerts took place. There were three people dressed real conservative, real traditional, sitting at a table. An empty chair stood about ten paces in front of the table. Without anyone saying anything, I took a seat there, and I looked more closely at the Board members. They all were in their upper fifties or lower sixties. I tried to see them clearly, but spending so much time in the cell weakened the eyes. Made it hard to see things from a distance because in the cell there is no distance. Their faces were blurry. The two men wore charcoal gray suits with black ties and the one woman wore a black dress with a white pearl necklace. I tried to take control of the situation.

“Which one of you knows calligraphy? Your handwriting is impeccable,” I said.

“We are music teachers. An intern was in charge of your invitation. A nice touch, isn’t it?” said one of the gray suits.

“You may proceed,” said the other gray suit.

I was shocked. The only words I heard from another human being for the last year was an officer saying: “Very Good, Brian,” and then this. I was expecting something more.

“So, I never had a music lesson,” I tried to explain.

The black dress interrupted me.

“What could you possibly mean? Have you not been listening to the prelude every evening? Isn’t that a music lesson? Three hundred and sixty-five lessons, to be exact,” she said.

I didn’t like how this was going and I stared down at the cello but that only frightened me more, so I stared at the white pearl necklace that I could barely see, and imagined that the pearls were prayer beads.

The silence in the room grew.

“Oh, you actually expect me to answer your question? I thought it was rhetorical,” I said to the black dress.

“We expect you to play Bach’s prelude, if you ever expect to be released from prison,” said the gray suit.

“You may begin at any time,” said the other gray suit.

You know what happened next, Andy?

I started laughing. It was both a sincere laugh and an uncomfortable laugh. They waited until I stopped.

Then I got serious.

“I see men every day at these concerts—” I started.

“We certainly hope you didn’t talk to any of them. Sharing such words can halt your individual progress toward transcendence,” said the black dress.

“That is such a big, pointless word,” I said, and then stopped speaking. I wasn’t helping my situation.

“From chaos into order and from that order into beauty. That is why Bach was chosen. Your mind was in complete chaos, and we can’t let you out if chaos still reigns in your brain,” said a gray suit.

“It’s very simple, Brian. By being able to play the prelude, you’ve giving proof that you have changed, and not only have changed, but will be the type of good that the world wants,” said the black dress.

“Needs,” the other gray suit clarified.

I knew what they were talking about. Even listening to Bach made me feel different, think different. I could only imagine that if I could play it, I would in fact be different. But the difficulty of the piece made it so unattainable.

Something else had been on my mind for months.

“I see the incarcerated in the audience at the concerts . . . they have a look of utter confusion. Like probably how I look. They don’t look like they are able to play any type of music.” I paused, but if I didn’t bring it up now, this might continue to haunt me. “Then some face who I’d seen for months is no longer there. It’s like he disappeared. It’s not only one person. Almost everyone eventually disappears. One day they’re not there and they never return. I don’t believe any of them could play the prelude and so I don’t think they were released,” I said.

“Is there a question you’re trying to ask?” said the gray suit.

“Did you kill them?”

“Brian, you have nothing to worry about. You’re making great progress,” said the black dress.

It was really odd to hear that, considering they hadn’t heard me play.

“Those others . . . the reason you don’t see them is because they committed the unpardonable crime,” said the gray suit.

“Which is?” I asked.

“It’s not the policy to reveal what it is. We used to tell prisoners but then they’d commit it before even letting Bach into their hearts,” said the other gray suit.

I wanted to leave the room ASAP. I didn’t want them to hear how utterly and completely far behind I was.

“I think I just need more time,” I said.

“That’s the spirit!” said the black dress.

“Next year, then?” I asked.

“Absolutely. And if you feel ready, you always have the right to request a parole board meeting early. We’re always looking forward to hearing an incarcerated person play Bach,” said the gray suit.

Quickly, before they’d changed their minds, I walked out of there wishing the cello was a little bit lighter so I could walk the ten paces to the door faster.

The next year went by quite differently. Sleeping for a year is probably a normal response and I would add maybe even a necessary response. But that Parole Board meeting really . . .

Andy, I’m sorry. Gotta take another break. I want to finish this letter and everything, but it seems like I can actually hear the prelude play right now in the cell. It is the strangest thing.

• • • •

I’m back.

I started practicing the cello frequently. Even though I didn’t have a clock or a watch, no natural light to mark the passage of time, no consistent time on when a brown paper bag of food would be delivered, and no consistent time when the officer would stop by, and I didn’t exactly know when the concerts would take place. I knew they were daily. This they made clear in the beginning. And so I just made sure to practice the cello sometime in between the concerts, especially right afterwards. If I had been sitting in the cell or laying down for an extended period of time, I’d tell myself, “Okay, it is time to practice.”

When I wasn’t practicing, I was thinking about the past. I would actually make sounds on the cello with the bow in order to stop my mind. So this wasn’t always even about the prelude. Sometimes I would make sounds to make my mind shut up. To make the images disappear. I told myself if I could play music then perhaps beautiful images would start to emerge.

Sometimes I tried to make beautiful images thinking that would then allow me to play music.

And the prelude of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major is basically a scale, right? A complicated scale with some variance. And so I tried to play different notes in a sequence from low to high. Or from high to low.

And that, I was able to do.

But it didn’t sound good, Andy. It never sounded good.

The problem was . . . the cello was never in tune. I had no idea. I used to think that the last prisoner who lived in the cell and used the cello was an asshole. Like I think he purposely left it out of tune. But he had nothing to do with it. He was probably just as lost as I was.

It’s getting harder to write this letter. All I hear is the prelude now. There was so much more I wanted to say, but I don’t want to mess with you. Build everything to a crescendo. That would be artificial. Yes, as you can probably guess, I did commit the unpardonable crime, but before we get to that, please do me a favor.

If you are ever in Seattle, and you are walking around the Capitol Hill neighborhood, a lot of nice shops, a lot of cool people to kick it with, if you ever see a guy named Louis, and you find out he’s a visual artist and he’s originally from Minnesota . . . If you see him, just walk on by. Ignore him.

You see Andy, I shouldn’t even be sending this letter to you. It is him I should be writing this letter to. He was my best friend growing up, but once I went to prison, he never contacted me.

And so I send my last words to a complete stranger.

Okay, some time has gone by since that last sentence. I heard more of the prelude play in my head, and you know what? If you see that dude named Louis in Seattle or anywhere, who knows where he could be, but if you see a guy named Louis, just assume that he’s my old friend. And instead of ignoring him, ask him how he’s doing. Make sure there are some good people in his life and if there are not, then be a good person in his life.

Because of all the things I could be thinking about, it is him that’s on my mind.

Or to be more specific, I’m thinking of his childhood home in Bayport. His mom was real proud that she owned a home but I don’t think she could really afford it. It never seemed to be heated in the winter. So you know what Louis did when he was around eleven? I have no idea how he got hold of the paint, but he ended up painting all four walls in his bedroom as if it was one big desert.

Blue sky. Cactuses. Fat ones filled with water. Abundance. But also thin, dried-up ones with sharp needles. Purple flowers. A few lizards. Lots of sand, of course. It was real basic, and even though it wasn’t realistic looking, it wasn’t cartoony. Maybe that was because of the seriousness with which he took it, the esteem he had for it.

I look at the walls of my cell and it is as if they are painted the exact same way. This cell has become a desert, and the prelude is what made the sun rise, the cactus grow, the lizard egg crack. It also made the drought. You can hear the drought in the prelude. It happens after a couple minutes go by. It’s as if the notes are saying that it might not rain again. But then the musical phrase in the beginning repeats but with more strength. All the rain comes gushing down. Flowers bloom. The prelude ends.

Does something come after the prelude? Does it constantly repeat? Or is death a never-ending rest note?

All I know are two things. I can’t stop hearing Bach. And in the middle of winter, with the heat off, Louis would sit alone in his room until he started to sweat. That is how much he believed in his desert.

I have to force myself to write more words. I’m no longer thinking in words.

• • • •

Okay, what happened was this. I smashed it. Got sick of staring at the cello every day. Got sick of every possible sound I was making on that damn thing. The day came when it just seemed to take up too much space. I didn’t even think I was angry. But I gripped its neck with two hands and lifted it over my head and brought it down onto the cement floor as hard as I could. Then I stomped on it.

Before I was really aware of what happened, I heard a short, efficient knock on the cell.

An officer peeked in. Looked at me. Looked at what was left of the cello, and said, “Oh Brian. That is not good. Not good at all.” Then he shut the door and walked away.

It was then I knew I had committed the unpardonable crime. There never was another concert for me. Sometime later, possibly only a few hours ago, an envelope slid underneath my door. On the front of it was my name. Typed. I opened it. It read:

You will be executed tomorrow at noon.

I missed the calligraphy. But not nearly as much as I missed the cello. Right after I smashed it, for a minute or two, I felt that if only I had the cello again, I would be able to play Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major. I just needed a couple more tries.

But quite quickly, I knew how utterly untrue that was. I’d never be able to play it, no matter how many daily concerts went by. None of us would ever be able to play it. I even think that a necessary string was missing—that’s just a hunch, though.

We weren’t meant to be able to. It was meant to be a death sentence without saying it directly. Back in the day, do you know how long it took to deny appeals? Years could go by. This was faster. If the prisoner wasn’t released, well then, he shouldn’t have smashed the instrument.

But enough. I’m not going to end this letter with a plea for music lessons, or symphonies to belong to, or the desire for sheet music to study.

No, I can hear the notes to the prelude too clearly to wish for anything like that. And now, in the desert, instead of a sun there is the moon. Please, if you get the chance, Andy, give my regards to Louis.