I went to the symphony tonight. A violinist featured. I could not keep my eyes from her; everything about her was perfect. Pale green velvet tunic and pants draped around her body. You know how velvet is: sometimes dark and course or shiny and smooth, depending on the light. So it was with her: the velvet like arms roving, trying to hold all of her at once as she twisted in the wringing of the music. Her face, gnarled too, in ecstasy but agony. (The body does not know positive from negative, the conduits of passion are the same for both. So then, where in us is that distinction made? How do we know when to call it one or the other? Sometimes the disconcerting coexistence of both.) I thought that she was herself a string on the violin, silent except in movement. The music -- this exquisite piece by someone named Bruch -- resides somewhere, playing eternally. She was the portal whence it came. Poured. So passive was she to its whims, the distortion from its realm to this was nil. I felt shivers begin at my jaw and spread slowly over my shoulders to my belly at certain sustained notes held impossibly thin. This process of translation must have hurt her, did possess her. But she was at ease with it, too, accustomed to living with this gift, this demon.