2
" Love is inexact, Henry said. It is not a science. It is barely a noun. It means one thing to one person, and one thing to another. It means one thing to one person at one point and then something else at another point. It doesn’t make sense. We are gathered here today to not make sense. We are gathered here today to listen to the ineffable. I’m supposed to be explaining it, but I can’t explain it. I love you, it’s a mystery. Because it’s a mystery, we have to take care of it. Feed it. It can go missing, but we can’t tie it up. We can only tie it to someone else. Other people. Then the world is like this: full of the geometry of my rope tied to you, and to you, and yours tied to him, and to her, and hers to someone else. I love you, it’s a mystery. A moment of silence. "
― Aja Gabel , The Ensemble
12
" Don't take a bath" Jana said, and they cracked up.
It was an inside joke. They'd been coached once by Jacob Liedel, the aging emeritus director of the conservatory, who sat with his saggy skin and liver spots in a chair inexplicably on the other side of the room, and shouted at them the whole time. He barely let them get through a phrase before waving his hands, interrupting them, correcting them. Brit admired his old-school edge, but she knew Jana found it upsetting, and the louder he yelled, the more strained her bow arm became, until Jacob finally yelled, "Don't take a bath!" and Jana stopped playing and said, "What?" Jacob repeated "Don't take a bath there. With that phrase."
None of them asked him what he meant, but he said it two, three more times during the coaching session; afterward, at dinner, the four of them sitting in a tired silence, Henry said, "What's taking a bath mean?" and Jana and Brit laughed so hard they cried into their cheese fries and slid under the booth. Now and again they still said it to each other with no consistency of context. "
― Aja Gabel , The Ensemble
16
" He was not only playing now, but playing everything before now, that miracle of a concert at Esterhazy, the way they'd sung at Carnegie Hall the first time. Time rolled out through his arm in hot waves. And though he was still playing, he looked around (no longer bound by time, anyway.) Jana, wide-eyed and angular, only her parted lips betraying the glass-like fragility he loved in her. Brit, round-faced, still freckled, more freckled after all these years, not looking at him, giving him his space, which he appreciated. And Daniel, glancing at him with no expression at first and the subtlest of understanding, continuing to play his own rock-solid part, even leading a little extra, picking up whatever Henry had left behind. "
― Aja Gabel , The Ensemble
