The Story of Rosie and the Posers

Once upon a time there was a lonely cellist. Her name was Rosie, but they never called her that. No concert hall would host her, no second-rate playhouse stage would requite her, not even a fairly swanky restaurant would give her succor. No, they called her "Poser!" and threw fish at her as she walked past, lugging her cello in lonely ignominy.One might be tempted to think, based upon these systematic rejections, that Rosie was a poor cellist. Well, she was a poor cellist, if you were to go by the rents in her pockets, the stitches in her cloak and the holes in her heart. But if you were to go by the nimbleness of her fingers, the tilt of her head, and the shining mass of sienna-colored notes that wafted from her cello, you might think again.No, Rosie was not a poor cellist. She was simply chronologically challenged. Everywhere she went she found she was one note ahead of the pack. No one wanted her music— till the week after she'd left and the musical opportunist who followed in her wake had a chance to polish it up and present it as his own gleaming chestnut.Just when the rabble began to rally round, she never could remember. But suddenly there was a violinist at her elbow who hadn't been there before. Robin fiddled quite well, never claiming to be a genius, but was certainly no hack. Then came Evelyn, who truly was a hack, but a hack with such flair that no one noticed the rough notes tripping from her lute. John appeared somewhere between Brussels and Madrid, joining the minstrels-in-search-of-a-stage, bringing an offering of scores and scores of scores, composed out of his own brain, written by hand, and lovingly packed between his feet and the gaps in his shoes. Perhaps they were penniless because they gave away most of what they earned to those less fortunate than they (though it is hard to imagine anything less fortunate than a songbird muzzled as it threshes out the wheat from the chaff), but if they lacked pennies it was a poverty much less stinging than that poverty of understanding which kept them from an audience's esteem. One by one the Posers (for so they had come to be called by those who acknowledged their existence at all) drifted in and drifted out, always yearning for that stage, for that one big chance to show their stuff, humble stuff though it was. Across the years they traveled, halted occasionally by brief promises of glory, nefarious managers, brushes with greatness, the promise of "Reality At Last!" But still they searched. Rosie herself fell by the wayside and was replaced by another Rosie with another cello. Robin faded away and was replaced by another Robin, this one a better-than-average violinist who's claim to fame was that Schubert once said he liked to hear him whistle. Evelyn the Hack was replaced by Evelyn the Pretender, a girl who flouted her way through flute pieces with such charm and dexterity that no one would have guessed she couldn't read a note of music. John eventually scored his scores over on a traveling salesman and retired into friendly, better-paying obscurity to be replaced by Joanna who tried to bring gypsy music to the masses and was mostly stoned for her pains. Each left a fingerprint as they wove in and out, blues travelers and polka dots on the vast canvas of musical history. Yet it was a print that remained invisible unless you just glimpsed it from the corner of your eye; rests at the beginning of a measure.But out of the mists around the rabble began to grow a legend.......a legend, or a prophecy, no one knew which. Someday the veil of their ephemeral existence upon the fringe of Reality would be torn asunder. One would rise from the Emerald Isle to lead the downtrodden and marginalized Siblinghood of Posers into the light, spilling it upon all those who aspired to more than the school stage, more than the fireside, more than silent journals full of brilliant poetry unheard by eager ear, light full, pressed down and running over, with plenty to spare for those who had nothing at all. Not even music.But the time has come. The promised one from the Isle of Musical Dreams has arisen and the Posers are composing themselves from among the ashes of deluded hopes, bringing music to the masses by bringing the masses to the music. Everyone will join the band and together they will usher in the music the world has never heard.This is their hour. This is their stage.

Submitted by Jessie MacInnis