I got her to play two strings, back and forth, plucking at a quickening pace, along with my heart. I touched her arm. I closed my eyes, and felt fearful of how much I felt for her. ‘Music is about time,’ I told her. ‘It is about controlling time.’ When she stopped playing, she looked thoughtful for a moment and said something like, ‘I sometimes want to stop time. I sometimes want, in a happy moment, for a church bell never to ring again. I want not to ever have to go to the market again. I want for the starlings to stop flying in the sky . . . But we are all at the mercy of time. We are all
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