#WordWeavers 2026.04.18 —If your antagonist had to learn a musical instrument, what would they pick and why?
I'm getting caught up in the word "had" here, as in the sense of both forced and required, but allowed to pick.
Rainy Days was born poor to a carpenter having committed the sin of being female in a society that gave women little self-agency. No coin for musical instruments. By her twenties, nobody in her world could require her anything.
Pigeon the Pilferer has the delicacy and manners of a dropped hammer, and is likely as dense. While he might have been required in upper school, nobody, no teacher and certainly no punk, was going to force him against his will. Having a rattle to use, stalking his prey through shadowy alleys like a snake, seems somehow appropriate, but for him it would be a choice
Boss Mead has a suitable middle class education, but was never the sort to excel. His school years are a tabla rasa to me. I can imagine economics forcing him after graduation to make coin and requiring him to learn something simple to create it. Piano-man piano seems his speed. Easy. He's a chill and affable person. His one real talent makes it easy for others to find reasons to make him happy—let's call it charisma for now—and convincing someone to teach him to play piano in a restaurant or a lounge would have been easy for him. Piano-man piano is basically learning how to play the keys and read the music sufficiently to pick out the melody. Then, it's memorization, and it's practice. With an added level of learning how to play "fancy," things like multi-finger chords, rhythm, dynamics, and such—which could have been picked up by listening to his mentor play—Boss Mead could have learned the music easily and learned to reproduce it for hours with feeling, creating a night long ambience and fugue. Yes, I can see Boss Mead starring in a hazy bar, a red whiskey in a crystal glass over the rocks on a coaster, sitting beside a torchere candelabra, playing until late, and making his first contacts for subsequent shady deals. Not canon, yet.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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