InsaneJournal

Her entire life, all Mary has known is music. Mary May Clarke was serenaded in her mother's womb for nine months, and when Mary's little face hit cold air and warm sunshine for the first time, she was surrounded by soft, sweet music from the encouraging voices of those who watched her birth to the slow, melodic lullaby of her mother's humming afterward. Like loving parents tend to be, Mary's own filtered what she saw and heard - but they opened up the floodgates of all things classical: classical music on the radio. They were of the kinds of parents who hoped their daughter would be raised elegant, tasteful, and forever preserved in a sort of state of antiquitous appreciation.

Not that this expectation was too demanding, but it was also not entirely feasible. Mary spent most of her primary education in the confines of private schools along with children like her - and of course she enjoyed it: the sort of friends that she could make, the education that she was fortunate enough to receive, but best of all, and most important to the course of her life, the influences that she had come upon during those years. It was her exposure with her piano teacher that had begun to spark the sort of passion that would grow as she grew. Of course she loved music - and Mary was kind of an intense child of sorts - and she never disappointed in piano performance. She played first Bach and Haydn, then Mozart and Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Debussy, and soon it was Liszt and Rachmaninoff. But there had to be more. There certainly had to be. The greatest of the greats, Mozart and Beethoven for instance, composed something even larger - for a symphony. It wasn't enough for her to have just heard an amalgamation of notes, and to play them. There was more than just what the piano could do. She didn't want to hear only a clean succession of notes, she knew there was something more intricate about music. There was more that could be produced from music theory and technical knowledge.

This was the challenge as Mary went into high school and began to pursue violin at the same time that she continued practicing the piano. And while her academic grades were slowly beginning to take a downward turn, she had nothing to show her parents as to the reason why exactly. Because along with practicing two instruments at once, Mary was experimenting. Perhaps gambling away her grades, but certainly experimenting and making something. She had a composition book with clean lines and she wrote. She wrote and played with notes and sounds. And when a progress report went home and Mary was beginning to get C's for grades, Mary didn't have an explanation. She entered her experiments into a composition competition and something must have paid off, because she won.

It was clear, both to her teachers and her parents, what Mary wanted to do. And to push her against the current would have been ludicrous. Mary gathered her portfolios of sheet music, and with the help of her music teachers, she was going to audition for the Guildhall School of Music. Not surprisingly, she got her way despite the slightest disapproval over her grades - as that's what passion does. Passion, of course, made anything possible. Her undergraduate career was spent exploring, at last, the things she loved, and it seemed that she was finally realizing and discovering all that she had originally set out to be: a composer. And of course, she had also had entertaining years of researching music and following the lives of contemporary composers working in the film industry - an odd little twist, but Mary absolutely loved film composers. She wanted to be Anne Dudley, or Rachel Portman, and she bought quite enthusiastically all of the works of Hans Zimmer and Gabriel Yared.

But she had also discovered a little something else that, surprisingly, had nothing to do with music at all: she found a companion, an unexpected companion, in one young girl named Allie Sommers who, it seemed, was born and raised and trekked through a life much similar to her own. Allie Sommers, a ballet dancer who had an appetite as large as an elephant's - Mary found Allie to be intriguing and adorable.

After finishing her undergraduate career, Mary decided to continue her education as a postgraduate there so that she could truly flourish and extend her abilities as a composer. Or, perhaps, Mary was too afraid to strike out on her own so early; not without some roots to keep her grounded, at least. But she's a girl of eccentric spunk.

Shoot me any line you can think of; just contact me either here or by AIM.

allie_bellie long time girl-friend and fine arts trooper
rufus_soloviev concerned feline network friend for kitty social hour
allegraclare Guildhall alum culinary she-hero with vocal bravado