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The haunting beauty of the melody played by the solo violinist from Vilvaldi's The Four Seasons literally pierced my basically liberal, ex-hippy, mostly vegetarian soul as I stopped for the red light at the corner of Broadway and Hall in the City of Trees, Beaverton, Oregon.
That this "jump car" was playing music loud enough to drown out the screaming decibels of a landing jet was bad enough, but that it drowned out my violin solo was just too much. Caught between the twin vises of the sanctimoniousness of the lover of harmony and classical music and the cantankerousness of a balding, heavyset man near fifty, something in me snapped! Deliberately I lowered all the windows that I could reach from the driver's seat. My hand snaked out, found the volume knob and with a sudden, violent twist turned the knob all the way to the right. For one glorious moment I could not hear the pounding of the bass of Guns and Roses or Ozzy or whoever was putting out that noise. Then, I saw the windows in the jump car lowering and the violence of their music began assaulting my eardrums. "Of course, you know this means war!" I thought to myself. Opening up the glove compartment I reached for my CD case and with a flourish withdrew Alexander Scrabin's Ninth Piano Sonata, also known as the Black Mass. "Let's try a little Russian justice!" I muttered to myself. "Let's just see who knows more about darkness-Ozzy or Alexander!" I thought to myself as I ejected the Vivaldi and put in the Scriabin! Quickly, I adjusted the tone until the treble from my small speakers challenged the raw bass emanating from the Pontiac. The effect of the" Devil's own music" was unnerving to many of the people in the cars around me. Those who had their windows down enjoying the cool spring temperatures quickly rolled them up. The rather large, hulking fellow sitting in the passenger seat of the Pontiac with a gold earring dangling from his ear, smiled sickeningly and stuck his hand out the window with a single middle digit showing. Somehow, they found some more volume and drowned out the demonic but lucid notes of the Scriabin.
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