Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and
am not contain'd between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.
Song of Myself—7
Walt Whitman

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I was perpetually horrified that my hands would shake too
badly to play.

When I was six, I climbed into my father’s lap as he sat at the bench of his prized Hopkinson’s piano, seamlessly running my small fingers along the keys and effortlessly
copying the tune I’d heard him play earlier. As the lively jingle reached the far corners of the crowded room, the aunts, uncles, and cousins who had all gathered under our
roof for the holidays turned to watch me in my absorbed delight. When I sensed the hush that had fallen and the eyes sweeping over my small frame with a mixture of
bemusement and wonder, I brought the music to an abrupt halt. I heard my father chuckle behind me and instantly flushed crimson with embarrassment as I—now dubbed “the little musical Celio”—was urged to play on.

Two years later, I learned to tightly clasp my nervous hands in my lap until the very moment I was expected to play in the marble-floored palaces of the city’s
aristocracy. When I began to compose my own works at the age of thirteen, invitations for my presence in Madrid, Prague, Warsaw, and Vienna became a monthly occurrence. In the royal courts I always requested the lamps be dimmed to
veil my painful apprehension in a shroud of darkness, and my spectators saw nothing but the hazy outline of my shadowy figure as I poured forth the mellifluous tune of my
demonic song. It wasn’t until I entertained in the salons of Paris that the rumors spread—they whispered that no mere mortal could compose such haunting melodies, that I sold my soul to the devil for my unearthly ability, and finally that I insisted on such dim lighting because it was Satan himself who actually performed my compositions.

At the time I found these fabrications and rumors surprising and amusing, for how wrong they all were! In truth, I was a performer terrified by my own audience.
While composing, I fretted incessantly as to whether this patron would enjoy this, that patron would enjoy that, what the crowds of Paris would think, what Madrid would think, what London would think, what my friends would think, and— above all—whether that night would be the night I was booed and heckled from the stage. One glance at the white-faced crowd, bejeweled and decked in its finest evening wear, was
enough to send me into a panic. My concert performances weren’t few and exclusive due to pride and vanity, as most of Parisian society imagined; instead, it took months—and sometimes years—for me to garner enough courage to face my multitudes of enthusiasts.

For years I lived in this world of glamour and excitement, my disquiet matched only by the wave of relief when my works were met with thunderous applause from the stupefied crowd. When I was twenty-four, the dreary chill of winter infected me with what might surely have been a fatal case of consumption, and for months I was wracked by fever, chills, and a cough so fierce my handkerchiefs became doused with blood. One evening—when the all-encompassing pain and misery of this world seemed far too much to bear—I wrapped my wasted frame in wool blankets, walked to my
beloved piano, and played what I knew even then would be the last song I ever heard. The pain melted from my lungs. The soreness left my aching limbs. I poured my heart, my life, my very soul into one final melody I was sure would be my lullaby to eternal rest.

And then Death came.

Not in the form of disease, not waste, not sleep: My death was a vampire kiss at the crescendo of my final sonata. From that moment forth I was lost in the ecstasy of
release, and my own music was drowned by the sound of the blood pounding in my ears. I died that evening, and my music died with me. And now for more than 150 years I have stalked the dark streets of Europe and the New World. Not
once in all these long and dismal nights have I dared approach the instrument that once brought me such fulfillment and joy in life, and never again can I allow
music's rapture to once again consume me. Only as the blood of my victims flows into my body--only as their dear human hearts beat a frantic rhythm of survival--can I hear the pure melodious symphony of life itself. The rest is silence.