I have always believed that the artist’s soul does not entirely belong to the body that houses it. There is something, an undercurrent, a persistent echo, that splits us in two. In my case, that something has a name and a face: my ghost. 

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I call him Florestan. Sometimes it appears reflected in the piano’s glass, other times in the ink that stains my fingers. It’s my most alive part, the one that burns, the one that dares to say what I barely knew how to whisper. It’s my most alive part, the one that burns, the one that dares to say what I could barely whisper. When he plays, he does so with a violence that’s frightening; when he writes, the pen trembles. I, on the other hand, am silence. I am the pause between two notes. 

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I don’t know when it started chasing me. Perhaps it was that winter night when I composed until dawn, and I thought I felt a hand, mine, perhaps, but not entirely, slamming the keys furiously. Since then, Florestan hasn’t let me sleep. He speaks of glories, of impossible loves, of fires of the mind. It whispers to me that calm is a form of death, that only excess can save me. 

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And yet, I fear it. Because every time it appears, something inside me fades away. My music grows brighter, but my body grows weaker. My heart beats hard, but my mind is torn in two. I’ve tried to exorcize it with reason, with silence, even with faith. But how do you expel someone who is also me?

On the longest nights, she heard him playing in the empty parlor. I know it’s not real, but the melody vibrates as if the walls are breathing. It’s beautiful, yes, but also terrifying: the beauty that is born only from the abyss. 

Sometimes I think that when I die, I won’t be remembered for my works, but for him. By that spirit that inhabited me and consumed me, that taught me that art is not created without sacrifices, that even passion can be a form of condemnation. 

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Florestán is still there, waiting for me, smiling from the mirror with my own eyes. And I, Eusebio, let him come closer. But in the end, what is an artist without their ghost? Just an empty body that hasn’t yet learned to burn.