I hear voices, the girl confesses. I think they come from another world. The young conductor asks her how she can be sure. How does she know the voices aren’t just inside her head? But she’s utterly convinced of it, and that should be proof enough, it seems. The young conductor says no one can know if something exists in and of itself outside the mind. Maybe you don’t exist except in my head, he says. The world doesn’t truly exist, interjects the brilliant composer, who then asks them to consider whether the entity that has created everything, that is imagining their existence, is of limited extension — if it takes up space somewhere — or whether it’s infinite. They’re not even voices from this world, insists the girl, they’re from a false world, a No World created by some alien consciousness. The brilliant composer’s symphony touches on this, she says, while really thinking about her own work in progress — the No World she writes and rewrites without ever getting anywhere; the No World that’s always expanding inside her, ever ripening, while never reaching maturity. There is a language that reaches out into the cosmos, with which we could communicate with beings from another galaxy. That language is music. How can she know they’re not actually the voices of the great musicians? Suppose the great musicians had never really existed. At times, it seems they’re only playing games. But then they’d say life itself is a game. The young conductor says it’s all the same, speculating about what would’ve happened if twelve-tone serialism had never been invented, or if the great musicians had never been born: the point is the music was invented, the musicians were born. And these things happened because they had to. The screenwriter imagines the young conductor’s voice off-screen, as the camera zooms in from a panoramic view of the city toward a dingy little bar with a foosball table — like one of those gambling dens in the movies, fumid and fusty, manned by local ruffians playing pool. Similarly, says the young conductor, youth exists in every age because it has to. The girl and the brilliant composer remain silent as he concludes his monologue, and the camera stops zooming once all three are together in the frame, their hands gripping the bars running through the tiny foosball players, the funk of smoke and alcohol pervading a setting unsuited for formalist debates and metaphysical colloquies. The two guys are wearing the Scholastic Institute’s regulation uniform, comprised of a navy-blue blazer, gray pants, a white shirt, and a necktie. The girl, on the other hand, likes to think she’s different, since she’s considered a rising star of the piano world, and although she attends the same school, believes she can dress however she likes, and it so happens she likes to dress in white. The young orchestra conductor takes aim, maneuvering his defensive line, before spinning the bar violently, projecting the ball up the table. If the great musicians were never born, he says, other musicians would be revered in their place. The brilliant composer reproves him for sounding like a broken record, for he’s merely repeating something he’s stated several times before.
It is night. The young conductor is rolling a joint and wants to know if the girl will write a libretto about making love in her mother’s bed. She can try, but all she really wants to do is get her novel back on track. Her cell phone rings, she moves her index finger to her lips, indicating that the conductor should remain silent. Her mother is off on her travels, but she’ll be back for the concerts, and this, the girl presumes, is why she’s calling. . the young orchestra conductor nibbles on the girl’s toes and then continues up her leg, putting the joint between his lips, from which he takes a final drag before proffering it to the girl. During the hand-off, he teases her by blowing the smoke in her face. But she ignores him and takes a long drag of the joint as her mother begins the interrogation. First she asks if the phone call had woken the girl up. No. She was reading the greatest dramatist who ever lived. A genius, she says. Her mother tends to disregard what her daughter is reading, no matter who the writer is, or how great he happens to be. She cares only about her career as a pianist. The girl talks about the reading material her literature teacher gave her. But haven’t you already completed that course? Yes, but this is supplementary reading. You’ve already told him you want to be a writer, haven’t you. The girl changes the subject and asks if her mother has managed to track down her cousin. Her mother’s spent a long time trying to locate a certain cousin who went missing in the neighboring country’s capital years before. No, she answers curtly and hangs up. That’s new, the girl thinks. Her mother usually ignores her questions. An answer is progress. The girl and the young conductor are reading W’s magnum opus. He wants to know if she’ll write a libretto based on W and his work. Later that night, the dramatist visits her in a dream. It seems he wants to explain to her the secrets of his craft. He teaches by demonstration, his words accompanied by gesticulations, like a magician threading his hands through the air while uttering incantations, who creates a world and measures its just circumference, who molds his characters and gives them the breath of life. He talks about their diversity, each an individual, a separate creation. He mentions his audience, and the girl seizes on this with curiosity, because she wants to know if it plays a major part in the creation of his works. But he suddenly starts speaking another language, and she despairs that she will only get to hear but not understand his answer. She turns, in her dream, to the young conductor, and begs him to take some notes. But then she wakes up, and sees the young conductor is no longer by her side. She gets out of the bed to go look for him and finds him in the living room, sitting naked in an armchair watching TV, with a glass of beer in his hand. On the screen, a pornographic actress anxiously tongues an inordinately erect penis before putting it into her mouth. The girl stands beside the piano looking on, silently. How old would you say she is? the conductor asks without turning. The girl doesn’t know. Perhaps thirty-something, she answers indecisively. There’s something about mature women, he says, still not taking his eyes off the screen, and lets a few seconds go by before adding, it’s as if they exude more confidence or something. The male actor then penetrates the actress, thrusting slowly at first, then faster, before settling into a regular rhythm. The girl says she feels the same way about older men, but she’s not sure if it’s for the same reason. The girl doesn’t realize the conductor has an erection until he stands up. He brings her to the armchair and sits her facing backwards in his lap, penetrating her from behind, his eyes remaining fixed on the screen almost every moment. He even starts thrusting in time with the actor, and the girl feels he’s only using her to imagine having sex with a thirty-something porn star. She tells him about her dream, about the dramatist’s visitation, that she believes he was going to reveal to her the secrets of his dramaturgy. The young conductor isn’t listening. Mature women really turn me on, he says. You’ll find lots of mature women in his plays, she says. Then she continues by telling him about the point in the dream when the dramatist began speaking another language. The young conductor asks her if people ever have sex in sixteenth-century plays. She doesn’t answer. He imagines they’d look exactly like the girl’s mother, who’s peering down at them from a photograph next to the TV. Your mother turns me on, he says while squeezing her. The girl jumps off and tells him to go to hell. She heads for the bathroom, turning only once, but just in time to see the young conductor cum in his glass of beer. The couple onscreen appears to be only getting started.