willow beatrice berkhardt

[WILLOW BEATRICE BERKHARDT]

WILLOW BEATRICE BERKHART

Name: Willow Beatrice Berkhardt
Nicknames: None of importance
Age: Twenty four
Date of Birth: April Nineteenth
Orientation: Still unsure
Nationality: Danish mother, American father
Home Town: Esbjerg, Denmark
Subject Taught: Orchestra
Play by: Anja Plaschg

--- SERIOUS Having grown up in a state of more or less complete social isolation, Willow missed out on a few behavioral traits that would have been socialized into her, like the concept of humor. Sure, she knows what it is, but doesn't quite understand how to employ or recognise it in conversation. She doesn't speak often unless spoken to, totally consumed by her thoughts and endeavors. That paired with her untidy, gaunt exterior gives people the impression that she is a very grim type of person. With the clothes she wears and the music she plays and her killer ramrod straight posture, Willow could be seen as one of the grim-faced people straight out of a Victorian photograph.

--- SCATTERED Willow has very irregular thought processes- antisocial tendencies and synaesthesia contribute to her overall impulsivity and irregularity. As each sense is immensely connected to all her others, Willow tends to surround herself with strange sights and sounds to stimulate her other senses. To others, this makes her look slightly insane, with pictures of dead people framed on her walls, metal music played with whale song. When you factor in her inability to behave in a manner widely accepted by society, one might compare Willow to their crazy aunt, the one who puts corn in her hair and thinks she's the queen's brother.

--- CORRUPT If there is one thing Willow hates more than anything, it's purity, delicacy, being good on the inside. In order to prove this to herself, she freely engages in activities that 'Good Christian Family Values' type families frown upon the most. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, art and freedom. She lives her life with her heart full of hatred and passion, a starving artist on the edge of complete mental breakdown.

LIKES: Dusty old houses, piano keys, scraps of lace, broken windows, odd jewelry, victorian photographs of dead people, history, classical music, old forests, empty spaces, rugs, pigs goats bears, snails, and cooking.
DISLIKES: Falling asleep, people, paperwork, television, medication, mess, organized religion, gherkins, family, and dogs.

Willow was the only child born to Elijah and Hanne Berkhardt in the city of Esbjerg, in Denmark. They lived in her mother's cozy downtown home, her father from Philadelphia, living in Denmark for work. The daughter to a passionate scientist and a passionate musician, there had always been heavy expectations for her. She grew up with a periodic table on her wall and Holst, Hanne's favourite composer, in her ears. The household was strangely bilingual, and Willow spoke both English and Danish, but couldn't differentiate between the two until she started school.

It wasn't long before her family learned of Willow's inheritance: the same synaesthesia that her mother had grown up with. It wasn't a horrible burden to bear or anything, but she couldn't imagine a world where people didn't see music. Though she liked science, especially chemistry, her way of thinking produced an incredibly profound connection to sound.

Although her parents sent her to public school and encouraged making friends and talking to people, Willow found that she didn't like any of the other children. Not because of anything they did to her or the way they behaved, they just all seemed too inaccessible and foreign. As she didn't pay much attention to other children, other children didn't pay much attention to her, and they were all more or less alright with that.

Willow received her first cello as a birthday gift when she turned six. Though she was more than thrilled, it didn't show to any of the party guests her parents had invited and she put up with. Her facial expressions didn't vary much at that point, but inside her heart was racing with excitement at having something so perfect all her own. It was the day after that she all but ceased making any sort of effort to interact with people. She attended her music lessons diligently, did unremarkably in school, and spent every other second of her free time working up callouses on her fingertips on the cello, playing the baby grand in the front room.

Eventually she started to scare her parents, and they had tried to take away her instruments and musicbooks and encourage her to make a friend or two, leave the house, but she had collapsed into her version of a temper tantrum, laying face-down and unresponsive on the floor. There was almost no interest that came from other people, they all seemed the same to her.

As she grew older, her parents began to argue, and her father ended up moving back to the US. This wasn't a particularly traumatizing experience, and she stayed in Denmark with her mother until she turned seventeen, at which point she moved to the US to live with her father while she studied music and education at university. She had always shown an interest at Emerson Academy, a school that her father's sister had attended, and from this connection was able to wedge herself into a music program, forging a strong relationship with the soon-to-retire orchestra teacher, and eventually nabbing herself the post.

There wasn't enough wine in the glass that the waiter had poured. She didn't know his name- Darrel, Daniel maybe, but he had bought her dinner after a few telephone calls where she didn't listen or talk very much. From the way the restaurant was decorated, it was a nice place, though the light was making her skin look a bit gray, as if she were already dead. She thought it might have been scaring him a little bit, as he was staring at her chest quite a lot, the low neckline of her dress.

The food came in courses here, tragically predictable french cuisine. She hadn't looked at the menu, just asked the waiter what he thought tasted the best. He had impeccable taste, she judged, after having a bite of her duck. Willow didn't eat much, which was why she loved the French portioning system. If she went to an American restaurant there would be enough for a week or so on her plate, but the French had it right.

The other women around her appeared perfect, curly hair and red lipstick and dresses that hugged the way they were shaped, leaning towards thin-haired, older men in tailored suits worth a years' rent in her apartment. She ran her fingers through her unruly dark hair, which she hadn't combed. The makeup she was wearing was from yesterday, and her lips were dry and pale. Her smoke-gray dress sagged a bit where there was supposed to be more of her body.

Darrel or Daniel, the man paying for supper, appeared not to have shaved for days. He was wearing glasses that were slightly bent and a sort-of shabby suit with a tie that was almost comically large. They were quite a pair, and had apparently surprised the Maitre d' with their being highly cultured. It was why she'd chosen him, he played percussion in a local orchestra she'd attended a rehearsal of, sitting in the front row and smiling at the timpani. Afterwards he'd come home with her, and an hour of awkward sex later they'd both decided to try dating a musician.

He was obviously sacrificing a lot of money to buy this meal, money he could spend on a haircut or a new pair of pants, and for that Willow respected him. She didn't consider herself worth a roadside hamburger when it came to dating, she hated people and so she expected them to hate her. Not so, in the case of Darrel or Daniel, he seemed to be going too far to make her happy. She couldn't name the feeling, but it was nice. She was feeling generous enough to go splits on the bill.

Hi, I'm CROOT and I'm FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND years old. I'm CREAMY. This is my FIRST application. I found NO REGRETS, JUST LOVE from A PLACE I CAN'T REMEMBER.

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[leon]

I think, i need to learn it.