Look, I do not play music. If you go to that theatre downtown – the one with the columns along the front, it was renovated in ’03, I’m forgetting the name of it right now – in about two hours, I’ll be pressing my fingers down on keys at the exact time Bartok tells me to, via the notes splattered across a page titled “Piano Concerto No. 3,” and I’ll be drawing my breath as the crescendo comes in on measure twelve, and I’ll psychoanalyze the sound as it floats into my ears to make sure I am capturing the tenderness of the legato in contrast to the inquisitiveness, the fiery curiosity of the staccatos – but I won’t be playing music, because I don’t play music.
Play. What an insult to the art form. Music is not a game. It is not petty enough to assign two concrete outcomes – winning and losing – to its product. It does not come with a pair of dice, because it leaves nothing to luck, or a plastic hourglass, because it is timeless. It does not, in fact, contain any pieces at all. Don’t argue and tell me it does contain pieces – violins for example. Because the violins are a damn lie, and you know it.
You could come, you know. To my recital. There’s refreshments and, I don’t know, some of the stuff you’ll hear is really good. This one girl’s doing half a movement on pizzicato. And then there’s this guest artist. I forget his name, but he’s a flutist. He studied at Oberlin, the conservatory there. He’s really, really good. He makes the flute breathe, and chirp, and sing, and persuade.
And even he does not play.
The notes are from somewhere. The sounds are from somewhere, they’ve got to be. I know where they’re from. They’re from nowhere. And we stole from nowhere, and made a somewhere, and that’s music I guess. It’s theft. It’s intrusion. It’s total lies. It isn’t fun, it isn’t funny, it’s not a game.
You really should come. You can watch me steal sounds from non-sounds, from things that would have never been there had I not possessed their being. And if you tell me how beautifully I played, I will have to shake my head and look at you disapprovingly. “Sorry, buddy, but look. I do not play music.”
Play. What an insult to the art form. Music is not a game. It is not petty enough to assign two concrete outcomes – winning and losing – to its product. It does not come with a pair of dice, because it leaves nothing to luck, or a plastic hourglass, because it is timeless. It does not, in fact, contain any pieces at all. Don’t argue and tell me it does contain pieces – violins for example. Because the violins are a damn lie, and you know it.
You could come, you know. To my recital. There’s refreshments and, I don’t know, some of the stuff you’ll hear is really good. This one girl’s doing half a movement on pizzicato. And then there’s this guest artist. I forget his name, but he’s a flutist. He studied at Oberlin, the conservatory there. He’s really, really good. He makes the flute breathe, and chirp, and sing, and persuade.
And even he does not play.
The notes are from somewhere. The sounds are from somewhere, they’ve got to be. I know where they’re from. They’re from nowhere. And we stole from nowhere, and made a somewhere, and that’s music I guess. It’s theft. It’s intrusion. It’s total lies. It isn’t fun, it isn’t funny, it’s not a game.
You really should come. You can watch me steal sounds from non-sounds, from things that would have never been there had I not possessed their being. And if you tell me how beautifully I played, I will have to shake my head and look at you disapprovingly. “Sorry, buddy, but look. I do not play music.”
Comment 14 likes