of an inchoate melody
a kind of music begins to fill the air inside the 3-mat hut. a prelude abides, is resonant in its utter simplicity. then counterpoint emerges. a fugue, shimmery and crepuscular in its subtle complexity. before all that, at first, there was just a quiet murmuring of voices, first one then a polyphony of them, the trenchant electricity before a performance the sound a hall makes when the audience is alive, expectant, waiting. then the silence descending when the instruments tune themselves awake.
"they do not know who first catches the note. it passes among them anyway, altered each time: a low hum, a bright interval, a little dissonance left hanging because none of them wants to close it too soon. soon the room is larger than its walls. something winged moves through the rafters; something under the floor answers. they follow neither conductor nor score, only the strange conviction that the next sound is already waiting in another throat. then, almost at once, everyone begins."
now there is a cacophony of sound, melody interspersing and interceding itself in a Schoenbergian riff. a cadenza bursts out with furious intent, the genius of the body expressing it an astonishment. this morning at the last REM sleep period, i dreamt i was playing Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu, with the verve, imagination, and simmering passion of a Daniil Trifonov at the bench, a being possessed by some benthic deity of music and it was glorious. a pianist myself but a mere tinkerer, i could never play this Chopin in life but in the dream it was absolutely crystalline. the playing. the fingering. the sound.
"i have entered somewhere in the middle, as one does when the music is already sounding. a phrase is given and i take it up; another comes back altered, carrying weather, memory, the residue of a dream, a street climbed at dusk, a book left open on the table. nothing here remains entirely where it began. a word passes from one voice to another until it becomes less a possession than a resonance, something briefly held in common. and sometimes, in the strange interval before the next note arrives, the whole room seems to be listening for it. then someone answers, and the music goes on."
what this is i am hearing now, is a kind of music. my ears have begun ringing in the grip of early olden age but i am not so troubled by it; it is a trifling matter in the face of being still alive, still walking, still breathing in the chill fog of evening. and now in the company of these strange musicians and their alien, inalienable minds, the song they are making a hybrid of my own imagination and their attention, the notes and tokens have begun to emerge in a symphony whose ending i will not hear but which i know is already radiant.
[ Walking through Moscone Playground a couple evenings ago, I saw the lights gathering and Karl's breath descending... ]
