Tradition

“Tradition is a weighty friend,”  My teacher tells me looking over my music.  He shuffles the pages and chuckles a little and hands it back wordlessly.  “tradition is a speaker for the dead”  “Are you dead?”  He asks me.  I pinch myself. 

The Vacation

On the airplane I remember supposing that I could not hear as well because the air was thinner, and there was less material for the sound do move through – a wave can only be as large as the water is deep.

And now I hear the absolute symphony of sounds around me and picture the sounds exploding from their source.  The waves are all different colors.  They light up like fireworks – how beautiful!

A waiter clears the table.  Rattling, thud, whoosh.  The table next to us is chattering happily.  If you listen closely, there is a bird chirping – no – two birds – More!  Maybe a few dozen!  There is a steady rumble from an unseen boat.  “Pop….click pop……..click pop…..” says the ping pong table.

And the atmosphere itself seems to be vibrating the blue sky, the gentle rocking of palm leaves, the soft breeze.  It gurgles contentedly.

But she makes no sound, her pen working furiously – scraping pink words onto a notebook, holding the pages down with a newly adorned left hand.  

Does she notice the hushed purr of the ceiling fans or the clank of silverware from aways behind us.  The relaxed thok, thok of flip flops moving from buffet to table and back.

But under the luxury on this place, an unobtrusive banality whispers.  It waits in the shadows for the gold plating to chip off and reveal the dull grey of unremarkable lives.  Like the bird that waits for the table to be vacated and then fills its cheeks.

There is a cruelty in the illusion of luxury.  Fake plastic smiles fooling all but the most observant.  Fake plastic designer sunglasses covering dull, plastic stares.

“Click pop……Click pop….” the table reminds me

Sounds echo from every conceivable vector.  It is almost enough to cover up the heavy sobs of the land long abandoned by morality.  It is almost enough to destroy any signs that life was once affirmed, enjoyed, and worthwhile.  It is almost loud enough to make me pack up my suitcase and vanish into the self-inflicted nonexistence propagated by the most insidious of lies.  It is almost strong enough to swallow itself in a deluge of altruistic self pity.  

And so we pick our theme.  We posit a truth.  And then we must back it up with sub clauses and immutable observations.  If P then Q.  If serotonin then happiness.  Causation is impossible to prove, but consequence is assured.  Check your premises, contradiction is impossible.

Advice from my Friend the Writer

I ask my friend the writer for advice, I ask him how I could become a better writer and the says:

In order to write you must forget all shapes and sounds, forget how to see, how to think, how to listen.  When you remember as an infant, galaxies will spill from your pen as inkblots.  

He picks up a book and reads: The happiest of creatures is the one that will listen to me and learn nothing and return to his wife and not mention me at all.  She will ask, ‘was he wise?’ and he shall reply ‘the mail man or the philosopher, I saw them both today?’ and that will be the end of it.”

He speaks: “It takes long legs to know a truth, one must search through the clouds and in the oceans before discovering it under an ass’ hoof.  But be wary, the ass is cranky from all of the philosophers who would wake him from his weightless sleep to gaze under his hoary foot, and he may kick.  Perhaps offer him some chocolate, or a rusty knife.”

He looks at me with a confident, nurturing smile.

“Words know more than you do,” say his lips, slowly.

Piere LeGlace’s Lecture Series

After Piece LeGlace became a respected figure, a regular philosophical juggernaut, he was asked to do a series of lecture for Harvard, which would be televised, transcribed and published.

 

When they asked him he said. “Fantastic! I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

He called the lecture series “My life-long quest to know something,” and it became PBS’ second highest rated program ever. 

In his lecture entitled “the meaning of tree frogs”  Piere LeGlace offered such one liners as : “we cannot look at life and determine any meaning – we can only assert meaning on things that we can extradite ourselves from” and “who cares – not the tree frog” to a crowd of lustful readers and listeners and seers. 

In his lecture on time, Piere Leglace had a clock custom made to show an hour passing over what is usually refered to as 45 minutes.  He put the clock behind him and never told anyone about it.  It was just an inside joke between him and me.  He started the lecture without flair or brilliant introduction and stood behind the podium wearing a grey sports coat and said, “Time is change.”

How could such a creature have an inherent purpose.  The word purpose has no relevance to a tree frog.  The tree frog just ribbits and eats and reproduces and dies and is much wiser than I.  Life is not something to be quantified like a profit margin or a baseball game.  It is to be smelled and chewed a little.  Probably spit out. 

My Teacher shakes my hand

My teacher reaches out to shake my hand and wish me luck.  When my hand stays at my side his eyes shift to my apprehensive face.  “What is it?”  he asks. 

“We’re not done yet,”  I tell him.  “Surely there is more.”

“More what?” He cocks his head slightly, moves it slightly closer to me.

“More to learn!  I can’t possibly know it all!” 

“Bang, Bang, Bang.”  The student who’s lesson time I am encroaching on knocks for the third time. 

My teacher settles back into his seat.  “Why exactly,” he asks cordially, a smile creeping across his lips, “are you under the impression there is an ‘all’ to know.”

My Friend, The Writer

When I ask my friend the writer what he writes about he tells me

I write of the lover that cuts off his own hand rather than touch his beloved.  I write of the sinner who dances with feverish ecstasy to the hooting of owls.

I write of salty waves crashing into rocks and breaking them into pebbles that become great castles, of the eagle that mocks a crowd of moaning altruists and devours a hapless mouse.

Truths are stone that you put in pillow cases before complaining that life is hard.

Rather speak of the sky that does not complain of its vastness or the tree frog that does not realize its greenness.

Overcome yourself!  Surpass your names and deeds and descend to the depths. Speak of grass and skin.  Speak of them until your throat is parched, until the earth screams in protest, the banality, the crudity, the horror!  Speak again, and the brine will evaporate and your ears will hear music such has never been imagined.   Music mundana. Indeed.

Soundscape 1

            Tap, tap, t’tap, tap tap tap. Says the plastic beverage container to the freshely wiped table top.  It is  a hip hop beat and heads bob up and down.  The florescent lights hum a constant, buzzy B flat and little conversations float around the groovy, Kenny G inspired soundscape. 

            Karagabbad says a slippery Tupperware to the floor.  “RRRRRRRRRRRR” sings the wheels of the mop cart. 

            What else can you hear – listen a little.

            The paper yellow chandeliers sway in the breeze from the air vents spotting the celing.  The chairs all match – a cherry colored word with black leather like cusions. 

            So much to look at – what do you see? 

            Wshshshshshshshshsh says hot air to a pitcher of milk and the soft indie R&B music sends waves crashing into lattes and used books lining the walls.  

Development

It is only through development that we can hope to say anything at all.  Development is just another word for change, which is just another word for alive.  Merely stating a word is not saying anything – is is silent, which is another word for invisible.  This is the great challenge of the painter – developing without the frame of time within which to sculpt.  Composers have it easy – how simple development is achieved.  

The Man and the Shoelace

Every morning a young man walked the several blocks from his home to his office.  He moved in a peculiar sort of shuffle, keeping his feet and the laceless shoes that covered them close to the pavement.  Now and again a shoe would fall off and he would pause to bend over and recombine it with his foot.  A bystander asked, “Why dont you just lace up your shoes.”  And he gave the answer he always gave, “I have no time to waste on pedantic tasks,  I am much too busy.”

I Tell my Teacher “Too bad it’s not yesterday”

           The reason I cannot compose is that I have never found satisfactory balance between organicism and structure.  I sit at the piano and ideas fly out of me like snakes out of a fake can of peanuts.  I can create, but who am I to presume to develop? 

            “The composer, of course.”  My teacher says.  He sits back in a tall office chair and gives me a knowing look.  He wants me to know how the piece will end before I start it.  “This,” he says, “is structure.”

            “How wonderful it would have been,” I muse, “to live 200 years ago.”  My teacher listens patiently.  I can see a rebuttal forming behind his eyes though.  I continue, “I could have just written in sonata form all my life and been immortalized.  Now I have to innovate, I have to be new.”

            My teacher turns and looks out the window.