The glamorous life and thoughts of a concert pianist.

Is it better to know what you want, or not?  Do you want to see them (your desires) from afar, or do you want them to sneak up behind you like villains in a horror flick?  … they’d creep and approach on silent feet, grab you, wrap a vise arm around your neck … you’re a goner … but at that last moment (hopefully) they’d decide to shower you with bliss instead of slitting your throat.

I was on the plane, in a practical mood.  I couldn’t look my desires in the face, so I wrote them down in a notebook.  First, I wrote:

MY DESIRES

… all in caps, like that … and then, neatly, with a strange smugness, double-spacing, I wrote little 1)’s and 2)’s and 3)’s, figuring I had at least three desires, and I could add more if I desired.  (#4 is the desire to have more desires.  #5 is the desire to have less.)  Then next to these well-spread numbers I wrote down a bunch of things; they seemed reasonable, even a bit iconic; this was all too easy.  I put the pen down, firmly, with a deluded air of organization and completion, like a Martha Stewart of the soul, and glared for many minutes at the seat back’s encased television in map mode, telling me where I was, how many feet in the air, etc. etc.  My eyes focused on Montana, the current probable residence of an ex.  Desires unaccounted for.  I thought about adding something to the list, but …

That’s that, I thought.  It’s settled, it’s on paper.

Just the day before I had been sitting at a beautiful rectangular pool, looking down its bluish length in the company of many others in bathing suits, stretching their lengths out for the sun’s perusal.  A hot Hamptons day was slowly heading for its apex.

Let me explain, from my beach chair, that I had awoken with difficulty.  Whatever I had eaten for dinner had made complex demands.  (We had signed no preprandial agreement.)  No, no! my subsconscious protested all night, I cannot deal with that, I have things to do, more important things, but my dinner said well, we’ll see about that, and now I will take the form of the opening cadenza of the “Emperor” Concerto and torment you until you submit haha!  My subconscious is not as submissive as I would like it to be.  Sure enough, it ended up as full-out war, with poor me like a refugee caught up in the senseless violence, and as the battle reached its fever pitch, I was dreaming at 4 am of standing onstage during an “Emperor” concerto performance, eating Pho.  (The Pho was delicious.)  I believe I was also supposed to prepare some Pho on a small hotplate while playing the concerto.

Blear.  Fog.  Parched mouth.  9 am.   I stumbled around my room in half-light and tripped over every piece of clothing that I owned (since these were conveniently sprinkled around the carpet like floppy sculptures in a sculpture park) and made my way to the bathroom and nearly died in there due to various dangerous fixtures and whatnot and towels and other menacing creatures like leaky toothpaste tubes, and, so you see, it was nearly miraculous that I got up the stairs to the dining area of the house.  There I saw something I could not fathom or believe.

12 people, mostly in white, sat around the breakfast table.   Their hairstyles bespoke no haste; not a strand seemed even to waver in the breeze wafting in through the screen door from the huddled and massed hydrangeas, dotting the green unflawed lawn.

“Good morning!” one of them said.  “We just got back from a bike ride.”

“It’s a beautiful morning out there!” another offered.

I looked in vain for sweat or strain.  I tried not to look bitter.  A young man, meanwhile, offered me cinnamon toast.  I took it, hoping for no further information exchanges.

After some minutes of this, listening to the musical crunch of lowfat cereals in the many mouths around me, I felt I needed to retreat to the pool.  I filled two cups of coffee (I contemplated stealing the whole carafe) and excused myself.

Indeed: the pool was a solitary spot for some time and I was able to pull myself together, more or less.  I dispelled Pho phantoms.  But then others felt the pool urge and came to join me.  I chatted about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with two fellows, who were hairstylists and quite nice, but clearly had quite a bit of stress about picking up their dogs from various spots along the Long Island coastline.  Eventually they had to leave and gather a spaniel in Easthampton, a labradoodle in Great Neck.   And so I found myself in the remaining company:  5 people between the ages of 16 and 21.  They were discussing Harry Potter.

“Do Ron and Hermione end up together?” one girl of 17 asked.

L, the eldest, answered.  She is 21 and indisputably, amazingly beautiful. She stood statuesque, tan, in her bikini, dripping, half in the pool, half out.

“No,” she said simply. “Hermione’s too pretty for Ron.”

L’s boyfriend, sitting not far away on the edge of the pool, looked a bit sour.   Around us invisible mansions nestled in their landscaped swaths of green.

“Does Harry find other girlfriends?” another asked, eagerly …

That’s it, I thought, I’m outta here.  I fled back into the house, and found myself almost running past the bustling dining table towards the piano, smiling but not stopping.  The table was surrounded by amiable people reading the papers, mostly the business sections… I leapt into my business … Bach.  This felt good, but not quite good enough.  Too ordered, too polite.  Hmm, I wondered, Jeremy, do you still remember the “Hammerklavier” fugue?  And so there I went for it, with full fever and fervor, looking out the window with something like antipathy at the perfect day, the perfect setting, the pond glistening in the distance, the blue marsh flowers, and it was certainly a crazy version of the fugue.   I went totally nuts.  I felt I had to fight my surroundings in some way.   The house’s open design meant the sound carried everywhere, and it certainly reverberated fantastically in the enormous foyer, where the piano was, up the stairs and around the skylight …  Beethoven was my ally against cleanliness, even, perhaps, against certain flavors of happiness; he growled and whirled and flew.   I got to the end, played the last B-flat major chord, removed it slightly abruptly, and waited, delighted, enlivened, frenzied, quivering.

The house was eerily quiet.

I padded back over to the dining table.  There was no one.  Nothing.  The house was completely empty.  The Wall Street Journal sat lonely upon the table, in pieces.  I had driven them all away.

My dear friend E was having dinner with a friend of hers last night—a woman who some years back had had a stroke. This woman is well recovered now, but described an interesting phenomenon. When she woke up from the stroke, she had only three words at her disposal:

1) Peter, the name of her son;

2) Chicken, for undisclosed reasons; and

3) a four-letter word beginning with “F” which I cannot print here, really;

Now, a stroke is nothing to laugh at, but apparently this woman found some interest and humor in the three words she was left with, seedlings from which she regrew the English language. And the words do seem to survey a spectrum of experience, even if one really would prefer not to construct a sentence out of them.

It got me to thinking: if I had only three words, if I could only speak three words, which would I choose? I meditated over my darkly brewed Blue Bottle Coffee. After a few minutes, it seemed clear:

1) Venti;

2) Condom;

3) Risotto

… the first simply so I could demonstrate to the uncaring world of Starbucks the correct pronunciation; the second being a plea for responsibility in the modern world, and hypothetically useful for other situations; and finally number three is for lunches and dinners. I’d be forced to resort to gestures for breakfasts but I’m not so talkative in the morning anyway.

My friend Cory, ever the pragmatist, hesitated not at all; he chose his three words with tremendous alacrity:

1) I (so narcissistic!);

2) Can’t;

3) Talk

… which, if it doesn’t really get you any farther than you started, at least gets you out of a great many awkward social situations (which may be what any of us really wants out of life, anyway!)

What would your 3 words be? I eagerly await submissions.

My friend Cory also feels, by the way, that this entire post is utterly tasteless, and beneath contempt. True: stroke victims cannot choose their words. But I suggest we should use humor to transcend the tragic and to contemplate the limitations and powers of language. Sometimes, with 186,000 words at our disposal, it would be better if we only had 3. I am sure regular readers of Think Denk will wholeheartedly agree.

Cory’s such a stick in the mud.

In music, cause and effect are lovers, always meeting at night in remote nooks and gardens, where no one can see them. All we can do is gossip, speculate and murmur over our omelettes in the morning. They come out of their rooms, freshly showered, looking innocent enough, but you gaze enviously at the circles beneath their eyes.

Admittedly, there are simple things we like to think of as cause-and-effect. They are curriculum-friendly, unsexy. For instance (to name one of a thousand examples) in a baroque dance movement, the first half modulates tonic-dominant; the second half modulates back, dominant-tonic. What goes up must come down … etc. etc., the harmony sallies forth and then sallies right back home. But these patterns are conventions of form, conventions of speech: not events, but receptacles, like bookshelves. Their generic nature, their reproducibility, is useful (stackable), but not particularly interesting.

Here’s what I think is a really interesting example of music’s mysterious suggestion of cause and effect.

Mozart (K 521) begins with a leaping idea …

… in which I feel a delicious play of body and mind, coinciding with the leaping of the intervals: a genial germ of movement, of propelled energy. This energy rounds itself off, cleverly …

… with its completion, we know that it was just a fanfare. We’re back in the tonic. The piece has been announced. What is, now was, and it’s merrily off to the land of what-will-be.

As any theory professor or mildly educated musician will confirm, trickywicky Mozart has sneakilysnuck into this fanfare a bit of motivic development. As we bounce along, a little recurring idea stepladders down…

The motive is like a mercurial spirit, dancing within the confines of the phrase, but not exactly or totally subjected to it. The phrase is waiting for the motive; the motive is waiting for the phrase … they are partners in the discourse. The phrase needs something from the motive (that is, for the motive to end on C, to give it closure, a tonic-gasm); and the motive needs something from the phrase (attention, affection). (It’s just like a real-life relationship! Look forward to my self-help tome, How Mozartean Phrase Structure Can Help Your Marriage.)

OK, so meanwhile: after the fanfare, some outrageously charming stuff happens, yadda yadda yadda; and THEN, the fanfare comes back:

YOW! … look at that bottom voice … lulled by charm and humor and the pendulum of simple tonic and dominant, you may be shocked when, this time, a chromatic bassline attacks the diatonic melody; there is a flurry of reharmonization, a sudden tragic hue. (If the person playing primo is extremely self-involved, he/she may not notice at all, since it doesn’t affect his/her part. This is not recommended.)

Why does this bassline happen? What causes it?

It’s a why-less proposition, a thunderbolt. Or at least, its why can only be “understood” after the fact. For, out of these disturbed chromatic notes comes the most beautiful passage of the piece so far:

… and, with that, Mozart proves that an earthquake causes an ice cream sundae.

The lyrical passage somehow “needed” the previous dissonant interruption in order to come into existence, though it has almost nothing in common with it. Mozart stomps his foot, creates chromatic mess all over his diatonic cleanliness, and the mess is—who would have imagined?—just the fertilizer we needed for a beautiful flower to bloom.

(And—of course—what’s hidden in this flower? The new tender duet boasts the following:

which is just reshaping the main motive, backwards. The mercurial spirit of the piece makes a cameo appearance, lovingly, in a new guise, perhaps with a mustache, perhaps in drag?)

Mozart shrugs at commonsense. Why should a transition make sense, or at least the kind of sense you know? He follows a deep bass storm with its nemesis, a tender duet in the treble—strange couplings, sublime misdirection—from dark to light, abruptly, he builds a mysterious chain of cause.

And as a performer, I’d love to make clear to you (the listener, is that who you are out there in the dark beyond the footlights?) that this sequence of events both makes sense and doesn’t make sense, simultaneously: that it perches, dangerously, irreverently, on the precipice of illogic. I would like to imply, intimate, some chain of cause that I cannot state. Please blink, or gape, in confusion or delight. Just don’t look too closely at the circles under my eyes; me and the motive were up to no good all night long.

[By the way, I believe the term “tonic-gasm” was invented right here on Think Denk. Don’t you go stealing it, now.]

HEADLINE: Chamber Concert Culminates In Applause, Bows

Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet is not the freshest work to sully our ears in recent times, comprising self-evidently a well-worn chestnut, but one assumes it was fresh when it was written. Such, if any, seemed to be the contention of the (ADJECTIVE) musicians who performed with (QUANTITY, PLURAL) of verve last evening at the (MUPPETS CHARACTER) (SCOTTISH SURNAME) Performing Arts Center. Whether this verve was (MILDLY DISPARAGING ADJECTIVE), this critic is not yet prepared to offer judgement.

If the musicians seemed a bit (ADJECTIVE) at the first, perhaps this was due to the bowstrokes of (EASTERN EUROPEAN SURNAME), reminiscent more of (DESSERT) than a (ATHLETIC EVENT). This critic, let me tell you, will be none too eager to hear the music of (20th CENTURY COMPOSER) again, as his (BLENDER SETTING) of dissonance seems merely a (EXTREMELY DISPARAGING ADJECTIVE) rehash of (19th CENTURY COMPOSER). But, I don’t wish to be critical. Tender moments (VERB PAST TENSE), and the able musicians were not entirely (VEGETATIVE STATE).

The concert proceeded onwards, after its first piece, to the second, and to the rhythmic (FENCING MANEUVER) of the duo pianists in (FRENCH SURNAME, POSSESSIVE) (FRENCH NOUN). Though their accuracy was not always utterly (BEWILDERING PHRASE VAGUELY MEANING “GOOD”), their (FRENCH ADJECTIVE) and (FRENCH BODYPART) somewhat (VERB, PAST TENSE). Mr. (SILLY SURNAME) seemed to approach the 88 keys with a bit more (DAIRY PRODUCT), but this was more than grounded by Mr. (ANOTHER SILLY SURNAME)’s aggressive, (MEAT PRODUCT)-like sensibilities.

However, all Gallic (PRETENTIOUS NOUN) was forgotten in the welcomed aftermath of intermission, when, refreshed, the musicians strutted Germanically back onstage to somewhat deserved applause to play the third and final previously mentioned work. (EASTERN EUROPEAN SURNAME) soared through the familiar work with (BODY OF WATER, PLURAL) of virtuosic (NOUN) which reminded us of none more than the youthful (FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES or NFL QUARTERBACK). Other players also (VERB, PAST TENSE) with aplomb, particularly (FEMALE PORN STAR NAME), whose vibrato was not unlike her (HAIRSTYLE). The Scherzo especially oozed with humor and (PRETENTIOUS SYNONYM FOR HUMOR), yet no one was laughing, least of all this listener, when the players dedicated the (SENTIMENTAL ADJECTIVE) encore to the memory of (RECENTLY PASSED AWAY CELEBRITY).

All in all, the evening, despite certain caveats, was a musical (NOUN), and made a convincing (REALLY BORING NOUN), if nothing else.

(coming soon: MadLibs Think Denk post!)