October 10th, 2008
Piano Bomb
Here is a Secret Vespers installment you can’t take to the airport. Have you ever wanted to make music out of crazy found sounds?
Transcriptorial: I am the bomb in the piano.
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At least one person in the world considers C#m and DbM pleasing when played together…I have yet to find that person…paper airplane…
‘It’s time to start this little game
Of cat and mouse,
And try to keep one step ahead,
There’s strangers in the house!
His watch is really a radio, his gun a pen!
He knows that it’s all gone
No Mom
Nobody wins…
Spyworld!’
(Wall of Voodoo)
I love to make music out of pillows because it has that soothing yet slapping noise to it.
I wanna make music out of sounds so lyrical.
I wanna make music out of words which remind me of you.
Sigh…
I wanna make music with you.
Have you ever listened to “Annie’s Song” by John Denver, ritz? It came to mind as I was reading and thinking about your comments, so many of which are sweet and wistful.
Nothing to do with crazy found sounds, unless we think of your voice as a sound I have just found and my offering of “Annie’s Song” a kind of song.
Imagine the sound of a bomb going off in the middle of a piano version of “Annie’s Song”: Where in the song should the bomb go off, do you think?
Should a bomb really go off? If I had my way, I wouldn’t want anything so destructive getting anywhere near sounds so comforting and plaintive.
I’ll indulge the question though: Not in the middle, definitely not in the middle.
If there’s no other option but for the bomb to go off, let it be in the end. This way, we give respect to the sound a piano can make, and the sound a bomb can make.
We will have an untarnished, untainted chance of listening to both sounds.
If we end up preferring the noise and destructive nature of the bomb, then we’ll know that is a choice effected by the bomb and bomb alone.
If we end up enthralled by the calm and peace the piano keys evoke, then it’s because we allowed the music to be played in full.
We wouldn’t know the nuances – the purity or lack of it – of a sound lest we allow it to be played as it should be. We wouldn’t appreciate the simple melodies of a song if we choose to complicate it with noise solely designed to destroy, to interfere….
Or do I have a tainted view of what bombs are made for? For if that is the case, I’m willing to listen to the sound of a bomb in its pure form, alone. Maybe, I’ll understand its nature a bit if I do so.
I am tickled pink that you replied to this, ritz, so thank you!
I agree that a bomb does not belong anywhere in “Annie’s Song,” but then neither does a bomb belong in a piano! In suggesting a bomb in that song I felt a little like I imagine a bomb feels inside a piano, if one imagines one is both the bomb and the piano together.
I used to sing “Annie’s Song” to my lover. We are no longer together, which is probably why I longed for the bomb when I read you and thought of that song.
Interesting that you’d have the bomb at the end, though. I can’t tell if that’s more or less tragic than having it somewhere in the middle. Probably most tragic of all would be having it at beginning.
“Annie’s Song”: I’ve actually never heard it on piano before. I don’t think I’ve even heard the John Denver version. My mother sang it to my sister and me when we were children, which is why I prefer it acapella. Maybe it would be too sentimental on piano.
Here is what I propose then, ritz (and thank you kindly for your indulgence): The sound of a bomb. Silence. Then a purely instrumental version of “Annie’s Song” played on the violin.
In a time not too long ago, I remember the piano.
I remember the violin.
But curiously, the words don’t fit.
Some people can sing
Some people can be musical
Some people, they wax poetic.
Which one am I?
Which one are you?
Should a bomb really go off? If I had my way, I wouldn’t want anything so destructive getting anywhere near sounds so comforting and plaintive.
this is what i really want.
It just hit me : “I used to sing “Annie’s Song” to my lover. We are no longer together, which is probably why I longed for the bomb when I read you and thought of that song.”
So I remind you of a bomb, huh?
Poor me.