His assistants busy themselves
Fetching scissors and coloured papers
Mixing hues of different flavours
Painting blues and greens and purples
Cutting stars and squares and circles
Beginning the journey
Through a thicket of collage and texture and bread and
circuses
From his bed he considers the surfaces
He remembers his voyages
And he watches
Henri watches
Henri’s body is bed bound
But his mind isn’t even earthbound
He cuts into the form of a figure
He places it next to another
Improvisation,
No turning back, no hesitation
Letting go to muscle sense and iteration
Creativity in the present tense
No more sitting on the fence
Commit to the composition
And he watches…
Enrico watches…
The kids coming up through the quavers and crotchets
Little birds with their scales and rhythms and pitches
Finding their voices and hoping to sing
He’ll pass on the history, of princes and kings
Of Bix and Miles and the truth and the sophistry
Of Chet and Louis and the proof and the mystery
And he takes an occasional player under his wing
And flies through fundamentals
Improvisations and incidentals
And he watches…
Stefano watches…
The silence of the film and the stillness of the man
Deadpan
Buster
Keaton
The girl leaves
His heart heaves
His blank expression
Falls to his knees and then the horizon
He sits.
He thinks.
Pushing his hat
Back on his head.
Lost in this moment of loss, the signs he misread,
He fails to notice
The coupling rod on the train that is rising and falling
and that is where his seat is
He bobs up and down as his dignity decreases
His stone face flashes a moment of indignation beneath
his…
Hat.
To acquire learning you need to read
But to gain wisdom you must watch
Stefano watches
Through the bars of his cage
A cage of bar lines and staves
Something to break out of
To fight with
To play with
To push and pull and tear and tickle and sway with
All those accidentals
Co-accidentals
Incidental music for life
Incidental music for life
