What is the difference
between music and not music?
Where is the gap between song and sound?
Where is the space between rhythm and repetition?
When are textures just trappings and rests just respites?
Which structures must we shape and which may we suppose from our surroundings?
Is a dirge without melody merely a eulogy?
Do we weep without rhythm so we don’t attract the damned,
When our relentless laments don’t strike up the band,
When our notes have no pitch, and we write and pass by hand?
When the dynamics fall static and we’re scattered on the moans,
Or timbres take root above and cleave past our bones,
What music was left us, and what have we left?
What bassless ambitions will others recall?
What fortes of ours drove friends up the wall?
Why couldn’t we measure more time with them all,
Laughing and singing well after nightfall?
What’s stopping us now, where is our wherewithal?
Why can’t we make music from the soft cues around us?
Why can’t we shake our chains til the ringing unbounds us?
Why can’t we hear the earth, and join in chanting with it?
We can, we can, we can now.
A one, a two,
A one, two, three, four…