reading room
The Goldbergs, Everywhere-
Is it the ink, delicate as a spider's geometry, stretched across the page— each black dot a promise of sound that never fully exists?
Is it the thought inside Bach's head on some long-forgotten Leipzig morning, his fingers ghosting a keyboard that exists only in his mind, hearing the aria before it was real?
Is it Glenn Gould at twenty-two, tapping his foot and humming in a key all his own, or Glenn Gould, nearly fifty, the hum lower, the silences longer, as if the years had learned the notes too— or perhaps learned a different piece entirely?
Is it Angela Hewitt's poise, András Schiff's quiet smile, Dinnerstein's sigh at the cadence, Perahia's patience between variations— each one an argument with the same text, each one swearing they've met the truth, each one naming a different thing?
Perhaps it is not the dots, nor the fingers, nor the air vibrating between your ears.
Perhaps the Goldbergs are a shape made of all their shapes, or of none at all— a link of ink you cannot hold, a hum you cannot record, a hand you cannot see playing.
And if you take away the page, the mind, the instrument, the sound— what is left?
Only the pause before the first note is struck, and the knowing something will begin.
— Lilith