every time i turn pages for somebody in a concert, i have an odd sort of revelation. it probably doesn’t help that it is a uniquely stressful situation – though never too bad, for one is always “the page turner”, never “emily” – the lights from the catwalk from my perspective back-light the performers, and make the black keys tilt like staggering drunks, so it seems like i’m turning pages on the set of some horrible film-noir. (what will happen when the piano stops, when i grab two pages instead of one, or forget the repeat?) when the clarinet player arduously drips the chain and cloth down the clarinet and wipes it clean every time, drips the chain and cloth, fusses with his mouthpiece every time, it takes too long between pieces and even though there is nothing going on this room full of community, full of strangers, we all are observing that odd tradition of breathless silence, the chain and cloth hissing through the clarinet, he smiles back-lit sheepishly. it is the sort of tensely bored forty-five seconds onstage between pieces where the only thing to think about is the precise angle of curl of one’s fingers, hidden in one’s own lap, and the potential offensives therein.

last night i saw the pianist depress the keys and the hammers rise, which is in itself not such a novel observation, but it was is a slight jiggle to the hammers after striking the strings, and i realized suddenly that the mechanism of the piano is in fact separate from the mechanism of the hands. this should be obvious. maybe just for me, having spent the last five years meditating on the supposed direct line between fingertip and sound, that rebellious post-strike hammer undulation appeared as the most seductive, mesmerizing mechanical give in the world, like the swinging ponytail of a runner passing you in the early morning, or the way somebody’s arm twitches against you as they fall asleep.