Shared Practice IV -- after Rilke

The original:

Music

Rainer Maria Rilke

What are you playing, boy? Through the gardens it went like many steps, like whispering commands.

What are you playing, boy? See, your soul is entangled in the rods of the Syrinx.

Why do you lure her? The sound is like a prison where loitering and languishing she lies. Strong is your life, and yet your song is stronger, against your longing, leaning sobbingly.—

Give her a silence, that the soul may softly

turn home into the flooding and the fullness

in which she lived, growing, wide and wise,

ere you constrained her in your tender playings.

How she already wearier beats her wings,

Thus will you, dreamer, waste her flight away,

no more may carry her across my walls,

when I shall call her into the delights.

Better Advice

After Rilke's Music

If your sound is perceived as a prison, then your penitentiary system has gotten way out of whack!

If she can't handle your strong music,

then she's not the girl for you, brother.

You can try and give her a silence,

but the chords and progressions

will dam up within your heart,

and stopped water soon turns sour.

And don't be sad –

she didn't live in flooding and fullness

before she met you. No.

These are just names the lonely give to being Alone;

no more than the “fullness” of the Abyss.

Trust me, dump this wimpy fledgling,

and wait yourself for a real bird.

For somewhere out there is one who has been longing her whole life for strong music:

Beautiful, loud, muscular melodies that will finally

reveal the range of her instrument's capacities

that have, until she met you, lain dormant and unknown.

In short: great music and great instruments

were made for eachother,

and there's nothing to be afraid of.