A Lesson in Music

Play the tune again: but this time
with more regard for the movement at the source of it
and less attention to time.
Time falls curiously in the course of it.

Play the tune again: not watching your fingering,
but forgetting, letting flow the sound
till it surrounds you.
Do not count or even think. Let go.

Play the tune again: but try to be nobody, nothing,
as though the pace of the sound
were your heart beating,
as though the music were your face.

Play the tune again: It should be easier
to think less every time of the notes, of the measure.
It is all an arrangement of silence.
Be silent, and then play it for your pleasure.

Play the tune again: and this time when it ends,
do not ask me what I think.
Feel what is happening strangely in the room
as the sound glooms over you, me, everything.

Now, play the tune again.


From 'Weathering' by Alastair Reid
(Canongate Publishing, 17 Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh EH1 1DR; 1978).