This music weeps, not for sin but rather for the black fact that we must all die, but not one of us knows what comes after. This music leaps from key to key as if it had no clear place to arrive, making up its life, one bar at a time. But when you come at last to the real theme, strict, inexorable, and bleak, you must play it slow and sad, with melancholy dignity, or you miss all its grim wisdom. In three pages, it says, the universe collapses, and you—still only halfway home.
From Playing the Black Piano by Bill Holm. Copyright © 2004 by Bill Holm. Reprinted by permission of Milkweed Editions. All rights reserved.