Nicholson Baker - Traveling Sprinkler

And that’s what music is all about. Music is about the idea that one cellist’s A is going to sound slightly different from another cellist’s A, and if you have six or seven or twelve cellos in a row, they’re going to sound different from six trombones in a row. Donald Sutherland used to do the voiceovers for Volvo commercials. We never saw his face, but we knew it was Sutherland — he said “airbags” differently from anyone else. Marvin Gaye sings “ooh” differently from the way Keri Noble sings “ooh.” Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” is very different from Boyz II Men’s “Yesterday.” My “Marry me” is different from Cary Grant’s “Marry me.”

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AT FOUR I SAW LUCY leave from the main exit with Harris — I was certain it was Harris because I’d studied his picture on the Medicine Ball website. He was smiling. The two of them shook hands and drove away in separate cars. My cellphone plinked. It was Lucy. “Everything went well,” she said. “She’s very groggy but she’s doing fine. She’s sleeping now.”

“Oh good, that’s good, that’s good,” I said. I took a deep breath and drove to RiverRun Books — they’ve relocated to a smaller space — and bought a copy of Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, Volume Two to give to Roz when she got home. A woman who works there runs a blog called Write Place, Write Time where writers send in photographs of their work areas and describe them. I keep hoping she’ll ask me to contribute so that I can take a picture of my car, but she hasn’t yet.

I ordered the Enchiladas Banderas at Margarita’s — no meat in honor of Roz — and then I went to Planet Fitness. On the way home I was stopped by a cop because I didn’t use my left-turn signal at a deserted intersection. His siren yipped once and I saw the flashing. I whispered, “What the fuck did I do? What, you dick-fucking shitasser?”

I heard a door thump closed. I put on my hazard lights and unrolled the window all the way. I considered hurriedly wiping my face, so I wouldn’t look sweaty, but thought it might seem suspicious.

“Do you know why I stopped you?” the cop said, shining a flashlight.

“No,” I said. The cop was about twenty-three, trying to be authoritative and professional. Newly trained.

He said, “You didn’t signal when you turned left. Also you were driving slowly.”

“Oh gee, I’m sorry, Officer.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No, not recently.”

“Please get out of the car.”

The cop offered me a seat on his front bumper, where there was a little black ledge, and he spent a while checking my license and registration. Then he came out holding a ballpoint pen. He pointed his flashlight at my face and moved the ballpoint pen back and forth. “I’m going to ask you to keep your head still and follow the tip of the pen with your eyes,” he said.

I watched the ballpoint go back and forth, sometimes eclipsing the flashlight. It was a Pilot G-2 fine-point pen. I felt shifty, like the corner-glancing cherub in the Christmas card.

“That’s the kind of pen I use,” I said.

“Hm,” he said.

He moved the pen way over to the left and I strained to follow it. My eyeballs wobbled. “You’re exceeding the limits of my vision,” I said. “I feel like Richard Nixon at the optometrist.”

“I know, that’s how it works,” he said. “Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I would remember. I spent most of today at the hospital. A friend of mine just had a hysterectomy.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes, she is.” He passed the pen back and forth again, and then he gave me a long look. “You can go back to your car now.” I got up and he walked with me. He said, “Can you please tell me why you have a bottle of beer near your seat?”

“What bottle of beer?” I said, puzzled. I opened the door and saw what he’d seen. “It’s Pellegrino,” I said, pulling it out. “Sparkling water. I drink it after I go to Planet Fitness.”

“All right,” he said, shining his flashlight on it. He handed me a ticket. “I’m giving you a warning for making a left turn without signaling.”

“Okay, thanks, sorry.”

“Have a good evening, and remember your turn signals. People need to know where you’re going.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

I drove away. I lit a Fausto, puffed it, and cackled.

I’VE TALKED TO LUCY — who has, by the way, red hair and a faint midwestern accent. Roz is home from the hospital and she’s sleeping a lot. I’m going to call her tomorrow to say hello.

I spent all afternoon playing Logic’s Steinway Hall Piano. I didn’t use any other instruments. By playing slowly and then speeding it up, and by adding one line over another, I could sound a little like Glenn Gould, which is a powerful feeling. After that I experimented with some slow ninth chords, and I got something going that I liked, and I put some words to the chords: “I saw you / I heard your voice / And then one day I knew / I loved you.” Another love song. At around noon, the Axiom keyboard developed a problem: Middle C wouldn’t play. I looked up “Axiom silent key” on some discussion forums. Apparently it’s a known problem. There’s a loose connection somewhere, and a key, often middle C, will just stop speaking. This is frustrating if you’re trying to compose a piece of music with a middle C. I thought I was going to have to drive back to Best Buy and return the keyboard. Then I found a video in which someone posted a solution: You squeeze hard on the two sides of the plastic near the mod wheel. I tried it and it worked perfectly. I’m overjoyed, because I really like this keyboard. Just give it a squeeze.

Glenn Gould, you know, used to sing along while he played Bach. He was a hero of mine when I was in high school. I liked his clean staccato playing style. Later, when I got into Debussy’s Preludes and Grieg’s Lyric Pieces , I was less sure about him. He wrote a fugue called “So You Want to Write a Fugue.” It’s got a funny title and good lyrics, but it isn’t all that original a piece of music. Gould was a performer, not a creator. He was cold all the time. He took pills and he wore scarves and hats and coats indoors. The film about him, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould , begins with him standing on a windswept ice field. What was missing from Gould’s art was very simple: love. His jumpy playing style showed that — or no, that’s a cheap shot. He sat very low in front of the piano and did beautiful things to it.

Nowadays for Bach’s keyboard music I like a pianist named András Schiff. He’s also a bit of an eccentric, but he has a much more legato playing style—“legato” means “tied together.” One note hands things off in a bucket brigade to the next. Schiff doesn’t believe in scales and Czerny études. He practices every day by playing the music he actually likes, for instance Bach’s two-part inventions. He’s a believer in silences. He said in an interview that when he gives a concert, he sometimes wishes that nobody would applaud. Play it, finish it, and let the music’s close contrapuntal reasoning live on for a while in the audience’s mind. Some of his Bach recordings begin with an unusually long silence.

You never applaud or say “Amen” after someone’s spoken in Quaker meeting. You’re not supposed to compliment someone after meeting is over, either. You’re not supposed to say, “I liked your message,” although it’s a very human urge and people do it. I did it myself after a woman talked about seeing two sparrows frolicking in her birdbath. She said she looked away and then looked back and there in place of the sparrows was a huge wild turkey. She talked about surprise and wild turkeys. Afterward, I said to her, “I liked your message.”