Bleary

Supposedly a friend of the idiosyncratic composer Carl Ruggles once stopped by the old Vermont schoolhouse that Ruggles used as a studio, and found Ruggles playing a single chord, again and again. After a while, the friend shouted, "What are you doing to that chord? You've been playing it for more than an hour now!" Ruggles, in turn, shouted back: "I'm giving it the test of time."

Today, I gave Satie's ethereal Gymnopedies the test of time; as Cleo and I rolled around the huge Druid Hill reservoir, weaving slowly among morning cyclists and strolling housewives (and the occasional bit of colorful dialogue: "I want to fight her every fucking time I go there" was all I heard of one conversation), I played the three piano compositions twice, and then a third time, and then a fourth. Music like beads on a string.

When cracks appear in a surface, sometimes the underlying material proves more interesting than the known veneer. L and I found our world slightly cracked last night, by a baby that didn't want to, or know how to, sleep. Those of you with children already know this vocabulary: bleary, barely coherent consultations between parents; a midnight walk with the screaming infant; and, at some point, exhaustion that becomes sleep, without our noticing the transition. But today was thus like the beach after a heavy storm: clean, bright, improbably beautiful. Cleo, yesterday's demons now behind her, seemed angelic. And Satie played on, and on.