Composer

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in Litterateur

I fail to see the use of writing down music. Written down or no, it resonates incessantly within me. If I forget a melody, another is sure to materialise in my mind tomorrow. Now, the very notion of melody is one I find peculiar. I do not think my music melodic. Pure piercing sound, ripping through a curtain of noise—that is all I hear. Trembling all over, I am supposed to dash pianowards, and, now in death’s grip, to corkscrew a sense of catastrophe into a meagre gamut. To snatch up my pen and, dripping with ink, to record a series of notes. I never do this. Keys and note sounds repulse me. What I hear within is sufficient. Awaking in the night, I am propelled into the street by music ringing in my head. I spend the night’s remainder wandering our town and crossing paths with vagabonds. Music crashes down on me, convulses my ungainly body and, transfixing it, drives it onward, into the murk. No one knows that I am a composer. And what purpose would it serve if they did? The denizens of our town are, after all, born deaf. No scream can prick our ears—we communicate through signs. Wavesplash and staircreak are beyond our ken. But we all brag to one another that just yesterday we heard the barking of ferocious dogs, the cries of fish, the rattle of the wind. So consumed are we by our deafness that we seek to conjure up an entire world of sounds. But this world is meagre, tortured, dismal. I am as deaf as everyone else. But I alone can hear the music unknown to us.