This is the second session we have focussed on our old upright piano and its impending fate to be transformed into a multitude of artworks. The aim was to describe the piano in detail and then attempt to tell its story.
LA GONDA (we'll stop here for a break)
Honeycomb interior peeks out from
dark varnish, its smooth polish shining
Soft hammers, creamy above the dirty ivory keys
Strings like a harp, their spine curving, metallic,
clamped, restrained, restricted by many solid screws
Holes behind the strings let sound cascade,
less like honey oozing, into the sound box
- Kate Jenkins
[75385]
Naked strings exposed to eye
and dust
Felted hammers waiting
Promises unfulfilled floating in the air
Your skin, much absent
otherwise beaten, battered
abused
Tattooed with identity
patronym
and slave trader
Exposed organs
dusty
But no, not an organ
no pipes
Just heartstrings taut, quivering in the air
as you await execution
- MJR
END NOTE: 75385
When your screws yield to the electric drill
your nails and glue will give to hammer blow
tinkling ivories will clasp to ebonies, and a
melee of tangling strings knit a new design.
The pressure bar that binds LaGonda strings
will twist and warp; dissonance new
and the four, six, twelve large bolts will fall
peeling pin block from warm wood
into cold sound-shimmering air
don't sit on that stool,
its legs will succumb to weight
and metal pedals will walk to another's tune
where octaves run no more
- Kate Jenkins
UNTITLED
Once in a forest
and a mine or three
the
back of a sheep
the face of a great beast
Gestated by active hands
in New Castle, Indiana
in a
nation with no true castles
And cast out, over the sea
a servant to strange fingers
in
strange lands
making strange cacophony
Old torments to new torments
Assemblies disassembled
Never again to be a forest
or mine
or
creature
gestated anew
by
new active hands.
- MJR
PIECES POETICO
Fragments of a tune scatter
beneath the tunemaker's resting components
fractured, stretched, aniente-to nothing
disassembled, sognando-dreaming
Timbre, that unique character, resonating now
as light and colour and shape
Turned up words
Design abstracted
Textures once pounded, rest
Work done. Score Al fine, ends
CAMOFLAGE
Hidden rocket launchers
beneath a shield of green
fire with purpose another time
Once these worked their blast
Within the bowls of The Piano
Deep resonance
Ear startling volume
Danger! watch out
