Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Sometimes, words are insufficient.

There are times when I write a piece—usually a longer piece like yesterday’s but sometimes just a poem—that the rhythm and speed of the words is just as important as the words themselves; it’s like rather than writing, I’m composing, and so when the piece goes out into the world I don’t want it to be read so much as performed. What the piece needs is something . . . else, something more. It needs less to have been written than to have been scored, like a piece of music.

Music has the advantage here, and those of you who have learned how to play music know what I mean. A musical score isn’t just the notes that tell you what pitch to play and how long to play them: high, low, short, long. The score is full of other instructions like how loudly to play the note or how softly, whether the notes should all be slurred together or if they should be distinct and separated. It tells us the tempo, and when it should speed up or slow down, hold back, pause, or just freeze under a fermata’s little umbrella. It even tells us the feeling of the section we’re playing, like if it should evoke agitation, sweetness, sadness, grandiosity, gracefulness.

It’s not that I want the piece to be sung; no, it should be spoken (aloud or silently), but as with that last piece, there are sections where it builds in fervor and speed, piling word upon word, crescendo, accelerando, stronger, faster, until bang! hit the sforzando on this word, and then quieter, softer, slower, and . . . breathe.

It’s a frustration not to be remedied, this missing element, especially as I know readers will often skip over sections, miss the rhythm of the words I’ve chosen, skim. Not a criticism. Folks are busy. Life is busy. Time is precious, and even if you grace me with the time to read a piece fully, thoughtfully, there’s no way it’s going to play in your head the way I’ve conducted it in mine. And, sadly, there’s no guarantee that, were I to read it aloud, it would be any better. Composition and performance are two entirely different skills. I’ve attended enough author readings to know this is true.

But, keep it in mind, maybe. Tuck that thought away, and if there’s a piece—a short essay, a vignette, a poem—that really clicks with you, go back to it, maybe even read it aloud, and see if there’s something else, something ephemeral, something hidden in the recitation that is more powerful than what mere words convey.

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