Be There or Be Squashed

Through the happy discovery of several YouTube performances of a favored pianist, Sviatasov Richter, rendering a number of works by a favored composer, Maurice Ravel, I was able to move through the thrill of the music itself, arriving at a useful, informative conclusion. Richter had an enormous repertoire, spanning a chronological gamut from Bach to such moderns as Gershwin, Berg, and Stravinsky. He was particularly fond of Debussy, performed Ravel with the insightful grace of a big man, a powerful performer, executing the lush sophisticated lyricism of Ravel.

Watching these Youtube videos impressed on me the little I knew of Richter, particularly his desire to render the work of the composer as the composer saw it, neither adding to it nor removing from it, neither embellishing nor diminishing what was there. Richter was, accordingly, like an actor, wanting to get at the essence of the text. Text meant a great deal to him to the point where, watching him, listening to him, I felt the connection between Richter and the music that the actor has with the text, that the writer has with the narrative, that the reader has with the narrative.

Into this equation comes the similarity between what the composer of music and narrative do, the play between the word and the note, the relationship each has to time. The word has verb tense, the note has duration. The actor needs to understand the consequences of time and timing, how to draw out, truncate, pause.

Particularly watching and listening to Richter perform Ravel's Alborado del Gracioso, Noble and Sentimental Waltzes, and The Waltz, all three of which are great favorites of mine, it was easy to picture him becoming the piece, the player transformed to the music, the actor losing self wile infusing energy into the text, the writer, during composition, becoming the story. So many stories don't work because there is little or no trace of the writer in them. Stories that do work seem somehow iconic or epic configurations, given reverberation through the writer's eye for physical and emotional details.

A writer's inventiveness is secondary to the voice and intent of the writer in concocting the narrative. What does the writer wish to demonstrate? What evocative details does the writer set up, almost as wind chimes are set up to be nudged into contact with one another by the breeze of the writer's invention?

Can you put yourself into this equation? It surely is an equation as opposed to a formula. The Imp of Perversity whispers into my ear that the more time the writer spends inside the story from the get go, the less time the writer will need to spend maneuvering the snow plow of revision down the pathway.