notes

two searches happening together

May 2026

When I improvise on the piano, two searches happen at the same time and I am only now starting to understand that they are connected.

The first search is what is inside. Some pressure, some image, some piece of weather. I am trying to find what it is, the way you might search for a word you cannot quite remember.

The second search is on the piano. Which finger, which key, which interval. Whether to wait. Whether to repeat. Whether to leave the gesture unfinished.

For a long time I thought these were separate. The "real" search was inside, in the body. The piano was the place where the inside search came out, more or less successfully. The piano was the medium. The body was the source.

I am not sure anymore that this is right. When I watch what is actually happening in a good improvisation, the two searches are doing the same thing. The fingers searching for the next interval are doing the same work as the body searching for what the felt sense is. They are mirrors of each other, on two different surfaces. The body is finding the implicit; the hand is finding what touches it. When they synchronize, the playing feels like one thing. When they do not, you can hear me trying, because the hand has gone ahead and the body has not caught up, or the body knows and the hand has not arrived.

The implication, which I am still working out, is that the piano is not the medium of an inner search. The piano is one of the surfaces on which the search itself is happening.

even if she does not really listen

May 2026

I had this thought once and have been turning it over since. The practice of writing for one specific person does not depend on the person actually listening.

My sister lives in another country. The recordings I make for her arrive at her phone eventually. Sometimes she listens once, sometimes she listens many times, sometimes she does not get to one for weeks. Sometimes I think she has not listened at all.

This does not change the playing. The intention toward her, the holding of who she is in the body while I am playing, is the work. It does the work whether she hears the recording or not. The listener is not only the person. The listener is the direction of your attention.

I have been thinking about what this means. It means that a person who has died can still be the listener of a piece you are making. It means that a person you have not spoken to in twenty years can be the listener. It means that someone you are about to meet can be the listener. The condition for the practice is the direction of attention, not the presence of the body.

I am hesitant to push this too far because it can quickly start sounding like a spiritual claim that I am not making. I am not saying the music reaches the dead. I am saying that for the music to be made, the maker has to be attending toward someone specific, and that the someone does not have to be currently capable of receiving in order for the attention to do its work.

Most of my pieces are made for people who, in the moment of the recording, are far away. The attention is toward them anyway.

"Dancing Hills"

May 2026

There is a moment I have had a few times in the studio, and once enough that I started writing about it.

Something is in the body. Usually a weight, sometimes lower in the belly, sometimes higher in the chest. It is not exactly an emotion, not exactly a thought. It is more like a piece of weather that has settled in. If I try to name it precisely I miss it; if I describe it loosely I can keep it in view.

One time, in the studio, what came was "dancing hills." I did not know what to do with the phrase, so I put my hands on the piano without knowing what I was going to play. What came was quiet, searching, slow. A few notes, a pause, a few notes. The phrase "dancing hills" stayed in the room while I played. The body did not lose it.

After a while I noticed the weight was less. Not gone. Different.

I am being careful with how I describe this because it is easy to make it sound like therapy or like a method. It is neither. It is just what the practice does when it is working. The body holds something implicit. The sound is one way the body has of making it slightly more explicit. The body confirms the sound, the way it confirms a word that fits a felt sense: a small relaxation, an exhale, a "yes that is what I meant."