Music Heard in Your Teacher’s House
2 Minutes Read Time
a golden shovel with Adam Zagajewski
What came to us sounded like mystic music:
at first, a chorus of Gregorian monks heard
filing past the juniper tree, though now we can say with
certitude that the music we heard came through pipes. You
heard the first hum in the bathroom—it was
startling, the way things are when you’re more
or less naked, and suddenly you’re not alone, the room grown colder than
other rooms in your Teacher’s house, where we were living. Music
in that house was softer then, had fewer movements and
fewer tonal shifts. High summer days we sat slack in the
heart of the house, fans whirling, and when there was bad blood,
we looked away. We often heard voices insist that
this was not what your Teacher had wanted. But when water flowed
through the pipes and belched into song, everyone shut up. Through
the pipes, throat singers incanted tones that seemed to assuage our
pain, or express it. Nomads have infiltrated the arteries
of this house, someone joked, but I don’t think this was
unknown to your Teacher, who knew we’re all guests here, knew more
shit would come. The way he knew that humility is grounded more than
anything in utility: we kneel to unclog a sink, to scrub sheets stained with blood.
Read more from Issue 21.2.
