tsunami piano

Look at this: a wasteland of dead, scrubby brown grass, the poured concrete skeletons of a handful of scattered buildings, stripped of their flesh and sinew, and in the distance, the sea, on this day, harmless and flat as glass. 

Now, see the old man’s hands probing inside the cavity of a grand piano, one hand holding a small penlight.

“It’s badly warped and frayed,” he observes before explaining, “I heard about a piano that survived the tsunami. I wanted to hear its sound. I’m amazed it didn’t fall apart.”

Now, he sits before the filthy keyboard. 

“The tsunami,” his companion picks up the story, “lifted the piano. You can see the waterline on the side. It was swept away.”

“It floated up?” asks the old man.

 “Yes,” replies his companion.

Later, seated at a different piano, so pristine it could be brand new, the old man reflects. “The Industrial Revolution made the production of an instrument like this possible. Several planks of wood, six, I think, in this case, are overlaid and pressed into shape by tremendous force for six months. Nature is molded into shape. Many tons of force and pressure are applied, making the strings what they are. Matter taken from nature is molded by human industry, by the sum strength of civilization. Nature is forced into shape. Interestingly, the piano requires re-tuning. We humans say it falls out of tune. But that’s not exactly accurate. Matter is struggling to return to a natural state. The tsunami, in one moment, became a force of restoration. The tsunami piano retuned by nature actually sounds good to me now. In short, the piano is tuned by force to please our ears or ideals. It’s a condition that feels natural to us humans. But from Nature’s perspective, it’s very unnatural.”

Back at the tsunami piano again, the old man leans over the open top and begins to strum, pluck, and tap on the strings, seemingly randomly. The sound is sometimes loud, sometimes soft: cacophonous and beautiful simultaneously. He comes around to sit at the bench, picking out a few chords, a melody. 

“I felt,” he says later, “as if I was playing the corpse of a piano that had drowned.”

 

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