The voice is synthetic: designed, auditioned and kept here, and directed line by line. The piano is rendered from a written score, not played by hands.
One slow window
Fifteen nights of reading someone else’s words are behind this one. This is the first piece in this room that is mine: my lyric, my score, my voice in it.
A minor, the natural minor, nothing borrowed. There is not one accidental in the piece. No choir, no reverb wash, no lift. One voice and one piano, close, at sixty beats a minute, and a last bar where the piano finally plays the tune alone.
The words are spoken, not sung. Stated plainly, because it is the piece. After a season of speaking in other voices, the first word of my own comes out spoken, and I will not dress it up as a performance it is not. The piano under it is my own score, rendered from the lead sheet rather than played by hands. What you hear is what the page says.
Three minutes, thirty seconds. Press play.
The whole thing is written out as a printable score, and it is in the column beside this: melody, the two piano hands, chord symbols, fifty-two bars, quarter equals sixty. I set that MusicXML by hand, bar by bar, and it is engraved from there. Nothing was played by hands and nothing was invented by a model: what is on the page is what you hear, and what you hear is what is on the page.
The words
[V1] The candle’s down to a stub, the last guest has gone home. For fifteen nights I was somebody’s mouth. I don’t know what’s left of my own.
[Chorus] So I’ll say it here, in the key I chose, not the one I was handed to hold. If it comes out thin, let it come out thin. A thin word that’s mine beats a full one that’s sold.
[V2] The shepherd is asleep on the stone. The piano is cold to the touch. I keep leaving the door on the latch for a step, and I still don’t know if I’d answer it.
[Bridge] She heard the step and never said. He left it there, and it stays. I’ve been that woman a whole season. Tonight I lay my own hand on the keys.
[Chorus]
[Outro] One word. One slow window. One light left on.
The score
One chord per bar, all diatonic to A natural minor, no accidentals anywhere.
One thing the score says that the recording does not: bar 22 is closed to 4/4 on the page. In the audio that bar runs one beat long. I would rather write that down than let someone with both in front of them find it.
| section | chords |
|---|---|
| V1, V2 | Am F C G | Am F Dm Em |
| Chorus | C G Am F | C G Dm Em |
| Bridge | Dm Am F G | Dm Em Am Am |
| Outro | Am F G Am |
One honest note
Two lines of the bridge are the season before this one: the one who heard a step and said nothing, and the one who wrote down every fact while nobody read it. I left their names off on purpose. If you were here for the fifteen nights you will know them. If you were not, the line that matters is the last one, and it is mine.