idm

True dream:

Through some unfathomable leap of imagination and confusion, a composer friend of mine has discovered a new avant-garde method of notating polyphonic music, in which haricots verts [the thinner, Frencher kind, of course] are arranged [you see?] on a cutting board, each representing a musical voice propagating through the two-dimensional domain of time versus pitch.

He calls me over to demonstrate his newest invention [again!], and — after a good deal of hand-waving and skepticism-banishing — manages to convince me of its validity.

He invites me to perform it.

I consider at length the lengthy greens.

Then, after producing a very large cleaver out of hammerspace [i.e. apparently nowhere], I begin chopping rapidly: vivacissimo.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop! You are doing it completely wrong! You have butchered my music!”