Walking yesterday in Rembrandtpark, I had my 20-sided die with me in my pocket - the green one, that I use partly for yes/no answers. This had not only brought me to the park - I couldn’t decide where to walk - but it was also guiding me around it. Naturally there are many different directions to take, all more or less equal in their appeal…….I came to a fork and the die said go right but I went left. Right only led to the children’s zoo and from a distance I had already seen that it was crowded with people. Nowhere to sit there. So I was wrong to give a decision to the die as there was actually no choice to be made.
I was looking for a quiet bench as I wanted to compose the variation theme for the piano sonata I had started the day before. I had brought manuscript paper with me and a pencil and a rubber. The music was in my head, but only vaguely so. It lacked that specificity that I sometimes have. I like to compose out of doors or in cafes. As I walked through the park I remembered how in the sixth form at school I also used to like sketching out of doors. I miss that. It was a nice time for me. Here in Amsterdam I never see anybody doing that. In Venice you see it the whole time. Why? Because it’s picturesque there? But people should sketch everywhere. Big factory chimneys belching smoke are visually nice too.
I turned left disobeying the die. I thought about that and the irony of my decision. The point of the die of course is to facilitate decisions where there is no obvious choice. It gets you quickly over any hesitation. And yet, disobeying the die like that causes uneasiness. Therefore I must conclude that the randomness is something more than randomness. The die starts to take on an authority, as if it not only chooses, but also sets rules.
It was hard to find a place where people weren’t coming by, as the day was beautiful and the park was full. As I looked for a place I took time to watch people playing. I enjoyed very much watching a rather fat young woman playing football in a little family group. It was a Moslem family I presumed as the women had head scarves on. So the fat woman looked very happy to have that freedom to play football within her family. And I thought directly of Picasso as people are always carping on about the way he depicts the women in his life, but the truth is that there are many paintings of his where he celebrates peace - peaceful scenes like the one I was watching. People free to play in the park without fear of attack. I think that the theme of peace in Picasso is a big one, though perhaps not as important as the theme of eroticism.
I thought a lot about the woman - the meaning of the head scarf and the context in which she was playing, within the family group like that. She had long robes and was really too fat to run properly and was laughing. It made me happy to see her so happy. I found a bench and I started to write. I continued to use the die, twirling it in my left hand and finding the answers I needed whilst writing with my right hand. The die was deciding for me questions to which there were no obvious answers. Apart from the outflow of sound (I compared it once to the Nile in flood) you can say that composition consists of replying to questions. Meanwhile, the biggest questions aren’t even asked and they are decided for you by the spirit that stands at your shoulder - the real director of things. You don’t see his face as it is the face of a god.
I was writing in four-part counterpoint yesterday rather than in homophonic or chordal texture. So the lines went their separate ways. Later at home I made a neat copy using four coloured pens, so that things didn’t get too confused on the page. I made repeated mistakes and in the end got so tired that I had to abandon the task. Making the mistakes upset me and I realized again that random decisions become as fixed as any others. I wasn’t willing to accept mistakes in what I had decided. Therefore disobeying the die is no simple matter. There’s a bigger issue there.
The colours in the score are very pleasing and are in fact part of the fun of doing it. This morning I was up early and completed the thing quickly. The sun was streaming through the windows in the back room where I worked on the dining table. I thought of the cactuses in the bedroom - they share the room with me and sit in the window behind the curtain. They would be enjoying the same intense light at that moment and I knew they would be content as yesterday I had soaked them in water. I also thought of Venice as the intense light reminded me of springtime there, walking around as a student, completely lost in all those little alleys where everything repeats itself in endless variation. The smells of flowers and of baking, and the bright sunshine and many shadows, the sounds of voices and that delicious Venetian accent which itself is music. Though in those days I had not yet understood the concept of a very wide definition of what music is.
I began to write this note as I waited for my neighbours to wake up so that I could play what I had copied neatly. My piano is dampened with felt. Even so, I fear that the sound travels down through the floor.
