Brutality – that is to say honesty: searing, open-wound
in the corridor behind the concert hall they paused to
honesty – may well be the key he needs. When I tell him this,
examine a painting hung on the wall. It was abstraction,
however, he laughs, showing his teeth. He says he knows
clumsy and uncontrolled, saved only by a corner where
it, has always known it, has the key there on the windowsill
two splatters of paint had overcome the mediocrity of
collecting dust. I’m a simpleton, he says, showing his teeth
their conception; working together, on their own terms, to
again. I can see cabbage, lodged: the kind of detail
create something wonderful. This is what they thought,
a brutal, honest secretary would point out. Even a semi-
high as they were; hypnotised voluntarily by each others’ eyes;
brutal one. But I’m a simpleton, marshmallow soft: the
each agreeing with the other: agreeing to argue, even,
occasional cloud on a hot summer’s day. His words, of
on a purely playful basis: a prelude to the teasing physical
course, from the poetical period. That was the one that
tussle that started by the door, moving soon into the
came before the one that may or may not have just
next room: the drum room behind the hall, unknown,
finished. What comes next is still under debate. The thing
beside the door that leads into the auditorium. The door
is, he says, you can only open that door once. And you don’t
that – impossibly – they did not see, too busy to know it, to
want to get into the habit, for once you’re in you’re there
see or hear it at all, but make instead the music missing from
for good. Which is to say, aren’t I still too young for honesty?
the silence, all four and a half minutes of it: all heard by all.
(Pierre Monceau and Jean-Pierre Sertin)
