A minifesto before the piano sonatas

April 15, 2026

the whole body is an ear
    compose with the whole body
resist the rondo goblins¹
    poke the eye of my formal intuitions
    shake off precedents (but embrace the residues)
    elevate pencilvisation²
what can constitute a sonata?
    a tidy ten-second trajectory
    a faltering ten-hour fragment
    a sketch an idea a gesture
    a system an agglomeration an erasure
how is a pine cone³ like a piano sonata?
the sacred radiates in the wake of derailed expectation
    no expectation—no surprise
    no surprise—no delight
    no delight—no transcendence
please nobody⁴
what revision is there that is not obfuscation? so revise a little
    or a lot
desire difficulty⁵
    in concept, composition, performance, hearing
    encompass the complex—jettison the complicated
    encompass the difficult faces of simplicity⁶
take the road less traveled by
    or take the other one⁷

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¹ I can't tell you how many rondos I've written... and ternaries...

² pencil improvisation

³ or a centipede, or a skyscraper, or a Cy Twombly sketch

⁴ except Tammy <3

⁵ Geoffrey Hill (The Paris Review, issue 154):
"We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning? I think art has a right — not an obligation — to be difficult if it wishes. And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic. And that tyranny requires simplification."

⁶ sorry, Mr. Hill, ease, not simplicity, is the opposite of difficulty— see Aram Saroyan or Mark Rothko or, yikes, The Road Not Taken

⁷ according to Frost, it doesn't matter in the end, just make up your mind and get on with it!