WEBVTT

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Sort of, half blessing
and half curse.

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The poem.

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This is a poem called
"Unrelenting Flood."

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It mentions a jazz
musician, a famous pianist

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named Art Tatum, who was
one of the great giants

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of his instrument and of
the history of the music.

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And he was, like a
startlingly large number

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of great early
keyboard musicians,

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nearly blind in the
later part of his life.

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This is-- and in fact the poem
refers to this better than I

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can summarize it so I won't.

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In fact, there are
interesting ways in which

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that helps to form a style.

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And Tatum is famous
for, among other things,

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his kind of inundation
of notes and melody.

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Sort of, filling of all
the available spaces

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into which silence and
rests might go with music.

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Without making it feel as
if things were bursting.

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The poem is called "Unrelenting
Flood," and goes like this.

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"Black key.

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White key.

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No?

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That's wrong.

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It's all tactile.

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It's not the information
of each struck key we love,

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but how the mind and leavened
heart travel by information.

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Think how blind and near
blind pianists range along

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their keyboards by clambering
over notes a sighted man would

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notice to leave out.

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By stringing it
all on one longing.

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The way befingered, blind,
mountainous Art Tatum did.

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The way we like joy to arrive.

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In such unrelenting flood, the
only way we can describe it

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is by music or another
beautiful abstraction.

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Like the ray of sunlight
in a child's drawing,

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running straight to a pig's ear,
tethering us all to our star."

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