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Who am I to judge a life? I have been with the bad and the good. I hold no verdict on the wrongs this man committed. Nor do I measure his virtues.
There is a reason you glance up when you first hear a melody, or tap your foot to the sound of a drum. All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?
I cannot keep you alive. I lack such power. But I infuse you.
I suppose they were right. Shorter names are more suited to hysteria.
You’re never in love with anyone the way you are when you’re eighteen, on a beach, at night, with your shoes off.
“Stupid boy. God gives you nothing. God only takes.”
Why? Wealth has never defined music. What is played from the heart can be played anywhere.
You should never construct a lie based on a child’s questions. It is like writing music based on cymbal crashes.
Truth is light. Lies are shadows. Music is both.
It seems cruel to say that he never saw Baffa again. But it is true. On the same day Frankie Presto found love, he lost his home.
You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance—to confine its own.
A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea.
They lay there together in the garden, two members of the trio, missing their third. Everyone joins a band in this life. One way or another, the band breaks up.
This may seem highly fortuitous, but when a higher power has plans for you, life can be full of near misses.
In time, Frankie stopped asking altogether. But being silent is not forgetting.
“Man suffers for his art, Francisco. That is what you must remember. Sometimes it is cannibals. Sometimes it is worse.”
“The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”
Musicians often grow friendly with those who stay to the end. They bond in an hour when all the world seems asleep but them.
Man searches for courage in drink, but it is not courage that he finds, it is fear that he loses. A drunken man may step off a cliff. That does not make him brave, just forgetful.
“Do you remember your first lesson?” “Yes, Maestro.” “What did you do?” “I listened.” “That is right. And where you are going, you will also have to listen. When you listen, you learn. Remember that. In music and in life.”
You don’t need much to remember someone, Francisco. Even one thing will do.”
Dizzy Gillespie, the jazz trumpet player, once said, “It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.” He was one of my special ones. And he was quite correct. Silence enhances music. What you do not play can sweeten what you do.
El Maestro was an artist (his soul was surely mine), but his instincts were too musical for this life. He left out words as he left out notes.
That’s why your crew came, isn’t it? Death sells. Music, not so much.
Be it opium or absinthe, marijuana or heroin, cocaine or ecstasy or whatever will follow, you may alter your state, but you will not alter this truth: I am Music. I am here inside you. Why would I hide behind a powder or a vapor? Do you think me so petty?
He thought of the hairless dog and the phonograph in El Maestro’s flat. He thought of all the parts of his life he had left behind. He was suddenly and profoundly sad. This trip was exciting, but he was still a child, and all children eventually want to go home.
I have said that music allows for quick creation. But it is nothing compared with what you humans can destroy in a single conversation.
She knew, in war, it was sometimes better not to know a name.
The world, to Frankie, just kept getting larger, and everyone in it was getting harder to find.
For my disciples, the map is simple. All lonely roads lead back to music. I embrace you. I forgive you. I will never leave you. Can humans say the same?
“You wanna keep making music for a livin’, son, you’re gonna have to be a lot of people. Some you’re gonna like being more than others.”
There are songs that you play that you have to restart, and songs that you play that you never get right. But when a song is complete, there is no more you can do.
Anyhow, being the daughters of a spy, truth and lies were often indistinguishable in our home.
That’s the way it worked between the two of them. Long periods of absence—then crazy, intense romance. I do believe she and Frankie belonged together, even if they rarely stayed together. It was as if they had a secret they were bound to, which made them joyful most of the time and insane the rest.
Maybe that’s why she and Frankie were attracted to each other. They were hardly allowed to be children when they were children, so when they were adults, they often acted like, well, children.
Artists believe that art makes all behavior acceptable. I do not agree. And I told him so.
This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times—or you will be useless.”
“Stop crying. Start playing.”
Inside all humans is the entirety of your memories, the ones you can access and the ones you cannot.
“Money and music are not friends.”
What would you give to remember everything? I have this power. I absorb your memories; when you hear me, you relive them. A first dance. A wedding. The song that played when you got the big news. No other talent gives your life a soundtrack. I am Music. I mark time.
He glanced around, expecting to be hit with a wave of emotion. But everything was different. The paint. The photos. The furniture. Rooms are rooms, after all, as a music staff is a music staff. How you fill them is what makes them your own.
HAD THEY ALL LEFT THAT DAY, OUR STORY WOULD BE DIFFERENT. But then, had many of you left places even one day earlier, the landscape of your lives would be rearranged. You cannot unplay your notes. Time, like music, is indelible that way.
Deep down, this had been his wish for years, seeking what every student desperately seeks from a beloved teacher: final approval.
Homecomings are never predictable. And there are few things emptier than applause when you feel you don’t deserve it.
