Friday March 9, 2018

A character on a TV show speaks to me. “They have forgotten who and what we are,” she explains. “Make them remember. Absorb without preconception or distortion. Finish the mission. Unlock the box that needs unlocking.” A cartoon squirrel attempting to crack a safe eyes me over its shoulder and says, “Tell me you have some experience with this sort of thing. Tell me you’ve done this before.” After several false starts—car horns, permutations of notes plucked casually from the strings of a banjo, the vibrations of a bouncing spring—I swell, I advance, I invent for myself the finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture.