A cadenza for solo Big Drum

The world is full of people who want to write. Of course they can write. Everybody in the civilized world, with a tiny group of exceptions, can set down in words what they have seen, or felt, or what they need or think they need. But that is not what they mean. They want to write books. They want to be authors. It is astonishing how this passion rages in so many innocent bosoms.
And of course many of them do write, and even achieve publication, for reasons that have nothing to do with Literature.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if, instead of teaching children for the past century or so to use the Roman alphabet, the educational authorities had taught them to use musical notation. Can you imagine what concert-going would be like? A typical symphony concert might begin with a rollicking overture called Poet and Peasant: I’ve Had ‘Em All, by some notorious Hollywood harlot. Next would come a Symphonic Poem, called My Life in Politics: Spilling the Beans, by an ex-Cabinet Minister. The hightlight of the concert would be an immensely long symphony, called simply Appassionata, with innumerable sexual climaxes, culminating in a real beauty – a cadenza for solo Big Drum.
It is undoubtedly a mercy that people have been taught to express themselves in words alone.

The peeled eye [fragment]

uit: The merry heart : reflections on reading, writing and the world of books - Robertson Davies

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