‘Who are you? What are you?’ I mean these were his first words. No ‘my name’s Hedrik and you are . . . ?’ holding out his hand to be shaken. Not a bit of it. Who are you, what are you? I mean, pardon? But then he’s a genius, you see, and they have different standards. They don’t need to stoop to the niceties, not when their heads are chock-full of . . . whatever it may be, tones, colours, visions, the likes of which the world has yet to fathom. Wars come and go, but Hedrik and his ilk come and go once only. There I go saying Hedrik and his ilk. His having an ilk at all was not something he cared to acknowledge, in fact he spat the word, as though I’d said something offensive, as if my saying ilk had meant that I saw him as one man among many, that there was an ilk from which he’d emerged or an ilk he belonged to, like some club. But the ilk of which I spoke was that of the elite, the pantheon of the greats, the most luminous of roll-calls there is. Once that was explained, he eased. As to the question who was I and what was I, I had no answer, which I suppose was answer enough in itself. But it was soon clear to him that, above all, I knew his music. I could hum the opening of his Palindromeda, could cite the shifts in rhythmic accent in his Strings Attached. The pathos of the toy-piano was known to me. There were rhythms I could mimic by tapping on a tabletop, whole sections I could whistle at the drop of a hat. He was perhaps impressed, despite himself. If so, it didn’t last. He was, unsurprisingly, upfront. ‘How can I put it,’ he said: ‘Fuck off.’ Just like that. I thought if he says anything like that again I’m just going to get up and walk out. His twilight years, these. Polly Tonal, I said, who was she? Just kidding. But seriously, polytonal, as distinct from atonal as distinct from parallel fifths all sixes and sevens and diminished this and augmented that and if the tone of C produces overtones of G and E the overtone G produceth subovertones of D or is it B whereas whole tone scales differing as they do from the diatonic bring to bear the atonal polyrhythmical dissonance such as heard in your Staccato-in-fucking D!
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