The Invisible Piano

By Nathan Payne | pablosmoglives | 5 Jan 2025

"Never trust a writer whose work cannot be played on the piano."
Pablo Keats-Kerouac Smog

I don't remember the quote exactly, but Pablo Keats-Kerouac Smog once said something to the effect that you should never trust a writer who doesn't know that a typewriter (or computer keyboard) is a piano, and that all true writers are concert pianists at heart, whether they're aware of it or not.

The degree to which you malign, mock, deface, or disregard the beauty of the music of the invisible piano in your head (or anybody's head) is the degree to which you enable a culture of artistic and emotional abuse.

A capital offense, punishable by a terminal inability to tell the difference between a soundfile and a song,

Followed by an

Eternity.

In hell.

"A War To End Wars" by Sylvia Plath, 1946

I don't remember the exact quote, but Pablo Plath-Bukowski once lamented the inability of the music of the invisible piano to exorcise light from the darkened heart of man, to set butterflies of sunlight free from the grave of zombie life as,

Fiercely in the hinterlands,

The black swan burns.

The Chilean word-pianist Pablo Neruda-Smog once observed that you start dying slowly if you do not stop scrolling,

And that it takes more courage and awareness

To stroll away from danger,

Than it does to run

In fear.

The Spanish songbird farmer Antonio Machado-Smog once reminded the wanderers that a library is a flock of birds, that flocks of birds are singing libraries, and that there is no road, only wakes upon the sea.

He also said that "in order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it," which is a polite warning against enabling a culture of artistic and emotional abuse,

Like a beautiful lady without mercy,

Alone and palely loitering,

Who would inhibit any future libraries of song

From taking to the sky.