Compaction

When you spend a lot of time recording a beautiful song, you compact the time as it were. You put a lot of hours of labor into a song that's over in three minutes. You can imagine it as a funnel where you throw tens of hours at the top, and under it a few minutes come out. When the song becomes a success song, you can experience the fact that many people start playing the song often. Then the time is stretched again, as everywhere in the country people experience them for three minutes time and time again. In this way, the minutes accumulate up to many hours, and a reverse funnel is created. At the top you throw three minutes once, and at the bottom a lot of hours come out again. The two funnels together form a diabolo of time.

In my life, I have built funnels countless times, and a diabolo once. Then I thought: if I try to put as little work as possible in a song, my funnels are always upside down. Then I can make sure that I only stretch the time and not compact it first. Then I improvise a song without thinking about it first, and I stretch the time. And if you stretch the time, you live longer. That way, by improvising, I can prolong my life.

But unfortunately, my nefarious plan fell apart when I realized that improvisation can never exist without prior labor. I've been practicing all my life. Every time I perform is rehearsal time for any subsequent improvisation. So I saw my dream of eternal life go up in smoke, and I again reluctantly reconciled with my mortality. I'm doomed to build funnels all my life, and I can only hope that occasionally there is a diabolo in between.

Artwork credit Diabolo: Małgosia Pea Tyczyńska

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