A pianist contemplates an electronic toy from their childhood and their ambivalent relationship with their instrument. Driven by a desire to hear what does not sound, they try to erase the sound of their instrument. Each performance of the work is an attempt at this, and at the same time a memory of all previous attempts, which, faded and distorted, interrupt the present.

Part 1: The Toy

As a child, I was gifted an electronic toy instrument. The manufacturers called it a xylophone, but to me, it has always been a piano.

I didn’t particularly like the sounds coming from the toy. But I liked the feeling of pressing its buttons and turning its knobs.

Preferably, I turned down the volume as low as possible.

It frustrated me that even with the volume at its lowest setting, I could still hear the toy’s electronic sounds. It did not occur to me to play the instrument with the electronics turned off.

Playing the piano, I press the keys so slowly that the hammer never reaches the string. That final point of resistance—where the strike should take place but doesn’t—is where the most beautiful sound is created.

Wanting to remove the other sounds from the piano, I muted all its strings. The strikes were still too loud. I removed the strings. But now that the hammers’ ability to hit the strings was lost, the absence of their striking did not sound the same. Perhaps it was not the striking itself that was the problem, rather what they made resonate. I replaced the strings with other material: wood, plastic, fabric. But none of the materials came close to the silence that sounds in the absence of a sound.

Part 3: What Was Remembered

A story
That was told
Before falling asleep
When the eyes begin to close
Slowly
Falling
When it was told
The words didn’t come through
Only the sound
Of the voice
Which, as the eyes
Were falling shut
Disappeared
What is heard then
Is the silence
That sounds
With the fading
Of the voice
The next time
The story was told
The voice disappeared
With the very first words
That weren’t heard
But the eyes
Did not close

Eveline Vervliet