Author Archives: Jeremy Denk

Something leapt out at me in the President’s speech last night: My American ingenuity was stirred and perhaps even plucked; well heck, goshdarnit!, why not craft my own healthcare bill? Everybody’s doing it. How hard can it really be? … 111th Congress 1st Session HR _________, To provide affordable mental health care for American pianists; [...]

A week of 90s in Seattle … my hostess and I are both heading down delirium’s loopy driveway. The notes on the piano that I don’t feel like practicing swim in the heat. I flee to an air conditioned coffeeshop. Outside, nothing but blue sky and hipsters in shorts. The trembling tattooed hand of the [...]

The other night I woke up from a vivid dream in which Anne Midgette was trying to prove that Charles Ives was gay using musical examples from his First Piano Sonata. The main thrust of this dream (so to speak) was clearly a reproach: I need to finish memorizing that monster of a piece before [...]

In April, I drifted off course, steadily. I can’t decide if I was the Titanic or the Exxon Valdez. Icebergs massed around me in the gloom of my pleasures. The boat needed a captain, but the captain was tired of giving orders, had had enough, and perhaps not without cause. Now we are here in [...]