The musician began to suspect that composition was a form of cowardice. To plan a piece in advance was to erect a wall. Improvisation, by contrast, required faith so he told himself. He sought the old librarian, rumoured to have played the violin well before retreating into books. “I decided,” the musician said, “I will only improvise. To plan is to hide.” The librarian closed the volume he was reading. “From whom are you hiding?” “From the audience. If I prepare, I control the outcome. If I improvise, I surrender.”

“And what do you imagine they will do with your surrender?”

“They may reject it. They may find it dull.”

The librarian nodded. “You believe the verdict is boredom?”

“Yes.”

The librarian walked toward a long corridor of shelves. “These ones over here,” he said, “are written with immense planning. Some are unread. There are also notebooks filled with spontaneous reflections. They too are unread.”

“That is different, music is alive.”

“So is disappointment,” replied the librarian.

The musician sat down. “It’s more authentic to improvise.”

“Authentic to what?”

“To the moment.”

“But which moment,” said the librarian, “distraction, vanity, hunger, fear. Which will you be authentic to?”

The librarian returned to his chair. “When you plan, you fear the audience will detect calculation. When you improvise, you fear they will detect emptiness.”

“Advice?” he asked.

The librarian reopened his book. “Play,” he said. “And understand somewhere in the audience, someone will be bored. Another moved. A third will totally misunderstand. Their reactions are not a single thought but a maze.”

The musician left, carrying with him the terrible consolation that courage and preparation were merely different corridors in the same maze. He understood, dimly, that no arrangement of notes could secure universal forgiveness. Yet he continued to search for one, and it was this search that made him worthy of pity.