He began with a suspicion that something was wrong with language. Just slippery. Words promised clarity but delivered only negotiations. He would say love and someone heard obligation. He would say freedom and someone heard threat. He was a musician, which meant he spent his life defending the usefulness of something that could not be paraphrased. Sometimes people asked what a musical piece “meant.” He would try to answer politely. The explanations seemed like cardboard replicas of something alive. None of it felt accurate.

That night at the piano he played an unresolved motif. He noticed his body leaned toward certain notes before his mind could explain why. The left hand ostinato. The right hand wandered, searching. When he finally allowed the harmony to settle, something exhaled. The resolution was undeniable and he realized then words behave are just maps describing territory, disputing borders. Music is weather. Good luck arguing with rain. He still loved novels but music made sense in the way gravity makes sense. The next time someone asked him what his piece meant, he said, “It means,” he said, “exactly what it does.”