I have played
for six people,
thirteen people,
twenty-seven hundred people,
confused bartenders,
and springer spaniels
whose commitment to artistic inquiry
was superior to many festival programmers.

The posters promised
AN EVENING OF EXTRAORDINARY MUSIC.

My manager,
which is occasionally me,
explains these things
using the language of algorithms,
branding,
audience development,
and pharmaceuticals.

Then I sit at the piano
and none of those words
know where the entry point is for

the most meaningful improvisations.

Some nights
I imagine the parallel universe
where I accepted the television contest,
smiled more,
played fewer departure chords,
and never mentioned
politics,
or mortality.

Perhaps there
I’m signing someone’s keyboard
outside a bar.

Instead,
I know the first names
of theatre technicians
from Nelson,
Regina,
Gimli,
and Powell River.
I know who owns the upright
with the sticky G-sharp.
I know which church basement
has a historical display that amazes.
This knowledge
will never appear
on Spotify for Artists.

The internet insists
that success is scalable.

Music insists
that one person
crying quietly
in the third row
counts as an event
the accountants
have no column for.

I stopped arguing.

The audience arrives
one at a time.

Sometimes bring friends.

Sometimes don’t.

Sometimes buy the book.

Sometimes apologize
for not buying the book
as though we had survived
a minor war together.

The strange part is this.

I keep going.

Not because I believe
next Tuesday
the algorithm will awaken
wearing a halo
and carrying a cheque.

I keep going
because somewhere
between the gas station coffee,
the soundcheck,
the broken piano bench,
and the applause
of seventeen strangers,
the universe occasionally leans over
and whispers,

“Nice try, fool.

Do it again.”