There was a musician who travelled from teacher to teacher asking how to find his voice, although he already possessed a voice and used it constantly to explain that he hadn’t found one. He discussed the missing voice in interviews, described its absence in grant applications, and occasionally informed audiences that the composition they were about to hear represented another important stage in his search for the thing he was presently using to tell them about the search. Eventually he heard about an old pianist who played every Thursday in a hotel lounge where nobody listened except a bartender polishing the same glass for twenty-three years and a stuffed moose whose opinion of contemporary harmony remained unknown.

The pianist was said to be the shit, although nobody could remember who first said this or whether shit was complimentary at the time. “Teach me your secret,” the musician said. “I don’t have one,” said the pianist. This was disappointing because the musician had driven four hours and gas was becoming so expensive he had begun considering whether enlightenment might be available closer to home. “How did you find your style?” “I stopped looking for it.” “How?” “I became interested in everything else.” At that exact moment an elevator opened and nobody got out. The old pianist nodded toward it as if this proved something. The musician suspected the pianist was withholding information, which naturally made him seem much wiser, so he returned every Thursday and watched him play.

Sometimes the old man was magnificent, sometimes terrible, sometimes both during the same eight bars. Once he stopped halfway through a song, stared at his hands and began playing an entirely different song in another key. The musician was certain he’d forgotten what came next, which he found shocking. “Weren’t you embarrassed?” “I was,” said the pianist. “Then I became embarrassed about being embarrassed, and after that embarrassment became embarrassed for both of us. There were too many people at the piano, so I asked everyone to leave.” “Who left?” “Nobody. That’s when it improved.”

The musician wrote this down and immediately regretted writing it down. Years passed and somehow the man searching for his voice became successful. Reviewers described his “unmistakable voice,” which disturbed him because apparently strangers had located something he’d spent twenty years failing to find. One critic called it “uniquely his,” another detected “the unmistakable influence of his early period,” although the musician hadn’t known he’d had an early period while he was having it. Meanwhile he noticed someone attending every concert. This person followed him from town to town, criticized every wrong note, remembered every bad review, distrusted compliments and became deeply suspicious whenever an audience applauded. At first the musician assumed this person was his enemy. Eventually he discovered it was himself. This was inconvenient because he’d already paid for both of their hotel rooms. Worse, he discovered another version of himself who appeared whenever things went well and whispered, They’re finally beginning to understand your importance.

The musician realized the critic and the flatterer were the same creature wearing different hats, and both wanted the same job: conductor. One night he sat at the piano and, through some error in the Department of Consciousness, forgot to determine whether he was playing well. He played for several minutes before realizing nothing inside him was taking notes. No committee, no grant jury, no imaginary reviewer, no younger version demanding an explanation, only ten fingers wandering around eighty-eight keys while somewhere inside the piano a small black horse galloped through a forest made of only Thursdays. When the solo ended, the audience applauded. He heard them but didn’t entirely believe them.

Afterward a woman approached and said, “Tonight you finally found yourself.” The musician thanked her and went looking for his coat. The coat wasn’t where he’d left it. Perhaps it had found itself too. He walked home without it, and somewhere between the hotel and a closed laundromat he began whistling a melody he’d never heard before. He tried to remember it and the melody changed. He tried harder and it changed again. Finally he stopped trying and the tune wandered ahead of him through the empty street, turned a corner without permission and disappeared. For once he didn’t follow it.