It's late on Saturday night and I've just returned from the benefit concert for the Help Lesotho cause, in which South African cellist extraordinaire, François le Roux, dazzled the audience with his one-man show consisting of cello, piano, organ, singing, whistling and dancing. The location was perfect; the wooden pews in the modest church held withered copies of the bible, with the edges of the books wrapped up in green duct tape, and the musty smell feeling familiar and intimate. While some of the performances went dangerously close to the cusp of my New Age limit, le Roux's sincerity and unique creativity more than made up for it. I especially enjoyed the parred down performances of a simple cello or piano being played. One piano composition moved me in particular; the artist picked a woman from the crowd at random and asked her to play any five or six keys on the electric piano. She clearly did not know how to play and tinkered out six lone notes, notes that did not seem to mesh together or make any sense on their own, especially in comparison to the complex music we'd been listening to for the past hour. The musician paused for a few moments in meditation, and walked away from his keyboards and organ to seat himself at the church's small old piano in a corner. The room was so quiet - almost uncomfortably so - that even my breathing seemed inappropriate. Finally, he played out the exact notes the woman had just invented. Another pause. Then repeated them, this time with a most subtle slowness and rythm. It was exactly as the woman had done, except slightly more elegant, more refined, more purposeful. Another pause, and this time I held my breath. What could one possibly do with such notes?, I wondered, almost embarassed. As though answering my thought, le Roux's fingers fell in a sudden cascade of soft passion over the keys. With every second new sounds emerged from the piano, each one more complex and gorgeous than the last, all the while maintaining the basic tune of those six simple notes. I sat through the improvised composition mesmerized, as though frozen by the complete bewilderment that had washed over my entire being. The artist's brilliance, skill and passion were almost shocking, and I grasped the pew in front of me as I continued to listen to the beautiful music that made complete sense, and that seemed to have existed in the artist's brain for years. I became so moved as to feel the hairs standing up on my flesh, with my heart feeling as though it would burst from my chest, and my teardrops carelessly forming small dark spots on my clothes. No regular old Saturday night in some bar could have ever replaced hearing that song this evening.

Hours later, I can still hear those lone notes that became the foundation for a composition of delicate beauty, and that is where blogs fail miserably, almost ridiculously; because if I could I would sit with you now and hum those small six notes to you as your read my words - perhaps play them myself if a piano were within reach - and allow you to imagine and believe that something amazing could be born from simplicity and chaos.

But it is past midnight now, and though you will not hear the music I have heard and still hear in my mind, perhaps you will be inspired or excited by the thought and possibility of it. And so I bid you goodnight, but not before bringing up another music-related matter, one that may unfortunately wreck the softness of the message above, but must be asked nonetheless:

Which one of you bozos in Ottawa bought the last Kings of Convenience CD at The Record Runner? Fess up. I called on Tuesday to make sure they had a copy since no one else in the city carries it, and they still had one left - but when I showed up on Friday it was gone, and now I have to import it from Germany and wait two months. So I went on and on about their music, so what? Couldn't YOU special order it since I discovered them first? Bozos!

Ah, what music does to me - it isn't human sometimes...