A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;
Ourselves in the tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place
Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them, on the blue guitar,
Placed, so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;
For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when
The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar
Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.
– Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar”
***
1. She’s smiling, enjoying herself and making playing the guitar look easy.
2. She has an audience of one sitting next to her (plus all of us!) making her playing a performance.
3. The music is acoustic, takes place outside, and the instrument doesn’t require electricity.
4. The music has a steady strummed rhythm, a sequence of chords (I-IV-I-V), and a melody that repeats with variations.
5. Look at her left hand technique on the guitar fretboard: her hand moves through a series of gestural shapes that keep the music continually changing in small ways despite its steady strummed rhythm and repeating chord sequence. This makes the performance feel longer than its 2:47 length.
6. Almost as soon as it has begun, the music is finished.
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