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failing - tom johnson lyrics

[spoken word]
in failing, i am required to read a long text while playing music written above the text. the text must be read out loud at a more or less normal pace, and i must not allow the music to slow me down. the task is fairly easy for a while, because there is not much music, and most of it comes at the ends of clauses and sentences, almost like normal punctuation. later on, there is more music, and the task becomes more difficult – so difficult, in fact, that i will probably not be able to do it without either slowing down my reading speed or else making mistakes in the music. at least the composer feels confident that i will eventually begin to run into trouble, which is why he called the piece failing. so far, the task is still not that difficult. but the challenge is that, as the piece becomes more difficult, i must continue reading the text at a normal pace, and playing the music as well as possible, just as i did at the beginning. by now, i am already rather busy, just playing the notes and reading the text, but the text says i should also try to listen to what i am doing as much as possible, and speak loud enough to keep a balance between the speaking and the playing. ideally, both the speaking and the music should flow easily and naturally, so that the audience can easily follow either element at any time. sometimes the music has a strong aggressive quality, and i have to speak quite loudly to be heard. at other times, the music is lyrical, almost sentimental, and i must speak more softly, so that the speaking will not cover up the music. but i should make sure that the text is always easy to understand. if my voice fluctuates too much with the rises and falls of the music, the text may become difficult to understand, and that would be a form of failing, because the text makes it clear that the speaking should always be easy for the audience to understand, regardless of what happens musically. by now this task is already rather challenging. but i have practiced the piece quite a bit (and that is a fact, as well as simply a line in the text), so unless i am having a particularly bad night (day), i can still handle the music quite adequately, without slowing down my delivery of the text. i should be able to keep everything well in tune, and play the dynamic markings accurately. if i am concentrating well, i should even be able to maintain a good balance between the speaking and the playing, and remember to make the text easy to understand, even though the mood of the music sometimes changes radically. but soon the music becomes more difficult yet, and i will probably start failing in one way or another. i should point out, however, that i am not obliged to fail. after all, the audience can not see the score i am reading, and no one would be the wiser if i were simply to leave out whatever p-ssages i am unable to play. people might be very impressed by my playing and think that i had succeeded in playing a piece which the composer thought could not be played successfully by any b-ss player. but of course, leaving out the hardest parts like that, i would be cheating, and the performance would not really be a success at all, since the piece is about failing. by now failing is extremely difficult. that is, the piece called “failing” is extremely difficult. there are a few relaxed moments now and then, but most of the time i am required to play a tricky chromatic melody at a fast speed, and by now i am probably beginning to fail in one way or another. of course, i don’t particularly enjoy failing. sometimes i think it would be better if i cheated a little so that i would not fail too badly and so that people would be more impressed by my playing ability. but on the other hand, if i do my best, and play most of the music well, it should be clear that i am doing the task as well as anyone could expect me to do it. moreover, i will be interpreting the piece accurately, since it is obvious that failing is about failing, and if i succeed in playing everything accurately without slowing down my speaking, or cheating, or anything, i will fail to fail, and thus will miss the point. in a way, i almost want to fail, because everybody fails at certain times and in certain ways anyway, and because that is what the piece is about, and because i want to interpret it appropriately. but of course i must not try to fail. i must try to succeed in doing the task well, without slowing down, and without missing notes, even though, by now, it is almost impossible to succeed for very long. if i tried to fail, and then failed, that would be a kind of success, and not a failure at all. so i must try to succeed. that way, when i fail to succeed, i will succeed in communicating the essence of the piece, even though i will fail to accomplish the task as it is set up. in other words, i will not be able to fail unless i am trying to succeed, and i won’t succeed in interpreting the piece sensitively unless my performance turns out to be a failure. or, putting it another way, i will probably succeed in failing to succeed, not only because the music is so difficult, but also because, if i fail to succeed in failing to succeed, i will fail to fail and will miss the point, since failing is obviously about failing, and since any successful performance must be a qualified failure. in any case i am continuing to read the text and play the music as well as possible, attempting to maintain a normal pace and make the text comprehensible, and i am probably continuing to fail. but i should not be failing quite as often now as i was before, because the music is returning to some of the more lyrical material. even that material is difficult to play as expressively as i would like under these circ-mstances, but at least there is not much danger that i will miss notes. and if i concentrate, i can also maintain a good balance between the speaking and playing. soon, however, i will be faced with a fresh difficulty. the text is about to run out, but the music continues for another minute or so. during that time, i must decide for myself what to talk about as i play. my remarks are to be genuinely improvised, and should include specific references to this particular performance, and to the degree to which i have been failing, or failing to fail, or failing to succeed to fail, or whatever. as before, i must continue to speak at a normal pace, in a normal tone of voice, and maintain a balance between the speaking and the playing. as an additional challenge, i am supposed to link the written part of the text with the improvised part so smoothly that no one will be able to tell exactly where the improvised speaking began. [improvised speaking]

- tom johnson lyrics

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