A girl has been playing on the guitar. She is pretty, and if I didn't
listen to her I could have watched her, and if I didn't watch her I
could have listened. Her voice, the movements of her body, the
expression of her face, all said the same thing. A player of a different
temper and body would have made all different, and might have been
delightful in some other way. A movement not of music only but of life
came to its perfection. I was delighted and I did not know why until I
thought, 'That is the way my people, the people I see in the mind's eye,
play music, and I like it because it is all personal, as personal as
Villon's poetry.' The little instrument is quite light, and the player
can move freely and express a joy that is not of the fingers and the
mind only but of the whole being; and all the while her movements call
up into the mind, so erect and natural she is, whatever is most
beautiful in her daily life. Nearly all the old instruments were like
that, even the organ was once a little instrument, and when it grew big
our wise forefathers gave it to God in the cathedrals, where it befits
Him to be everything. But if you sit at the piano, it is the piano, the
mechanism, that is the important thing, and nothing of you means
anything but your fingers and your intellect.