In 2005 The Piano Man was found wandering the streets of Sheerness in a soaking wet suit and tie
he didn't say a word.
When presented with pad and pen he simply drew a grand piano.
His nurses sat him in front of a beat up old upright
he played for four hours straight;
for four months his hands were the only things to break his silence.
Alexandre Dumas said "man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy."
Do you ever think about how Beethoven hacked the legs off his piano so he could feel the sounds he couldn't hear in his head, through his chest?
And Van Gogh heard the sounds his paintings made but kept going until his sanity
was just a memory floating on a distant river under a tired Milky Way.
And you see, like a Gaelic folk song blindness runs red through my family,
so I know it's not much but I'm here, still trying to mould my hands to say the right form of 'I love you'.
And did you know that the human heart beats over 30 million times a year, but we still have a hard time keeping our feet on the ground?
And did you know that the act of breaking in a horse is actually the act of breaking it's back?
Like we can't sit without sitting on broken things.
And did you know that every time a mobile phone sends out a GPS signal a bee loses it's way home, and every bee that doesn't reach it's hive dies?
So on nights when your pulse matches the beat of my favourite song
you don't have to wonder if it's me matching the syncopation of your silence --
and I wonder if you ever found what you were looking for.
And I wonder if you realise that on days you're not here I roll up my sleeves,
count the beats without you,
sit on the backseat and miss you.
And somewhere The Piano Man rolls up his sleeves
creates the Big Bang under his fingertips.
And in 2005 on an April morning in Sheerness, a suited piano man walks straight into the ocean,
begs the current to take him.
I send you a message
a bee loses it's way home.
I send you another
another bee dies.
My chest cavity is a bumble bee crypt,
my tongue a honeyed graveyard.
Another message.
The Big Bang.
The hive.
A suit.
That ocean.
Another back is broken.
Another message is sent.
I fear I am more honeycomb than heart.
To create is to destroy. To destroy is to succeed.
And would you just look at what these piano hands have finally done.
Grace beadle 2014