The Conversation About Tone Poems

Skateboards? I almost made them respectable.



"I've been reading it," she said. "And I like it."

Great.

"But. I don't understand."

There's not much to understand. It is what it is.

"Yeah. But what is it?"

Well...

I think of it as a series of tone poems.

"But it's not. I don't think you even know what a tone poem is."

Sure I do. It's a short piece of prose designed to evoke a certain feeling or emotion.

"No. A tone poem is a single-movement symphony that tells the story of a poem or painting. That thing you're talking about? It doesn't even exist."

Oh.

Well that's how I think of it.

And that's what 'tone poem' should mean.

"This is your problem," she said. "It's always been your problem."

And I stared at her, wondering why she became so rigid and so literal. I knew then what I'd never known before -- how lucky I was that we didn't wind up together. And I couldn't get this song (a perfect modern tone poem as far as I'm concerned) out of my head:


And she shook her head sadly and said "When are you going to learn that you can't just make shit up?"

Not yet.

Not just yet.