He settled his long, thing fingers across the keys, began by testing a scale, then fell into a rhythm. His left hand worked chord changes with confidence, then the right came in, tapping out high notes like a chickadee’s call, music as anarchic and hopeful as a summer afternoon in Central Park. Benjamin’s fingers fell in loopy circles like sycamore seeds to the ground, and then, to give the tune an improvised bridge, he clanked out hectic downtown rhythms, musical analogies for the coffee roasting and the docks clanking below the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the city he was he giving his father, a welcome-home gift wrapped in klezmer blues.

– Gabriel Brownstein, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W”

For eight weeks out of the last eleven, I tried to talk about music like it was a novel, and failed every single time.