i# STEAL THIS CD

In my day-job, clerking in the music de-
partment of a large, chain bookstore, it
is  often  my duty to flip, compact disc
by compact disc, through our  inventory,
in search of the small magnetic stickers
the company affixes to the recordings as
theft  preventers.   Found  cut from the
packaging cellophane and wadded  between
disks,  they are the telltale sign of an
attempt to steal  the  disk  from  which
they came.  They are a record (evidence,
if you will) of the  musical  tastes  of
the  larcenously-inclined segment of our
population.

Most are stickers for the music of popu-
lar  rap  music acts, like Eminem or The
Black-Eyed Peas.  Perhaps,  then,  there
is  some  degree of truth to the reputa-
tion such music enjoys as a  breeder  of
anger,  hatred,  gangsterism, theft, the
smacking up of ’ho’s and the busting  of
caps.

Perhaps.    But  today,  wadded  up  and
tucked out of the way somewhere  in  the
Rachmaninoff  section, I found the secu-
rity sticker for Morton Feldman’s  ‘Pat-
terns  in  a  Chromatic Field’ for cello
and piano.

I’m not making this up.

Certainly, it is more than possible that
the evident theft of one one of the most
anemic, listless pieces of music of  all
time,  by  one  of the most emphatically
un-hip composers of all time could  have
been a mere mistake; a crime of opportu-
nity committed by the  ignorant.   Won’t
the  would-be  criminal  be surprised to
hear the results of the theft?–

–just...   one...   note...    at   a...
time.

But–and  perhaps I’m being sentimental–I
prefer to think that someone walked into
that store with one thing on their mind:
“I’m gonna snag  me  some  super-concen-
trated,   post-expressionist   uber-mod-
ernism.”

And as  much  as  I  by-and-large  can’t
stand  more  than  five minutes of Feld-
man’s music at a time, it does my  heart
good  to  think someone could be willing
to go to that length to  listen  to  it.
Because  it  means  someone  still cares
about serious music.

If no one riots at premiers anymore,  as
they  famously  did in the earliest part
of the 20th century, perhaps they can at
least steal Morton Feldman CDs.

It’s a start, at any rate.
 Evans Winner
 Seattle, Washington
 December, 2005