The music, well, it doesn't come from me. My fingers don't even touch the keys, you see. Nobody ever questions as to why I demand that I remain behind a curtain; not in front of the nightly audience, taking accolades over Mateus, and howl with the bartender, Allen. "The music's more important, Neal." I explained to Mr Cassady when I began at the old restaurant bar. "It's not about me. Never has been, never will be." He merely needed somebody to play the old brown piano on the nights a crowd wasn´t up for sing-along jazz. He couldn't care less whether they had any talent or not. The holy fool didn´t even mind the curtain. He and the manager had ´rescued´ it from the old theatre in downtown Denver. The cityś transforming the joint into more apartments. The city is booming. The hotel above now charges $6.50 a night, but its ecstasy has been lost since the early years of the Beatniks. You'd think it'd been debilitate, centring all that intensity night after night? However, the most exceedingly lousy thing I, at any point, walk away with is a deadness from spending the entire night on a piano stool. You can't complain about finger spasms when they aren't even touching the keys, you see. The most magnificent evenings are the ones when there are individuals with significant issues: broken hearts, recent loss, and human problems. I feel their energy is the most educating, and the piano feeds on it like a mosquito sucking blood, plumping up its mid-region with all that life sauce. For me, it just feels sweltering and thick – like a wet summer inside your heart. I sit behind my velvet curtain and tune in to the clink of cutlery; wine pouring from bottles; servers removing orders with courteousness fit from the likes of New York and San Francisco. I lay my hands above the piano and close my eyes. I've attempted it with them open – it's interesting, the way the keys move like imperceptible fingers are squeezing them – yet it doesn't achieve the same result. I can't channel them into that moment and emotion. There were complaints about the pianist that evening, the manager, Mr Kerouac informed me. Since that day, eyes closed with only whispers from my fingers. People leave in tears relatively every night I am behind the curtain. Sometimes joy, sometimes its entirely something new. "That piano, Neal," a regular named Carolyn once said. "It sounds like it's chasing what's in my blood while wickedly dancing with my heart." They adore it. They feel understood. Less desolate, I assume. I, also, feel the heaviness of the substantial number of issues I've never had, every one of the diseases, battles of the heart and betrayals. It resembles reading a good book: it reaches out and talks to specifically you. The paper-bound life is unified with immense love; however once it's over, you return to your life like nothing's changed. Pages will keep turning; the tune will continue evolving. That's how the music was created. On the off chance that they ever pull back the curtain, it's finished. I'll quit being their observer and they'll see me: the one who conducts the draining of their hearts, someone who can't see the music. A man who doesn't even touch the keys, you see.