I am currently leaning over a Steinway Model L with a tuning lever in my right hand and a persistent, throbbing sensation behind my left eye. Owen J.-M. stands next to me, his head tilted like a bird’s, listening for a frequency that doesn’t quite exist yet. He’s been a piano tuner for 34 years, and he tells me that most people don’t notice a piano is out of tune until it sounds like a honky-tonk in a thunderstorm. By then, the pinblock is often cracked, or the soundboard has lost its crown.
‘It’s the drift,’ he says, his voice a low rasp. ‘The drift starts 4 months before you can hear it. It’s the ghost notes, the tiny vibrations that shouldn’t be there, humming under the actual music.’
I feel that drift in my own neck right now. I cracked it too hard this morning-a sharp, stupid twist to the right because I felt ‘stiff’-and now there is a metallic ringing in my ear that feels like it’s tuned to a sharp B-flat.
The Unheard Frequency
For the Soundboard to Crack
To the Ghost Notes First
The Graveyard of Minor Grievances
We are a culture of people who wait for the soundboard to crack. We have been conditioned to believe that if a symptom isn’t loud enough to stop us from working 44 hours a week, it doesn’t actually exist. We treat our bodies like high-mileage
















