Mixed Metaphors (and other grammatical sins)

I’ve always had sort of a fondness for mixed metaphors. Born of confusion (or is it “borne of”, I never can remember), they have a certain charm in that, while non-sensical if taken literally, they nonetheless always convey a clear meaning. Except when they don’t of course. Then you’d like to steer them back to port, but that ship has already sailed on the water under the burned bridge. Or maybe I should say “bridges” since I’m purportedly talking about music for two bridge-building instruments (that’s a metaphor) — that actually have their own bridges! (That’s not.) On the other hand (worth two in the bush, by the way), we don’t want to burn them at both ends. Or at all, because burning the bridges means you’d burn the instruments too, and burning instruments is something I can’t condone. So maybe not. (“Not” here refers to saying “bridges”, try to keep up please.) But I digress from my digression…

Anyway, regardless of the irregardlyness of it, those amalgamated analogies can be the friends who guide us through the storm into the calm before it. If they’re friends who can travel backwards in time of course. You know, like that guy in that movie.

In any case (not to be confused with an instrument case, and by the way, you might want to think about getting a fireproof one next time), the wonderly mishmash of violin and pipa strikes me out as something of a mixed metaphor, a tangled combination that shouldn’t make sense, but somehow doesn’t not.

And that was my starting point for this piece, where these two amazing instruments (and amazing musicians I get to write for, lucky devil-definitely-cares me!) are put through a musical blender to try to cook up (wait a minute, that one actually worked) something that doesn’t make sense, but in a way that makes sense. If that makes sense. So I apologize if I’ve let you down the wrong path on that ship that drifted under that a fortnight mentioned burned bridge. (Has it really been two weeks already?!)

In any case (and, to be clear as mud, this is a different “In any case” than the one above), if it helps (I know, I know, not likely), you can think of it like this: Mixed Metaphors uses the instruments as a metaphor of things that are mixed, but isn’t a mixed metaphor itself, even though it mixes them. The music sometimes gets mixed up, but that really isn’t a metaphor, except sometimes it might be. And while the program note is humorous (gosh, I sure hope so anyway), the piece isn’t really, though I will say it’s a bit quirky at times. So that right there’s a couple more things that are mixed, in a way that — if I may reach for the stairs — justifies writing these notes (get the double entendre there??) when they don’t fully reflect the Mother Nature of the music. (Not nice to fool Her, but your audience is OK…) The bottom line of the barrel is that the program notes are more an accompaniment to the piece than a description of it. Both of them jump around between ideas and get twisted up in nots (knot that you would no), but in the end know instruments got burned.

Mixed Metaphors was commissioned by and is dedicated to Patrick Yim. It mixes musical metaphors for about 9 minutes or so, and then it doesn’t anymore.