The quiet after the last note

I was in a tiny hall in Hackney today—bare walls, one chandelier with a broken bulb, and a piano that hadn’t been tuned since before the war. Played Schumann’s Kinderszenen like I’d never played it before: slow, clumsy, full of breath. The audience was two people and a dog on a leash. When I finished, no one clapped. Just silence, then the dog yawned. I stood there for a minute, not moving, listening to the air settle. That kind of stillness is rare. It doesn’t need applause. It just needs to be.