There are instruments that behave like furniture—faithful, familiar, always there when you need them. And then there are instruments that behave like stars.
If the trumpet were a star, it would be the Sun. Not metaphorically, but in temperament: warm, sovereign, impossible to touch without being changed. If the violin were a star, it would be a supernova. Its vibrations tear through galaxies. They leave trails of light in places that never knew they needed illumination.
I’ve been thinking about this because of Tear.
My friend insisted I upload it to SoundCloud, and I did, reluctantly. I expected silence. Instead, I got comments—real ones, thoughtful ones. Most listeners gravitated toward the keyboard edit. It’s the version that behaves like a room you can walk into. It’s accessible. It’s furniture.
But my heart belongs to the brass edit.
Not because it’s better. Because it’s the one I can’t reach.
I once tried to play the trumpet. “Tried” is generous. Out of hundreds of attempts, I produced exactly one note. It was a long, horrifying, out-of-tune wail. It sounded like a dying star collapsing under its own ambition. Trumpetists do something supernatural: they shape the aperture of their lips at the exact threshold where sound becomes wind. They summon tone from breath, from pressure, from the invisible. They whisper into metal and the metal answers.
I couldn’t do it. My body refused. My lips refused. My breath refused.
And yet that failure became a metaphysics.
Because the trumpet is not an instrument you play. It’s an instrument you become. It demands a surrender of ego. It requires a calibration of self. You must be willing to stand at the edge of silence and push through. It is the Sun: radiant, unforgiving, generous only to those who approach with devotion.
The keyboard, by contrast, is a companion. It meets you halfway. It forgives your clumsiness. It lets you translate emotion into melody without asking for a sacrifice. It’s the furniture of my musical life—solid, familiar, always ready.
But the brass edit of Tear is the version where I tried to touch the Sun.
It’s the sound of reaching for something I can’t physically do. It’s the sound of longing for a note I will never produce with my own breath. It’s the sound of failure alchemized into beauty.
Maybe that’s why people relate to the keyboard version. It’s human. It’s accessible. It’s the room.
But the brass version is the window.
It’s the reminder that some stars are not meant to be played with. They’re meant to be worshiped from a distance. Their warmth is felt but never held.
And maybe that’s enough.
@pencilmagmen 