It is the activity that can bring us together during these lockdown times, but it is also something that can frustrate us beyond reason. No, not playing the piano, or trying to make a croquembouche. The activity in question is the humble jigsaw puzzle.
A mate of mine, Kathy, decided recently to start a 1,000-piece puzzle with her family. After a few lockdown days, Kathy was ultimately deserted by her children and her husband and left, alone, to complete the puzzle. Wine in hand, late at night Kathy came to put in the final piece. Except once she had, there was a problem. There was still a hole. A hole for a single piece. You can imagine the howls from Kathy. She looked everywhere. Under the rugs, the violin case, the school books, the dog, the husband, and nope, nada.
At this point, the problem of a jigsaw puzzle changes completely. From a convergent problem where there is an end, the puzzle has turned into a divergent problem, one without end. A Buddhist koan is a classic example of a divergent problem: what is the sound of one hand clapping? But convergent problems are remarkably restful for the brain. Sudoku, crossword puzzles, a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle which actually has 1000 pieces. Cooking is a combination of the two types, and so is playing music. The convergence of scales and exercises, and the divergence of interpretation.
So what could Kathy do? Would she make her own piece and try to hide it amongst the rest of the puzzle? Or would she make a piece that completed the puzzle, but stood out in its difference, like the Japanese art of repair, Kintsugi? Or would Kathy leave the hole unfilled, a metaphor for life always somehow being perfect in its incompleteness?
And what about incomplete pieces of the music? Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s and Beethoven’s and Mahler’s incomplete symphonies? The works left simply as musical sketches? Would we start a puzzle if we knew all the pieces were not present, and would we listen to a piece of music, knowing the end will never be written? What would we begin, knowing it will never be finished?
It’s clear, isn’t it? We do listen to those incomplete pieces of music. We relish their imperfection, just like a 1000-jigsaw puzzle with 999 pieces, and just like our lives.
Ed Ayres presents Weekend Breakfast on ABC Classic (Saturday and Sunday 6am – 9am).