Kimothy: id like to welcome michael philips-screwdriver to the 1781PNA HQ, that’s head quarters, not high quality. now, screwdriver...

Mitch: call me michael

K: now michill, you are an accomsplashed pianist and concert pianist with many accolades, acolytes and public performances spanning a long career lasting over, well, lets see, it’s been over a long time

M: 30 years, yes

K: right and what our viewers of this blabazine are chomping at the bit to find out is how do *you* play the piano?

M: well, it takes years of practice, obviously starting when one is young and through that practice one builds up an ability to

K: yes but how do you play the piano?

M: there is a great deal of practice in building up technique, learning to read music and

K: what i’m driving at here is how, i really mean to ask how, do you play the piano?

M: i’m not sure what...

K: Machel, are you using your hands?

Both: (a pause)...

K: are you, mikhael, using your hands to play the piano?

M: ... well of course i am using my hands how else would...

K: and with those hands how do you get the noise from the instrument?

M: do you genuinely not know how a piano works?

K: genuinely.

M: i had thought that you wanted to interview me to find out about my technique and how, for example, i got to Carnegie Hall

K: was it by practice, man, practice?

M: Yes it was

K: what is a piano really, I mean when you really get down to it what is this big box of strings and hammers and switches that can be manipulated to create sound? I mean *really*?

M: Well now I’m glad you asked that as a matter of factobakto because you see most people who interview me, me, me are sycophantic pseudo intellectuals who are all wondering what car I drive and pretending that the only thing in life that matters is the universe, when in actualllywally factujaftu is that what rilly mutters is the origin of the piano as a shape shifting cloaking device from the bronze age.

K: I’m certain it isn’t that.

M: well what is it then because as a tool for simply producing music and nothing more it fails miserably. It was once an orange cheese, no it wasn’t I’m mistaken, it was once a dreary old thing and then, and then along came Jass.

K: Jazz surely.

M: yes the means through which a human being can travel through time and space at astronomical, sic, pace simply by manipulating the controls, those black and white keys, all eighty-bumgurgling-eight of them. it is quite extraordinary when you think about it. that’s what I use my hunds fur.

K: are you sure it isn’t the eroin?

M: stop being fafecæs, man, mam. it isn’t all evans’s. would be odd if it were.

K: jazz, the final frontier, not space, not jace, not spazz, just ... jazz.

M: if you like, yes.

K: how does a boy who grew up in the forests become an andrew carnooglie hull success with this joozz?

M: practice, man, practice. I sat down to play the organ at the Not Redham cathedral, where was I going with this? yes, I mean you can spend hours alone looking out of the window or you can spend hours alone looking out of the window or you can end hours alone jumping out of a window but if you have nothing but trees and a piano and maybe the feeling that it’s all just Finnish forests so what’s the bloody point then sooner or the other one you are going to find yourself looking back at the window you have jumped from and what do you know, you have landed on a Steinway.

K: what’s a Steinway?

M: It’s a kind of piano.

K: so it’s not a piano, but it is similar to a piano, right.

M: no, it is a piano, of a particular type.

K: fortuitous. did it break the fall or did it add to the injury?

M: everything adds to the misery

K: on the Steinway, on the Steinway. Turn left at the traffic lights.

M: I beg your pardon?

K: In the pedestrian zone. How old where you when you learned to read music? I mean the dots on the lines type of music.

M: Younger than I am today, I, donut, remember. How old where you when you learned to... what is it you do?

K: It’s not an article about me, it’s you my editor is interested in and you the readers are interested in. I’m known for my ability to war correspond.

M: You’re a war horrorspondant?

K: No, I war correspond. How old?

M: You first. About nine or so, maybe thirteen.

K: Years I suppose. Quite a gap, four years, couldn’t marrow it down could you? Make it a little more zucchini?

M: Nine then, and tell the readers I was practicing Beetroothoven by the time I was eight, on the Oboe. Classical music always sounds best on the Oboe.

K: Why the capitalization of oboe?

M: Oh you can hear that can you? Well it’s because it’s a proper noun isn’t it? Town in Scotland north of.

K: Surely that’s Oban? I had an uncle who played the Oban? Drunkard he was. Uncle Gavin we called him on account of

M: That was his name!

K: No, he was in love with a man called Gavin. Our uncles name was Murray. My father’s brother, surname escapes me to this day; I don’t think I ever knew it.

M: Names are funny like that, one minute they’re there, the next they’re living with Mormons in Idaho.

K: Are you good on the Oboe?

M: Better on the Tuba!

K: I won’t ask. Do you know the one that goes: pump-pum-pump harump-dee-dump?

M: Johann Hummel?

K: I just did, and well. We’ll gloss over it for now. It’s your finger-jive on the ebony and ive-ory we’re most interested in today. You’ve released a new recording that will be made available to the public this coming September?

M: Initial printing is some one hundred copies on digital download alongside 56000 cassette tapes. You can get a copy by going to our website and asking politely, if we like your personality we’ll ask you to pay a sum of money to cover the cost of production plus a fee for our profits, and then we’ll send you a cylinder in the post for you to play on your phonograph. I’m leaving now.

K: So be it, thank you Mr. Machyl Fillips Rue d’Iver, it’s been talking to you

M: And you, sir.