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ORIGINALLY, I NAMED this print Tonic, after the tonic chord in the key of C. The word tonic refers to the pitch a scale starts on, the first scale degree; a tonic chord is the first, third and fifth note of a musical scale.
But this picture isn’t that.
This pictures a mistake. The beginning and ending note, do, has a leger line through it like Middle C, the first note or first scale degree of the C scale. But take a look, the note is not in the C position, it is in the D’s place, the second-degree space directly below the staff. That makes the first note pictured a no-note— a fabrication. What a jarring displacement for a musician.
It reminds me of a quotation I’d pinned to my bulletin board for years.
If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-
turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the
man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man (or woman)
—C.S. Lewis
So why didn’t I hurry to the computer, open up InDesign and correct my mistake? Because it memorializes imperfection and reminds me that I’m no big know-it-all deal. My mistake turned into a embarrassing yet significant corrective moment.
You see, I’d been rather pleased with myself over a series of prints on musical themes and thought the friends I’d given them to would be equally pleased. I don’t think they knew what to do with them. My pictures are abstract metaphors; my friends are concrete realists. Their first words were to point out my mistake. They saw a musical confusion they didn’t know how to play.
For me, that was a tonic, a sharp awakening. One meaning for the word tonic happens to be a bracing or an awakening. The print is a tonic all right, just not the one I thought it would be. I decided not to correct it— at least not yet. Every time I look at it I feel a pinprick of pain in my heart that reminds me not to presume that I’ve got it right or know what others will think.
