How sweet it is that when he sings he knows when he is right. His ideal of right comes not by the prescripts of musical theory but instead from a feeling emanate within him. Letting his voice exist this way is not always pleasant. He knows of harmonically chaste ascensions as a state of pure pretty and he knows of visceral hard on the chords catharcisisms as gutteral caucophony. His mind unravels to the time and if he conjects dissonance it doesn't necessarily sound wrong to him. Wrong is more a conflict between his voice and his core. It exhibits like the nag of an infidelity-- it starts at the head and sickens the body. But, when he sings right his whole breath builds and his body tenses into all his practiced specifics until finally, it settles into a sublime let-go, one he can maintain for a significant while. His words follow, and when, with his breath, his body, they come together perfectly, he reaches a state of nirvana.
In the center of a hardwood stage, bourbon brown, he has his mic-stand positioned. With specifics developed from years of experience the microphone is set to project its reach right into the depths of him. Hanging from his neck by a thick strap is an acoustic-electric guitar, black-bodied, maple bridged with four volume knobs colored like the bridge; it has three four-petaled flowers, small and the color of silver, ornamenting the ribs. It's a rugged, old miracle, worn to a pale where the strings meet the frets, the more obvious of its numerous blemishes.
With him there is only one other musician, a talented and experienced multi-instrumentalist who holds a bluesy bass behind a three piece drum set.
The Singer peers from underneath his hand. Its shadow, additioned at the end of a fading blue ballcap, retro 1980's LA Angels, helps to hide the uncertainty in his eyes. He is straining for someone unseen, his hopeful dream, but she goes unactualized, unaffirmed. Instead, he sees that the crowd's features are suppressed by a bright spotlight, their mesh of silhouettes like a dark pool. They don't notice his searching; they are in the presence of an inherent masquerade. He wonders if they are just blinded by the stage's role, just here expecting another casually dressed hero. "They're crowded," he thinks. He searches, searches for an antidote to his uncertainty. He's trying to penetrate a barrier, a barrier which is becoming constant.
As secluded as one could possibly be stands David, one of the Singer's closest friends. He is a darkly featured man, average-height but toothpick thin. His jaw is angular and his face is hollow in the cheeks yet prominent at his nose and chin. Underneath his black hooded sweatshirt his arms are tattoed-- sleeves rich with dichotomous images of pleasure and pain intermixed with black text. Underneath his faded black jeans is more of the same. In a sort of corner David creates, whereby the crowd passes without disturbing him, he is, to the Singer, a pillar, a foregrounding figure, separating the drunk buzz behind. To the Singer's relief, he stands clear of the pungent spotlight.
David is looking down at a clear pitcher, a nearly empty tip jar, thinking. He thought along the lines of the pitcher's ability to capture a place, how the curvature voluptuously angled towards an opening from which to pour and the way the light of the room reflected off all its softened edges; "It is hollow."
The barroom has marble walls and a dark wood floor all polished to glow in an ambiance of warm and yellow. A pair of rooms filled with competing chatter are adjoined to a square parlor where the stage is in a corner and along the opposite wall there is a bar. The atmosphere is a clatter of chatter where the drinks are being poured and their is an amorphous line, the clientele, made mostly of mastercard kids trying to feel alright, buying drinks at double price. Their are also a few well dressed gentlemen reasonably reluctant to let go of their stools. Flaunting delicious cuts with lucrative respect waitresses serve in black uniforms under flat-screen TV's for moments better spent ignoring the hired entertainment.
The Singer turns to Rob, the bass player. He's been a friend for a few years, someone he spends a lot of common time with. He's older, in his forties clean cut, face shaven, thick black waves combed back and bronze skin. His cheeks are cut, his face is square right to his chin and in his dark eyes the Singer sees the spotlight reflecting. Rob looks to him briefly then looks away with a grimace directed at the white light. His finger taps to his bridge and the Singer prepares to sing.
The bassist lays it down, an easy but quick lick, eight notes to a bar, starting high, dropping low, to bounce back and forth, until it sticks at the middle only to recycle and, all the while, he's pumping at the kick drum. The Singer, matching the rhythm of the bass to his guitar, strums corresponding chords, three harmonic changes, one starting low and shifting to a high, one dense chord to focus the back and forth and a final broad major with finger plucks that reach below the melody of his voice. Initially, his phrasing is complicated but during the end of the sequence his singing becomes more notable and he lands clear and open high tones like a virtuoso. He sings of his friends, the few who have passed on and, except to those close to them, have gone permanently unknown. The two of them act with a loss of all casualness. Their faces contort, their bodies seize and bending into their knees they wrap their instruments with their hands, their dancing fingers. Their feet tap incessantly.
When the Singer's eyes rest their clench he is reminded he has an audience. Some of them listen indirect while most of them overwhelm the music with their own voices. A few stand out, the new faces showing attention. And then, there are those who often came out to see him.
His vocal expression, true-grit and dream-stuck, moves those who listen. It wills their own expression, one inseparable from the immediacy of their own lives. To every person the meanings of the lyrics are pertinent. The relationship between his voice and the voicing of the other instruments creates a mood for them, a shared stasis in time. They follow him through every movement, every tone being carefully chosen and sung with specific inflection. They feel intimate with him, an unafraid stranger. He disassociates from a personal connection, focusing instead on his own present existence. It doesn't matter: their mind’s eye invents everything.
More often then he likes his voice sounds wrong. It doesn't quite drop to the volume he wants or he sings too loud, overcoming the other instruments. It errs in its attack or its cutoff is too long, too short. His vibrato comes and goes with incorrect timing. Likely, he's the only one who notices the individual disturbances but following each one he has a draining sensation, a stomach pitting momentum stopper, which is something the crowd picks up on. It holds him back. It compounds into a vicious anxiety. First, it makes him question everything inside of his singing, his breathing, where the next notes go, the feeling he's creating, his relationship to the time: his very volition. Then, it makes him question everything outside of his songs, his grasp on life, his fears, his friendships, his girlfriend and his point in this existence .
Tonight, he will not come close to his bliss.
* * *
After breaking down their set Rob and the Singer meet David outside. The city is teeming with hazardous excitement. In front of the outlets of the night establishments, people are making their own cacophonous sounds through hideous shrills, tough-guy woops and laughter thick as butter. The city consists of two contrasting spaces, those street-lit sidewalks filled with all the well lit spirits, and a place lain with black rock, a river-bed like Acheron's, but instead of using a ferry Charon bore his ill-fated souls on new-millennium chariots moaning with chamber halls packed by the dead. And, all of it echoes off towers of dark mirrored glass. David leans against the sheen cement foundation of one of these towers, the same which contains the basement barroom.Through the light of a streetlamp corner exhumes his smoke. He turns his head, which before seemed directionless, just gazing unfocused into the running black waters, expecting them.
With a voice diminished the Singer says, "Thanks for the drink tickets Rob. I'll be seeing you in a couple of days then?"
"Oh yeah, m'boy, oh yeah. Anytime," and with a wave "I'll catch you later then." He disappears into an alley adjacent David's corner, towards a parking garage behind the high-rise. David lifts himself from the wall to walk with the Singer away from the dense district and towards their homes.
They make their way through the hubbed field of individuals and the Singer is the first to speak. "Well... that went.. alright," he decides.
"Have a good time with Rob's drink tickets?" David asks. He looks straight ahead. His lean body seems to shudder with every step.
"Yeah, guess so." He looks to David inciting a turn from his fellow's gaunt head.
David smiles, just a little, and drags from his cigarette, ember burning bright against his five-o-clock shadow.
"Didn't make shit for tips though. Goddamn nice of Rob to give me those drinks. I mean it's not that it matters to me, really, but it would be nice to make something."
"You're voice was giving out from time to time."
"I must be getting too drunk. Well, that's just how it goes when its real time."
"Just noticing."
"Yeah, you're right. Something's up. I'm not sure what it is but it's really fucking with me. Something's getting to my nerves or-- something. I don't know. It doesn't really matter."
"Nothing really matters."
The Singer moves to thinking that the city lights are not unlike the spotlight in their vibrancy. They are, however, different in that they originate from a multitude of sources instead of one. Still, if it were to be looked at from high they would appear as one. A wave of nausea comes across him. He feels overwhelmed, as if he suffered from over-exposure. Partly, he think's, it's the alcohol, partly, the sound of the city. While waiting at a crosswalk he closes his eyes to find darkness. He recites the mantra: 'nothing really matters.'
He almost feels better. David looks to him, dark brows and obsidian colored eyes clouded by whites, empathetic, their features suspended in a state of silent and plaintive discourse.
"You know, that sounds pretty hopeless," says the Singer.
"Well...it's not, really. I know that we're conditioned to think the opposite, but, in truth shouldn't we be honest with ourselves? No God. Crushing reality. I mean what really matters when considering the context that is reality? Maybe, you shouldn't worry so much. Maybe, if you're going to do something, you should just do it for the sake of doing it."
"Because, it's not that easy. I don't feel like I'm capable of just doing something. There has to be some reason in it." The Singer can tell: David's been thinking.
"Well..." in spite of entertaining an idea David concedes, "what's your reason for doing it? Why do you sing? It seems like you need to say it again, so, what is it?"
They continue to walk from the resounding echoes of the city's clamor, the sound having now dampened to a point where engines are loudest and, in different parts of the city, sirens can be distinguished. The tall towers are replaced by three and four storied buildings next to large volume apartment complexes made of brick. A new piercing sound wails. It comes towards them. As it approaches red orbs burnish the walls of the buildings with rotating beams. The ambulance passes, dopplering away both sound and burnishing.
"Okay, man..." The Singer prepares; he feels another push of alcohol. "I guess it's about connecting to an audience through common themes. It's about sharing a struggle against whatever and giving a voice to that feeling. It's about being subversive and influencing society through culture. I don't know... it's about being able to say the truth with everyone listening because most of the time people are too scared to say it."
"You guess? I don't know? Sounds pretty weak, not to mention you're expecting too much. Forget your hopes. Forget your ideals. You need to resolve yourself to the inevitability of chaos. You can't depend on getting a point across, you can only depend on what you are. Even when everybody's watching you have to remind yourself: it doesn't really matter and instead, you've got to do whatever it is you need to do. You need to let go of your notions of perfection and purpose. You have to lose everything, your very self, and dissolve into pointless existence."
"Poetic. Have you been writing today? Well, as much as I like poetry you're argument is flawed, flawed by one thing: it's selfish. Why the fuck do you think I'm standing under a spotlight that's pointed directly at me?" The Singer asks.
"First off it's not selfish, it's actually selfless. Secondly, you are the only person who can answer that question and it's exactly what we're already talking about."
The Singer is frustrated. The scope of the conversation isn't beyond him, it's more that he wasn't prepared to be talking about himself, nor was he prepared to do so under the pretenses of existential philosophy. "Based on what you're saying there is no point."
"I never said there wasn't a point: the point is to do it. I'm saying you shouldn't depend on your reasons to do it."
"But those reasons are the only reason I'm doing it in the first place!" The drunk part of him felt like choking David. "Music means a lot to me, it always has. I mean, the first time I felt like this world was more than it was made out to be was through music. Do you have any idea how powerful a feeling that was? It changed my life. Since then, I've committed to creating more and more of it. It seemed to make life real, like really real. Ever since then music has brought me a lot of great things. Shit, I would have never met Kirstin without it. It made life alright, good, even!"
"So what's bothering you so much then? It sounds like you have it all figured out."
"I don't know. I really don't know. Part of me thinks its that most these shows we've been playing have been at all the wrong spots. Back in the day when we were playing at people's houses, or in the warehouse district, or the all-ages venues, those felt right. Now, we've been trying to book bars that pay advances and it just feels wrong now, when most of the people you're playing for don't really give a damn whether you are there or not."
"My point exactly."
The Singer audibly 'ugh's. "The problem with your point, David, is that if I got up there and did what you told me I would come off as releasing some inner demon and I'd look like a manic-depressive insane-person. I can't alienate people. I have to reach a common ground."
David considers refuting the Singer's assumption that he was talking about catharcisism but defers, "And, what is that?"
"What? The common ground?"
David nods.
"It's all the things life is about: love, sadness, dreams, the ruts of work, insanity, escapism, drugs and booze, friendships, sex, conflicts, purpose, oppression and struggling against it--life itself."
"Like, corporation raped America? Dysfunctional sociological systems? The belittlement of ideal body images? Money made from suffering? Why get up and sing about these things?" David asks.
"Well, I really don't want people to feel shitty when they walk out the door so I try not to focus too much on the negatives. But, I do think by giving the themes the proper exposure and crafting an intention behind them people actually enjoy those songs. They don't feel so alone in the world. They are reminded we are all in this together and a lot of us are trying to change things."
"Now you want to change the world, huh?"
"Not the whole world but, yes, I am trying to change the parts that I can. I just can't do it alone." The Singer sighs. He feels too drunk and too disinterested for many more passionates. "But, then, what's the point if nothing matters?"
"If you ask me-- you are supposed to be alone and all this suffering is out of your control. Its more a matter of what you can do to deal with it." David's motif finale.
"I don't know man. Right now, I just don't know."
They walk silently across the concrete. Eight blocks walked, conversation no longer shortening the time. The indigo sky, starlit only by those which are most radiant, is impacted by a pocketed distribution of clouds, substantial enough to absorb the city lights. Reaching into the sky is the Singer's building, an old five story brick tower without halls, a staircase with four floors, four units to each tier. In the top corner he sees the bedroom light, dim and waiting. Despite the acute animosity between them the Singer invites David up.
"No, thanks, I'll be fine."
"Whatever works." The Singer convinces himself to say one last thing. "Look, it's complicated and I understand what you are trying to say but it's just that there's more to it then logic can untangle."
"No argument there," David says.
They stand at the stairs preceding the entrance to the building. The Singer sits with one leg on a higher stair and stretches the other across the lower stairs, wrapping his arm around the bent leg to secure his torso. He looks up at David. He is still drunk and he's tired, without a linger of elation from the night's earlier excitement. "Well I should probably sober up a little. Want to have a cigarette?"
"Yeah, sure." David draws a red pack from his pocket and pulls two cigarettes, lighting them both, passing one to the Singer.
"Gotta quit smoking." The Singer looks back towards the city center. "So what's your plan, anyway?" He asks David.
"What plan?"
"Your plan with life."
"Aside from getting under your skin? I'll keep writing, stay clean and go unnoticed. You know how it goes with me. I look forward to playing music with you and I'm pissed about winter coming. I can't say much else about any plan." David's inflection gives a sense of something unmentionable, ambiguous, omitted.
"Good..." the Singer feels like saying nothing. His breath leaves him with each drag and his attention shifts from his friend and back to himself.
"Yeah. You have to be looking forward to your meeting tomorrow?"
"I am and I'm kinda fucking nervous right now so I'm not letting myself think about it. I have to get some sleep tonight."
They drag from their cigarettes, drawing in the harsh smoke treated with chemicals, savory as acetone. They're silent, solitary robots, programmed by their overseer to addition wear on themselves prior to a predetermined expiration. Perhaps, even those chemicals serve an additional purpose, some sort of dual function, some kind of catalyst for certain operations: David's thoughts who, having finished exactly half his cigarette, turns to the Singer and says, "I'm off now, goodnight. I'll see you tomorrow." He is more genuine now, less grim.
The Singer stubs what remains of his smoke against the steps and swallows. He watches David walk. His hands are kept in pockets, cigarette suspended between lips. He holds himself erect, head high, rigid, his knees and his ankles absorbing the force of each step. The Singer feels a wave of worry as he watches his friend disappear into the streets. "Everything means nothing to me," he sings the melody quietly to himself. His throat feels scratched, inflamed.
The building's foundation reaches to the same height as the five stair entrance. The windows have latticed shelves and the lowest windows are also barred. They are all dark but the one aforementioned. Its faint light diverts his thoughts to colored walls and a sandy haired girl about whom are many of his songs. Inputting the key-code causes a click. Up he starts, and up and up, amidst a buzz of iridescent light, keeping his steps softened. Before he reaches the top his keys are drawn. He enters the third room, which would read '19' were it not for the brass '1' which is missing. The door clicks behind him.
Stepping shoe-less across plush colorless carpet he carefully lays his jacket across the back of a white wicker-framed couch. In a corner next to it there is a glass topped end table, also wicker-framed, with an orange shaded, blue bodied, lamp. When he turns it on he leaves behind the first smudge on the glass top; 'she's cleaned everything again,' he thinks. The smudge evaporates at its edges but retains itself in his oils. He sits, gives the back of his head to the white wall and rests his eyes with a sigh, long and wispy at its finish.
His vocal chords feel like dirty ropes, deposits of mud and sand inhibiting the natural flex of their fibers. Over an extensive few minutes, he calms his breath and focuses on the tactility of it as it passes through his throat. It seems to cool the affecting friction. Quietly, he sings a few low tones. He moves up in intervals to his mid range. Then, he repeats. A punctuation of silence, and his head tilts back to its normal posture. The crud feels looser.
He leans forward and draws himself back up to stand. He undresses, folding his shirt, pants and socks in a neat stack he tucks under the couch. The carpet is sheen as glass except where his recent footsteps displaced the vacuumed threads. He's slow to fulfill his nagging thirst. Instead, he looks around the clean room and at the many framed photographs, her work. One word, he thinks. 'Immaculate'.
The sensation of cold kitchen tile livens his thin feeling body. The cold water he pours down his throat does the same. After returning the pitcher to the fridge, he supports his weight with his hand pressed to its goose-bumped vinyl.
He loses another moment. He's staring at old memories caught by a more casual camera held. She is beautiful. Even in the photos, she glows.
He lets his mind go. A memory of passing his hand across the little moles next to her jawbone. Its firm structure curving to little ears. Warm and blushed out with hot flashes precedent to intimacy. Closed lashes would twitch a little. Then, the lids would lift, revealing clarity, a willful certainty. He had emptied words and kisses across her neck and her ears. Her lashes like strings of a golden lyre.
The bedroom is warm and comfortable. The walls are dandelion colored, dank with dimness. She is asleep, gently breathing. Her figure looks glossy against the inanimacy of shadowed furniture. Dotted by small groups of those moles, her slender back is turned towards him. Her hair is pulled across her neck and under it. A violet sheet is drawn just to her hips, expecting him. The edges of her ribs lift a little. The blade of her shoulder shifts. Her hand moves beneath her head. He lays beside her.
When she turns, her eyes gleen, intoxicated with sleep. "Hey," she whispers. He kisses her. "How was it?" She closes them.
"Fine. It's better you didn't come out."
"Is everything okay?"
"Of course. Don't worry." He puts a few slow kisses against her forehead as if to slow the rhythm of his words, trying to turn them into heavy bits of nothingness, pressing her back into sleep.
In the center of a hardwood stage, bourbon brown, he has his mic-stand positioned. With specifics developed from years of experience the microphone is set to project its reach right into the depths of him. Hanging from his neck by a thick strap is an acoustic-electric guitar, black-bodied, maple bridged with four volume knobs colored like the bridge; it has three four-petaled flowers, small and the color of silver, ornamenting the ribs. It's a rugged, old miracle, worn to a pale where the strings meet the frets, the more obvious of its numerous blemishes.
With him there is only one other musician, a talented and experienced multi-instrumentalist who holds a bluesy bass behind a three piece drum set.
The Singer peers from underneath his hand. Its shadow, additioned at the end of a fading blue ballcap, retro 1980's LA Angels, helps to hide the uncertainty in his eyes. He is straining for someone unseen, his hopeful dream, but she goes unactualized, unaffirmed. Instead, he sees that the crowd's features are suppressed by a bright spotlight, their mesh of silhouettes like a dark pool. They don't notice his searching; they are in the presence of an inherent masquerade. He wonders if they are just blinded by the stage's role, just here expecting another casually dressed hero. "They're crowded," he thinks. He searches, searches for an antidote to his uncertainty. He's trying to penetrate a barrier, a barrier which is becoming constant.
As secluded as one could possibly be stands David, one of the Singer's closest friends. He is a darkly featured man, average-height but toothpick thin. His jaw is angular and his face is hollow in the cheeks yet prominent at his nose and chin. Underneath his black hooded sweatshirt his arms are tattoed-- sleeves rich with dichotomous images of pleasure and pain intermixed with black text. Underneath his faded black jeans is more of the same. In a sort of corner David creates, whereby the crowd passes without disturbing him, he is, to the Singer, a pillar, a foregrounding figure, separating the drunk buzz behind. To the Singer's relief, he stands clear of the pungent spotlight.
David is looking down at a clear pitcher, a nearly empty tip jar, thinking. He thought along the lines of the pitcher's ability to capture a place, how the curvature voluptuously angled towards an opening from which to pour and the way the light of the room reflected off all its softened edges; "It is hollow."
The barroom has marble walls and a dark wood floor all polished to glow in an ambiance of warm and yellow. A pair of rooms filled with competing chatter are adjoined to a square parlor where the stage is in a corner and along the opposite wall there is a bar. The atmosphere is a clatter of chatter where the drinks are being poured and their is an amorphous line, the clientele, made mostly of mastercard kids trying to feel alright, buying drinks at double price. Their are also a few well dressed gentlemen reasonably reluctant to let go of their stools. Flaunting delicious cuts with lucrative respect waitresses serve in black uniforms under flat-screen TV's for moments better spent ignoring the hired entertainment.
The Singer turns to Rob, the bass player. He's been a friend for a few years, someone he spends a lot of common time with. He's older, in his forties clean cut, face shaven, thick black waves combed back and bronze skin. His cheeks are cut, his face is square right to his chin and in his dark eyes the Singer sees the spotlight reflecting. Rob looks to him briefly then looks away with a grimace directed at the white light. His finger taps to his bridge and the Singer prepares to sing.
The bassist lays it down, an easy but quick lick, eight notes to a bar, starting high, dropping low, to bounce back and forth, until it sticks at the middle only to recycle and, all the while, he's pumping at the kick drum. The Singer, matching the rhythm of the bass to his guitar, strums corresponding chords, three harmonic changes, one starting low and shifting to a high, one dense chord to focus the back and forth and a final broad major with finger plucks that reach below the melody of his voice. Initially, his phrasing is complicated but during the end of the sequence his singing becomes more notable and he lands clear and open high tones like a virtuoso. He sings of his friends, the few who have passed on and, except to those close to them, have gone permanently unknown. The two of them act with a loss of all casualness. Their faces contort, their bodies seize and bending into their knees they wrap their instruments with their hands, their dancing fingers. Their feet tap incessantly.
When the Singer's eyes rest their clench he is reminded he has an audience. Some of them listen indirect while most of them overwhelm the music with their own voices. A few stand out, the new faces showing attention. And then, there are those who often came out to see him.
His vocal expression, true-grit and dream-stuck, moves those who listen. It wills their own expression, one inseparable from the immediacy of their own lives. To every person the meanings of the lyrics are pertinent. The relationship between his voice and the voicing of the other instruments creates a mood for them, a shared stasis in time. They follow him through every movement, every tone being carefully chosen and sung with specific inflection. They feel intimate with him, an unafraid stranger. He disassociates from a personal connection, focusing instead on his own present existence. It doesn't matter: their mind’s eye invents everything.
More often then he likes his voice sounds wrong. It doesn't quite drop to the volume he wants or he sings too loud, overcoming the other instruments. It errs in its attack or its cutoff is too long, too short. His vibrato comes and goes with incorrect timing. Likely, he's the only one who notices the individual disturbances but following each one he has a draining sensation, a stomach pitting momentum stopper, which is something the crowd picks up on. It holds him back. It compounds into a vicious anxiety. First, it makes him question everything inside of his singing, his breathing, where the next notes go, the feeling he's creating, his relationship to the time: his very volition. Then, it makes him question everything outside of his songs, his grasp on life, his fears, his friendships, his girlfriend and his point in this existence .
Tonight, he will not come close to his bliss.
* * *
After breaking down their set Rob and the Singer meet David outside. The city is teeming with hazardous excitement. In front of the outlets of the night establishments, people are making their own cacophonous sounds through hideous shrills, tough-guy woops and laughter thick as butter. The city consists of two contrasting spaces, those street-lit sidewalks filled with all the well lit spirits, and a place lain with black rock, a river-bed like Acheron's, but instead of using a ferry Charon bore his ill-fated souls on new-millennium chariots moaning with chamber halls packed by the dead. And, all of it echoes off towers of dark mirrored glass. David leans against the sheen cement foundation of one of these towers, the same which contains the basement barroom.Through the light of a streetlamp corner exhumes his smoke. He turns his head, which before seemed directionless, just gazing unfocused into the running black waters, expecting them.
With a voice diminished the Singer says, "Thanks for the drink tickets Rob. I'll be seeing you in a couple of days then?"
"Oh yeah, m'boy, oh yeah. Anytime," and with a wave "I'll catch you later then." He disappears into an alley adjacent David's corner, towards a parking garage behind the high-rise. David lifts himself from the wall to walk with the Singer away from the dense district and towards their homes.
They make their way through the hubbed field of individuals and the Singer is the first to speak. "Well... that went.. alright," he decides.
"Have a good time with Rob's drink tickets?" David asks. He looks straight ahead. His lean body seems to shudder with every step.
"Yeah, guess so." He looks to David inciting a turn from his fellow's gaunt head.
David smiles, just a little, and drags from his cigarette, ember burning bright against his five-o-clock shadow.
"Didn't make shit for tips though. Goddamn nice of Rob to give me those drinks. I mean it's not that it matters to me, really, but it would be nice to make something."
"You're voice was giving out from time to time."
"I must be getting too drunk. Well, that's just how it goes when its real time."
"Just noticing."
"Yeah, you're right. Something's up. I'm not sure what it is but it's really fucking with me. Something's getting to my nerves or-- something. I don't know. It doesn't really matter."
"Nothing really matters."
The Singer moves to thinking that the city lights are not unlike the spotlight in their vibrancy. They are, however, different in that they originate from a multitude of sources instead of one. Still, if it were to be looked at from high they would appear as one. A wave of nausea comes across him. He feels overwhelmed, as if he suffered from over-exposure. Partly, he think's, it's the alcohol, partly, the sound of the city. While waiting at a crosswalk he closes his eyes to find darkness. He recites the mantra: 'nothing really matters.'
He almost feels better. David looks to him, dark brows and obsidian colored eyes clouded by whites, empathetic, their features suspended in a state of silent and plaintive discourse.
"You know, that sounds pretty hopeless," says the Singer.
"Well...it's not, really. I know that we're conditioned to think the opposite, but, in truth shouldn't we be honest with ourselves? No God. Crushing reality. I mean what really matters when considering the context that is reality? Maybe, you shouldn't worry so much. Maybe, if you're going to do something, you should just do it for the sake of doing it."
"Because, it's not that easy. I don't feel like I'm capable of just doing something. There has to be some reason in it." The Singer can tell: David's been thinking.
"Well..." in spite of entertaining an idea David concedes, "what's your reason for doing it? Why do you sing? It seems like you need to say it again, so, what is it?"
They continue to walk from the resounding echoes of the city's clamor, the sound having now dampened to a point where engines are loudest and, in different parts of the city, sirens can be distinguished. The tall towers are replaced by three and four storied buildings next to large volume apartment complexes made of brick. A new piercing sound wails. It comes towards them. As it approaches red orbs burnish the walls of the buildings with rotating beams. The ambulance passes, dopplering away both sound and burnishing.
"Okay, man..." The Singer prepares; he feels another push of alcohol. "I guess it's about connecting to an audience through common themes. It's about sharing a struggle against whatever and giving a voice to that feeling. It's about being subversive and influencing society through culture. I don't know... it's about being able to say the truth with everyone listening because most of the time people are too scared to say it."
"You guess? I don't know? Sounds pretty weak, not to mention you're expecting too much. Forget your hopes. Forget your ideals. You need to resolve yourself to the inevitability of chaos. You can't depend on getting a point across, you can only depend on what you are. Even when everybody's watching you have to remind yourself: it doesn't really matter and instead, you've got to do whatever it is you need to do. You need to let go of your notions of perfection and purpose. You have to lose everything, your very self, and dissolve into pointless existence."
"Poetic. Have you been writing today? Well, as much as I like poetry you're argument is flawed, flawed by one thing: it's selfish. Why the fuck do you think I'm standing under a spotlight that's pointed directly at me?" The Singer asks.
"First off it's not selfish, it's actually selfless. Secondly, you are the only person who can answer that question and it's exactly what we're already talking about."
The Singer is frustrated. The scope of the conversation isn't beyond him, it's more that he wasn't prepared to be talking about himself, nor was he prepared to do so under the pretenses of existential philosophy. "Based on what you're saying there is no point."
"I never said there wasn't a point: the point is to do it. I'm saying you shouldn't depend on your reasons to do it."
"But those reasons are the only reason I'm doing it in the first place!" The drunk part of him felt like choking David. "Music means a lot to me, it always has. I mean, the first time I felt like this world was more than it was made out to be was through music. Do you have any idea how powerful a feeling that was? It changed my life. Since then, I've committed to creating more and more of it. It seemed to make life real, like really real. Ever since then music has brought me a lot of great things. Shit, I would have never met Kirstin without it. It made life alright, good, even!"
"So what's bothering you so much then? It sounds like you have it all figured out."
"I don't know. I really don't know. Part of me thinks its that most these shows we've been playing have been at all the wrong spots. Back in the day when we were playing at people's houses, or in the warehouse district, or the all-ages venues, those felt right. Now, we've been trying to book bars that pay advances and it just feels wrong now, when most of the people you're playing for don't really give a damn whether you are there or not."
"My point exactly."
The Singer audibly 'ugh's. "The problem with your point, David, is that if I got up there and did what you told me I would come off as releasing some inner demon and I'd look like a manic-depressive insane-person. I can't alienate people. I have to reach a common ground."
David considers refuting the Singer's assumption that he was talking about catharcisism but defers, "And, what is that?"
"What? The common ground?"
David nods.
"It's all the things life is about: love, sadness, dreams, the ruts of work, insanity, escapism, drugs and booze, friendships, sex, conflicts, purpose, oppression and struggling against it--life itself."
"Like, corporation raped America? Dysfunctional sociological systems? The belittlement of ideal body images? Money made from suffering? Why get up and sing about these things?" David asks.
"Well, I really don't want people to feel shitty when they walk out the door so I try not to focus too much on the negatives. But, I do think by giving the themes the proper exposure and crafting an intention behind them people actually enjoy those songs. They don't feel so alone in the world. They are reminded we are all in this together and a lot of us are trying to change things."
"Now you want to change the world, huh?"
"Not the whole world but, yes, I am trying to change the parts that I can. I just can't do it alone." The Singer sighs. He feels too drunk and too disinterested for many more passionates. "But, then, what's the point if nothing matters?"
"If you ask me-- you are supposed to be alone and all this suffering is out of your control. Its more a matter of what you can do to deal with it." David's motif finale.
"I don't know man. Right now, I just don't know."
They walk silently across the concrete. Eight blocks walked, conversation no longer shortening the time. The indigo sky, starlit only by those which are most radiant, is impacted by a pocketed distribution of clouds, substantial enough to absorb the city lights. Reaching into the sky is the Singer's building, an old five story brick tower without halls, a staircase with four floors, four units to each tier. In the top corner he sees the bedroom light, dim and waiting. Despite the acute animosity between them the Singer invites David up.
"No, thanks, I'll be fine."
"Whatever works." The Singer convinces himself to say one last thing. "Look, it's complicated and I understand what you are trying to say but it's just that there's more to it then logic can untangle."
"No argument there," David says.
They stand at the stairs preceding the entrance to the building. The Singer sits with one leg on a higher stair and stretches the other across the lower stairs, wrapping his arm around the bent leg to secure his torso. He looks up at David. He is still drunk and he's tired, without a linger of elation from the night's earlier excitement. "Well I should probably sober up a little. Want to have a cigarette?"
"Yeah, sure." David draws a red pack from his pocket and pulls two cigarettes, lighting them both, passing one to the Singer.
"Gotta quit smoking." The Singer looks back towards the city center. "So what's your plan, anyway?" He asks David.
"What plan?"
"Your plan with life."
"Aside from getting under your skin? I'll keep writing, stay clean and go unnoticed. You know how it goes with me. I look forward to playing music with you and I'm pissed about winter coming. I can't say much else about any plan." David's inflection gives a sense of something unmentionable, ambiguous, omitted.
"Good..." the Singer feels like saying nothing. His breath leaves him with each drag and his attention shifts from his friend and back to himself.
"Yeah. You have to be looking forward to your meeting tomorrow?"
"I am and I'm kinda fucking nervous right now so I'm not letting myself think about it. I have to get some sleep tonight."
They drag from their cigarettes, drawing in the harsh smoke treated with chemicals, savory as acetone. They're silent, solitary robots, programmed by their overseer to addition wear on themselves prior to a predetermined expiration. Perhaps, even those chemicals serve an additional purpose, some sort of dual function, some kind of catalyst for certain operations: David's thoughts who, having finished exactly half his cigarette, turns to the Singer and says, "I'm off now, goodnight. I'll see you tomorrow." He is more genuine now, less grim.
The Singer stubs what remains of his smoke against the steps and swallows. He watches David walk. His hands are kept in pockets, cigarette suspended between lips. He holds himself erect, head high, rigid, his knees and his ankles absorbing the force of each step. The Singer feels a wave of worry as he watches his friend disappear into the streets. "Everything means nothing to me," he sings the melody quietly to himself. His throat feels scratched, inflamed.
The building's foundation reaches to the same height as the five stair entrance. The windows have latticed shelves and the lowest windows are also barred. They are all dark but the one aforementioned. Its faint light diverts his thoughts to colored walls and a sandy haired girl about whom are many of his songs. Inputting the key-code causes a click. Up he starts, and up and up, amidst a buzz of iridescent light, keeping his steps softened. Before he reaches the top his keys are drawn. He enters the third room, which would read '19' were it not for the brass '1' which is missing. The door clicks behind him.
Stepping shoe-less across plush colorless carpet he carefully lays his jacket across the back of a white wicker-framed couch. In a corner next to it there is a glass topped end table, also wicker-framed, with an orange shaded, blue bodied, lamp. When he turns it on he leaves behind the first smudge on the glass top; 'she's cleaned everything again,' he thinks. The smudge evaporates at its edges but retains itself in his oils. He sits, gives the back of his head to the white wall and rests his eyes with a sigh, long and wispy at its finish.
His vocal chords feel like dirty ropes, deposits of mud and sand inhibiting the natural flex of their fibers. Over an extensive few minutes, he calms his breath and focuses on the tactility of it as it passes through his throat. It seems to cool the affecting friction. Quietly, he sings a few low tones. He moves up in intervals to his mid range. Then, he repeats. A punctuation of silence, and his head tilts back to its normal posture. The crud feels looser.
He leans forward and draws himself back up to stand. He undresses, folding his shirt, pants and socks in a neat stack he tucks under the couch. The carpet is sheen as glass except where his recent footsteps displaced the vacuumed threads. He's slow to fulfill his nagging thirst. Instead, he looks around the clean room and at the many framed photographs, her work. One word, he thinks. 'Immaculate'.
The sensation of cold kitchen tile livens his thin feeling body. The cold water he pours down his throat does the same. After returning the pitcher to the fridge, he supports his weight with his hand pressed to its goose-bumped vinyl.
He loses another moment. He's staring at old memories caught by a more casual camera held. She is beautiful. Even in the photos, she glows.
He lets his mind go. A memory of passing his hand across the little moles next to her jawbone. Its firm structure curving to little ears. Warm and blushed out with hot flashes precedent to intimacy. Closed lashes would twitch a little. Then, the lids would lift, revealing clarity, a willful certainty. He had emptied words and kisses across her neck and her ears. Her lashes like strings of a golden lyre.
The bedroom is warm and comfortable. The walls are dandelion colored, dank with dimness. She is asleep, gently breathing. Her figure looks glossy against the inanimacy of shadowed furniture. Dotted by small groups of those moles, her slender back is turned towards him. Her hair is pulled across her neck and under it. A violet sheet is drawn just to her hips, expecting him. The edges of her ribs lift a little. The blade of her shoulder shifts. Her hand moves beneath her head. He lays beside her.
When she turns, her eyes gleen, intoxicated with sleep. "Hey," she whispers. He kisses her. "How was it?" She closes them.
"Fine. It's better you didn't come out."
"Is everything okay?"
"Of course. Don't worry." He puts a few slow kisses against her forehead as if to slow the rhythm of his words, trying to turn them into heavy bits of nothingness, pressing her back into sleep.