Story About Musicians
We took our writer friend, Barbara Lane, to go hear some music down in Decatur. She converted her experience into the following story. We liked it too much to let it go unnoticed, so here it is:
Music in Decatur
By
Barbara Donnelly Lane
I’m a writer. I have a friend who’s a musician. Once we had a discussion about which is harder: sitting alone in a room, talking on paper with people who don’t exist, or playing music in front of a room, singing for people who don’t listen. Whenever I’m with her, my mind wanders back to this question.
So one night we go with our husbands to a restaurant in Decatur. This is an artsy section of Atlanta where you can walk barefoot like a flower child on the sidewalk, or you can buy gourmet dog biscuits from a kitschy bakery.
It is early spring, but the air is so thick with humidity, it settles in the skin. They serve sweet tea in the café where we are waiting to hear singer/songwriters perform. Rice Krispy treats are wrapped in cellophane by the cash register. The server has a silver hoop through his lip. A customer who buys a cookie is wearing flip-flops with a mini-skirt and carrying a $500 purse.
Walking to a table with my drink, I notice boldly painted people line an exposed brick wall. They have distorted faces in frames, like the reflections in fun house mirrors. They make a statement about what to expect from the entertainment. Perception defines art, right? Reality is something different.
As we’re getting settled, a boy in dirty jeans takes the microphone set up by the window. He’s got on scuffed, black boots and a white and blue bandanna. He screams his songs, the words hurled up into the ceiling’s acoustic tiles, which are the color of ink, and I think I have found the place where bad poetry settles forever. In those tiles, a wounded wail can go and die.
I lean over to my friend to ask her if the boy is any good as a singer.
She considers for half a second. “Uh… No,” she says, and I don’t argue. After all, I’m tone deaf. What do I know about music?
Next the boy’s girlfriend stands up to sing with him. She’s got butterfly tattoos on her shoulder and calf, long curly hair that flows down her back, and soft curves as full as those in a painting by Ruben. (Chubby women were art back in the glorious day.)
Butterfly girl whispers the harmony into a second microphone and steals glances at the boy who scream-sings with his eyes closed tight. I wonder if they make love with faces like this. I wonder if she is pregnant.
I lean over to my friend to ask her if the girl is any good.
She considers for less than half a second. “Uh… No,” she says, and I don’t argue. Even I already knew the answer to that question. And I know nothing about music.
When the couple is done singing, there is a tip jar for gas money. The boy takes a seat beside it, starts sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon. He’s already explained he and his girl are on tour: a word my friend puts into disdainful air quotes before explaining that “tour” is code in musician speak for singer/songwriters living in a van down by the river, singing in YMCA showers once a week, driving from town to town until the inspiration (or VISA card limit) runs out.
I watch the boy as he puts away his chocolate-colored guitar, gently caresses it’s neck as he lays it down to sleep in a battered case beneath a table. I can see he loves his music. I wonder if the baby will have a bed in his van, maybe a space to dream in the glove compartment.
I lean over to my friend to ask her if the couple was paid to play tonight.
She doesn’t even consider her answer. She snorts and smiles broadly, pouring me a glass of wine. Apparently, I need something stronger than tea. Shaking her head as if I have said something profoundly funny, she reiterates the obvious, “You know nothing about music.”
I don’t argue. This is her business. It’s all just noise to me.
Still, I look back at my boy with interest. His chin is cupped in one hand now, his boots crossed at the ankles. Watching a folk band set up their equipment, his expression is a strange mix of boredom and longing.
A bass player has a mountain man beard big enough to house a chipmunk, but the middle-aged woman in the sack dress on keyboards beside him looks like a librarian.
I wonder if this pair has ever made love together. Don’t they say musicians like orgies? Even the hairy ones? I wonder if these two live in a log cabin with a mortgage and drive a Chevy Suburban to work.
Whoever these band members are, whatever they do behind closed doors, now my boy must sit and listen to them play their shinier instruments as part of the regular audience. He must stare at the lead singer who is hawking home studio CDs that have better cover art than his and butterfly girl’s in the cardboard sleeves, when all he really wants to do is keep scream-singing and get famous.
His beer is empty now and no one gets him a new one.
Yet butterfly girl is looking at our boy from across the room with a raw longing. She is so young, I wonder if he took her to prom, or if he convinced her only losers ride in limos, wear sequins. It’s cooler to be starving.
Her eyes are so young and wide–her belly so round and growing–I want to buy her a piece of pie and tell her it’s not too late to go to beauty college.
I lean over to my friend again to ask her which is harder–being a writer or being a musician–but the new band is playing, and now she is really listening.
These people must be really good to capture her attention. (I’ve already learned musicians are the harshest critics.)
I look at the boy, the girl, the ceiling.
I hope their baby is born an accountant, not an ounce of rhyme or rhythm in him.
I think about the boy, the girl, the reality, their perceptions.
Life’s a hard burden for anyone born with a poet’s crazy mind, a musician’s heavy dream.
I get out my wallet and put a dollar in the boy’s half empty tip jar.
He smiles and nods, his tired, brown eyes brightening.
I know nothing about music, but I know I must pay him.
He has entertained me.
I will write about him later.