Trojie's original fiction. Be afraid.
Jul. 18th, 2008 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gmtaslashTitle: Cover Notes
Author: Trojie
Notes: I think this is the first piece of my original writing to see the light of day. Bridget has seen it, but other than that, I’ve been sitting on it for about ... five years actually. I wrote most of it in one sitting. It took me about half an hour, originally, and then I’ve looked at it every so often and adjusted bits and pieces. I’m quite happy with it. I like it. It is sort of inspired by Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’, off the album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ (if you don’t know it, go and ask your parents. You ought to know it. This album is STILL in the Top 100 Album charts and it was released over thirty years ago). It is also probably a tad influenced by Neil Gaiman, as I wrote it after I’d just finished reading American Gods three times over in two days and was a bit drunk on Gaiman. Whether or not it sounds anything like him is another matter, but this ought to be mentioned just so that blame can be laid. I’m posting this largely because I hope to have more original writing done soon, and I’m steeling myself to public reaction. Reactions and reviews always gladly received.
Just before the van fell off the cliff, Spanner held his breath. He wasn’t clear on why he was holding his breath. Maybe he was waiting. Maybe he was trying to speed up the inevitable. Maybe it was like watching the Olympics; you hold your breath just before the brave little guy from Lithuania wins the hurdles, or whatever. But it was probably just waiting, considering the person that is – or was - Spanner. Let’s not try to read too much into it, eh?
In the little, teetering moment before the van fell off the cliff, Milo wondered vaguely what Eddie was thinking, which was odd, because before, they’d never really had to wonder what the other was thinking, because they could tell. But all those other times, conceivably, there could have been any one of thousands of things for the other one to be thinking, yet still they knew, but here, when the main thing someone would be thinking of was ‘ohmygodmessyhorribledeath,’ here Milo was, suddenly uncertain of what Eddie was thinking.
Milo was aware that he was possibly a little incoherent.
That little, teetering moment was not a time of great cogitation on Eddie’s part. Mainly he was thinking ‘Jesus, who’ll pay for all the gear in the back?’
Spanner, Eddie, Milo and Dylan. Up until the rather enthusiastic turning manoeuvre executed by Dylan, which would have worked perfectly had it not been pissing down with rain, and had they not been on a road which was flanked by cliffs on either side, one of which went up, and the other of which went emphatically down, they had been a band. I don’t know who said it, but it has been said that we all die alone. They did indeed die, all individuals, but they had been a band, and these things are important.
There’s a kind of spiritual chemistry in a band . . . and I do know who said that, it was Roger Daltry, but I digress.
Their band had been . . . all right, I guess, typical post-Nirvana grunge/punk/alternative rock, the sort of thing that gets played about eleven pm on student radio stations, and that night they’d been playing a gig. In a pub. They were on their way home now. There were four of them; Spanner on guitar, Eddie and Milo, brothers, playing bass and drums respectively, and Dylan on vocals. The band was called Verdigris. Dylan, the sole student amongst them, had found it somewhere in a book, and they’d liked it. Occasionally Eddie thought it sounded very metal, and they didn’t play a lot of strictly-speaking metal, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone, so he left it. What’s in a name, indeed?
In the little, teetering moment before the van fell off the cliff, the CD player changed songs. They’d been unable to agree to one CD, so they’d shoved in some random mix disks that Eddie and Milo’d made. The sound tugged at him, so Dylan listened. The new song wailed and sang and grated across his nerves, but he couldn’t wrench his hands off the steering wheel to hit Next. Beside him, he heard a strained little chuckle.
‘Eddie?’ he gritted out, suddenly irrationally afraid that the sounds he made would weigh the van down – that was the trouble with studying philosophy, it made you such a paranoiac – and Eddie said, in the same strained tone as the one he’d chuckled in; ‘Ironic-’ Dylan’s mind suddenly short circuited; Had they put Alanis in? Had Alanis ever sounded like this? ‘-this song.’ Eddie continued. ‘Pink Floyd. Great Gig in the Sky.’
Maybe the words had weighed them down. If light has force, why can’t sound have weight? The little, teetering moment was over. The fall happened.
***
Rock, well, alternative rock at least, is founded partially on the rise of the geek. It works, somehow, the rebirth of the kid with the jumpers and the milk-bottle glasses into the detached, knowledgeable musician who works quantum physics and obscure literary references into songs, who spent years, in between study and running the backstage of every school pantomime, patiently and methodically learning the guitar. It works, somehow; maybe it’s the desperate need for rock and roll to prove that it doesn’t work how life works, that somehow, magically, the underdog wins, that image doesn’t matter. The cool and the popular and the shiny-haired, who in a previous time trod all over the geeks, and did all the things that, in stereotypical American teen movies, jocks and cheerleaders do, they become the reviled. Lyrics, songs, whole albums trash them. Loner and loser win out in the end. It’s all very rebellious, and new, and alternative, and oh so formulaic at the same time. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll, and untimely deaths as well.
***
Eddie was dead. He opened his eyes. Admittedly that isn’t the sort of thing you expect to happen after you’re dead, but nevertheless the habits of a lifetime do not change easily, and opening your eyes once you wake up is one of them. It is quite a nice surprise to be dead, and find you can still wake up.
‘Guys?’
A collection of groans signalled that they’d woken up too.
‘Hello?’ That was not a nice voice, thought Eddie. Slowly his senses filled in the background. There had not, surprisingly, been a lot of pain in the whole dying experience. That was a plus. But there was pain now. Mainly coming in through his ears. The air was full of discords, missed notes, sharps, flats, squeaks, every noise of torture ever wrung from an instrument was crowding the . . .
Where are we?
By rights they should have been on the rocks, in bits, or possibly with an arty Jackson Pollock-y spatter effect. Eddie didn’t think this was the case, somehow. He felt remarkably corporeal. Of course, he’d read about how amputees reckoned they could still feel their missing limbs, so maybe that wasn’t such a big help. He sat up gingerly, still wincing at the crash of sound in the . . . room. It was a room. There was a whiteboard with staff lines drawn across it, and a big smoothly curved treble clef, but no time signature, no notes. The notes were in the air of the room. And they hurt.
‘Hello?’ That not-nice voice was still there. Eddie swivelled carefully – each movement brought a new jangle of music in pain to his ear – and found a person standing over him. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Milo (who looked unhurt) and Spanner and Dylan next to him. Eddie was less than inclined to be charitable towards Dylan right now. The person offered Eddie a hand up, and Eddie, being pulled to his feet, could feel the notes ripping past his ear like hessian tearing, and he didn’t like it.
‘Can I go now, please?’ Somehow this place felt like a classroom, and Eddie wasn’t at home with classrooms, and this sullen person with the unpleasant voice reminded him sharply of a music teacher he’d once had, when his mother thought that the clarinet was the right instrument for a boy to learn, and he wanted to leave. Now.
‘Oh no, boy, you can’t leave. You haven’t done any practicing in . . .’ the teacher-person squinted at him. It was like being riveted to a wall. ‘You haven’t done any practicing in a long time.’
‘What?’ Eddie was bass-playerly monosyllabic. No-one has yet ascertained whether it is the bass itself that lures quiet young men to play it, or whether quite ordinary young men somehow become quiet and measured once they pick up a bass, but there it is; bass players tend to be the quiet ones, and Eddie was an example of rigid conformation to the cliché.
‘Practice, boy. Scales. Arpeggios. Some kind of structure.’
Eddie felt drowned. He’d hated that side of the music lessons. The guys had never asked him for ‘arpeggios’, which made him quite thankful (although in the back of his mind he was aware that he played quite a lot of them, even if they didn’t call them that). He didn’t know how to deal with this brassy person, so he turned and pulled the now sitting Milo up to his feet, and then offered his hand grudgingly to Dylan. Milo hauled Spanner up, and the four of them turned to the teacher-person. Eddie stayed silent. Talking to people was a lead singer thing, that’s why you had them, to shout all the right words and let him get on with the bass playing, and so he was content when Dylan, who deserved a bollocksing anyway, took the lead.
‘We’re going now,’ said Dylan defiantly, chin in the air and eyebrow raised.
‘And I never saw you in class at all, young man.’ said the teacher, jabbing in a knobbly, bony finger like a conductor’s baton into Dylan’s square chest. All the while the discords wailed around them. Eddie was getting a headache. He wished he had his bass. It seemed very illogical to want his bass, for Christ’s sake, he tried to reason with himself, it’s a bass, not a teddy-bear, but never the less he wanted the feel of strings under his fidgeting right-hand fingers, and the comforting weight of the strap around his shoulder and neck.
‘I never took classes,’ said Dylan, raising an eyebrow in a way he probably thought made him look cool. He didn’t really need to try to look cool; he was a lead singer and cool just seemed to happen to them, especially when they were lean and cocky and had hair of just the right length, like they were made for lead-singing, which Eddie thought was very stereotypical, but had to admit, it seemed to work.
‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ the Teacher (the capital letter slotted into Eddie’s brain) said triumphantly, and waved violin string arms around. ‘Listen to everything you created, in your ignorance, boy, when you tried to make music.’
The discords shifted, concentrated, and the gruff, growling sounds that filled the air were recognisable as Dylan’s first attempts at vocals . . . Eddie caught snatches of lyrics from songs they’d covered. It was not pleasant. Stripped of backing, Dylan’s learning-to-fly voice sounded reedy and thin.
‘. . .here we are now, entertain us . . .‘
‘. . . white man, in the palais . . .‘
‘. . . don’t go hiding, hiding in the shade. . .’
Before they’d heard much though, the Teacher whirled on Spanner.
‘George.’ it said with some satisfaction. ‘Clever boy, weren’t you. Oh yes, I remember you. You could have done well boy, you could have done well.’
Spanner looked at the floor. ‘Din’t want to . . .’ he whispered.
‘Didn’t want to what, boy? What?’
‘Didn’t want to play your stupid piano!’ he blurted out, furious, then blushed pink and stared at the floor again, while the teacher cackled. The sound became careful, rote-learned piano sounds, and then wild chords that jarred upon the ear. And then, horror of horrors, it was The Song. The one they didn’t play, cos it was ‘old’, or ‘boring’, or any one of a number of reasons, but mainly, because it was The Song and no-one played it, not beyond the first few bars, but here was Spanner playing it (and Eddie knew that it was Spanner playing it, but didn’t know how he knew it) all the way, badly and excruciatingly, up until where it would change over from acoustic-sounding to electric-sounding, and Eddie could feel himself tense for the first drum beat, which never came, for Spanner had ended in disarray, but they all knew what the song was, and Dylan could be seen in Eddie’s peripheral vision, guiltily mumbling the words of the Song they’d never played . . .
‘. . . and it makes me wonder . . .’
Spanner looked ashamed. Before he’d even had time to make sheepish eye contact with the others though, the Teacher was on to Milo. Drummers attract a lot of scorn from players of other instruments, partially because people who play other instruments can’t always see what’s so difficult about banging sticks on things, and partially because secretly, people who play other instruments are awed at the idea of using both hands and both feet at the same time, while keeping the beat. Drumming is also a bit primal for people who play the oboe or whatever. However, the mystical drumming aura didn’t seem to put off the Teacher, who pushed Milo hard enough that he almost stepped back, despite being somewhat over six foot, and solidly built.
The air convulsed with the clatter of a thousand dropped sticks, expanded to the drum rolls that had got away and ended in chaos, pulsed wildly to millions of beats, all the beats that went nowhere, that got dropped, missed, sped up or slowed down. Every little mistake Milo had ever made on that kit had come back to haunt him. Eddie felt protective of his brother, who twitched at every collision of stick and drum skin. He put an arm out, but then felt stupid and dropped it again, turning away a little bit –
- into the grinning face of the Teacher.
And the drum beats faded to the bone-numbing sound of bass guitar through big speakers and powerful amps, the sort of sound that you felt instead of hearing, that turned dance music fans into shivering heaps of jelly by the end of each evening, and that Eddie felt roaring through his very soul every time he picked up his bass – but the sound was wrong, and it was his wrong. That knowledge itself was painful enough, but the wrongness of it pained him, made him want to throw away every piece of music he’d ever heard and sit in silence for the rest of his life, rather than make those mistakes again. Shame seared him.
And suddenly it stopped, and the background noise went back to the universal discords. Eddie looked around at his band mates. Dylan burned with embarrassment, and Spanner with disgrace. Milo looked aggrieved.
‘Play,’ said the Teacher.
The hand that had itched to feel heavy strings under its fingers suddenly found them, and the pressure of a strap pulled on Eddie’s shoulder. He had his bass, or maybe the ghost of his bass, he didn’t know, but he had it. Spanner had his guitar, but he held it like it was a piece of china, or maybe a bag of dog shit, something he didn’t really want to be holding, but nonetheless had to hold, because it was his job and he couldn’t just leave it for someone to step in. Milo had a kit in front of him, and sticks, which he was staring at like they were made of dynamite. Dylan had no mike, and there were no speakers or amps, but looking at the Teacher, Eddie somehow didn’t think that was much of a problem, not here.
‘Play,’ said the Teacher.
It was Spanner who began it. It was Spanner’s song really; his favourite cover, and every time they played it, it was always Spanner who started it. It had been played at thousands of school balls ever since it had first come out, and it seemed particularly appropriate to Spanner, who’d left school at sixteen and was a mechanic’s apprentice. It was Spanner who began it, followed by Milo, who picked up beats like other people picked up cat hair. Dylan grinned when he heard it, and Eddie readied himself . . . hey that rhymes . . . for his cue.
‘We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control . . .’
It felt good to play it, Another Brick in the Wall Part Two, which was a ridiculously long name for such a short song, right in the face of the Teacher, who stood watching with his/her head on one side, like a grey praying mantis sizing up a moth.
‘Enough,’ said the Teacher suddenly, the changed sound of its voice making Spanner look up from the frets of the guitar.
‘What?’ said Dylan, almost truculent, definitely pissed off. He ran his hand through his hair.
‘Why are you playing that song?’ asked the new Teacher.
‘It’s a good song.’ said Spanner gruffly.
‘Who taught you to play the guitar, Spanner?’
‘My brother.’
Spanner wasn’t sure what the Teacher had looked like before, but, just for a moment, it almost looked like . . . no. He was being stupid.
‘And do you think he’d like you to be playing that song? Here?’
‘I-‘
‘Do you think he’d like to know that you didn’t appreciate his teaching?’
‘It’s just a song.’
‘Here? Are you sure?’
‘No.’
‘Play something else, then.’
The Teacher stood back to listen.
‘We’re not the first, I hope we’re not the last,
'Cause I know we're all heading for that adult crash
The time is so little, the time belongs to us
Why is everybody in such a fucking rush . . ?’
It was messy and sprawling, but it felt good to play like that.
The Teacher watched them, but they forgot the fact that they had a spectator, and just played. Even when the Teacher smiled, and said, with Spanner’s brother’s voice;
‘Good job guys,’ they didn’t hear it.
And slowly the discords melted away with the rest of the classroom, and the Teacher, and the song wound down.
***
‘And that’s a promise.’ Dylan growled into a non-existent microphone. Spanner let the guitar squeal to a halt. Milo, who’d not had much to do for the last bar or so, stuck his sticks in the waistband of his jeans. They looked up, and the scenery had changed.
‘What in Christ’s name was that all about?’
Carefully, the four all looked around. They were in what looked like a corridor now, lined with doors as far as the eye could see. About to strum idly at his guitar, Spanner suddenly noticed that it wasn’t there anymore. Startled, he reviewed the last five minutes. He was sure guitar-playing had figured in it somewhere.
‘Didn’t we just . . ?’
‘I think so.’
‘That thing reminded me of your clarinet teacher,’ said Milo to Eddie, quietly.
‘Funny,’ said Spanner. ‘I thought it was the woman who taught piano, down the road from me.’
‘Was it?’ asked Dylan bluntly, fiddling with his fringe for lack of something else to do. Eddie shifted uneasily. This was to fill time until Spanner, slowly, said
‘No. I . . . I don’t think it was a person.’
Dylan had another pressing question. ‘Where are we, do you think?’
‘No idea.’
‘Shall we look behind the doors?’
‘I dunno.’
Dylan shoved his ear up against one. ‘I can hear music.’
‘Leave the doors alone,’ said Milo suddenly. ‘No, Dylan, leave them,’ Dylan paused guiltily in the act of pulling at one.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I . . . just don’t think we should go through the doors.’
Dylan wheeled away from the door. ‘OK then, but what are we supposed to do? Hang around in a corridor for eternity?’
‘Don’t be silly mate,’ said Spanner reasonably. ‘Not all eternity.’
‘Well if we can’t go through the doors, then what can we do?’ asked Dylan irritably, running his fingers backwards through his hair, something he always did when he was frustrated, making him look like a punk porcupine.
‘Christ knows. But –‘
Whatever Spanner was about to say was never ascertained, because just then, the door that Dylan had been on the point of opening slipped gently off its latch. Milo leapt to shut it. He couldn’t say why, but there was something vaguely unsettling about those doors, each thrumming quietly with reflected noise from whatever was behind them. He didn’t want to hear what was going on, and he certainly didn’t want to see it. It clicked shut again when he shoved it, but a snatch of the sound from within got out.
‘Hey everyone, we’re Verdigris-‘
‘That sounds like us-‘
‘That was us.’ Eddie felt very definite on that score. The name sort of clinched things.
‘So, we’re here, but what? That’s us playing behind those doors?’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘That’s . . . not possible . . . is it?’ said Dylan uncertainly. ‘It’d amount to, I dunno, time travel. Or something,’ he finished lamely, when the other three regarded him, amused and slightly pitying his student-ness.
‘One gig behind each door,’ Spanner guessed, his eyes shining. He pressed his own ear up against a door. Milo had to fight the urge to pull him away. ‘Do you think we could-‘
‘No,’ Milo and Eddie said in whiplash unison. Seeing Spanner’s eyes narrow in rebellion, Eddie quickly added. ‘Some of our gigs I wouldn’t want to relive.’
‘And we might implode,’ said Dylan eagerly.
‘What?’
‘If you now meets one of your past selves . . . we don’t know what could happen. It’s very exciting. We were talking about it in my last lecture.’ Milo shook his head. Students.
‘All in favour of not imploding,’ the drummer said, and put his hand in the air. Eddie followed suit, and then Dylan. Spanner looked at them, and then stuck his own hand in the air as well, with just the suspicion of what, on someone who wasn’t a guitarist and therefore didn’t have machismo sloshing out their ears, might have been called a pout.
‘Shall we wander down the corridor then?’ he asked. ‘Or will that make us implode too?’
‘Hang on,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘You guys need to come with me.’
The voice belonged to Pete, who had a black t-shirt with ‘Tech Crew’ on the back, and drank a lot of coffee. He ushered them into what he called the ‘studio’ and left them alone to write.
‘You’ve gotta write something,’ he said. ‘Everyone does before they go onstage. A new song to perform, or like, rearrange something. You could do a cover; everyone likes the covers. We have a lot of the younger guys come in here and play their own stuff, you know? But, like, they don’t put any thought into it. Complete crap, a lot of it, I swear. Haven’t got a clue which end of a guitar is which.’
‘Onstage?’
Pete was kind of edgy, caffeine-d up. He spoke in very short sentences.
‘You know. What you’re here for. The gig. You know, it’s weird you being here all together. We have a lot of people come in on their own. Have to wait around for their band to get it together. Sometimes they hook up with other people who came on their own, you know, go out there and perform sort of like a composite group. Some guys just wait, wait for a long time. Still, you guys are ok, you got here together. Good on you.’
Eddie figured it was the coffee. After Pete had twitched his way out of the studio, he looked around. The room had chairs, and a table with pens and paper, and was reasonably comfortable looking.
‘So,’ said Spanner, de facto musical director. ‘What shall we play?’
Dylan shrugged. Milo and Eddie traded a look, then raised identical brown eyebrows in their own peculiar facial shrug.
‘Dunno.’
‘Funny,’ said Spanner. ‘Neither do I.’
It was odd. Spanner at the very least was always full of ideas, and Dylan usually had a few bright sparks, although a decent number of them had to be squashed before he did damage. Eddie and Milo tended to work beats and rhythms out at home together before presenting them to the other two, but still, they usually had something. Now, nothing. The writer’s block from hell seemed to have struck.
‘Well, a cover then?’ asked Spanner at last.
Nobody said anything. They just couldn’t think.
‘I wish I had my bass,’ said Eddie, for the second time that day, although the first time out loud. ‘I could have worked something out, at least,’ he said. Spanner nodded.
‘I know. We could have hammered something out.’
More silence.
Milo dropped into a seat.
‘Ow.’ he said, feeling his backside go numb.
‘What?’
‘Sat on something.’ He fished around in the general region of his trousers and pulled out his drumsticks. ‘Hey! I’ve still got my sticks!’
‘Awesome!’
‘Nice going mate.’
‘Play something.’
‘I . . . can’t think of anything,’ Milo said, his face falling. ‘I can’t think of anything and my arse is numb.’
‘Bugger.’
‘So we’re going to be here for all eternity, because we can’t think of anything?’
‘Are we back to harping on about eternity?’
‘Look, Milo, just, oh Christ, I dunno. Hit the table.’ said Spanner with exasperation.
‘What?’
‘Just hit the bloody table. You’re a drummer, right? So keep the beat.’
Milo struck the table tentatively, then more confidently; a steady tap! tap! tap! As he got more confident he varied the rhythm. It was slow, metronomic, but compelling.
‘See, that’s what I’m talking about.’ said Spanner. ‘Dylan. Sing.’
‘Sing what?’
‘Whatever you feel like.’
Spanner was getting into this. He waved a finger in vague time with Milo, and then said
‘Go!’
Dylan started with the first thing he thought of, the chorus of a song he’d heard a few times, with the same hypnotic beat that Milo was setting out.
‘Fire and water, must have made you their daughter
You’ve got what it takes
To make a poor man’s heart break . . ’
That sustained note was too much and his voice cracked and quavered. He switched from that chorus into another one, older this time, and Milo, recognising it, sped up to match him.
‘They call me the hunter, that’s my name
A pretty little woman like you
Is my only game . . .’
Eddie had his head down, almost sunk onto his chest and he was humming, rumbling really, eyes closed; the picture of concentration. Spanner’s eyes were wild with excitement. The blues. They played a bit of blues occasionally, and Spanner loved it. He itched for his guitar.
‘Ain’t no use to hide
Ain’t no use to run –‘
A knock came on the door of the studio, interrupting the flow. It was Pete.
‘I heard you guys from down the hall, ‘ he said, and held out his hands; Spanner’s guitar and Eddie’s bass were clutched in them. ‘Thought you might want these now; have a run through or something. I’ll send one of the stage crew to come talk to you.’
Eagerly Eddie slipped the strap of the bass round his neck. Spanner treated his instrument more reverentially, but he too was keen to get playing. Milo, at the table, looked to the guitarist. Spanner nodded.
‘One, two, one two three fo-‘
A knock came at the door, and then the door itself was timidly pushed open. Milo lowered his sticks. The other three looked pointedly at the person who sidled into the room.
‘Yes?’ said Dylan bluntly. The new arrival straightened up. ‘Um, I’m Paul. Um, you guys are Verdigris?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Great. Um, I’m sort of sound crew, but that’s not why I’m here. Ah, I’m sposed to take you backstage, right?’
‘Yes?’ said Dylan, thrown slightly off-balance by Paul’s stilted manner of talking.
‘Come on then,’ said Paul, jerking his head towards the door and taking off. The four musicians looked at each other, then followed. Spanner noted that Paul also wore a Tech Crew shirt.
It wasn’t a long walk to wherever they were going, but watching Paul walk made Spanner feel slightly sea-sick; the man bobbed and wove around like a marionette with its strings irreversibly tangled. At last he pushed open a door into a room plastered with dog-eared posters.
‘Here you are,’ he said, gesturing that they should go in. ‘Gabrielle’ll, um, look after you.’
Spanner, Milo, Eddie and Dylan trooped into the room. There was someone in a corner of the dingy space.
‘Hi,’ she said, getting up and extending a henna-ed hand. ‘I’m Gabrielle. You guys need anything before you go onstage?’
‘Some time to practice would be nice,’ Eddie whispered to Milo. Gabrielle favoured him with a big, brilliant smile, and pointed to a large red door labelled ‘Stage’ on the other side of the room.
‘Nah, we’re fine,’ said Dylan, eyeing Gabrielle appreciatively. She had thin blonde dreadlocks threaded with wooden beads, and wore clothing straight from the Sixties, or possibly straight from a second hand shop somewhere. She smiled when she noticed Dylan’s appraisal.
‘You sure? Coffee or something maybe? We go through a lot of coffee.’ Milo immediately thought Pete, and was surprised when Gabrielle caught his eye and nodded emphatically.
Eddie was looking at the posters on the wall with something approaching awe.
‘These are all signed,’ he whispered, and twisted to look at Gabrielle. She smiled again. ‘Of course they are. I think there’s one of yours over there somewhere, actually.’ She handed Spanner a pen. ‘If you wouldn’t mind . . ?’
Hurriedly Spanner scrawled ‘Spanner’ on a corner of an old paper poster that had been prised off a lamppost or something. It read ‘Cover Night; Verdigris, Twister and Red Hen. This Thursday, live at _____’ One of their better gigs, he admitted, for all they’d played nothing original. Sometimes covers were better, or at least they tended to get a favourable reaction. He shoved the pen into Dylan’s hand. Dylan’s loopy signature blossomed over the paper. He handed the pen on to Milo, who tended to write slowly and carefully, and when the drummer had finished he went to give the pen to Eddie, but Eddie – was still inspecting the other posters.
‘Kossoff . . . Joplin . . . Jesus Christ!’
‘He’s here?’ asked Dylan facetiously.
‘No, don’t be stupid, I just meant . . . guys, come here, you’ve got to see this one . . .’ Eddie was slightly incoherent as he pointed at one particularly old signature.
‘Hendrix?’ read out Dylan. Awed, Spanner reached out a finger to trace the writing.
‘He’s here?’ said Dylan again. Gabrielle nodded.
‘Yeah. Played an awesome set too.’ Her eyes glazed slightly with happy memory. ‘Still in the audience, I think. Most of the old guys are.’
‘Who else is, um, in the audience?’ asked Spanner, just a bit shakily. Gabrielle looked up, like she was assembling a list in her head.
‘Uh, Bonham’s still out there-‘ Milo made an incoherent squeaking noise ‘- um, Cobain of course -’ this time the squeak was Dylan’s ‘ - let’s see . . . Hendrix, yep, Kossoff, um, Fraser as well, Jesus, when those two got on stage together . . . uh, Morrison –‘
‘Um, thanks.’ Eddie cut her off. ‘That’s . . . kind of intimidating,’ he said, and Spanner nodded emphatically.
‘Oh, you’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about,’ said Gabrielle reassuringly. There was a roar from beyond the stage door. ‘Ah, that’ll be the end of the last set,’ she said. ‘Sounds like they were popular. You guys are up next. Go on.’ She nodded at the door. Spanner reached for the handle.
‘Wait!’ said Dylan suddenly. The other three turned to look at him.
‘It’s just . . . we’re dead, right?’ he continued in a small voice. Eddie held his breath. It was the first time any of them had actually voiced the words that were hovering around them; dead dead dead, you are dead . . .’ And this place is, sort of a waiting room. We don’t have to go through.’ His mouth twisted, uncertainty in every line of his body. ‘If we go through, right, it’ll be like we really are dead . . .’
Gabrielle looked at him kindly, and opened her mouth to say something, probably something comforting, but if the words that Dylan had said had been hovering around them, there were others too, words that had been spiralling round the four of them since right before the fall, and Spanner, a Floydie to the last, found himself saying gently,
‘I am not frightened of dying,’
The beat, slower than a heartbeat, filtered gently out from the gap under the door. Milo picked it up. Milo always picked up the beat. He said;
‘Any time will do, I don’t mind,’
Eddie added automatically ‘Why should I be frightened of dying? There’s no reason for it.’ He looked down, puzzled at the words coming out of him and went cross-eyed, like he was trying to see down his own mouth. Milo smirked.
A line of three dots hung in the air. A gap needed filling.
They all looked to Dylan then, and the last words fitted perfectly in his throat, so he said them. ‘You’ve got to go sometime.’
‘That’s it guys,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Welcome to the Great Gig in the Sky.’
Dylan reached for the handle of the Stage Door.
Author: Trojie
Notes: I think this is the first piece of my original writing to see the light of day. Bridget has seen it, but other than that, I’ve been sitting on it for about ... five years actually. I wrote most of it in one sitting. It took me about half an hour, originally, and then I’ve looked at it every so often and adjusted bits and pieces. I’m quite happy with it. I like it. It is sort of inspired by Pink Floyd’s ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’, off the album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ (if you don’t know it, go and ask your parents. You ought to know it. This album is STILL in the Top 100 Album charts and it was released over thirty years ago). It is also probably a tad influenced by Neil Gaiman, as I wrote it after I’d just finished reading American Gods three times over in two days and was a bit drunk on Gaiman. Whether or not it sounds anything like him is another matter, but this ought to be mentioned just so that blame can be laid. I’m posting this largely because I hope to have more original writing done soon, and I’m steeling myself to public reaction. Reactions and reviews always gladly received.
Just before the van fell off the cliff, Spanner held his breath. He wasn’t clear on why he was holding his breath. Maybe he was waiting. Maybe he was trying to speed up the inevitable. Maybe it was like watching the Olympics; you hold your breath just before the brave little guy from Lithuania wins the hurdles, or whatever. But it was probably just waiting, considering the person that is – or was - Spanner. Let’s not try to read too much into it, eh?
In the little, teetering moment before the van fell off the cliff, Milo wondered vaguely what Eddie was thinking, which was odd, because before, they’d never really had to wonder what the other was thinking, because they could tell. But all those other times, conceivably, there could have been any one of thousands of things for the other one to be thinking, yet still they knew, but here, when the main thing someone would be thinking of was ‘ohmygodmessyhorribledeath,’ here Milo was, suddenly uncertain of what Eddie was thinking.
Milo was aware that he was possibly a little incoherent.
That little, teetering moment was not a time of great cogitation on Eddie’s part. Mainly he was thinking ‘Jesus, who’ll pay for all the gear in the back?’
Spanner, Eddie, Milo and Dylan. Up until the rather enthusiastic turning manoeuvre executed by Dylan, which would have worked perfectly had it not been pissing down with rain, and had they not been on a road which was flanked by cliffs on either side, one of which went up, and the other of which went emphatically down, they had been a band. I don’t know who said it, but it has been said that we all die alone. They did indeed die, all individuals, but they had been a band, and these things are important.
There’s a kind of spiritual chemistry in a band . . . and I do know who said that, it was Roger Daltry, but I digress.
Their band had been . . . all right, I guess, typical post-Nirvana grunge/punk/alternative rock, the sort of thing that gets played about eleven pm on student radio stations, and that night they’d been playing a gig. In a pub. They were on their way home now. There were four of them; Spanner on guitar, Eddie and Milo, brothers, playing bass and drums respectively, and Dylan on vocals. The band was called Verdigris. Dylan, the sole student amongst them, had found it somewhere in a book, and they’d liked it. Occasionally Eddie thought it sounded very metal, and they didn’t play a lot of strictly-speaking metal, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone, so he left it. What’s in a name, indeed?
In the little, teetering moment before the van fell off the cliff, the CD player changed songs. They’d been unable to agree to one CD, so they’d shoved in some random mix disks that Eddie and Milo’d made. The sound tugged at him, so Dylan listened. The new song wailed and sang and grated across his nerves, but he couldn’t wrench his hands off the steering wheel to hit Next. Beside him, he heard a strained little chuckle.
‘Eddie?’ he gritted out, suddenly irrationally afraid that the sounds he made would weigh the van down – that was the trouble with studying philosophy, it made you such a paranoiac – and Eddie said, in the same strained tone as the one he’d chuckled in; ‘Ironic-’ Dylan’s mind suddenly short circuited; Had they put Alanis in? Had Alanis ever sounded like this? ‘-this song.’ Eddie continued. ‘Pink Floyd. Great Gig in the Sky.’
Maybe the words had weighed them down. If light has force, why can’t sound have weight? The little, teetering moment was over. The fall happened.
***
Rock, well, alternative rock at least, is founded partially on the rise of the geek. It works, somehow, the rebirth of the kid with the jumpers and the milk-bottle glasses into the detached, knowledgeable musician who works quantum physics and obscure literary references into songs, who spent years, in between study and running the backstage of every school pantomime, patiently and methodically learning the guitar. It works, somehow; maybe it’s the desperate need for rock and roll to prove that it doesn’t work how life works, that somehow, magically, the underdog wins, that image doesn’t matter. The cool and the popular and the shiny-haired, who in a previous time trod all over the geeks, and did all the things that, in stereotypical American teen movies, jocks and cheerleaders do, they become the reviled. Lyrics, songs, whole albums trash them. Loner and loser win out in the end. It’s all very rebellious, and new, and alternative, and oh so formulaic at the same time. Sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll, and untimely deaths as well.
***
Eddie was dead. He opened his eyes. Admittedly that isn’t the sort of thing you expect to happen after you’re dead, but nevertheless the habits of a lifetime do not change easily, and opening your eyes once you wake up is one of them. It is quite a nice surprise to be dead, and find you can still wake up.
‘Guys?’
A collection of groans signalled that they’d woken up too.
‘Hello?’ That was not a nice voice, thought Eddie. Slowly his senses filled in the background. There had not, surprisingly, been a lot of pain in the whole dying experience. That was a plus. But there was pain now. Mainly coming in through his ears. The air was full of discords, missed notes, sharps, flats, squeaks, every noise of torture ever wrung from an instrument was crowding the . . .
Where are we?
By rights they should have been on the rocks, in bits, or possibly with an arty Jackson Pollock-y spatter effect. Eddie didn’t think this was the case, somehow. He felt remarkably corporeal. Of course, he’d read about how amputees reckoned they could still feel their missing limbs, so maybe that wasn’t such a big help. He sat up gingerly, still wincing at the crash of sound in the . . . room. It was a room. There was a whiteboard with staff lines drawn across it, and a big smoothly curved treble clef, but no time signature, no notes. The notes were in the air of the room. And they hurt.
‘Hello?’ That not-nice voice was still there. Eddie swivelled carefully – each movement brought a new jangle of music in pain to his ear – and found a person standing over him. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Milo (who looked unhurt) and Spanner and Dylan next to him. Eddie was less than inclined to be charitable towards Dylan right now. The person offered Eddie a hand up, and Eddie, being pulled to his feet, could feel the notes ripping past his ear like hessian tearing, and he didn’t like it.
‘Can I go now, please?’ Somehow this place felt like a classroom, and Eddie wasn’t at home with classrooms, and this sullen person with the unpleasant voice reminded him sharply of a music teacher he’d once had, when his mother thought that the clarinet was the right instrument for a boy to learn, and he wanted to leave. Now.
‘Oh no, boy, you can’t leave. You haven’t done any practicing in . . .’ the teacher-person squinted at him. It was like being riveted to a wall. ‘You haven’t done any practicing in a long time.’
‘What?’ Eddie was bass-playerly monosyllabic. No-one has yet ascertained whether it is the bass itself that lures quiet young men to play it, or whether quite ordinary young men somehow become quiet and measured once they pick up a bass, but there it is; bass players tend to be the quiet ones, and Eddie was an example of rigid conformation to the cliché.
‘Practice, boy. Scales. Arpeggios. Some kind of structure.’
Eddie felt drowned. He’d hated that side of the music lessons. The guys had never asked him for ‘arpeggios’, which made him quite thankful (although in the back of his mind he was aware that he played quite a lot of them, even if they didn’t call them that). He didn’t know how to deal with this brassy person, so he turned and pulled the now sitting Milo up to his feet, and then offered his hand grudgingly to Dylan. Milo hauled Spanner up, and the four of them turned to the teacher-person. Eddie stayed silent. Talking to people was a lead singer thing, that’s why you had them, to shout all the right words and let him get on with the bass playing, and so he was content when Dylan, who deserved a bollocksing anyway, took the lead.
‘We’re going now,’ said Dylan defiantly, chin in the air and eyebrow raised.
‘And I never saw you in class at all, young man.’ said the teacher, jabbing in a knobbly, bony finger like a conductor’s baton into Dylan’s square chest. All the while the discords wailed around them. Eddie was getting a headache. He wished he had his bass. It seemed very illogical to want his bass, for Christ’s sake, he tried to reason with himself, it’s a bass, not a teddy-bear, but never the less he wanted the feel of strings under his fidgeting right-hand fingers, and the comforting weight of the strap around his shoulder and neck.
‘I never took classes,’ said Dylan, raising an eyebrow in a way he probably thought made him look cool. He didn’t really need to try to look cool; he was a lead singer and cool just seemed to happen to them, especially when they were lean and cocky and had hair of just the right length, like they were made for lead-singing, which Eddie thought was very stereotypical, but had to admit, it seemed to work.
‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ the Teacher (the capital letter slotted into Eddie’s brain) said triumphantly, and waved violin string arms around. ‘Listen to everything you created, in your ignorance, boy, when you tried to make music.’
The discords shifted, concentrated, and the gruff, growling sounds that filled the air were recognisable as Dylan’s first attempts at vocals . . . Eddie caught snatches of lyrics from songs they’d covered. It was not pleasant. Stripped of backing, Dylan’s learning-to-fly voice sounded reedy and thin.
‘. . .here we are now, entertain us . . .‘
‘. . . white man, in the palais . . .‘
‘. . . don’t go hiding, hiding in the shade. . .’
Before they’d heard much though, the Teacher whirled on Spanner.
‘George.’ it said with some satisfaction. ‘Clever boy, weren’t you. Oh yes, I remember you. You could have done well boy, you could have done well.’
Spanner looked at the floor. ‘Din’t want to . . .’ he whispered.
‘Didn’t want to what, boy? What?’
‘Didn’t want to play your stupid piano!’ he blurted out, furious, then blushed pink and stared at the floor again, while the teacher cackled. The sound became careful, rote-learned piano sounds, and then wild chords that jarred upon the ear. And then, horror of horrors, it was The Song. The one they didn’t play, cos it was ‘old’, or ‘boring’, or any one of a number of reasons, but mainly, because it was The Song and no-one played it, not beyond the first few bars, but here was Spanner playing it (and Eddie knew that it was Spanner playing it, but didn’t know how he knew it) all the way, badly and excruciatingly, up until where it would change over from acoustic-sounding to electric-sounding, and Eddie could feel himself tense for the first drum beat, which never came, for Spanner had ended in disarray, but they all knew what the song was, and Dylan could be seen in Eddie’s peripheral vision, guiltily mumbling the words of the Song they’d never played . . .
‘. . . and it makes me wonder . . .’
Spanner looked ashamed. Before he’d even had time to make sheepish eye contact with the others though, the Teacher was on to Milo. Drummers attract a lot of scorn from players of other instruments, partially because people who play other instruments can’t always see what’s so difficult about banging sticks on things, and partially because secretly, people who play other instruments are awed at the idea of using both hands and both feet at the same time, while keeping the beat. Drumming is also a bit primal for people who play the oboe or whatever. However, the mystical drumming aura didn’t seem to put off the Teacher, who pushed Milo hard enough that he almost stepped back, despite being somewhat over six foot, and solidly built.
The air convulsed with the clatter of a thousand dropped sticks, expanded to the drum rolls that had got away and ended in chaos, pulsed wildly to millions of beats, all the beats that went nowhere, that got dropped, missed, sped up or slowed down. Every little mistake Milo had ever made on that kit had come back to haunt him. Eddie felt protective of his brother, who twitched at every collision of stick and drum skin. He put an arm out, but then felt stupid and dropped it again, turning away a little bit –
- into the grinning face of the Teacher.
And the drum beats faded to the bone-numbing sound of bass guitar through big speakers and powerful amps, the sort of sound that you felt instead of hearing, that turned dance music fans into shivering heaps of jelly by the end of each evening, and that Eddie felt roaring through his very soul every time he picked up his bass – but the sound was wrong, and it was his wrong. That knowledge itself was painful enough, but the wrongness of it pained him, made him want to throw away every piece of music he’d ever heard and sit in silence for the rest of his life, rather than make those mistakes again. Shame seared him.
And suddenly it stopped, and the background noise went back to the universal discords. Eddie looked around at his band mates. Dylan burned with embarrassment, and Spanner with disgrace. Milo looked aggrieved.
‘Play,’ said the Teacher.
The hand that had itched to feel heavy strings under its fingers suddenly found them, and the pressure of a strap pulled on Eddie’s shoulder. He had his bass, or maybe the ghost of his bass, he didn’t know, but he had it. Spanner had his guitar, but he held it like it was a piece of china, or maybe a bag of dog shit, something he didn’t really want to be holding, but nonetheless had to hold, because it was his job and he couldn’t just leave it for someone to step in. Milo had a kit in front of him, and sticks, which he was staring at like they were made of dynamite. Dylan had no mike, and there were no speakers or amps, but looking at the Teacher, Eddie somehow didn’t think that was much of a problem, not here.
‘Play,’ said the Teacher.
It was Spanner who began it. It was Spanner’s song really; his favourite cover, and every time they played it, it was always Spanner who started it. It had been played at thousands of school balls ever since it had first come out, and it seemed particularly appropriate to Spanner, who’d left school at sixteen and was a mechanic’s apprentice. It was Spanner who began it, followed by Milo, who picked up beats like other people picked up cat hair. Dylan grinned when he heard it, and Eddie readied himself . . . hey that rhymes . . . for his cue.
‘We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control . . .’
It felt good to play it, Another Brick in the Wall Part Two, which was a ridiculously long name for such a short song, right in the face of the Teacher, who stood watching with his/her head on one side, like a grey praying mantis sizing up a moth.
‘Enough,’ said the Teacher suddenly, the changed sound of its voice making Spanner look up from the frets of the guitar.
‘What?’ said Dylan, almost truculent, definitely pissed off. He ran his hand through his hair.
‘Why are you playing that song?’ asked the new Teacher.
‘It’s a good song.’ said Spanner gruffly.
‘Who taught you to play the guitar, Spanner?’
‘My brother.’
Spanner wasn’t sure what the Teacher had looked like before, but, just for a moment, it almost looked like . . . no. He was being stupid.
‘And do you think he’d like you to be playing that song? Here?’
‘I-‘
‘Do you think he’d like to know that you didn’t appreciate his teaching?’
‘It’s just a song.’
‘Here? Are you sure?’
‘No.’
‘Play something else, then.’
The Teacher stood back to listen.
‘We’re not the first, I hope we’re not the last,
'Cause I know we're all heading for that adult crash
The time is so little, the time belongs to us
Why is everybody in such a fucking rush . . ?’
It was messy and sprawling, but it felt good to play like that.
The Teacher watched them, but they forgot the fact that they had a spectator, and just played. Even when the Teacher smiled, and said, with Spanner’s brother’s voice;
‘Good job guys,’ they didn’t hear it.
And slowly the discords melted away with the rest of the classroom, and the Teacher, and the song wound down.
***
‘And that’s a promise.’ Dylan growled into a non-existent microphone. Spanner let the guitar squeal to a halt. Milo, who’d not had much to do for the last bar or so, stuck his sticks in the waistband of his jeans. They looked up, and the scenery had changed.
‘What in Christ’s name was that all about?’
Carefully, the four all looked around. They were in what looked like a corridor now, lined with doors as far as the eye could see. About to strum idly at his guitar, Spanner suddenly noticed that it wasn’t there anymore. Startled, he reviewed the last five minutes. He was sure guitar-playing had figured in it somewhere.
‘Didn’t we just . . ?’
‘I think so.’
‘That thing reminded me of your clarinet teacher,’ said Milo to Eddie, quietly.
‘Funny,’ said Spanner. ‘I thought it was the woman who taught piano, down the road from me.’
‘Was it?’ asked Dylan bluntly, fiddling with his fringe for lack of something else to do. Eddie shifted uneasily. This was to fill time until Spanner, slowly, said
‘No. I . . . I don’t think it was a person.’
Dylan had another pressing question. ‘Where are we, do you think?’
‘No idea.’
‘Shall we look behind the doors?’
‘I dunno.’
Dylan shoved his ear up against one. ‘I can hear music.’
‘Leave the doors alone,’ said Milo suddenly. ‘No, Dylan, leave them,’ Dylan paused guiltily in the act of pulling at one.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I . . . just don’t think we should go through the doors.’
Dylan wheeled away from the door. ‘OK then, but what are we supposed to do? Hang around in a corridor for eternity?’
‘Don’t be silly mate,’ said Spanner reasonably. ‘Not all eternity.’
‘Well if we can’t go through the doors, then what can we do?’ asked Dylan irritably, running his fingers backwards through his hair, something he always did when he was frustrated, making him look like a punk porcupine.
‘Christ knows. But –‘
Whatever Spanner was about to say was never ascertained, because just then, the door that Dylan had been on the point of opening slipped gently off its latch. Milo leapt to shut it. He couldn’t say why, but there was something vaguely unsettling about those doors, each thrumming quietly with reflected noise from whatever was behind them. He didn’t want to hear what was going on, and he certainly didn’t want to see it. It clicked shut again when he shoved it, but a snatch of the sound from within got out.
‘Hey everyone, we’re Verdigris-‘
‘That sounds like us-‘
‘That was us.’ Eddie felt very definite on that score. The name sort of clinched things.
‘So, we’re here, but what? That’s us playing behind those doors?’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘That’s . . . not possible . . . is it?’ said Dylan uncertainly. ‘It’d amount to, I dunno, time travel. Or something,’ he finished lamely, when the other three regarded him, amused and slightly pitying his student-ness.
‘One gig behind each door,’ Spanner guessed, his eyes shining. He pressed his own ear up against a door. Milo had to fight the urge to pull him away. ‘Do you think we could-‘
‘No,’ Milo and Eddie said in whiplash unison. Seeing Spanner’s eyes narrow in rebellion, Eddie quickly added. ‘Some of our gigs I wouldn’t want to relive.’
‘And we might implode,’ said Dylan eagerly.
‘What?’
‘If you now meets one of your past selves . . . we don’t know what could happen. It’s very exciting. We were talking about it in my last lecture.’ Milo shook his head. Students.
‘All in favour of not imploding,’ the drummer said, and put his hand in the air. Eddie followed suit, and then Dylan. Spanner looked at them, and then stuck his own hand in the air as well, with just the suspicion of what, on someone who wasn’t a guitarist and therefore didn’t have machismo sloshing out their ears, might have been called a pout.
‘Shall we wander down the corridor then?’ he asked. ‘Or will that make us implode too?’
‘Hang on,’ said a voice from behind them. ‘You guys need to come with me.’
The voice belonged to Pete, who had a black t-shirt with ‘Tech Crew’ on the back, and drank a lot of coffee. He ushered them into what he called the ‘studio’ and left them alone to write.
‘You’ve gotta write something,’ he said. ‘Everyone does before they go onstage. A new song to perform, or like, rearrange something. You could do a cover; everyone likes the covers. We have a lot of the younger guys come in here and play their own stuff, you know? But, like, they don’t put any thought into it. Complete crap, a lot of it, I swear. Haven’t got a clue which end of a guitar is which.’
‘Onstage?’
Pete was kind of edgy, caffeine-d up. He spoke in very short sentences.
‘You know. What you’re here for. The gig. You know, it’s weird you being here all together. We have a lot of people come in on their own. Have to wait around for their band to get it together. Sometimes they hook up with other people who came on their own, you know, go out there and perform sort of like a composite group. Some guys just wait, wait for a long time. Still, you guys are ok, you got here together. Good on you.’
Eddie figured it was the coffee. After Pete had twitched his way out of the studio, he looked around. The room had chairs, and a table with pens and paper, and was reasonably comfortable looking.
‘So,’ said Spanner, de facto musical director. ‘What shall we play?’
Dylan shrugged. Milo and Eddie traded a look, then raised identical brown eyebrows in their own peculiar facial shrug.
‘Dunno.’
‘Funny,’ said Spanner. ‘Neither do I.’
It was odd. Spanner at the very least was always full of ideas, and Dylan usually had a few bright sparks, although a decent number of them had to be squashed before he did damage. Eddie and Milo tended to work beats and rhythms out at home together before presenting them to the other two, but still, they usually had something. Now, nothing. The writer’s block from hell seemed to have struck.
‘Well, a cover then?’ asked Spanner at last.
Nobody said anything. They just couldn’t think.
‘I wish I had my bass,’ said Eddie, for the second time that day, although the first time out loud. ‘I could have worked something out, at least,’ he said. Spanner nodded.
‘I know. We could have hammered something out.’
More silence.
Milo dropped into a seat.
‘Ow.’ he said, feeling his backside go numb.
‘What?’
‘Sat on something.’ He fished around in the general region of his trousers and pulled out his drumsticks. ‘Hey! I’ve still got my sticks!’
‘Awesome!’
‘Nice going mate.’
‘Play something.’
‘I . . . can’t think of anything,’ Milo said, his face falling. ‘I can’t think of anything and my arse is numb.’
‘Bugger.’
‘So we’re going to be here for all eternity, because we can’t think of anything?’
‘Are we back to harping on about eternity?’
‘Look, Milo, just, oh Christ, I dunno. Hit the table.’ said Spanner with exasperation.
‘What?’
‘Just hit the bloody table. You’re a drummer, right? So keep the beat.’
Milo struck the table tentatively, then more confidently; a steady tap! tap! tap! As he got more confident he varied the rhythm. It was slow, metronomic, but compelling.
‘See, that’s what I’m talking about.’ said Spanner. ‘Dylan. Sing.’
‘Sing what?’
‘Whatever you feel like.’
Spanner was getting into this. He waved a finger in vague time with Milo, and then said
‘Go!’
Dylan started with the first thing he thought of, the chorus of a song he’d heard a few times, with the same hypnotic beat that Milo was setting out.
‘Fire and water, must have made you their daughter
You’ve got what it takes
To make a poor man’s heart break . . ’
That sustained note was too much and his voice cracked and quavered. He switched from that chorus into another one, older this time, and Milo, recognising it, sped up to match him.
‘They call me the hunter, that’s my name
A pretty little woman like you
Is my only game . . .’
Eddie had his head down, almost sunk onto his chest and he was humming, rumbling really, eyes closed; the picture of concentration. Spanner’s eyes were wild with excitement. The blues. They played a bit of blues occasionally, and Spanner loved it. He itched for his guitar.
‘Ain’t no use to hide
Ain’t no use to run –‘
A knock came on the door of the studio, interrupting the flow. It was Pete.
‘I heard you guys from down the hall, ‘ he said, and held out his hands; Spanner’s guitar and Eddie’s bass were clutched in them. ‘Thought you might want these now; have a run through or something. I’ll send one of the stage crew to come talk to you.’
Eagerly Eddie slipped the strap of the bass round his neck. Spanner treated his instrument more reverentially, but he too was keen to get playing. Milo, at the table, looked to the guitarist. Spanner nodded.
‘One, two, one two three fo-‘
A knock came at the door, and then the door itself was timidly pushed open. Milo lowered his sticks. The other three looked pointedly at the person who sidled into the room.
‘Yes?’ said Dylan bluntly. The new arrival straightened up. ‘Um, I’m Paul. Um, you guys are Verdigris?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Great. Um, I’m sort of sound crew, but that’s not why I’m here. Ah, I’m sposed to take you backstage, right?’
‘Yes?’ said Dylan, thrown slightly off-balance by Paul’s stilted manner of talking.
‘Come on then,’ said Paul, jerking his head towards the door and taking off. The four musicians looked at each other, then followed. Spanner noted that Paul also wore a Tech Crew shirt.
It wasn’t a long walk to wherever they were going, but watching Paul walk made Spanner feel slightly sea-sick; the man bobbed and wove around like a marionette with its strings irreversibly tangled. At last he pushed open a door into a room plastered with dog-eared posters.
‘Here you are,’ he said, gesturing that they should go in. ‘Gabrielle’ll, um, look after you.’
Spanner, Milo, Eddie and Dylan trooped into the room. There was someone in a corner of the dingy space.
‘Hi,’ she said, getting up and extending a henna-ed hand. ‘I’m Gabrielle. You guys need anything before you go onstage?’
‘Some time to practice would be nice,’ Eddie whispered to Milo. Gabrielle favoured him with a big, brilliant smile, and pointed to a large red door labelled ‘Stage’ on the other side of the room.
‘Nah, we’re fine,’ said Dylan, eyeing Gabrielle appreciatively. She had thin blonde dreadlocks threaded with wooden beads, and wore clothing straight from the Sixties, or possibly straight from a second hand shop somewhere. She smiled when she noticed Dylan’s appraisal.
‘You sure? Coffee or something maybe? We go through a lot of coffee.’ Milo immediately thought Pete, and was surprised when Gabrielle caught his eye and nodded emphatically.
Eddie was looking at the posters on the wall with something approaching awe.
‘These are all signed,’ he whispered, and twisted to look at Gabrielle. She smiled again. ‘Of course they are. I think there’s one of yours over there somewhere, actually.’ She handed Spanner a pen. ‘If you wouldn’t mind . . ?’
Hurriedly Spanner scrawled ‘Spanner’ on a corner of an old paper poster that had been prised off a lamppost or something. It read ‘Cover Night; Verdigris, Twister and Red Hen. This Thursday, live at _____’ One of their better gigs, he admitted, for all they’d played nothing original. Sometimes covers were better, or at least they tended to get a favourable reaction. He shoved the pen into Dylan’s hand. Dylan’s loopy signature blossomed over the paper. He handed the pen on to Milo, who tended to write slowly and carefully, and when the drummer had finished he went to give the pen to Eddie, but Eddie – was still inspecting the other posters.
‘Kossoff . . . Joplin . . . Jesus Christ!’
‘He’s here?’ asked Dylan facetiously.
‘No, don’t be stupid, I just meant . . . guys, come here, you’ve got to see this one . . .’ Eddie was slightly incoherent as he pointed at one particularly old signature.
‘Hendrix?’ read out Dylan. Awed, Spanner reached out a finger to trace the writing.
‘He’s here?’ said Dylan again. Gabrielle nodded.
‘Yeah. Played an awesome set too.’ Her eyes glazed slightly with happy memory. ‘Still in the audience, I think. Most of the old guys are.’
‘Who else is, um, in the audience?’ asked Spanner, just a bit shakily. Gabrielle looked up, like she was assembling a list in her head.
‘Uh, Bonham’s still out there-‘ Milo made an incoherent squeaking noise ‘- um, Cobain of course -’ this time the squeak was Dylan’s ‘ - let’s see . . . Hendrix, yep, Kossoff, um, Fraser as well, Jesus, when those two got on stage together . . . uh, Morrison –‘
‘Um, thanks.’ Eddie cut her off. ‘That’s . . . kind of intimidating,’ he said, and Spanner nodded emphatically.
‘Oh, you’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about,’ said Gabrielle reassuringly. There was a roar from beyond the stage door. ‘Ah, that’ll be the end of the last set,’ she said. ‘Sounds like they were popular. You guys are up next. Go on.’ She nodded at the door. Spanner reached for the handle.
‘Wait!’ said Dylan suddenly. The other three turned to look at him.
‘It’s just . . . we’re dead, right?’ he continued in a small voice. Eddie held his breath. It was the first time any of them had actually voiced the words that were hovering around them; dead dead dead, you are dead . . .’ And this place is, sort of a waiting room. We don’t have to go through.’ His mouth twisted, uncertainty in every line of his body. ‘If we go through, right, it’ll be like we really are dead . . .’
Gabrielle looked at him kindly, and opened her mouth to say something, probably something comforting, but if the words that Dylan had said had been hovering around them, there were others too, words that had been spiralling round the four of them since right before the fall, and Spanner, a Floydie to the last, found himself saying gently,
‘I am not frightened of dying,’
The beat, slower than a heartbeat, filtered gently out from the gap under the door. Milo picked it up. Milo always picked up the beat. He said;
‘Any time will do, I don’t mind,’
Eddie added automatically ‘Why should I be frightened of dying? There’s no reason for it.’ He looked down, puzzled at the words coming out of him and went cross-eyed, like he was trying to see down his own mouth. Milo smirked.
A line of three dots hung in the air. A gap needed filling.
They all looked to Dylan then, and the last words fitted perfectly in his throat, so he said them. ‘You’ve got to go sometime.’
‘That’s it guys,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Welcome to the Great Gig in the Sky.’
Dylan reached for the handle of the Stage Door.
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Date: 2008-07-18 10:28 am (UTC)As to the actual story, I rather like the image of all the discordant sounds floating around the room. I was lucky enough to have two awesome clarinet teachers, but the woman who took choir most of the time... yeuch. I think this has definite appeal for anyone involved in music-making. :D
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Date: 2008-07-19 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-18 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 08:24 pm (UTC)I like this line a lot. Especially in the context of being dead. ;) And the amputees feeling their own bodies is an interesting analogy for a ghost.
A couple of minor questions: Is Pete someone they used to know? Or is he just a sort of Saint Peter figure with a name tag and they know the type? And in the first section, you stay with Eddie's point of view, but in the second it skips around. It's a litlte jarring.
I like the imagery especially, and the songs chosen are great. A good piece overall!
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Date: 2008-07-19 09:25 pm (UTC)As to the POV shifts, hmm. I wonder if I can fix that *goes to her drawing board* This may get edited again later. Ta for concrit, always it is dear to my heart :)
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Date: 2008-07-19 11:23 pm (UTC)But yeah, I meant to say I liked that the angels were the Tech Crew, then posted the comment and forgot.
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Date: 2008-07-20 08:21 am (UTC)All the small details, like Pete and Paul and Gabrielle.
And everything. Was excellent. :D
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Date: 2008-07-20 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 06:52 pm (UTC)