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The music industry is crowded and vicious, perhaps worse than acting, writing, painting. Average ears are capable of perceiving no more than a few dozen distinct musical notes or more than a handful of truly different styles -- and in the few brief decades since recording technology began preserving every effort great and small, almost all of the pleasing combinations of sound have been done. Over and over. Most of the unpleasant ones have been done repeatedly as well. At first the Internet offered new venues, buyers and stages, but it also quickly became a vast garbage dump into which every copycat and tin-ear poured their knock-offs. Alan's not above borrowing concepts or inspiration from his favorites, Christ Butter, the Beatles, but he labors to make each composition fresh. He has fought for and earned each of his few professional credits, and puts only his best songs on the two web sites promoting his work... but it's near-impossible for any single voice to rise above the global mob. What it takes to stand out is a completely new style. The strange text in the photographs is definitely music, Alan decides. Strange music. He tries to give it voice, coughing through the unique tempo: "Dah dah wa. Wa dah." Very strange. As if someone combined bagpipe marches with reggae, wind noise and dashes of punk. Its clash and contrast are unspeakably lovely. "Dah wa. Da dee..." He finds himself roaming his one bedroom apartment like a slow-motion pinball, flopping down on the couch to continue his translation, rising to dig through the refrigerator, the whispering in his head escaping him in wet-dog shakes of his body and hands. "Dah dee. Dah dah." He finds himself mumbling, always mumbling, water bubbling from his lips under the hot spray of the shower, flat echoes surrounding him as he paces in the short entry hall. "Dah wa. Dah dah." He finds himself in bed, lurching from a deep but restless sleep, the phone ringing. The answering machine speaks, his boss, furious. Apparently he left the FastFoto door unlocked. Alan is exhausted, damp all over with sweat, his belly glued with semen. For the first time in twenty years he's had a wet dream. But it was a nightmare. He remembers thick conflicting emotion -- anger, longing, joy -- coupled with random sensations like hunger and heat as well as cascading memories of being a teenager, a child and, insanely, an old man heavy with arthritis. He pushes out of the twisted sheets and hurries back to the shower. And, again, water bubbles from his lips as he begins to chant the magic sounds: "Wa dah. Wa dah." For the first time he feels a touch of fear. The name on the deposit envelope is Wendy Dannenbring. Originally Alan had planned to observe her, meet her, at FastFoto when she came in for her film. But there isn't anything there for her anymore. The prints, the negatives and the deposit envelope all came home with him. And he can't wait. Caught by the warm yellow dawn, sitting on a frigid bench for the cross-town bus, Alan examines the envelope again. Her address is not in an upscale neighborhood, so in that respect at least she is like him, still struggling. For the moment. Wendy Dannenbring is about to knock the world off its feet and he thinks he can help. He thinks he can improve her ballad by underscoring it with a more normal bass. Good reviews from the critics are wonderful, but if an audience doesn't understand what they're hearing, they won't come back for more. "Dah dah, dah. Dah wa." He imagines he's found his perfect match. She obviously understands the power of solitude, given that this creation must have required years of intense labor. Yet she's also passionate and starved for intimacy. It's all in the music. Dreaming over her tight spikey cursive, he thinks of his few lovers, a teacher who earned his first crush, a favorite, untouchable cousin who mercilessly flaunted herself for years and once let him surprise her by the pool with her top off. He thinks of women he's only hoped for, daydreams, gentle nurturers. The loud arrival of the bus shocks him like an alarm clock. So does discovering, as he rises, that he has an erection. Fear spikes through his heart again. A sagging old dumpling of a woman opens the door only as far as the security chain allows. Alan stares at her, gives the apartment number a double-take. Her eyes, bright with anxiety, bruised by sleep-deprivation, sweep over him and past his shoulder as if expecting someone else. He holds up the deposit envelope. Her eyes widen, then slide to his face. Whatever she sees there does not seem to lessen her anxiety, but she raises one small hand to free the security chain. Wendy Dannenbring's place would have been cliche Grandma except that the frilly white doilies on the sofa and end tables are visible only where the massive drifts of paper have been organized into stacks. And it's unusual for people her age, the last of the pre-Boomer generation, to be high tech. She has three computers. Oddly, all are unplugged and two have been disassembled, the printers stacked upsidedown in a corner of the small room. Filthy crusted dishes sit among the paperwork. Alan stands motionless while Wendy sits and fusses through the photos. "Should've known," she mutters. He waves at all the paper. "Why did you take pictures?" "To see if it would stay the same." "What?" Disappointment is not uncommon in Alan's life, but this wacky old bat could not be farther from what he'd hoped for. The shock of her temporarily quiets the song in his head. "Should've known better," Wendy says again, still talking to the pictures or maybe the floor, rocking gently. "I thought it was all automated now." She stops and looks at him. "Do you know what this is? Can you understand it yet?" "It's brilliant, beautiful, who wrote it?" "It's extraordinarily dangerous." Hope leaps up in him like fire. "It wasn't you?" Wendy's gaze lifts up, weary and scared -- and determined. "I'm not sure," she says slowly. "What the hell do--" "Oh, I typed it. That much I'm sure of." Her eyes have not left his face. "Are you dreaming?" He tries not to flush or look away. "Me too," she says, her deliberate, measured tones infected now with a hint of panic. "Fantasies, real-life, sex, hope, death, everything mixed together non-stop." |
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