Listen to your heart.
Yes, in a way it was an incredibly banal insight. But perhaps the most banal insights were the greatest of all, if you were really capable of living by them. It could well be true, and Teresa’s thoughts continued along these lines as the Principal and the counsellor droned on with their questions.
She answered in monosyllables, in a tone of voice she hoped sounded authentic. ‘Don’t know’, ‘Don’t know’, ‘No’, ‘Yes’. The role this time was girl shocked by her own actions.
Fortunately she had scratches on her cheek, which helped with her interpretation of the role. She had seen red, she hadn’t known what she was doing. Eventually she was allowed to go back to her lesson.
When she walked into the classroom everyone fell silent as she sat down at her desk. She glanced at Micke, and the hint of a smile flitted across his face. She took out her exercise book and scribbled down the fragments of ‘Mush’ that had come to her. She already knew what melody they would fit.
If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then many things that end up being of major significance start out as a cool idea. Someone is bored and tries out some small idea just to pass the time. And before you know it we have Pacman, nylon stockings, the theory of gravity or the idea for The Lord of the Rings. A professor is sitting in his study one gloomy day. He takes a piece of paper and jots down, ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ He doesn’t know what a hobbit is, or what kind of hole it is. But it’s a jolly little sentence-what might come next?
The weekend after the incident with Jenny, Theres and Teresa were sitting around on Saturday evening with nothing to do. They didn’t feel like watching a film, and they had spent so much time working on songs that they’d run out of steam. Teresa had taught Theres to play noughts and crosses, but after a few trial games they were so unbearably even that each round became simply a matter of who could hold out the longest, and it was always Theres.
Theres seemed to lack any capacity for boredom, and as they sat opposite one another at the coffee table with a round of noughts and crosses between them that already covered half a page, Teresa began to feel a desperate urge to come up with something, anything, new.
Then it came to her. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘Shall we make a video?’
Max Hansen hadn’t been in touch for several days, and it seemed as if Theres’ career in music was over before it had begun. They might as well mess about a bit on their own, it didn’t really matter after all.
They dug out a dark blue sheet which they hung on the wall in Theres’ bedroom, and mounted some small lamps for the lighting. In a drawer in the kitchen Teresa found a light-rope which they suspended from the ceiling so that it would make Theres’ eyes sparkle when she looked up at it.
Teresa fastened her mobile to the back of a chair with duct tape, then adjusted the height by putting a few DVDs under the legs of the chair so that Theres’ face just filled the screen. Then she began recording and started the song on the computer.
Theres couldn’t grasp the concept of miming; she just sang the song. Perhaps the lip synching worked better that way, and in any case it wouldn’t be a problem to remove the sound from the film and add the pre-recorded track instead. The real Theres’ voice blended perfectly with the pre-recorded version as she sang the whole song.
Fly, fly away from everyday things
Fly, fly away and put aside your wings
Fly, fly away from ties that bind
Fly to me, fly to me…
Teresa never got used to it, she was just as spellbound every single time. When Theres had finished singing it was a long time before Teresa could bring herself to lean forward and switch off the camera.
They had done some work on iMovie in school, and Teresa knew the basics of how to edit and add sound. As she was about to replace what Theres had just sung with the pre-recorded version, she stopped. Instead of removing the new version completely, she simply lowered the volume.
The new version sounded different, but still toned perfectly with the old one. The quality on the mobile’s microphone was much worse, but the tinny, metallic sound in the background somehow made the song fuller, more exciting. Teresa wasn’t musical…What was that called?
‘Theres,’ she asked. ‘What you sang just now. You weren’t singing the same thing, were you? You were singing a harmony, weren’t you?’
‘I don’t know. What’s a harmony?’
‘I think what you just sang was a harmony.’
‘That’s the way it should be. Sometimes.’
Teresa experimented, making Theres’ voice from the mobile louder and softer in different places, removing it from the verse and making it significantly louder in certain parts of the refrain until Theres said that was the way it should be. They played the result on full screen with sound and picture, and everything fitted together in a way that was difficult to define. It just worked.
Theres’ calm, expressionless face, only her mouth moving as she sang the dramatic words to the natural melody, occasionally supplemented by the electronic voice that seemed to come from another world. It fitted.
Teresa leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest as she looked at the frozen image of Theres on the screen. ‘Shall we post it on the net?’ she said. ‘On MySpace or something? Somewhere that people can watch it?’
‘Yes. People can watch it.’
Teresa spent a while sorting out a MySpace account for her old alias Josefin. As she was about to post the video, she came across a problem she hadn’t considered: who was she going to put down as the singer, and who was behind the song? Theres was already known as Tora Larsson, and what about Teresa? Did she want to expose herself to possible derision? That was always a risk when you put yourself out there in some way.
The cursor flashed, demanding a name in the box for artist and originator. Teresa juggled with words. Tora Larsson, Teresa, Theres, Larsson, Tora, Teresa, Larsson…
Te…sla.
‘Tesla,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘We are. That’s what we’re called, the two of us together. Tesla. Is that OK?’
‘Yes.’
Teresa keyed in the name and the title, ‘Fly’, and sent the package off to the incalculable storage area that is MySpace. Then she logged out, switched the computer to standby mode and shrugged.
‘We can check later,’ she said. ‘If anyone’s watched it. Anyway, it’s done now. Although I don’t suppose anyone will be interested.’
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Two days later, twenty people had watched and listened. Four days later it was three hundred. When Teresa went up to Stockholm the following weekend and they checked the number of hits together, it had reached two thousand. Without exception the comments were positive, and some enthusiasts had sent the link to every single person they knew. Virtually all of them seemed to be young girls.
A couple of hours before Teresa was due to go home on Sunday, they checked again. The number of people who had listened to the track was up to four thousand, and the video had been given the honour of a place on the banner as ‘most played’, which would presumably guarantee even more hits.
Just as Teresa was about to leave for the station, Max Hansen rang; he was absolutely beside himself. Someone had told him about the video clip, and how the hell could they possibly have done something so bloody stupid? They’d ruined everything now. All the work he’d put in, all the money he’d invested to get the right version released, and they’d just killed all his efforts stone dead with this fucking awful recording that absolutely anybody could get hold of for free.