“What can I get you?”
“Oh, a Coke, please.” The order doesn’t seem to bother him. He squirts out my drink and places it in front of me.
“Are you playing tonight?”
“If that’s all right.”
“Fine with me. Did you sign up?”
“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t.”
“No need to apologize.” He smacks Craig on the shoulder and gestures for the clipboard. Craig complies without looking.
“Put your name at the end.”
Ed finishes retuning, mouths a count-off to Peter, and cuts it off.
“I just want to tell you a little about this song.” Peter smiles and nods. “I wrote it one night — Peter knows — it was when we started bombing Afghanistan.” There’s a collective moan and sigh from the crowd. Craig nods his head, tries to catch the bartender’s eye, doesn’t; then someone at the bar to commiserate with, but everyone’s either paying attention to the duo or their drinks. He finally looks to me, but I can’t give him anything except the fish eye. He looks away.
“I had so many different emotions when I realized we were at war. The first, of course, was anger. I was outraged. I mean, I wasn’t asked. There wasn’t a vote.” He steps back and exhales. “But part of me was. . relieved. You know, I’ll admit it. I was scared of terrorism and I wanted to act — because I was angry at them, too. So that’s how it began. So I plugged in my electric and turned it up, started playing power chords because I wanted to make an angry song. And Peter will tell you, it just wasn’t coming, and he said,” he turns to Peter as though he’s going to let him speak. He doesn’t. “He said, ‘I don’t think you’re really listening.’ And I yelled at him, something, I don’t remember. He said, ‘You need some space.’ So I just sat there and didn’t do anything. I just sat there and then I put down the electric and went to the piano and played a little. And what I heard was so sad. I needed to put words to it. I just grabbed some scraps and a pencil. And I wrote like a madman. And when Peter came back, I didn’t say anything to him. I just showed him the — hah — scraps. And he told me to get up. He sat down at the piano, and we worked on it well into the next day until it was just perfect — you know.”
He backs up again, shoots a quick look back to Peter. Strums a chord, lets it ring out.
“It’s a song about war, I guess — a war song. But it’s about the sadness of it all, which is something people don’t really see. People get so wrapped up in their anger, both sides, that’s all they know how to express. But there’s more. So here it goes.”
He starts his count again. Mute Peter stops him with a quickly raised finger.
“Oh, my god, the title. The song is called “The Lonely Night”—and two, three. .” Peter hits a minor chord and holds it — lets it ring. Ed picks the arpeggio slowly, awkwardly, as though he’s searching for the strings for the first time. They find each other’s tempo, agree on a common pace — a slow, rolling egg waltz. “Ooo. .” They’re both tenors. Ed’s singing voice is lispless. They hold the harmony for two bars and stop for two beats. Ed closes his eyes and sings:
Why do they drop two-ton
Bombs on the heads of the old?
It makes me so lonely.
Why do they drop two-ton bombs
On the heads of the babes?
I hear them fall.
And the change:
I’m so far away
Why do I feel this way?
I leave — back out the door like I’ve left something burning on the stove. I slow up a block away and then stop. Ed’s voice comes up in my head — the first line, “Why do they drop two-ton bombs. .” I start walking again and it lets up. The faster I go, the more it diminishes until, near running, it’s finally gone. I stop. It comes back full tilt — the limp, high, cloaked exhortation. I try to dispel it. Where was Al in his song before he was so rudely interrupted? The overlapping descending chorus of ooos. I’ve always wondered, marveled, at how he, in that song, in that moment where there should be some crescendo — some answer, manages every time I hear it, to avoid bathos in the anticlimax. “Hmm hmm hmmm-mm. .” The tone, so low and mellow. Maybe just an organ hanging on, mirroring the backing vocals. And then the blade-with-balm shriek, which throws up image after image for me: Gavin and his beer can litter; Shake’s gently dancing shoulders; Brian’s idiotic stoned grin; Lila’s twist of the knob up to the end of the AM dial; my father’s record stacks; the books he’d leave lying around the house, open. Sometimes when I was walking by, he’d stop me, “I love this part — listen.” Read what was to me an incomprehensible passage. It would knock me into a stupor. The words seemed to fly around the room with disparate half-formed images. I’d try to cling to something: “Seawrack” blah blah blah. “Seatangle.” All I really took with me was how the words behaved — explosives stashed in everything — the sofa, the television, his face — condemned structures awaiting implosion. “Seawrack” and “seatangle.” Watching something else grow in the destroyed face. His eyes, darting from the page to my face, regarding both with equal, unguarded affection. Standing there he was — what little chest he had puffed out — powerful, as if he’d just unlocked the secrets of some ancient tome, an unknown benevolent incantation so potent that merely thinking it dispelled all impotent and childish notions of magic and power.
I go back. There’s a young woman on the stage. She has crazy, long blonde ringlets that spill over her shoulders and onto her guitar. I don’t recognize the song, although it does sound familiar — open tuning, droning unfretted strings. Her voice spirals up from a strained and wavering tenor to a light, easy soprano like a big bird searching for a thermal strong enough to lift it. I can’t make out the words. They don’t seem to matter to her except for giving her a reason to sing.
She finishes, bows her head slightly to applause and chatter. A whistle. She raises her head sharply, throws her hair back and catches it behind her head with both hands. There’s something about her face — it’s difficult to tell from this distance, over and between heads in the smoky dark — the shapes perhaps; eyes and nose don’t match, maybe it’s the nose and forehead. It’s odd but not unattractive — beautiful even. She drops her hands and her hair drops too. Craig hoots, and I snap around to face him. “All right, Rosa!” He claps methodically. Rosa doesn’t respond. She checks her tuning and leans into the microphone, “This one’s called ‘The Seagull.’”
I wonder why she stopped her last one. This song sounds very much the same. It could’ve been, had she continued, a suite; slightly varied but linked songs, similar in melody, tone, and performance — or at least her hair. Perhaps none of us in the audience knows that it’s the reason we’re listening, because we could all just go home and put on a Joni Mitchell record rather than listen to Rosa fall short of the mark. Perhaps it’s her odd face, covered by the cascade. From where I’m standing she looks small. Perhaps it’s my distance. Maybe the guitar’s too big or the stool too tall, her hair, or the sum of all these factors. She finishes, stands, and bows. Craig is up there in the wings to congratulate her — an aborted lip kiss that morphs into a hug and a cheek-to-cheek rub.