I latched onto this heaven-sent piece of Acadian driftwood, but it wasn’t heavy enough to support me. Another wave of dia-tonic chords, and I was resubmerged in the horn section’s slip-stream. Too tired to surrender, I decided to just sit there on the floor until the storm subsided. Knowing that in the morning the authorities would find my bloated, improvisation-logged body on the Slumberland floor buried under alluvial layers of sedimentary jazzbo. From behind, just as I had given up all hope, a suntanned-lifeguard-brown arm wrapped itself across my chest and dragged me to the river’s edge. Backs against the wall, we slumped to the floor. The hand tapped a beat on my heart. Doomp-doomp tshk da-doomp-doomp tshk doomp-doomp tshk. . And there it was, a sardonic sonic pun buried beneath the pounding piano, the keening horns and the epileptic bass line: The violinist quietly quoting Eric B. and Rakim’s “My Melody” was the melody. Doomp-doomp tshk da-doomp-doomp tshk doompdoomp tshk. . Her hand still tapping my chest, Klaudia von Robinson and I headed back out into the rushing waters, determined to ford the unfordable.
CHAPTER 5
YOU KNOW HOW when a soprano hits that note and the wineglass breaks? The Schwa’s music does that, except instead of breaking glass, it shatters time. Stops time, really.
Whenever I hear about a method of time travel that involves wormholes, flux capacitors, or cosmic strings and no music I’m not impressed. If there is such a thing as a vehicle for time travel it’s music: Ask any brokenhearted Luther Vandross fan.
I used to be obsessed with stoppages in time. Whenever I saw the dog acting funny, I’d think he was forecasting an earthquake. So I’d run inside and set the kitchen clock precariously on the nail nubbin, so that when the big one hit, our fractured family clock would join the famous timepieces stopped by cataclysms, like the frozen wall clock from the Great Alaska Earthquake and the smashed Waiakea town square clock lying in the rubbled aftermath of the 1960 tsunami. In high school I was an above-average athlete who rarely saw the field of play because I’d call time-out for no reason other than to see the scoreboard clock come to a halt. Every spring and fall at the onset of daylight savings time I’d call the time, hoping to hear time stop and repeat itself. In L.A. the number was 264-1234; three hollow rings, and the time would answer. The time was a woman. A husky-voiced female who got straight to the point: “At the sound of the tone, the time will be eleven thirty-three p.m. and ten seconds.” Beep. No hello or nothing. “At the sound of the tone. .” Man, I miss her. With the Schwa’s band tearing a hole in the space-time-music continuum, I felt like calling the time right then and there. Press the receiver to my ear so I could hear her say, “At the sound of the tone the American Negro will be passé, and I for one couldn’t be happier.” Beep.
When the Schwa called me onstage for the encore, I somnambulantly approached the bandstand. The carnage was everywhere. It was as if some suicide sound bomber had detonated his explosive belt in the middle of the room. People, seats, and sensibilities were scattered about the room. Though the band had stopped playing, the music still rang in everyone’s ears. The audience still tumbled and swayed in the eerie disharmony of a North Korean gymnastics troupe celebrating May Day on acid and half rations. In the darkness I found myself stepping over prostrate bodies and bumping aside zombified audience members. The Schwa’s set had blown minds, and all that remained was the smithereens of a pre-Schwa, post-commercial consciousness.
I took my place behind the turntables, my hands shaking so uncontrollably I could barely put the record on the spindle.
“PTSD!” someone shouted.
A peal of laughter rippled the room. They were right, of course; we were all indeed suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. My case being especially acute because I had to follow in the Schwa’s brilliant wake. To ease my nerves I did what we all do in times of crisis: I turned to the cliché. Peering through the darkness into the packed house, I imagined the audience naked, but in this case the old adage was of no help because half the audience really was naked. In back of the room couples clung to each other in the infamous Yoko-and-John-Lennon Rolling Stone pose. A conga line of streakers, including Thorsten and Nordica, molted from their clothes and deliriously snaked their way through the audience. A man stood at the front of the bandstand wincing as he pulled the hair from his nipples. The sympathetic African sandwich peddler gave him a rose and a hug.
Cuff links sparkling in the spotlight, Stone raised his arms and hushed the crowd.
“On those days when I wake up realizing my life has been lived in vain, I come here to the Slumberland. Let me rephrase that: I never knew my life had been lived in vain until I came to the Slumberland and heard that jukebox.”
“Die größte Jukebox in der Welt!” someone, who sounded suspiciously like Klaudia, shouted.
From its corner the jukebox flashed and flickered its lights in appreciation.
“This is a man who’s turned the jukebox into a modern-day oracle. You put your money in the slot and Bill Withers answers a question you didn’t think you had, Aretha Franklin distills advice you didn’t think you needed, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers predict your future. He’s a man who’s synthesized every sound ever heard and every feeling ever felt. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…”
He never finished his sentence. He’d forgotten my name, hoping “the look” would suffice as an apology for his mental lapse and my anonymity.
“The look” sufficed. I’d waited all my life for someone to give me that look. The look Duke gave Johnny Hodges. Bob Marley gave Peter Tosh. George Clinton gave Bootsy. Benny Goodman gave Charlie Christian. Billie Holiday gave Lester Young. Chuck D gave Flavor Flav. Alvin gave the Chipmunks. The look that said, “Do your thing, motherfucker.”
I didn’t mince music. I slapped the crossfader and hit them straight with the beat. No grease. The room went reverential. Folks sat down and listened with the rapt attentiveness of campers hearing their first fireside ghost story. Those on the outside pressed their regretful faces against the windows and the skylight. I knew, somewhere, my boy Blaze was listening in on the international feed, clapping his hands and nodding his head. “Oh, hell yes. It’s about time, fool.”
I was scared. Scared that I would die before we finished. I wanted time to stop but not forever.
The Schwa was frightened too. Even though he’d been expecting a miracle, he wasn’t quite ready for the thoroughness of the boom. His hands shook. He was faltering, unsure of himself. It was then I shot him the look. Do your thing, motherfucker.
The Schwa leapt onto the track. Tackling and attempting to subdue his instrument as if it were a wild swamp gator roused from a deep, satisfying sleep. The first note he hit was pure paterfamilias. Its sound wave so concussive it flapped my clothes, shook the walls, and caused one audience member to exclaim, “Yes, Father?”
If you ever attend a poetry or jazz workshop to learn the mystical art of improvisation, invariably the instructor will say to you, “First thought, best thought.” It’s a faux-Buddhist axiom that has led to nothing more than some wildly uneven Beat literature and some shaky second-half play calling by the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl XIV, but it sounds good. Personally, I never believed in improvisation. Listen to any cat freestyle or solo — Dizzy, Biggie, Bessie, or Ashbery — they’re not playing the way they want to play, they’re trying to play the way they want to play. No one ever sounded exactly the way they wanted to sound. But that night the Schwa convinced me otherwise. Without trying, he played exactly the way he wanted to play, and when I say he wasn’t trying, I don’t mean he wasn’t putting forth any effort, I mean there was no pretense. He simply played his ass off, blessing my beat with brilliant new neo-bop and retro-cool interstices that filled voids both musical and spiritual.