Double Tears
Chapter 136
“There’s no tragedy you can’t profit from.”
—Henry Mosquera, Space Fandango: Backstabber’s Blues
WE ALL HEADED FOR KOKOMO to watch Livy play basketball in the regionals. I mean a lot of people, not just my pod. Livy’s and Rachel’s parents, my parents, all the kids. Somehow, I ended up with Sophie in the front seat next to me and four kids taking the other options—Pey, Richard, Donnie, and Barb. Joyce and Lisa were a little miffed about not being able to ride with us but I couldn’t take all six and I at least wanted one girlfriend with me. We promised to switch things up on the way home.
Livy’s team took the first game, 68-39. They were so fired up they were ready to take on both the other teams right then. Of course, they had to play to find out who would be the challenger in the final game that night. We all went out to eat, laugh, and kid around before the final game in the evening. It was a closer contest, but we still managed to pull a 62-59 win out. The girls would head for semi-state next weekend.
It was an interesting combination that I took home. Lisa and Joyce sandwiched Richard between them in the back seat while Pey and Barb rode in the back with Donnie in Rachel’s Yaris. She got Nanette in front with her while I got Desi and Beca. Beca shoved Desi in the middle, graciously letting her sit next to me. It didn’t make much difference. I think I was the only one awake by the time we got back to Fort Wayne. We dropped the children at their respective homes and the rest of the pod headed for Donna’s. Rachel waited at the school for Livy and joined us when our lover got home with the team.
I’d been taking one of the upstairs bedrooms when we stayed over at Donna’s and just letting whoever wanted to join me. This time, though, Donna grabbed my hand and took me to her room where we had a night of slow easy loving.
We woke up to six inches of fresh snow. I was thankful none of us had to drive in it coming home from the game. There had only been a few flurries by the time we got home. I took Donna’s truck out and plowed the long driveway first thing. The snow was still coming down so I guessed I’d need to plow again before anyone left. Then again, if a snow day was declared for school tomorrow, maybe we’d all spend another night at the farm.
Before I finished, I shoveled the walk out to the parking area where we had our cars and cleared the area in front of the garage. Then I shoveled the snow that had blown under the roof onto the wrap-around deck. I was plenty cold by the time I got inside and was greeted with hot coffee and warm girls. We had a wonderfully cuddly morning, most of us doing the studying we hadn’t done Saturday.
Of course, Cindy and I had to do some practicing. We’d decided to Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor, D940. It’s written for piano four hands but Mr. LeBlanc ‘happened to have’ a copy he’d transcribed for guitar and flute. In return, we planned to do our next recording in his music room with a limited audience he would invite.
“So, where’d you sleep last night, Piper?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” she teased back. Then told me. “I slept with Beca. She’s so sweet! I always wondered what it would have been like to have a big sister instead of a big brother.”
“That’s cool. I think Beca likes being a big sister, too.”
“Are you nervous?”
“About Beca?”
“No. About the broadcast this afternoon. Will anyone even tune in on Sunday afternoon?”
“We can check to see how many have registered. I’m sure Beca’s been in touch with Joan this morning.”
“I’m worried no one will like it or they’ll think we’re too radical.”
“Let me ask you: Do you feel too radical? Is it an honest portrayal of your viewpoints? I don’t want to push my world view on you. It’s better to have your character out in the open right away, I think, than to gather a following and then spring it on them. Seems every music group I can think of who did that suffered for it.”
“I do think we took the right approach. I don’t want to be a political activist with my music but after what happened last month, the National Service scares me. Somehow, I thought I was going to go do two years of service and still be able to practice two or three hours a day and perform, like I would if I was in college. But it’s not like that, is it?”
“Well, it might still be possible. I don’t know what their deal is, but we’ve got that audition at the National School of the Arts this summer if we want it. It doesn’t really make a difference for me but if it can get you into a program there, it would be worth it,” I said.
“Why do you keep putting yourself down about your music? Do you really think I’d have chosen an inferior musician to be my partner in this? Your guitar is every bit as popular as my flute. We’re making a new sound and direction. That is what our broadcast today is as far as I’m concerned. I played four different flutes in this recording. Each one gave us a different sound for the composition.”
“That’s what I mean. I played one guitar and thumped on it a bit for rhythm.”
“We need to change that.”
“What?”
“We need to get you more guitars with unique sounds that you can switch to, like the lute guitar.”
“You want me to get that viola da gamba thing, too,” I laughed.
“Or a bowed guitar. It would double the range of things you can do,” she said.
“We’ll see,” I said. But it was an interesting idea. I really liked our music.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as performed by Marvel and Hopkins and Company had over two hundred viewers when we went live. It was great! I think. The half-hour discussion with the artists went nearly an hour before we finally had to cut it off. In the discussion, we introduced all the members of our pod and thanked Desi for her vocal contribution and Sophie for dancing and choreographing the whole thing. Of course, I mentioned John and the guys from my class who did the camera and sound but they weren’t with us.
“Is political satire going to be the future direction for Marvel and Hopkins?” one of our viewers asked.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “This piece came together after an extremely stressful time for all of us here. And, I suspect, for everyone in the country. It was timely and appropriate. Next time we are going to be back in a very intimate chamber setting to play Shubert’s Fantasy in F minor. We’ll have all the details on that up on our site soon. But we do like performing with costumes, dance, and storyline. There will be more of that whether it’s seen as political or not.”
“Are you opposed to the National Service?” another asked. I took a deep breath but Cindy jumped in before I could respond.
“I’m fifteen. National Service has been a thing since I was nine years old—not long after I started playing the flute. It’s not like I ever thought it was something we could change; it was just a part of life. I still have three years before I have to enter. But what I’ve discovered, partly through this past month and our creation of this piece, is that it is a huge obstacle between me and the fulfillment of my dream. Livy and Rachel turned eighteen this fall and we’ve all looked at their induction letters. We’ve been on the website and looked at what they can expect when they enter the service after graduation. There is a very specific list of things you can bring to basic training. Nowhere on that list is ‘musical instrument.’ I’ve been playing the flute three to five hours a day for six years. What’s going to happen to my playing when I can’t practice for eight weeks? Or sixteen weeks? What will happen to my fingers if I’m sent to weed asparagus ten hours a day for two years? Let me tell you, none of the kids working in those fields today are there because their NSAT showed a strong aptitude for playing in the dirt. I’m trying to get everything I can out of the next three years because I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play again after that.”
“Are you members of the resistance who drove the president out of office last week?” someone asked.
“I’m seventeen and not eligible to vote,” I said in measured tones. “I think the president was driven out of office by a majority of the electorate who voted for his opponent. The constitution is very clear about his term ending when the new president is sworn in. I’m a little older than Cindy, but I’ve been really confused about how we seem to believe that what we individually want is what the constitution says. It’s like most people use the Bible. Decide what you believe and then look for a passage that supports it. For example, did you know the law for National Service, Title 53, doesn’t really cover how the Service works? It establishes certain bodies for setting up and managing the Service. The rules, regulations, and procedures are covered in a volume of over a thousand pages that is changing daily. And I guarantee you that even though those rules, regulations, and procedures have the power of law, there is no legislator who has read them. If you want to know if I’m part of the resistance, it has nothing to do with whether the president did or didn’t act within his authority according to the constitution. It has to do with whether I am about to be enslaved for two years without recourse to law or justice.”
“Do you think the new president will do a good job?”
“She has a pretty low bar for success,” I laughed. “Does anyone want to talk about music?”
“I’m sorry if that went a little further than we intended,” I said to Cindy. We’d shut off our computers and I pulled her onto my lap in a big chair to hold her. She was shaking, but not crying.
“You were great. And I started it by whining about the Service.”
“That wasn’t whining. You put together a good and coherent statement about what worries you.”
“And you supported it with your argument. We are where we are. I don’t regret it.”
“Good. I’m relieved. Cindy, I want what we do to be the best thing possible for you. I’m afraid you put your trust in a seventeen-year-old who doesn’t always know what’s best,” I said.
“You’re seventeen, but sometimes you sound older than my parents. Is that what they call an old soul?”
“Maybe so. I’ve just discovered that wisdom doesn’t always come with age.”
The week was another busy one as the orchestra had an assembly performance and mid-winter concert. LeBlanc really tried to showcase promising musicians in the orchestra with solos during the performance in every piece we played. Assembly schedule shortened all classes by eight minutes and inserted an extra period right after lunch. During our regular orchestra class, we’d moved all the instruments and set up on stage. The second half of our class was spent practicing segments in the gym.
That’s one of the things about a school our size. Where do you put everyone? We had an auditorium where public events were held and special speakers came in for particular convocations. But it wouldn’t even come close to seating all 2,200 students. Closer to a third. Then there was the cafeteria or what was referred to as the multi-purpose room. It had a small stage at one end and was where school events like dances were held. It wasn’t equipped for the whole school either. We even had three different lunch periods in order to accommodate everyone. So, when there was an all-school assembly, it occurred in the gym. Once chairs were set up on the canvas covered gym floor, we could seat 2500 in there easily. Of course, for a really big event, like graduation, everything was moved to the Coliseum where the student body, parents, friends, and relatives could all be seated. Commencement typically had around 8,000 people at it.
My point? Tuesday’s assembly concert was in the gym. Wednesday night, when we did the same program for the public, it would be in the auditorium. Very different sounds.
Filling the cavernous gym with music was a task. Not that the eighty-piece orchestra wasn’t up to it, but solo performances were less robust and had to have a microphone in order to boost them to the crowd. Our first violinist did a great job, obviously having practiced with a microphone and knowing exactly where to stand in order to get the clearest sound from her instrument. The poor guy on oboe missed his mark and Rachel told me after the concert that even though he could be heard, it was like he was far away and trying to play over the orchestra. Cindy and I had one movement of the Mozart Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra, in C major. We had a big advantage because we were used to playing with wireless pickups on our instruments and the audio guys fed it right into the system. We did just the first movement, Allegro, and it went well. We didn’t come in until a minute and a half into the ten-minute movement. And it was mostly Cindy. I played the transposed harp part and until the last two minutes, it was mostly just arpeggios backing up her flute and blending with the orchestra. I had a nice thirty second solo near the end, though.
There was applause at the end of the piece and out of the audience someone whistled the distinct opening notes of the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. There was a lot of laughter and applause. Well, apparently, someone had listened to our newest YouTube offering. We bowed again and took our places back in the orchestra as a French horn player took the front of the stage for her solo in Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. She had a beautiful sound. I love listening to the horn.
We were setting up in the auditorium Wednesday after school when Mr. LeBlanc put a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look at him.
“That was a daring performance you broadcast Sunday,” he said. He hadn’t said anything the past three days and I assumed he hadn’t seen it. But maybe he was just too busy thinking about the concert tonight.
“Do you think it was too much?” I asked. I was concerned because he was probably the most influential of our music consultants other than Cindy’s flute teacher Jannie.
“The piece itself was exceptional,” he said. “Poignant and expressive. I might revive the orchestral version we did a year ago and ask your friend to add the vocals. It points to a whole body of music you could be tapping. Most movie sound tracks are orchestral and could be used. Not strictly classics but very much in the same vein. I’m concerned about the commentary after the show.”
“You listened?”
“Oh yes. I won’t comment good or bad on it but just want to caution you to make sure you and Cindy are on the same page when you are answering questions. I think you should discuss the kind of questions you are likely to get ahead of time and talk about how you feel. Little is worse than for people to come away from a Q and A session like that thinking one of you is being used by the other and would be better off solo. And that could go for you as well as Cindy. We’ll help when you record Monday night. After you’ve played, we’ll have the audience ask questions and discuss the piece. It will help you be prepared for the next one.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, I guess.”
“You guys!” Joan shouted as she burst in to our study session Saturday morning. Beca squealed and ran to her. None of us were expecting Joan to drive from Chicago to Fort Wayne in her Miata with the weather as undependable as it had been. Roads were currently clear, but in Indiana we could have snow, rain, sleet, hail, or a tornado later in the day. We were putting in study time before we all packed up and went to watch Livy in the semi-state at Crown Point. It’s almost all the way back to Chicago and Joan could have just met us there. “I couldn’t wait and I had to be here with you,” she panted. “You’ve gone viral.”
“Sounds sick,” I laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. You have over a million hits on YouTube!” Stunned silence fell on the room. A million views? That was the contemporary equivalent of a gold record in indie circles. And we get some kind of royalty from YouTube for advertising stuff. This could be really big. But Joan wasn’t finished. “Your Patreon subscriber list doubled this week. You now have over a thousand patrons. And, get this, Jacob has been turned into a meme.”
“What?”
“Someone captured your response during discussion and subtitled it. Now it’s all over Twitter and Facebook.”
“Oh, God, no! Which response?”
“She has a pretty low bar for success,” Joan laughed. “And believe me, it’s not just being applied to the president. Some girl tweets that she has a date with her dream-guy and someone else replies with your meme: ‘She has a pretty low bar for success.’ It’s almost a competition to see who can tweet it first. Somebody tweets a final score in a baseball game shouting in all caps, ‘TWINS BEAT ANGELS!’ In seconds, someone has posted the meme of you saying, ‘She has a pretty low bar for success.’ You are a cultural phenomenon overnight. You need to feed the fire.”
There was a lot of bouncing and jabbering. It’s hard not to notice when my girlfriends are bouncing since they seldom wear support when we’re lounging around at Donna’s. But even that didn’t affect me as much as Joan’s news. I sat there staring at Cindy who had her mouth open like she intended to say something but forgot what it was. All of a sudden, she stood up and threw herself at me on the sofa, hugging me tightly.
“What do we do now, Jacob?” she whispered.
END PART XI
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