EzzyB: Blog

Not a lot of flashy writing in this bit, just some antics of a couple of the characters remembered as they discussed the Chaos tour they recently completed.

The band and some of the staff of the recording studio are sitting around a couple of tables at a Savannah restaurant having what they think is (more on that in the next post) a bit of a post-tour celebration.

Tina is still a bit mischievous and Anita is still, well, Anita.

"Would you guys stop talking shop please?" Cheri asked from the other side of Rebecca. "It's boring."

"Alright, what you want to talk about baby-girl?"

"Claire wants to know what it's like?"

"What?" Tony asked, furrowing his brow.

"Touring! What do you think?"

Tony laughed. "Well you were with us. Didn't she believe you?"

"No! I mean yeah, I mean…." Cheri blew out an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes at him. "Must you be so difficult?"

Tony nodded, smiling at Cheri. "I'm your father. It's in the job description." Tony had long since mastered the primary rule of parenting teenagers: If you don't cause them to roll their eyes at you three times a day, you're doing it wrong.

"On stage Tony, she wants to know what it's like on stage in front of all those people."

Tony shrugged. "It depends who you are I guess. Kyle is still terrified every time he goes out. Rebecca never looks at the people, she looks straight over them. Me, I don't know. It was pretty exciting at first."

"At first?" Claire asked with some skepticism.

"Yeah. Well, we did the same show, with the same songs, in the same order, for eleven weeks. After the first few weeks it was starting to get kind of routine. "Except", he said, glaring at Tina, "when some people go changing things up on us."

Tina laughed then struck an innocent pose. "Who me?" she asked, staring at Tony through her bangs.

Tony just shook his head. "Yes you. Detroit, remember?"

Those at the table, except for Lauren and Claire, all broke out in laughter at the memory.

Finally, Cheri held her hand up then pointed to Dewayne. "Explain it to them please," she said, indicating her new friends.

Dewayne got his laughter under control, mostly, and tried to explain. "Well like Tony said, it was in Detroit. We just came onstage. As usual, it's packed, fourteen or fifteen thousand people. I always open the show with the starting solo to Invisible Lover. I'm just about to start when she," he indicated Tina, "starts wailing away on the damn saxophone!" It took a second, but we realize she's starting out with a somewhat, ahem, different, solo. The one for Last Regrets. That's the last song we're supposed to play."

"Hey! It was a good solo. I worked on it for three days!" Tina cried out.

"It was an awesome solo," Dewayne agreed, "to the wrong damn song!" The table broke up in laughter again. "So here's Tony, right…, he's not even holding the right guitar. Rebecca's back at her keyboards instead of out front, Gwen and Chrissie are totally confused, not to mention the whole lighting and effects production crew."

"What did you do?" Claire asked between giggles.

"Once those two were ready," he waved toward Tony and Rebecca, "we played the song. Then Tony starts the rhythm line to the second to last song! We ended up doing the whole show backwards."

"Let's just say our sound and production crew were somewhat less than happy with us when the show was over," Kyle added.

"Yeah, they got all legal with us and everything," Tina said. "All this 'breach of contract' this and that. Those guys had no sense of humor."

"That ended up costing us about thirty-five thousand dollars young lady!" came a voice from the second table. The voice belonged to Richard Gannon. Rich was an underutilized artists and repertoire vice-president they'd filched from Polygram to head up Cobblestone Digital. He was sitting with his wife Carly and many of the executives. It was a decidedly young group with Rich as the oldest at thirty six.

"Take it out of her pay!" Tony shouted back. "Just leave her accomplice alone."

"Accomplice?" Dewayne asked.

"Accomplice." Tony confirmed. He looked from Dewayne to Gwen sitting next to him. "Gwennie?"

"Yes Tony?" Gwen said in a little-girl voice.

"Why was the FM clip mike on Tina's sax hot and adjusted to the perfect volume at the beginning of the set? She didn't need it until the fourth song."

"I, uh, must've left it on by mistake?" she asked hopefully.

"Now Gwennie, that sax sits in a stand right in front Jerry's drums when she's not using it, right?"

"Yes"

"What happens if Jerry were to, oh, start playing the drums with that mike on?"

Gwen's face contorted into a knot. "Eww!, that That would distort something awful. That mike could never take drums."

Tony nodded and turned back to Dewayne. "Have you ever known Gwen to make a mistake like that?"

Dewayne shook his head and turned to his girlfriend. "You are so busted."

"Uh, lets let's talk about Anita!" Gwen said.

"Hey! Leave me out of it. I didn't do anything." Anita protested.

"Oh no? The boy in Birmingham you were kissing?" Gwen said, sensing a successful change of subject.

"It, was was… just a kiss, come on."

"Anita, he was like twenty !" Rebecca said.

"Well, I didn't know. He looked young."

"Yeah, he didn't look a day over eighteen. You were still twelve. You're lucky I was there; Tony would still be in jail if I let him at the guy."

Anita giggled. "Well the security man you called wasn't exactly easy on him either."

Many of you have seen this short scene on my forum (that Yahoo cancelled my login to).

The end of chapter 9 of Rebecca Danced chronicled the discovery of Rebecca's hidden musical talent. Specifically:

"What didn't occur to Tony at the time was that she couldn't just apply her gift to a musical instrument. She could do it with her voice as well. Tina knew she could right from the start. Tina went to church."

I started thinking about how exactly that may have worked, given what we now know of Tina's synesthesia, and this is what I came up with.

It was a perfect lightning bolt.

The soft green line was clean and pure in the middle of so many rough-edged imperfect ones and quite a few that weren't even close to adequate. The perfect line barely hooked back as the notes changed and moved off to another vector in the pattern. It was almost instantly at the next precise place with as little effort as possible.

As she sang, Tina compared it to her own aquamarine lightning bolt. A slightly broader line with imperfections marring its sides. The hooks in the bolts of her voice within the pattern were rough in comparison. Her voice seemed to find the next note, then fine tune it to the perfect timbre. Eventually it pretty much matched the soft green one, but the difference was marked.

This voice danced in the song. Erasing the rest of the pattern in her mind allowed Tina to hear, and see only that voice. She'd never seen anything like it. Even most instruments couldn't duplicate this perfection. The closest were her electric keyboards, relying as they did the principles of electronics to maintain tune instead of physical means. Even those varied somewhat depending on the amplifier and speakers used. No, this was different.

She closed her eyes and reveled in the voice, admiring musical perfection. She allowed the other parts of the pattern of the hymn in one by one. The church organist was the closest, but its player was merely competent. The congregation's voices varied wildly from completely off-key to quite talented. It didn't really matter she thought. God doesn't care.

As the hymn wound down, still with eyes closed Tina found herself turning and again filtering out all the others to find the source of the pure, soft, green voice. When the song completed she opened her eyes to find herself looking at an improbable sight.

There in the aisle between the pews was a girl, no older than herself: a small redheaded girl, sitting in a wheelchair.

This is one I was never so sure of. It would have made the cut into the story, but it does contain a very long paragraph that tries to describe music to a reader.



Chaos music is now completely original. It was easy to point out songs from the period in the first two and a half books that the band played. You could look them up and listen. How does one describe music that has never been played? A small hint from Tony was that their signature hit Invisible Lover was, "just a thinly disguised song about masturbation." The final paragraph of State of Chaos tries to impart some sense of it. But, you can't hear it, and, well, it's music.



As a writer, it's pretty hard to do. Then the scene shifts gears and I seemed to end up with a bit of a poignant scene with the senesthesic and the non.



Tina leapt off the stage travelling several feet towards the sand below only to be snatched out of the air by Riley, who was in on the stunt. She laughed heartily as he swung her around once and set her on her feet in the sand.



The concert had been an almost liberating experience. There were no stuffy production management types running around insisting the band do things just so in order to have the lighting do just this or have a pyrotechnic go off on that beat. It was just what they'd wanted it to be: playing music on the beach for their friends. About four thousand of them.



Still they'd pulled it off. Some people were wondering why the stage had been built through the week, but the concert had only been announced that very morning as a free event for locals. A free Chaos concert announced any sooner probably would have drawn tens of thousands from out of town.



Four thousand people attending on twelve hours notice out of a population of only around a hundred thousand was still pretty impressive.



"God that was fun!" she said, drawing Riley down for a kiss.



Riley looked down at her, still in awe after a year that this amazingly talented and beautiful girl came to him when she left a stage. "It sounded like you guys were having fun. That thing you guys just did, that was amazing!"



That thing had been a thirty-minute improvisational version of Invisible Lover that was nothing short of superhuman. It started when Tony literally intercepted the third verse with a guitar bridge that rolled back into a solo that he handed off to Dewayne, then he took that back and prompted Tina into a guitar solo and then apparently he prompted Anita to pick up a guitar even though she normally didn't for the song. When Tony picked up the rhythm again it wasn't Tony's guitar at all. He had put down his guitar completely and moved to the piano. When he picked up again he was back in the pattern, obviously prompting a keyboard solo from Rebecca, then with a toss of his head sent Tina, still with a guitar strapped over her shoulder, to her keyboards and the four-way guitar jam session turned into a three-way session on keyboards. Eventually, on a prompt from Tony, Anita took back over the rhythm, or in the case of Invisible Lover the lead rhythm guitar piece and Tony began the vocals for the third verse. Everyone had huge smiles on their faces thinking it was great fun. The final chorus was always done a cappella and started normally until Tony then began singing it in tune with one of the theme variations Rebecca has used on piano. Tina caught it in two notes, Rebecca in three then the entire vocal harmony dissolved in to a single, chaotic pin-point as the other four adjusted and exploded back outward in Tina's diabolical seven-part vocal harmony that was the band's trademark. That turned into a purely vocal seven-way jam session with nothing but Jerry keeping time with a light bass-and-snare beat before they finally ended the song, and the concert.



"Where is he anyway?" Tina asked. "That was just insane. He saw it, he had to."



"Who?" Riley asked.



"My brother! I wasn't doing that, it was all Tony's doing. I'm not even sure how we did it," she said, but in an instant she did. Playing the pattern of the music back in her head she examined it up to the point where the vocals twisted and pinched down to a single point before exploding out again in some hippy-scientist's vision of the Big-Bang that created the universe with rock-n-roll. It was… glorious.



Tina was as high as a kite, on music.



"There he is," Riley said, pointing back to the stage where Tony was lifting Anita down in a bit more controlled manner than Tina's leap. They had promised to leave by the front of the stage. Tina broke away from Riley and raced to Tony leaping into his arms and wrapping her own arms and legs around him until he crashed into the ground and ended up flat on his back with Tina sitting on his stomach.



"You saw it! You saw it, you had to," she said excitedly, looking down at her brother.



Tony rested his head back in the sand and gave his sister a wan smile. He shook his head slightly, "No, I heard it. I bet it looked fantastic though."



'Amazing," she said, leaning forward and allowing his arms to wrap her in a hug. "It looked beautiful."



Yeah, that paragraph was ponderous I guess. It never seemed appropriate to break it up though.



Ezzy

A little setup here; mainly because I'm posting these scenes out of sequence.


Somewhere I think I wrote that in one summer and with one album the band had already outsold Elvis. They are immensely popular. Indeed a lot (too much if you ask me) of the conflict in the story was in the way the band deals with the sudden fame.


Also if you remember the end of State of Chaos you know that Tammy's Wheel's has seriously outgrown Savannah. Tony has put Cheri in charge of working with her new school in Athens and getting the ball rolling on a new Tammy's Wheels franchise there.


Note that this scene, like many I post is unedited.



"OK everyone, welcome," Cheri said. She was in the main living room of the mansion. As large as the room was it was quite literally packed with her fellow high-school students, at least thirty of them as well as two teachers, from Redcliffe Academy. "We want to thank you all, I think you know me, and I'm sure you've recognized some of the others in the room. Welcome to our fall public service project. I'd like you to meet the guy I actually do call dad sometimes, if you don't know why by now it'll become clear soon, Tony Smith."


The kids actually started to applaud before Tony shushed them with a hand gesture. "Please none of that here. Welcome to my home, and here I'm just Tony. I'm not a whole lot older than any of you and I'd really just kind of like to keep it informal. A couple of years ago, about the time we started officially forming the little band you may have heard of, we started something else as well. We had a friend, a pretty good friend," Tony reached to his right and pulled Rebecca in front of him and wrapped his arms around her, "who was in a wheelchair."


Tony went on to tell the brief history of the charity known as Tammy's Wheels that refurbished and decorated wheelchairs for children's hospitals and pediatric wards. He even, barely, managed to get through the explanation of just who Tammy was. After a twenty-minute question and answer session with the high school students Cheri, organized as ever, had the teens broken down into groups discussing different territories to recruit businesses and groups to the charity's cause.


"Are we forgetting anything?" Cheri asked Tony and Rebecca as they watched the various groups interact.


"Judging?" Rebecca queried.


"Oh, yeah. That's not something that I've thought about. Redcliffe has all grades, but the elementary school is on a different campus a few miles from the high school. I guess we need to talk to them."


"I'm sure Mr. Wilson will know who to talk to," Tony said pointing at a balding, heavyset man standing near the door. Where the other teacher, who had been introduced as Ms. Grey was actively interacting with the various groups of students, Mr. Wilson had stood, mostly unmoving, throughout the morning viewing the meeting with what appeared to be an almost unhealthy dose of skepticism. Even though he'd been told everything he seemed to believe if he just waited around long enough, Cheri's real parents would come home.


"Yeah," Cheri replied. "I guess, he's an assistant principal. Will you come with me to talk to him?"


Tony thought for a moment, knowing what Cheri was avoiding. "The question isn't will I Cheri. Of course I will," he said, wrapping an arm around her. "The real question is can you, or will you, do it yourself?"


Cheri looked up at him sharply, not grasping his meaning immediately. "Oh," was all she said when she realized what Tony was up to. Rebecca looked on intently, not quite sure what was happening.


"Yeah," Cheri said after a bit of hesitation. She ran a hand across her head as if to tame a non-existent stray hair from her glossy black mane. "Right, I'll talk to him." With that, and a slight shiver, she drew herself up to her full five-foot-three and, to an outsider, appeared to walk confidently to Mr. Wilson.


"Tony? What just happened there? Why wouldn't you go talk to him with her?" Rebecca asked.


Tony looked down at Rebecca. "If we asked a cartoonist to draw a charicature of an authority figure at Cheri's school, I'm sure he'd draw someone who looks an awful lot like Mr. Wilson there," he said, indicating the teacher with a nod of his head.


"Then why…" the question died on Rebecca's lips and she became thoughtful.


"Remember last year, at the press gala, when Dad kind of threw us into the fire with the mayor and his wife?" Rebecca looked up at him and nodded. "Sometimes," Tony said in explanation, "most of the time, I can just be Cheri's friend and supporter. That's easy, but sometimes I need to push her to do things she's not comfortable doing.


"Sometimes I need to be her father."

I mentioned in the forward to Pattern Opus that I owed a debt of gratitude to Bar Bar for her suggestions. She actually sent me a 500 or so word example of how I might describe Tina's gift.

There actually is a Chaos universe. In SOL parlance that is a place for stories that exist in the same place/time/circumstances of another story, but not necessarily affecting the main stories and written by other authors. I did this because someone (hint: one of my editors) expressed an interest in writing a story based entirely on, wait for it, Sparkles the Cat. So far, no takers, not even for Sparkles. I attributed this, once again, to my characters. I mean no one, but me, could really understand them, right? Heh, Bar Bar understands Tina very well, thank you very much.


I decided to incorporate her ideas into chapter 3. After editing it to fit my vision of Tina's synesthesia and some mild de-Aussification (spanner becomes wrench etc.) this is the result.

Tina sat in one of her favorite spots on Kali. It was at the bow with her legs dangling over the side and the wind blowing in her face. This put the safety rail firmly across her stomach and a single strand of wire running above her head. The wire ran from the bow up to the top of the cabin. Tina was quite sure it did some important job on the boat, but quite honestly, she didn't know what that important job was, only that it had something to do with the radios. What was important to Tina, however, was that when the wind was just right, like it was today, the wind raced across the wire and made it hum a perfect low C.

She loved to sit there and let the C provide a steady and continuous bass line while she improvised music in her head around it. When she'd been young it had been mostly classical music using violins or flutes. When Tammy had gotten sick and the music had changed from bright, frisky major keys into more sombre minor key melodies.

When Tony had developed an interest in rock music and that had expanded her repertoire of musical styles and the music in her head had expanded in equal measure. The recent refit had caused a temporary problem because after the refit the note had changed to a C sharp. While Tina had no philosophical objection to music in C sharp, it jarred with her tradition of composing music around that low C while sitting in that particular spot.

An adjustable wrench and a little bit of experimentation had fixed that. It was the same principle as tuning a violin but on a rather larger scale. She hoped it didn't affect whatever that wire was doing. Tony hadn't seemed to notice anyway.

Today the wind was blowing perfectly so the low C note was playing clear and strong. It appeared as a long, thick green bar in her mind. Tina's hands twitched as she fingered an imaginary violin, sending its red and pink diamond notes soaring in intricate patterns around the green bar in her mind. In the background, she imagined the distinctive and unique sound of Tony backing her on his guitar and added his sharp, red octagons to the pattern.

She shook her head and introduced some drums with their solid black circles and vertical lines into the musical pattern to even out the irregular percussive slap of the water against the hull. The music in her today was joyous and bright and Tina revelled in it. She added and subtracted instruments and played with tempo and volume. She danced through a variety of keys and styles but her music was always supported underneath by that wonderful low C.

Tina sensed, rather than heard, the engines change. She felt Kalli start to turn under her as it changed headings. She twisted in her spot and looked back up to the cockpit where she could see Tony behind the wheel. He saw her looking and waved. Then he pointed toward the shore, indicating that it was time to head into the intercoastal towards BJ's. She laughed and waved back. Then, satisfied that all was right with the world, she turned her face back into the wind.

She'd held a long drawn out chord in her head while she was distracted. Now she let the chord fade as the turning boat took the wind away from the wire and therefore took the power out of her low C.

Not for the first time, Tina wished she could create such a note with her own hands. The only instrument that came close to it was the double bass. She'd had a little play on one after an orchestra rehearsal at Gilchrist. That had been fun. The bowing had been easy - it was just like bowing for a violin but with larger, exaggerated movements. The fingering was also like fingering for a violin but with slower and larger - too large for her small hands to do comfortably. But the feel of the deep notes rumbling through her as she leaned her body against the big double bass - ah, that had been wonderful.

For the curious the wire is an HF radio antenna. And "tuning" it would have had no effect on it as an antenna.

But damn Bar Bar, that was awesome.

Ezzy