Chapter 116

“I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.”
—John Varley, The Persistence of Vision

18 AUGUST 2020

I think Cindy has become a part of our regular lunch table. It’s natural enough, I suppose. She traveled with us this summer and became part of our performance troupe. Everyone in the pod likes her and she gets along with everyone. Plus, we’re in orchestra together and that means we break for lunch at the same time and just naturally walk to the cafeteria together. It’s almost like she’s one of our pod.

Her mother will kill me.

Every once in a while, I catch myself about to do or say something to one of my girlfriends that is wholly inappropriate for our young friend to hear. The girls, on the other hand, have no filters. I guess if she didn’t want hear things that make her blush, Cindy could go join one of the other tables with music geeks.

On the other hand, it’s giving us time to work out some details in our performance business. We need to get the rest of the system set up so we can release our first video the 29th.

So much to be done, and I’ll need to go to her house this week to get things finished.

“It’s going to start off looking homemade,” Rachel said. “That’s not all bad. We’ll actually hype up the ‘just getting started’ aspect and play on people to support us with that. The important thing is getting the basic structure down and making sure you have a private viewing area for your patrons as well as a storefront to sell your merchandise.”

“What merchandise?” Cindy asked. I was wondering, too.

“Starting with this,” Desi jumped in. She opened a bag and pulled out a T-shirt.

“Wow! When did we do that?” I shouted. People in the cafeteria turned to look at us and Desi quickly pushed the shirt under the table.

“Shh! Not yet!” she hissed. “We took the photo the weekend John was with us in Kentucky, remember?” It was a posed photo of Cindy, Desi, Brittany, Sophie, and me in our costumes from the video we’d shot. It was a great photo and just came to life on the black T-shirt. Beneath it in script was written ‘Marvel & Hopkins 2020.’ It was really beautiful. “I worked with Mom and Dad last weekend to get a prototype ordered. We’ll get a stock we can sell directly when you play a concert, but mostly it’s a direct fill from the T-shirt company. It has plusses and minuses long-term, but as a starting point, it keeps us out of having to handle money and sales tax and all that crap. You get twenty percent of sales paid to you by the company and they handle all the transaction details.”

“We’re going to get totally overwhelmed, aren’t we?” I sighed. I looked over at Cindy. She hadn’t said a word and her mouth was hanging open a little. I reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. She straightened up and looked at me. The shock seemed to dissolve from her face.

“You would be if you didn’t have a pod,” Beca said. “That’s why Rachel’s been working on getting a site stub up and Desi’s been working on merchandise. As soon as you guys review it, I’ll have your Patreon site ready to launch and we all have email lists to send invitations to. We’ll lead with the recital you did last winter. It’s on YouTube and establishes your channel. Subscribers at Patreon will get first access to the new video and short special content you’ll produce exclusively for patrons. We’re all working on this in one way or another.”

“But how do we pay you?” Cindy asked in a very small voice.

“First we figure out if it’s worth anything. If you gave us fifty percent and had no revenue, that would be the same as us doing it for nothing. So, we figure we’re just volunteers as far as getting things launched. Jacob already put together a preliminary business plan last year. We’ll work with that as a basis and refine it before we formalize,” Livy said. “I’m taking that class this semester and it’s really good.”

I had the music in my head and I ran. The guys on the team were beginning to figure out the pace. They couldn’t all keep it up, but fewer were falling off after the first mile. Jock never criticized them for not keeping up. He had them work on other things that would help their running.

For me it was time to be free—time to fly. I loved the feeling of the wind in my hair and in my lungs. I was ready for anything.

I didn’t go six miles Wednesday. We ran the five and my closest teammates knew we’d come in together in the five-mile race on Saturday.

I went to Cindy’s house after practice Thursday afternoon. It was time to lay the whole plan out for Mrs. Marvel.

“The site looks very well thought-out, but we should get a professional designer in on it. You shouldn’t look so amateurish,” she said.

“We want to capitalize on the homemade look during the first couple of weeks and then let the site look like our support is growing steadily—whether it is or not. It needs to have the appearance of bootstrapping success,” I said.

“I see that. Will this Patreon subscription platform work? It seems awfully risky.”

“That’s partly where you come in,” I said. “We’ve all developed email lists of our friends and relatives. Brittany and Sophie are culling the lists for duplicates and creating personalized emails to be sent on Monday. We need to have the email picked up and forwarded. We need to have a campaign where you forward the email to your contacts and they forward to theirs. We thought you could especially contact some of the influential people in the music community here in Fort Wayne and see if they’d do an endorsement for Cindy.”

“Yes, I can do that. What is the content?”

“We’re starting with the recital from last winter. We have the video we shot at school, but I’ve also converted all the sound tracks to music files that can be downloaded to smartphones and music players. People who become patrons will get all those tracks free. We’ll be selling the tracks through our store on the website.”

Betty sat back away from my laptop where I’d been showing the pieces and looked at Cindy and me. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She opened her eyes and nodded. Her brow was creased and I could see how deeply she was debating with herself. Finally, she sat up and appeared to come to a decision.

“I want to see your video,” she said firmly. “You’ve kept this whole first performance you plan to launch with a secret. Before I approve this website and Patreon, I want to know what you are producing.” I was afraid of that. We’d been going for a fait accompli and knew there was a huge risk in showing our musical advisors what we’d created. John had given me the stick with the file on it in class this morning. I hadn’t had a chance to look at it yet.

I plugged the thumb drive into my laptop and launched it. Cindy and I huddled over her mother’s shoulders as it came to life.

At lunch on Tuesday, Cindy and I had gone to the media lab and John recorded a promotional tag for the end. We had two versions of the file, one with and one without the tag. The one without was for those who were already our patrons and getting the piece in advance. The one with would be uploaded to our YouTube channel a week later. It invited those viewing to become patrons.

“It’s not what I’d have chosen,” Betty said into the silence that descended upon us. “But I’m not blind. I see where you are going with this. Unlike the website itself, the video is professionally produced and impeccable. Of course, I knew you were doing these performances at the fair, but I thought you were just having fun and I wouldn’t interfere with you finding your sound. I had no idea this was going to be your sound.”

“We plan to do more traditional pieces as well,” I said. “John has already talked to us about how to stage the Suite Buenos Aires. It won’t have quite the same drama as this and will only be Cindy and me, without the supporting cast. But you told me you want Cindy to become a household name. To be popular. Sticking with orchestras and ensembles won’t do that. We have to up the entertainment game.”

“Yes. And with the Cantos Desiertos up front and the Suite Buenos Aires following, people will know and understand the depth of your musical talent and not assume it is just hidden by showmanship,” Betty said. “I think we should not show this to Leonard until after it’s released.”