Chapter 135

“The artist lives to have stories to tell and to learn to tell them well.”
—Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I KNOW IT’S SHORT NOTICE,” John said. Yeah, if it had been any shorter, he’d have caught us all naked. Fortunately, he called before interrupting our party. I still wasn’t sure how secure anyone’s clothing was. He’d arrived ten minutes after the call. “I’ve been filming through the whole start of semester. I’ve got tape of the posters in the hall on time-lapse. The school is going to remove them all next week. There has to be something you can play while I record you in the school hall that shows the conflict as it arose and settled.”

“Wow! I wish we’d had this idea the first of the year. We could have practiced something. I don’t even know where to start looking for an appropriate piece of music,” I said. Cindy and I had been working on Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo, trying for something with a sound that would express what we’d been feeling since New Year’s Day but I didn’t think it was the right thing to work with in the halls of the school. And neither Cindy nor I had been happy with it when we stopped working on it this morning.

“We could try it but it isn’t ready,” Cindy agreed. “I’d like to do something like this but I don’t want to put something out that looks rushed and amateurish. It’s more than the message. This is like our image and future.”

“Which is one of the reasons we should look at it seriously,” Donna said. “It has to do with your relevance. If you put out a standard show in February that looks like it was put together before the whole crisis, people will wonder where you’ve been. I’m not saying you have to do this but we should explore all the options.”

We sat in the sunroom trying to figure out if there was anything in our repertoire we could adapt to this kind of theme. We’d done a conflict and resolution theme for our first video and it was still being downloaded more frequently than anything but our holiday concert. It showed that people really liked it when we created a story and played to it.

“We need a storyline,” I finally said. “We can work on music to go with it, but what is the story we’re telling?”

“Mexican Standoff,” Nanette said. “Literally, this time. Two sides have come face to face and neither can move without being injured. Like if I let go of your hand to punch you, you’ll be clear to stab me. Then a third party comes in and breaks up the fight.”

“There should have been a way to resolve it without the deus ex machina,” Brittany said. Donna looked at her proudly. “What do we do next time if the principal isn’t there to step in and stop things?”

“What happens when two people are in love but there is a conflict between them?” Rachel asked. “Neither really wants to be fighting with the other but something keeps driving them until...”

“Until one says ‘I’m sorry.’ Otherwise it keeps escalating and escalating until there’s no hope for reconciliation,” Livy concluded.

Desi whistled and all had an instant of recognition. Three men standing with their hands near their guns, ready to draw. No one able to make the next move for fear they would choose the wrong target and be shot by the third. She whistled again. I opened my guitar case and started tapping on the body. By then, Cindy had her flute assembled and took over the whistle. Echoing over the next chord, Desi sang ‘wah wah wah.’

“Do you know this, Cindy?” I asked as I picked the notes.

“Yes. Mr. LeBlanc had us do it as a novelty piece in last year’s fall concert.”

“It was a piece Vinnie had me do as an exercise to learn picking. Way back. Before. But my fingers remember.”

“Is it too ... disrespectful? Not serious enough?” Beca asked.

“I think it’s just what the subject needs,” Rachel said. “It would be great if you could cut in some overlays of scenes from the wall, John. It captures the absurdity of the situation. Becomes a satire.”

“I have access to all kinds of footage from the wall,” Joan said. “It’s public property, like photos from space by NASA.”

“Desi has to sing, though,” Livy said. “I can’t even imagine how you get that sound or tone.”

“Dance,” Brittany said. I wasn’t sure if it was a suggestion or a command. She was looking straight at her aunt. Sophie nodded.

“How long can we delay the school from scraping the walls?” Donna asked. “These guys need to rehearse.”

“I’m not sure, but I can get you all in to rehearse and work on staging tomorrow if you’re in,” John said. I looked at Cindy. She grinned.

“We’re in,” I said.

With John’s visit, the shape of Beca’s birthday party changed. Cindy and I had to find out how much of the music we could remember. We ended up having to make a run to our homes to find the music. Cindy picked up half a dozen different flutes as well. She wanted to find the right sound. For the heck of it, I picked up my lute guitar, too.

When we got back, we set up in the office to practice with Desi. Donna was at her computer and smiled at us.

“License,” she said. There was a reason we normally played only classical music. Performing a current piece, even one as old as the 1960s, required a performance and recording license. I was glad Donna was on it. We just assumed she’d work her magic and focused on practicing.

“Can we do it with just the three instruments?” I asked. “I mean flute, guitar, and voice? Some of the vids I’ve seen covering this are pretty flat.”

“You do a good job with the drumbeats on the guitar,” Cindy said. “I can switch between flutes to get the different sounds. Including the whistle. Listen.” She pulled an Irish penny whistle out of her bag and played the tones. It was completely different than when she played it on her flute. Then she pulled out a Native American flute and there was a completely different sound.

“We’ll need to see if John can attach a pick up to each of them, I guess,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Desi said. “I don’t think you’ll need pickups for this at all. School halls have their own acoustics. We sometimes sing in the hall when we’re rehearsing a play or choral piece just to hear what it does to our voices.”

There were heaps of issues to be resolved and we worked until after midnight before we all collapsed. The rest of our pod had been busy as well. Sophie had worked out choreography that they could all do down the hall and I was amused to find elements of the line dance Donna, Rachel, and Livy had been practicing in it. That amused me no end as I thought of them dancing naked down the hall. I supposed we’d need to think about costumes tomorrow. I slid between Livy and Rachel and my two lovers quickly put me to sleep.

We were at school at nine o’clock Sunday morning. We hadn’t even prepared breakfast but drove through Starbuck’s instead. John had scouted several locations. It’s amazing how many miles of hallway there are in a high school the size of ours. We had to balance out what we liked or didn’t like about the posters in the hall as well as the acoustics. Sophie had ideas regarding whether there should be stairs and how long the hall needed to be. There was a difference between halls with bulletin boards and trophy cases as opposed to lockers.

We didn’t get our first run-through of the music until after eleven.

Of course, John wanted everything recorded. He listened to our conversations and experimented with camera angles. After we took a short break to eat, we were ready to start seriously blocking and staging the six-minute performance. Three other kids from my advanced photography/video class showed up to work with John.

We played, we blocked, we choreographed. We brainstormed. Something didn’t work, we talked about what would work. Even the video kids got into the action by suggesting things they could see through the lens. Riko and Riley showed up to analyze what we were doing and consider costumes. Two guys I recognized showed up and just watched from down the hall. They were our principal and head custodian. Weird. I’d never actually met the principal and had only seen him when he was presenting to the school in assemblies. The custodian was the kind of laid-back guy it takes to deal with three thousand teenagers and their garbage every day. I sometimes wondered if he was always high.

Eventually, the principal nodded at John and the three went off to talk for ten or fifteen minutes.

“They’ll give us through Wednesday night,” John said as we all packed our gear to leave for the day. “They want the halls cleaned and clear before the weekend. We’re hosting the winter tourney here and they want the school sparkling for all the visitors.”

I looked at my pod. We’d already poured so much into this that we were committed. But two nights of rehearsal and one to video. We couldn’t even rehearse right after school because of other people still using the building. Oh, Cindy, Desi, and I could practice the music but we couldn’t put everything together until rehearsals at seven in the evening when the building was clear. It was going to be a hell of a week, again.

“Let’s all get some sleep,” I said. “We aren’t going to get much for the next few days.”

There were a lot of I love yous and kisses and then we all shuffled off to our homes and beds.

28 January 2021

We’re all exhausted. I’ve fallen asleep in class twice. LeBlanc dismissed Cindy and me from orchestra to go get some rest yesterday. Today won’t be better. We recorded until two this morning before we all agreed it was a wrap.

But it’s good. Whether we get any message across with it or not remains to be seen and will probably be based more on John’s editing and footage he cuts in than on our playing. But our rendition of ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ is something to be proud of. Riko got us all western outfits with no particular color or style differences. And she managed to get us all flat western hats like Clint Eastwood wore in the movie.