Initial Draft, 20 July 2008

Wow, Kate. Once again you have me in awe of your ability to write about real life, about people.

First, I shall start with what I loved:
-You really captured the music part. Anytime you were talking about about how self conscious one could be or the magic of it being created and translated through the fingers. I know that you played piano, and sang, but this that you describe here is something different, those who are musicians know. Beautiful, Kate.
-Also, the second to the last paragraph, beginning "He plays with his head", this part sounds like an essay or memoir. I think this is the tone you are going for. I don't think it's absent from the other portion I just feel like you nailed it here. The cadence is wonderful to read.
-I am not sure how you did it or how intentional it was but the imagery is wonderful.

Suggestions:
- Work on your dialog. "I can't sew while you play bass?" It's not hitting me right. Maybe I need your thought process here? Or something a little different.
-It's an interesting jump from being too shy to play in front of you to having you name the songs. there maybe should be more on the transition from uncomfortable to trust???

I spent the end of the evening last night lying on Arya's bed, stitching the straps back onto his flying shark backpack and helping him name the songs he's been writing. It was an amazing hour or so - the first time I've really felt creative in months.

We met for dinner at Five Guys, under the pretense of my returning the duffel bag I'd schlepped home from DC for him yesterday while he went up to New York City overnight. He was high when he came in - pink eyes and a tendency for extensive philosophical conversations. There's an very conscious art to keeping the dialogue going at times like this. Well, I'm very conscious of it - he probably has no idea.

I bought our cokes and cheeseburgers, after he tried to pay for both our meals. I paid the girl twelve or thirteen dollars and sixty-three cents and added a dollar to the tip jar, and he put his bank card back in his wallet and asked me why I wouldn't let him buy me dinner. I told him he pays for me too much - he does, too, I owe him half a dozen drinks this summer. He sounded genuinely bewildered. I like that about him.

We ate our burgers and I filched (his term) his fries and we talked about his going in to the Peace Corps. He sounded much more enthusiastic tonight than I ever remember him being, which is worrying. I don't want him to leave.

I'd thrown a needle and a spool of grey thread into my purse tonight, since I had promised a month ago to help him repair the backpack and had yet to actually follow through. I asked if he'd like me to come over at the end of dinner, and he considered for a moment before saying,

"Well, I was planning to go home and play the bass for a while."

"I can't sew while you play the bass?"

"I'm just trying to decide if I'm comfortable enough to play in front of you."

I hadn't really ever thought of it that way, that there's an intimacy to it, allowing someone else to hear the music you've created. I suppose, in a way, it's like allowing someone to read my writing, and a rough draft at that. You don't show that to just anyone.

He decided, ultimately, to let me come over, and I settled on to the bed and got my needle threaded while he putzed around the apartment, putting in a load of laundry and taking a hit of the half-smoked pipe on his desk before eventually settling down in front of me with his acoustic bass.

He had asked me before we left the restaurant to help him give names to the songs and riffs he'd been working on, to help him distinguish them and remember how they go. I warned him that my responses to music tend to be in images - "This sounds like riding a motorcycle" or "This sounds like walking outside with your shoes off after it's rained." So, at least he'd been forewarned when I described the first song as "following someone through a crowd on a sunny day" and the third as "circular, but in a progressive way - like dancing, or the wheels on a car." He seemed to get titles out of them, though, with varying degrees of expressed satisfaction.

He told me at the end that he doesn't like playing unfinished songs for people, because he often doesn't get the reaction he was hoping for. It's like Sam Seaborn, in the Drop-In episode, when Toby throws a line in and kills his speech at the environmental dinner. I didn't stand up clapping. I didn't feel it in my socks.

I loved watching him play, though. There were times when I couldn't tear my eyes from his fingers. I can get my head around the idea of writing music. I don't know how it gets from his mind to his fingers - how do they know to move over the strings like that? I'm in awe of it. I always have been, but this was the first time I'd ever watched it so closely.

He plays with his head bent over the bass, his face essentially disappearing between his hair, grown long and curling, and his beard. His hands move the whole length of the strings, which squeak sometimes as he slides along them, in sharp contrast to the smooth, rich sounds of the song. He adds his own percussion to some songs, right hand slapping at the body of the bass while his left hand teases the strings of the neck. When he keeps time with his foot I can feel it, coming through the floor and up into the bed I'm lying on. He breathes differently when he plays, heavier and through the nose. The sound stands out from the music, but doesn't distract from it. I'm not sure he hears it at all.

He played three short songs and a riff before calling it a night, scribbling down a title for each on a notepad I couldn't see. I didn't ask to read it, although I wish I had, now. I felt that I'd taken enough steps in with the music, but you know me - I want to know the words.