On dark shadows and light tunes
Is the effort really better than the achievement?
I am compelled to write every week for a very small audience, if for no other reason than to ask myself questions that don’t have any answers.
It’s a gray and cold Friday afternoon at the start of our holiday weekend and I’m standing underneath a tent on a stone patio. My spouse Janyce left fifteen minutes ago to find a bathroom and I’m the last one left out here with our cooler, blanket, and the folded lawn chairs.
“This is how I want to be when I’m old,” said Janyce earlier, when we were leaning into the cold mist, marching up the winding hill to follow the signs to our picnic destination.
“No sitting it out for us,” I said.
“What happened? says Janyce, walking towards me. “Where’d the band go?”
“Change of plans,” I say, “they’re moving it inside.”
We are last to enter the gallery space of the museum, spreading out our picnic on the carpeted floor while the four musicians set up on a makeshift stage, one level up and in front of the latest photography exhibit. I snap a picture of one of the large format photos hanging on the wall. It’s the kind of swamp photo I might be tempted to take myself, pulling the car over onto the shoulder of the road, getting out and squatting down to capture just the right angle of the sun casting long shadows of the tree stumps. One line from the exhibit note on the wall reads:
Although shadows can be highly aesthetic, they can also be invisible, manifesting as secrets and fears in the back of our minds.
I make up stories about the band while we unwrap our picnic items.
“The lead singer left to make it on her own in Brooklyn but failed,” I say to Janyce, while unwrapping the foil package and handing her a cold chicken leg. “And a few years went by and now she is reuniting with her old band.”
“Yeah? How do you know that?” she says, pouring me an inch and a half of Rock & Rye into a glass from her workout thermos.
“I don’t. But I'm looking at her Instagram now and it seems plausible,” I say.
The acoustics are bad in the museum but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. I look around at the dozen of us picnickers happily munching away, dry and warm on the carpeted floor.
“We’re so happy to be playing to an audience after so many years apart,” says the lead singer.
“She has a really good voice,” says Janyce.
“I agree. They are good, but I can see how they probably won’t hit the big time with this band. But maybe that’s not so bad,” I say.
Is it not so bad? I wonder a lot about this. I am compelled to write every week for a very small audience, if for no other reason than to ask myself questions that don’t have any answers.
The other night when I couldn’t sleep, I listened to a radio program with several George Eliot scholars. There’s a line from her famous novel Middlemarch that reads: “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.” I’m thinking about this line while two members of the band, just the singer and drummer holding a ukulele, stand up together to belt out a perfect July summer ditty called “Firefly”.
Ooh firefly, dance with me tonight, show me how dark becomes light
Ooh firefly, dance with me tonight, you make it all alright.
I don’t want to miss one second of summer. I’ve made several advance reservations for random days at outdoor restaurants by the water, scoped out picnic spots and free concerts, booked airbnb rentals, and penciled in blues festivals on the calendar. I’d say at least fifty percent of the time so far we’ve hit it right on the nose, with perfect balmy weather, sunsets, cookouts with family and friends— and the summer has only just started. But I don’t want to miss out on finishing my novel, either. And it occurs to me all of a sudden, coming over me like an evening shadow, that maybe my packed agenda is the perfect foil against doing any of that writing at all. George Eliot’s sharp wisdom aside, truth is, I really don’t want to fail.
“We’re going to do one more for you. Thank you so much for coming out,” says the lead singer. A few of the band’s family members start handing out CDs from a big box leftover from the release party in 2015.
“You don’t want any money for it?” I ask. We had already whispered to each other on our lawn chairs that we would buy one to listen to in the car.
“You kidding?” says the drummer’s wife handing us two and turning to catch her toddler running away from her. “Take one for anyone else you think might want it.”
“I will,” I say, and look over at the beaming band, each of them taking turns hugging each other with big smiles on their faces while we all start to pick up our things and file out the door.