He threw his pencil on the paper, breaking the tip. He looked out the window.
His wife knocked and walked in.
“Here you are, Hunny.” She set a sandwich on his desk. “How’s it going?”
“Like hitting my head against a wall.” He was gruff. “It’s that curse of getting big early. My life has been crashing downhill for years.”
She didn’t move. He looked up at her. She was biting her lips, hoping for him, but also a little hurt by his tone. He wasn’t getting what he wanted so why muster what he didn’t have to give to her?
He said a clipped “thank you” which also told her goodbye. She escaped silently except for the light drumbeat of her sandals down the wooden stairs.
He took a bite and sighed. He walked across his attic-turned-studio and thumbed thru his vinyl collection. “ I love this shit, he said. I hate that shit…. See I know what I like. I just can’t make it worth shit anymore.”
He eventually put on a Billy Joel vinyl, splashed into his beanbag chair and put on his headphones. He nodded his head for the whole side A and then got up again, feeling inspired.
He crossed the room and sat at his desk. But nothing came. He heard no music in his head. On the surface, music was just a series of notes on a page, but so much else was behind it.
“God, why have you taken away my music?”
As he waited, not expecting an answer, muffled voices soaked in through the window by his desk. Eventually he opened the window and listened more.
He knew he didn’t like the sound of this. The couple next door was always nagging, impatient, and mean to each other. It had a certain rhythm, tone and musicality, like all conversation, but it was definitely not music that he liked.
But then his eyes glazed into a stare. His jaw almost dropped. He was trying so hard to make good music, but he hadn’t been making good music for years, when his opportunity was right in front of him.
“Well, shit… I could do that.”
He picked his head up and looked for his pencil. He tried to write something but it only scraped soft wood across his paper.
He stared at the paper. “I guess this type of music isn’t written on paper.” He turned in his swivel chair and looked down the stairs. He reached back and took another bite of the sandwich as he stared. He swallowed it and opened his mouth.
“Rosy!” And then much quieter he cursed, “that didn’t sound good at all.”
He breathed in, cleared his throat, and practiced a few notes under his breath and then tried again. “Hey baby!”
A sad but hopeful, “Yes, Love?” echoed back up the stairs.
He cleared his throat again and breathed from his diaphragm. “The sandwich was delicious, baby.”
It sounded good. But it had taken work. He was definitely rusty. But he felt he did indeed have this music within him.
She appeared at the bottom of the stairs and her voice echoed up the staircase, surprised. “Well, good, Babe… I’m glad you liked it.”
Now that sounded nice. It had hope and relief in it. He rolled to the edge of the stairs where he could see her.
She stood looking up at him. Trying to decipher if this could be sincere.
“Hunny, you’re a very good wife. I just want you to know that.”
She gave him a crooked smile. She thought it was weird but it also made her very happy.
She said a sweet, “Thank you.” There was a hint of confidence in her tone again. She nodded and walked back into the kitchen.
Her sonorous voice in the stairwell echoed in his ears.
This new instrument would definitely take some tuning. But the first few, unpracticed notes were brilliant. He could do this.
He heard her washing the dishes. He got up and brushed off the crumbs from his pants. He wanted to make more of that sweet music. He picked up his plate, and dabbed up crumbs with his thumb, wiping it clean.
As he headed down the stairs he smiled as he realized work on his largest and most masterful work was about to begin.
—
How can you make sweet music with more people in your life?
