Tinker and Blue (17 page)

29

Blue smoked a cigarette on the sidewalk in front of the Warehouse Gallery. The exhibit was up, Blue Cacophony's gear was set up, and people were beginning to filter in for the opening. After a few minutes he spotted Tinker who had gone home from the tunnel, showered and was now arriving for the show. They leaned against the building trading pieces of their day, Tinker describing for Blue a mucking machine he had been working on underground while Blue relayed the details of arranging the art show.

“Let me ask you this, Tinker. You know that wall between the common room and Karma's and my room, the one Tulip painted? Well, if you had to move that wall, say, a couple of miles, how would you go about doing it?”

“The wall! Of course! I went back to the house for a shower and I knew something was different. It just felt roomier somehow. I thought it was because the place was empty, everybody being down here, but now that you mention it the wall was missing. You mean it's in here?” Tinker said, nodding his head toward the warehouse.

“Yeah. If you had to move it what would you do?”

Tinker thought about it for a moment. “I think you'd have to tear down the wall behind it then cut the studs and laths, otherwise the plaster would crumble all to hell. How did you do it?”

“That's pretty well the same idea I had,” Blue said with a shrug, pushing off the building and walking toward the door.

—

Inside, the warehouse walls were hung with Tulip's collection, while in the middle of the floor stood Blue's bedroom wall. A small card stapled to the end of it said the title was
Harmony
. People who had received invitations, street handouts or read about the opening in the underground press were arriving in larger numbers. A collapsable table was covered with wine and cheese. Blue tested the wine, unimpressed.

“Tulip would of done better to make her own instead of buying this Naptha Valley shit.”

“I think it's the Napa Valley, Blue,” Tinker said, pouring himself a glass.

“Whatever. Tastes like naptha to me. What do you think of this stuff, Tinker?”

“It's okay. Leaves my mouth a little dry—”

“No, I mean Tulip's stuff. I had a talk with Capi this afternoon about it. He really likes it so that should put you on your guard, buddy. I told him about Henry Bruce and his abstract barn boards, but he still thinks Tulip's paintings mean something. Harmony, he said. ‘They're filled with harmony.' How can you know that when there's nothing there to recognize? That's what I'd like to know.”

“I can't say I don't like them, Blue. I guess I never really thought about them before. Remember when the art nun used to make us—”

“I was talking about that just this afternoon. So it's not like we're ignorant about abstract art or anything, huh. We know what we like.”

“I guess I'd have to say I like them, Blue.”

“Now why do we have to say that, Tink? Besides the fact that we like Tulip so we're not going to say that we don't like them. That would be like telling your own mother she can't cook. I suppose that's part of it, too. Tulip's no spring chicken, is she? She's got to be at least thirty. You'd think by now she'd be able to draw as well as colour.”

Kathy and Karma, holding Barney by the collar, joined them at the food table, taking a glass of wine, a nibble of cheese.

“It's overwhelming to see Tulip's work gathered together like this,” Karma commented, scanning the walls as she spoke, confirming her remark to herself. “We're witnessing something important tonight.”

“You bet,” Blue assured her. “Blue Cacophony's debut.”

“That too, Blue, but look around. Tulip's work is affecting a lot of people here.”

“Yeah, the ones on drugs.... Just kidding,” holding up his hands to ward off the dual glares of Kathy and Karma, then he pointed across the hall to where Peter? was tacking No-Recording-Devices-of-Any-Kind posters in the wall spaces between Tulip's paintings. Behind him, the gallery owner removed them. They argued. They compromised. Peter? took down his posters and nailed them to the outside of the gallery.

“This no-recording gimmick of Peter?'s is just about the worst idea I ever heard,” Blue mused. “I got to change their minds about that. There's a big opportunity drifting by here and we're just watching it float away. A musician without an album is like a ... like a ... like a parent without a child. If we recorded I bet they'd sell like crazy, at least in the Co-op back home, eh, Tinker?”

Peter? walked toward them and signalled Blue with a head gesture to get ready. The exhibit was filling up. There weren't many people Blue didn't already know by sight or by name. They were from the neighbourhood, from the crossroads of Haight-Ashbury which, it occurred to Blue had been turned into a small town by the people living there. All over the city, neighbourhoods had their own population and their own character and their own characters. Nobody lives in the city, Blue thought, just in a corner of it. He and Tinker had picked up a lot of knowledge about a few of the city's streets, felt as at home in their neighbourhood now as it was possible to feel without actually being back home. That's how everybody survives these places, Blue realized, by carving huge cities into small, manageable neighbourhoods. He stored that thought for a future song.

Except for a few unfamiliar faces, it was the people from the neighbourhood here to see Tulip's work, to hear Blue Cacophony's debut. It was a neighbourhood that happened to be the capital city of hippiedom, famous all over the world for reasons weird to some, wonderful to others, but a neighbourhood nonetheless, a small town inside a big city, Jonah inside the whale just trying to survive. The people from the neighbourhood were filling up the gallery the way people home would fill up a dance hall to hear the music of a Cape Breton fiddler. Everything around him, the people, the paintings, was suddenly familiar. Standing with his guitar, waiting for Nathan and Gerry to get ready for the performance, Blue located Tinker and Karma and Kathy standing together watching him, waiting. They nodded to each other with an intimacy that they shared with no one else in the gallery.

The drone of Nathan's pipes spiralled like thick smoke from his instrument, joined a moment later by an agonizing note from Gerry's violin, signalling the introduction of Blue's voice rising from his throat like a wounded crow. People turned toward them, some staring, some listening, a few moving toward the band to stand front and centre and sway with closed eyes to a rhythm most others had difficulty identifying.

Unexpectedly, a half-maddened chorus of moans and whines ricocheted through the gallery as Barney, unable to find any place to hide, panned Blue Cacophony's debut. What caught everyone's attention, however, was not the unkindness implicit in Barney's review but the atonal harmony of these two enemies, artist and critic raising voices in some discordant choir. Barney's canine complaint complemented Blue Cacophony's music with a fullness that turned everyone's ear, voluntarily or involuntarily, toward the music. It was a duet that was not lost on Peter? who immediately began coaxing Barney closer to the band, dragging him forward by the collar, fitting together a puzzle of misshapen pieces: young musicians, dog, instruments and revolutionary theory, re-forming his philosophy of music to accommodate Barney's appearance in it.

Blue Cacophony played through its forty-minute gig, unloading Blue's lyrics in a shatter of sound and German shepherd that confirmed for Peter? the conviction that his discovery of Blue – his creation of Blue Cacophony – was the thin edge of a wedge meant to rupture old standards, challenge human aural perception, a sound in the wilderness announcing the destruction of the martial man, the birth of a new music to which mankind could march toward the new Republic. Blue, less philosophical at the moment, caught Peter?'s eye with an eyeroll of his own. Peter? responded with a reassuring thumbs-up, ignoring the obvious plea to get the dog off the small stage where Blue Cacophony was being upstaged. With the relentless accompaniment of Barney, Blue Cacophony finished its set by providing the audience with a teasing sample of Blue's work-in-progress, “The Red Lobster” which, Blue announced, was only seventeen verses away from completion.

—

While Blue, Gerry and Nathan were putting away the equipment, Peter? spoke to a cluster of reporters representing the spectrum of newspapers who probed him about the band, its sound, purpose and newest member.

“Oh, yes, Barney's been practising with the band for months,” Peter? replied. “He's a part of it. Even has his own agent which happens to be me. What I believe is that for music to grow through the atrophied state that it has been caught in for the past several thousand years, new elements have to be explored. I'm sure you are aware that man is not the only creature that sings, but he has not opened his music up to the possibilities that exist all around him. He often copies other creatures' sounds, but rarely has he invited other creatures to gather around the campfire and share their songs. That is what Blue has done with Barney, invited him to join the band, to contribute, for we must never lose sight – although I fear most people lost sight of it in the dim dawn of early time – that music is not man's monopoly. All creatures sing to the Universe, and every creature, no matter how small or insignificant, is in greater harmony with the Universe than the most enlightened, the most talented, the most brilliant of men. Blue Cacophony is striving, through Blue's genius, to restore to us our fundamental reality. We are witnessing a music that belongs to the Universe, is in harmony with the Universe in a way no other music has ever been. I predict—”

Blue half listened to Peter? trot out his favourite theories and expound upon them. Any question directed at Peter? by a reporter or a friend was a challenge to him to explain the meaning of life. Blue wondered if Peter? shouldn't wear a sign around his neck warning reporters and other innocents that a philosopher resided within.
Ask questions at your own risk.
Putting away his guitar, Blue noticed one weary reporter break free and wander toward the band.

“As a musician, I wonder if you would give me a few words on the exhibit? How does a musician who works in sound perceive abstract art which, it could be argued, could be duplicated by a child?”

“A few words?” Blue said. “Guess that's why you're asking me and not Peter?. But look, buddy, I spent a lot of time studying these paintings and I have to tell you that no child did them. An old woman did. Well, older anyway. Tulip. I saw you talking to her. Now you take that wall over there. Do you know what was on the other side of that wall? My bedroom. Would I have donated it to this show if it wasn't a masterpiece? There isn't a form or colour that is out of place with any other aspect of the painting. Watching it for me is like meditating. Tulip gets in touch with the underlying truth of the Universe here. It's all about harmony. I'd like to think that some of that harmony is in our own music. That's Blue Cacophony. You ask Peter? and he'll tell you how to spell cacophony.”

While the reporter made notes, a small cluster of people had drawn around the interview, Karma with a much quieter Barney, Kathy and Tinker, Capricorn and Tulip.

“Thank you, Blue,” Tulip said. “I wasn't even aware you noticed my paintings. My wine, yes, but not my paintings. If I leave a couple of bottles in your room will they bribe you into saying more nice things about my work?” she teased. To which Capricorn added a cryptic question of his own. “Blue, tell me, is there a difference between a horse trader and horse thief?”

“Let me ask you about your music, Mr. Blue. Is the dog a gimmick you'll be using regularly?” asked the reporter.

“Talent doesn't need gimmicks, to quote the other fellow. As for Barney, well, some people seem to think that after tonight he should be in the band and some people think those people should be shot, but I left my gun home. The band will be meeting tomorrow to discuss Barney's future.”

“Then I can report that the dog is not a band member? Once the word gets out, a lot of people will be flocking to your next gig to see the singing mutt. This is your chance to nip that rumour in the bud because I think my associates over there have already decided that the dog's the story. Who knows how many people will pay money to hear a rock-and-roll dog singing with Blue Cacophony. If you don't want that to happen, could you give me a denial before people are misled into spending their money?”

“Hundreds, eh? Well, like I said, the band will be meeting tomorrow to discuss it and I suppose once Peter? gets through arguing his case Barney will be the lead singer and have his own set of drums. How much you figure people would pay to hear a dog sing? They pay an awful lot to hear Bob Dylan, don't they? Could be Blue Cacophony's going to the dogs, as the other fellow says.”

“A last question. Why have you decided against recording?”

“Well, not everybody in the band is in favour of not making a record, but what I was a saying when I suggested it was that the best legends are the ones we don't know anything about, like the angels at Bethlehem when Jesus was born. We know there was a whole host full of angels up in the sky singing ‘Silent Night,' right? No one disputes that because it's right there in the Bible, but they never made a record, so all we can do is imagine how beautiful it must have sounded. Unheard music is the sweetest, as the other fellow says.