Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

  No click. No hum.

  The absence of both hit particularly hard, and suddenly I found myself full of an emotion I wasn’t ready to define. It made me breathe hard. My pulse raced.

  “Thy Ken,” I said, knowing they could hear even if I couldn’t, and launched into the opening riff, as I had that first time on stage three years earlier. They joined in, blowing away a mournful thickness in my throat. I was immediately struck by the deep frequencies of drum and bass as though a fresh wind had blown through the room. The band felt just as vibrant and vital as ever.

  Musical instruments are definitely alive. The guitar my father gave me seemed to shiver in my arms the moment I first strummed it. My black Schecter Omen now shook with sympathetic vibrations from the other instruments in the room. At that moment, I truly understood what Dad was on about. Music is at heart a collaboration between composer, performer, and audience. Those roles aren’t always separate—​in this case, I was partly all three—​but however it’s arranged, it’s an ecosystem, not a matter of mechanically following a set of instructions in order to create a series of pressure waves in the air that achieves a desired result. It’s unpredictable, unexpected, unfathomable.

  Music is not a thing you’re doing. It’s a process, a thing you’re being.

  That day in the garage, I was being it in a different way than ever before, and it was . . . Well, it wasn’t as brilliant as it had been. But it made me aware of how bored I had been without it. The counseling sessions and deaf classes were exhausting, as was trying to cope with life’s new challenges, but they weren’t stimulating. Playing with my friends was stimulating.

  “Thy Ken” roared to a brutal finish. The three of us fell back, grinning. I felt exhausted, like I’d had the best sex of my life. Don’t judge me. My elation in that moment was genuine. Just because I had lost my girlfriend along with a small oyster of brain tissue didn’t mean that I had lost absolutely everything.

  Sad Alan reached for his phone and typed something. Mine buzzed in my pocket.

  I’ve never heard you play like that.

  Some of my elation ebbed. Did he mean out of tune or off beat? I had felt nothing but perfection. “How?”

  Angry.

  It’s cool, said Roo. You’ve got every right.

  I sure do, I remember thinking, and, Yeah, they’d better be cool with it. They were my best friends. They had to take me as I came.

  But now my elation was gone. In its place was the feeling I had had before, when plugging in my guitar. Now Alan had named it, I knew it for what it was, and it didn’t feel good.

  Four Minutes and Change

  December 26

  The sense that my friends are unable to understand what I’m going through, even though they understand me perfectly well, is very present when I continue trying to explain my big idea.

  Mimes? You want us to stand on stage together and be mimes!?

  No. Pretending to play isn’t the point. It’s playing SILENCE.

  Jesus. Do we even need to be there?

  Yes, or it’s just an empty stage.

  And the difference is . . . ?

  The difference is that the room isn’t empty. There’s an audience. There’s a band. There’s music, only it’s silent. Get it?

  I get that whatever happened to your head was worse than we thought.

  It’s like that piece of music where the audience makes the noise. Is that right, Drip? No one actually plays anything, but there’s still background sound. That sound is the music.

  Kind of . . . but not really.

  The world has come a long way since the premiere of John Cage’s 4'33", in which a pianist sits at a piano and does nothing for three movements while the audience listens to whatever ambient noise happens to fill the auditorium. The piece is often brought up as a joke, but really it’s utterly brilliant. 4'33" is not like Beethoven’s Ninth, in which all the notes are laid out and an orchestra just has to play them in the right order. In Cage’s masterwork, there are no notes, and the audience—​the world—​is the orchestra. Every time it’s performed, it’s different.

  The true genius of the piece is in the title: 4'33". There’s no traditional musical performance, but it’s perfectly structured by having a time limit. It’s not random in that regard. It’s not Four Minutes and Change. John Cage sat down and wrote the damn thing exactly the way he wanted. He put years of thought into it. He composed it.

  So how can it not be music?

  Because neither the musician nor the instrument is making a sound, you might say. Isn’t that what needs to happen for there to be anything we can call music?

  People have been debating this question for decades now. It’s not the debate I want to have with my oldest friends.

  The background noise will just be something hearing people can hear, and if they’re distracted by it, well, that’s a shame, but it won’t be part of the music.

  So what is?

  The music would be . . . the music. I’m still working on that part. And really, it’s not the most important thing, not today. I just want to know that you’d be part of this. That you’d be there, if it ever happens. Even if you think it’s wrong.

  Or fucking mental.

  * * *

  At the same time as I’m attempting to enlist the support of Blackmod, I’m sounding out someone who knows much more about this kind of experiment than I ever will. Professor Dorn isn’t terribly approachable under the best of circumstances, though. Emails, I’ve learned, prompt autoreplies warning of delays due to the constraints of academia, the demands of various projects, and frequent physiotherapy for workplace injuries. And maybe she’ll tell me I’m fucking mental too. But she at least knows from my attempts to get into her course how determined I am.

  So, Rain, you want to write music for the deaf now, she replies to my email, three days after I had sent it. I guess that’s an improvement on your last submission. Tell me why.

  This is hard because I know from bitter experience that she will call me on any halfhearted bullshit. Being vague won’t work, and neither will hiding behind jargon. I have to be blunt and sincere and, above all, interesting. She’s like G, which makes me wonder if deep down I dig the challenge.

  You’re the one who got me into John Cage. I don’t think he went far enough.

  This time there’s no delay between my communication and her reply.

  The man who said, “Everything we do is music”—​you don’t think he went far enough?

  He also said, “Every something is an echo of nothing.” What if nothing is the whole point, and the something only gets in the way?

  So you did read the book I recommended. Well done, I suppose. You’re saying, what does it matter if music is composed of sounds or not? Maybe the sounds interfere with what music really is, underneath. Yes?

  Yes, Professor D.

  So tell me what music really is.

  I prepared this answer in advance.

  Music is in three parts: the idea, the execution, and the audience. Who says what form the execution has to take?

  No one. Especially not someone who can hear to someone who can’t. That would be discrimination, Rain, although I’m pretty sure the university’s antidiscrimination policy manual is under one of the legs of my desk . . .

  If 4'33" creates a space in which the world supplies the performance, why not a piece where the space IS the performance?

  This time there is a pause. I wait anxiously at my computer, biting my thumbnails. If I get up and walk away, I won’t see her reply, which comes twenty minutes later.

  Do you think you can actually make something of this?

  Yes. I want to.

  Well, hurrah for you.

  I need to.

  You still need a portfolio, you mean, if you hope to study in my composition class. And I, as it happens, need works for the undergraduate concert in June. Perhaps you’ll get to stage your little experiment there, if you can supply me with something in time. No promi
ses. Submissions are due next month.

  Suddenly, this is seeming much realer than I expected. Originally, I intended to write a piece for Blackmod to perform in a bar, not at university . . .

  Does this mean you’ll help?

  As much as I can. I’ll need to see a proposal, which necessitates talking about what this actually is. I don’t think you really know yet. Arrange for an interpreter, and let’s meet.

  I can’t agree to that, but I don’t want to explain why. That would mean confessing that my knowledge of sign language is depressingly deficient. Skipping deaf class has held me back in a way that, for the first time, makes me feel slightly ashamed.

  Maybe we can stick to email for now?

  All right, but it’s touch-and-go how long my hands will hold out. I can’t do this all day, you know.

  Professor Dorn’s repetitive strain injury is a source of constant complaint. I see barriers to communication everywhere now. It’s amazing people talk at all.

  The Mars Scenario

  October 7

  I regard this as progress, Simon. Super to see you practicing again, even if it did provoke feelings that weren’t universally positive. Few experiences are universally anything, I’m sure you’d agree. You still have questions. The answers won’t all come to you at once, but they’re waiting for you. Be open to them, and they will come.

  God, I hated when Sandra talked like this. I resisted the urge to introduce her to Sad Alan; a few days ago, at the first practice of the poststroke Blackmod, I had shown him the selfie I’d taken with her, and he had declared himself instantly in love.

  To say that I was not in love with Sandra would be the definition of an understatement.

  Oh, come on.

  You sound so skeptical. I bet you’re thinking: how much longer do I have to wait for these answers? What do I do until they come?

  Uh, no.

  What, then?

  It’s too hard to explain.

  I was feeling the same anger I had felt while playing “Thy Ken,” something I definitely didn’t want to share, because I knew she’d try to talk me out of it. Anger was all I had, after Shari.

  Okay, Simon, let’s change the subject. What about Mars? I read recently that the air pressure there is so low that sound hardly carries at all. So if people ever live on Mars, they might as well be deaf.

  Unless they’re wearing spacesuits, I said, playing along with wary relief. At least she’d stopped digging into my feelings with a dental pick.

  Right, or never leave their habitats, those little inflatable houses where they do all their experiments. If they stay in there, they’ll be fine.

  Until they go back home to Earth, where they belong.

  Exactly. But what if they can’t go back home? Wouldn’t it be better if they could learn how to live without spacesuits?

  Oh, god. I’m the Martian in this scenario.

  And you have a choice: you can pretend that everything is exactly the way it used to be, only your suit has a leak in it. You can patch it. You can go back into your habitat. But there’ll always be another leak, no matter how you try to preserve the plastic protecting you. Your bubble is going to deflate eventually. Why not accept that and adapt to the new world right now? Learn to breathe that air and go exploring. You never know what wonders you might find!

  If I actually was on Mars, I would agree with you. But I’m not. None of that is real, and I’m not giving up the band.

  I’m not talking about the band, Simon.

  Or music.

  I’m not talking about music either.

  Then what!? Help me out here!

  That’s when she did something she hadn’t done in any of our sessions before. She rested her hands on the laptop and spoke to me with her mouth. The way her lips moved would’ve made Sad Alan swoon, but I could only guess what she was saying.

  “I’m not dead,” I said aloud through grinding teeth.

  The look she gave me said as clearly as words, You know that’s not what I said.

  “And you doing that isn’t helping,” I told her.

  She made the sign for What?

  I imitated her you-know expression. “Everything.” Being so smug, mostly.

  She signed something I didn’t understand. I just stared furiously at her until she typed on the computer:

  Tell me, Simon, please.

  “All I can tell you is that this is getting me nowhere,” I said, scooping up my laptop and throwing it into my backpack. Sandra waved her hands to get my attention, but I ignored her and left the room, filled with a rage I could never have expressed.

  In the reception area, Mum glanced up in surprise and put her magazine aside: my session wasn’t due to finish for another ten minutes.

  Are you okay? she signed.

  I exited the building, not meeting her eye. Her stare was too . . . parental. Too worried, too judgmental, too full of questions.

  “Take me to Dad’s,” I said, slumping into the passenger seat. Mum’s car is an ancient red Civic that smells of stale pastries and socks. Maeve and I share the Civic she owned before this one, which is so dire it defies description. It’s more rust than car now, I think.

  Mum pulled pen and paper from her handbag, and I moved quickly to cut her off.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She settled for patting my shoulder, and I shrugged her hand away, hoping she couldn’t see the acid tears filling my eyes. The car came to life underneath me, and then we were moving, jerking into traffic. Everything was pointless. I was choking in a cloud so thick and heavy it might collapse on me at any moment. I had to lash out at someone.

  I fumbled for my phone and texted Maeve. We hadn’t spoken since our argument about me being a miserable useless shit.

  You’re such a bitch. How can you side with Shari? She’s the one who dumped a deaf guy.

  Maeve must have been waiting by the phone.

  Is that what you are now?

  I wrapped both hands around my phone and ground it so hard into my forehead it left a dent. That was the closest I would let myself come to screaming.

  Private Radio

  December 29

  Being mental has never stopped us before, Drip. A gig’s a gig. And we get paid, right?

  Maybe?

  You want musicians to mime your music or whatever it is, you gotta pay them.

  All right, all right. You’ll get paid.

  Great. Easiest six-pack I’ll ever earn.

  I feel a bit of seasonal cheer when Roo and then Sad Alan finally sign up for a performance that might never happen of music that no one will ever hear. Where that cheeriness comes from, exactly, I don’t immediately know. It’s not like I’m going to be blasting those chords from “Thy Ken” into a crowd. It’s not like I’m going to feel the organic and very powerful connection between me and my guitar, my guitar and the amp, and my amp and the speakers, as though I’m woven into a strange cybernetic organism that’s somehow using me rather than the other way around . . .

  Or maybe it’s exactly that, I think over the following days, only it’s a different kind of connection and a different audience to connect with. Music is the thing, the thing that binds me to my instrument and my instrument to the crowd. If we just change the instrument to something that doesn’t require noise, while at the same time maintaining that connection . . .

  You’re self-sabotaging again.

  G emerges via text after five days of silence to respond to a long message I sent her last night, outlining my latest confused thoughts and asking her what she’s doing on New Year’s Eve. It may seem weird that I talk to her electronically even when she doesn’t respond, but I know she’ll tell me to fuck off if ever she gets tired of it. I assume she’s out there somewhere, tuning in to our private radio station, even if I’m the only one transmitting most of the time.

  Unless you’re actively trying to scare me off . . .

  I take this as the invitation it is.

  Well, go
lly gee, G. I thought I already had.

  Ho ho ho. Life has been complicated.

  Yeah, I get that. Tell me what you’re doing right now.

  I’m wondering what’s in this for you.

  How much detail would you like me to go into?

  No. This impossible music thing of yours.

  The new John Cage, remember?

  I remember. But what REALLY?

  This silences me for a moment. What really? With Scrote Punch, the answer had been easy to define. I did it for Sad Alan and Courtney—​who did get together in the end, but only long enough for my idiot friend to realize that he preferred the fantasy to the reality. From then on, it was for me, tentatively probing the previously unexpressed desire to step into an arena that sporty blokes normally occupy: showing off and competing and, yes, being noticed by girls, because it turned out that with time and a lot of practice, we stopped being completely terrible. All the other bands were an extension of that theme.

  What if I don’t want to tell you? I text back.

  If you can’t tell me, who are you going to tell?

  There’s my counselor.

  Are you back seeing KO again? I thought you said he was stupid.

  He isn’t, really. Better than Sandra, anyway. He just makes me feel stupid.

  Not wanting to talk doesn’t make you stupid.

  I thought guys weren’t supposed to be able to.

  Men have plenty of problems, but that’s not one of them. Have you been on Reddit lately?

  That isn’t talking.

  So show me what is. Give me the particulars. Give me WHAT REALLY. Think of it as a late Xmas present.

  I have to do something when you’re not around, don’t I?