The Artist

by Mark Tiro

“Am what?”

  “Music.”

  “Huh?” I asked reflexively. It didn’t make any sense, and I think because of that, I must’ve instinctively just ignored it and went right on talking. “Anyway, thank you for the compliment. I don’t know what happened to me tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever played those like that before.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “Now, can I ask you something? Would you mind a lesson? Maybe you would sit with me at the piano—maybe you would sit with me and give me what you have?”

  “What I have? I could try. Sure, why not.” I walked over to the bar to pour myself another drink. “So, what’s this thing you mentioned? Something about when I was sixteen?”

  3

  Three

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Remember what? You mean something about when I was sixteen?”

  She sat silently, expecting me to answer something I had next to no memory about. And she waited, here, in silence, until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Oh, I get it,” I said. “You must’ve read a bio on me. Or maybe you saw one of the documentaries they did on me?”

  She just kept looking at me, but she didn’t say a word.

  “You know, I’ve had a lot of people in my life,” I went on. “Wives, managers, fans… but all of them have always wanted something from me. I learned that long ago—keep to myself, right? After I became famous, I realized the only people I’d ever really be able to trust anymore were the ones I’d known before it all began—before I became famous.”

  She didn’t say a word. She just looked at me with those eyes. Quiet, unjudging. Hopelessly deep.

  Despite my better judgment, I opened my mouth and let the words tumble out.

  “Well, of course you know, then. Sixteen was when I wrote the song that would become my first breakout single. It was after playing that song in some past-its-prime piano bar back in Queens when this record executive came up to me. From there, I signed with my first label. And that song got me onto the radio for like four minutes.”

  She still didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter at this point, and I went right on talking. Memories I hadn’t even thought of in years came tumbling out of my mouth as quickly as they came tumbling into my mind.

  “And back in those days, four minutes was huge, to get that much time for a single on the radio. I would’ve been the most popular kid at prom. Well, I guess if I’d gotten to go.” I sighed, suddenly wistful as the memories came flooding back. “But I was on tour by that point.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t go to prom? Because you were on tour? Are you sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure. The record company said I had to tour to support the single, and I why would I give that up just to go to a dance?”

  “Would you play me that song for me now? That first song—the single you got on the radio? When you were sixteen.”

  “I don’t know, it’s not in any of my sets anymore, and…”

  “I’ve never quite been able to play it well, myself. I was thinking, maybe you could give me a lesson? Show me how to play it—maybe then, it will come back to you?”

  And so, we went from where we were talking at the bar, back over to the piano.

  “You sure you don’t want to hear more Beethoven?” I asked, then put my hands down to play a few more bars of one of the sonatas.

  The strangest thing happened, though. Nothing came out. I just sat there, not knowing where to begin, not knowing where to put my fingers. It was as if this perfect rendition I’d just played a few minutes before had been completely wiped from my mind.

  “That’s weird,” I said, out-of-sorts just a bit. “But you did ask for help playing my single, not Beethoven’s sonata. So let me play you my first single, then.”

  And I did. I don’t even think my head actually even remembered how to play that first single I’d written, back when I was sixteen. As soon as my fingers settled onto the keyboard, though, it was like music remembered itself. Memories streamed back—things I hadn’t remembered since I was a boy. After that, my fingers weren’t too far behind.

  Now I was playing it for her like I was hearing it in my mind for the first time. My fingers played the old piece as the music came into my mind. For the fun of it, I started singing some of the lyrics as they came back to me.

  A flood of memories rolled in, taking me back to the first time I’d played this song in public after I’d gotten out of…

  What is it? I racked my brain, trying to fill in the gaps.

  “What?” she asked, echoing my own inner thoughts.

  I was sixteen, and a nurse had smuggled in something to me. What was it? I tried to think of what it was, but it didn’t come back to me.

  I couldn’t remember.

  “Where are you? Is it the prom?” she asked, jolting me out of my reverie. I was still sitting at the piano, but now instead of the happy memories, now I was remembering other memories. Something else. Something I’d… forgotten.

  That first time, when I wrote that hit song, the thing came out whole, completely-done. It was like Athena springing fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus. Now I remembered, my brain—it had only been half-functioning at the time, and all the sudden—boom! Out came this song, fully-perfect, whole. Finished.

  “I told you, I didn’t go to the prom,” I told her after regaining my composure. “She said no!” The words burst out of my mouth at the same time they came into my mind.

  A tear ran down my face before I realized it.

  “What happened? What do you mean, ‘she said no’?”

  “She said no!” I shot back. “What’s not to get? She didn’t want to go with me.”

  “To the prom?”

  “Yes, to the prom! Okay, it hurt me. There—are you happy now? Anyway, why are you bringing this up now?”

  “Still hurts?”

  “No!” I barked. “It does not still hurt! That was a long time ago.”

  She sat there, not saying a word. But her eyes didn’t move.

  “She said no to me, okay!” I said, agitated. The words were tumbling out of my mouth now the second they came into my mind, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

  I didn’t want to stop them. I didn’t want to stop the tears. Or the memories.

  “And it hurt!” I half-shouted. “It hurt so much. I thought we were going out, me and her. I thought she loved me. I thought I’d marry her. I’d already told my parents about her. Hell, I’d even introduced her to my grandparents that year they drove up from Florida for the holidays.”

  “I see.”

  “I even wrote a song for her. Not this song. Not the hit—that came later. A different song. No one knows this, but the hit single was the second song I’d ever written. The first song, though—” I started, breaking down now, “that was supposed to be her song.”

  “Have I ever heard it?” she whispered.

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “Because no one’s heard it. I’ve never played it for anyone. I wrote it for her, not for anyone else. But I never got a chance to play it for her. And so I never played it for anyone. Ever.”

  “Not even once? Not for yourself?”

  “Never. I told you—she didn’t want me.” I sobbed, then lashed out. “And anyway—I couldn’t go to prom!”

  “Why not?” she asked softly.

  “Because I was in the hospital!”

  “Hospital?”

  “I had nothing. No girl, no future—nothing! She didn’t love me, okay? Why are you making me say this?”

  “Why were you in the hospital?”

  “Because I tried to kill myself, okay? There, I said it. Are you happy now?”

  She sat silently, but didn’t say a word.

  “So yes,” I went on, “I couldn’t go to my prom because I was in the hospital.”

  The next instant, I found myself back there.

  Back, sixteen again. />
  Back, in that hospital room again.

  4

  Four

  “Why don’t you play the song for me?”

  The words had come from the nurse, as she walked into my hospital room. Probably just to check on me. The nurses made the rounds a lot in the psych ward here—always checking on you to make sure you hadn’t found something that wasn’t battened-down, some way to finish the job that landed you here to begin with.

  All us patients in here were just the failures, anyway. The successful ones were downstairs. In the morgue.

  “What?” I asked the nurse. I’d heard her question, but in the muddled-up thing that passed for my brain, it hadn’t registered.

  To be fair, there was a lot of noise, and a good amount of chaos as well. With my door open, I could hear the sounds of machines blaring and alarms beeping. I could see other nurses, too—and some doctors, I think, as well. Every time one of those alarms started blasting, I could see a whole hoard of them, running past my door, down the hall, towards the sounds. The carts they were pushing weren’t exactly quiet, either.

  The nurse in my room was calm as could be, like she didn’t have a care in the world. While the doctors and other nurses were streaming by down the hall, past my room, she was gently closing the door behind her. That went a long way to shutting out the craziness outside.

  Then she turned quietly to me.

  “The song you wrote for her?” she asked. “Why don’t you play it for me?”

  “I’m never going to play music ever again!” I thundered back. “Not that song—not any song! Not for anyone. I just want to die—”

  “Well, that’s too bad,” she said softly, interrupting my morbid denouement. “Because I found this piano in the basement. When no one was looking, I kind of snuck it into your room here. I was just thinking you might…”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I blurted out at the nurse. “There can’t be. This is a hospital room! There’s no piano here.”

  Her eyes moved as she looked over to the other side of the room. When she did, I jerked me head around to look.

  That’s when I saw it.

  The piano.

  Right beside the bed, taking up just as much room—if not more—was what looked like a brand new, upright piano.

  “That’s impossible. How could I not have noticed that?”

  “Maybe you weren’t looking?” she said, grinning.

  “I can’t just start playing,” I protested. “This is the middle of a hospital ward. Other people will hear.”

  “So? And anyway, these walls are soundproofed.”

  I knew from just being there more than fifteen minutes that she was lying about that. But she just went on, undeterred.

  “Now will you play that song for me? Like I said before—no one else will hear.” Then she looked in my eyes, and somehow, I knew it was true.

  “I also brought you some paper, and a pen,” she went on. “For if you’d like to write a new song…”

  Despite my resolve to never play again, this piano towering over my bed was too much. Like the siren song that beckons the sailor across the waters, I couldn’t resist. And so, I got up and went over to the piano.

  Then, slowly at first, I ran my hand over the keys. I felt their supple give.

  I listened to their whispering sounds.

  With every touch, they grew more seductive, more inviting, until they were… irresistible.

  Then I sat down.

  “Just this one song… just this one time—just because you asked,” I told her firmly. It was the most I’d stood up for myself, since, well…”

  “Just this one time, of course.”

  But inside, I was smiling. Some irresistible force was pulling me in—deep into the music that was already starting to overwhelm my mind.

  “How did you get the piano in here without me noticing?” I asked. “Was it when I was passed out? When they sedated me with the meds?”

  The nurse didn’t answer me. She just sat there, looking at me with that coy, ever-so-slight smile on her face. She didn’t say a word.

  “Oh never mind,” I went on. “Anyway, yes—I’ll play you a song.”

  She looked at me again.

  “Fine, then. I’ll play you that song. Just this one time. After this, I will never play it again.”

  And I did. I played her that song. It was the first one I’d ever written, for the first girl I’d ever loved.

  I played it for the nurse in the hospital room that day.

  Once the song was done, I put my hands down, and looked at her. Playing it hadn’t been so bad, after all, I thought.

  “You’re right,” the nurse interrupted my reverie. “That was terrible. You probably should never play that song again.”

  In an instant, my anger rose up. I became defensive, then lashed out.

  “What do you mean, ‘that was terrible’? I poured everything I had into that song—I left my heart in that song!”

  She waited for me to finish. Then she added, “Well, maybe when you’re old, you can play it one more time. But not for now. Now, you’re just at the beginning, and new beginnings call for new songs.”

  She’d said it matter-of-factly, and before I could even process her words, she pushed the paper and pen in front of me.

  “Here you go,” she said, pointing down to the paper. That’s when I looked down.

  “Oh my god! I can’t believe… how did you find—”

  “Blank music manuscript paper? It was just lying there the whole time, next to the piano.” She was grinning like this was fun for her, now. Like she was messing with me. But you could tell, there was a resoluteness you didn’t want to mess with.

  “I can’t just write like that,” I objected. “It takes a lot of work, you know. And effort, too. I have to get in the mood. It’s not easy—it’s not like I can just write music whenever I want. It has to come to me.”

  “I see.”

  But she just sat there, looking at me. Or more like—looking through me, until I finally stopped protesting.

  Then we both sat there, in silence. After what seemed like forever, the silence finally started to seep down, inside of me. I stopped fighting inside my head.

  After that, something amazing happened. Something that had never happened before in my life—at least before that.

  Silence. In my mind. Real silence, deep, and flowing, still and dynamic—all in the same instant.

  “Is it possible to just make music?” I found myself asking the nurse. The question had come out of nowhere. She had said she didn’t want me. My muse had rejected me. As I sat there, I supposed I could go on without her. I could find a new muse to inspire me to write music. Maybe it would take me a long time to heal. But for the first time, the thought had occurred to me that it could happen.

  “Do you remember how you were when you let go and wrote that song for her? Do you remember how you felt?”

  “I felt great.”

  “Really? Did you feel… great? While you were writing? Because didn’t it take you like most of that year to write that one song for her?”

  “Well, maybe it was after I finished writing it that I felt great. And after polishing it, too. While I was writing it, though? It was like water, or light, or…”

  “Music?”

  “Or love. It was like love. It had this energy I couldn’t control. And this energy, it just flowed through me. It felt great.”

  “It felt great? Not out-of-control, maybe? You spent a lot of time polishing. Were you afraid of…”

  “I wasn’t afraid of anything! I just needed to write what I needed to write.”

  “Would you like to be able to make music all the time, without having to try? To feel it flow through you, so it wouldn’t take so long?”

  “Sure, of course. I’d love that—who wouldn’t! But I don’t know…”

  “I can show you. You just have to be willing…”

  “You can show me?” I blurted, cutting her off. “
Sure, of course! Of course I’m willing!” I paused a second, with what I’m sure must’ve been a stupid, boyish grin on my face. Once I regained my composure, I asked, “So, do you play, too?”

  “Just something from a long time ago,” she answered so quietly I couldn’t see her lips move. “You already know the basic chords, so let me show you something special.”

  “Special?”

  “Special, yes. It’s very old, and not many have ever known it. It’s a chord, a… secret chord.”

  “A secret chord? Yes, show me, please. I want that—”

  “If I give this to you, you have to know—it is only for you. You cannot play it for anyone else, ever.”

  “Ever?”

  “Not until I come back.”

  “If I can’t play it, what’s the point of it?”

  “In my secret chord—all music lies. This, for you—it’s the source.”

  “Yes, I want it! Teach me, please? Will you? Will you?”

  I stood up and watched as she rolled up her sleeves. Then she walked over and sat down in front of the piano.

  “Remember, this is… all yours to play. But for you only… until we see each other again.”

  “Yes—great! Thank you.” I said, more excited now. “I won’t forget you, I promise.” I felt more alive than I could remember being in, well… forever.

  That’s when I remembered I was still in the hospital.

  “Wait, does ‘until I see you again’ mean I’m finally going to be able to leave this hospital?”

  Seated in front of the piano, she looked at me.

  “Yes, of course. It’s done.”

  Then, without another word, she turned back towards the piano, and she began to play.

  5

  Five

  “So that’s where you wrote the song that launched your career? In a hospital room?”

  “I’d completely forgotten that until now. It was a long time ago.”

  I walked over to the bar. “Would you like another gin and tonic?” I asked her across the quiet, empty space that separated us. “I’m tired. I need a drink.”