Sounds Like Titanic

by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

  “I don’t like using mirrors so I’m gonna need you to tell me what’s going on,” Becca says as she accelerates onto Interstate 95, taking both hands off the wheel to light a cigarette.

  “Okay,” you reply.

  “Can I get over now?” she asks.

  “No.”

  Becca takes a deep drag of her cigarette. “Do you know what this song is about?”

  You have never listened closely to AC/DC. Becca cranks up the volume and begins to shout along:

  Dirty deeds and they’re done dirt cheap

  Dirty deeds and they’re done dirt cheap

  “It’s about a group of assassins in Vietnam,” Becca says. “Can I get over?”

  “No . . . wait!” The car swerves in and out of the lane.

  “Or maybe it was Russia. Anyway, they torture people. Torture ’em for money.”

  “But not very much money,” you add helpfully.

  “Right,” Becca says, smiling at you.

  Despite her lack of skill with the rearview mirror, Becca is a virtuoso of the car horn—she plays it frequently and with passion. Every few minutes she adds a vocal element to the performance, sticking her head out the window to yell lyrical renditions of the word “motherfucker” at the Connecticut moms in SUVs.

  Even though Yevgeny and Debbie warned you not to ask questions, you are dying to hear Becca’s thoughts on The Composer, his music, and the nature of the gig. But when you ask her what The Composer is like, she becomes uncharacteristically quiet.

  “He’s a sweetheart,” she says. And for the first time all day her eyes are locked on the road.

  “Do you like the music?” you ask.

  “Yeah. It’s nice.”

  “Does The Composer work with you in the office?”

  “No—he works at the New England office,” Becca says. “I’ve actually only met him once.”

  “The New England office?”

  “Can I get over?” she asks, veering into the next lane.

  “Um . . . no.”

  Six hours and a lifetime of lane changes later, you arrive at a Red Roof Inn in Natick. Cynthia, a tall, thin flute player from Boston, is inside, lying on one of the beds in your shared hotel room. She is already in her pajamas, watching TV and reading a book called Get a Financial Life.

  “Sorry it’s so late,” you whisper, not bothering to introduce yourself. “It was a long trip, and then I had to help Becca unload and count the CDs.”

  Cynthia glances up from her book. “That’s not in my job description,” she says simply.

  The next morning you reload the boxes of CDs into the rental car while Becca asks the hotel clerk for directions to the mall. Cynthia waits in her car, reading her book. But you don’t mind lifting heavy boxes, even if it isn’t in your “job description.” You are too psyched to be on your way to your first official performance as a professional violinist, even though you know the audience won’t hear a note you produce.

  Because you grew up in the country, the American shopping mall was never a familiar place to you. Once or twice a year your mom would take you and your brothers to a mall in Northern Virginia. As a teenager, you looked forward to these trips—the malls in Fairfax and Tyson’s Corner were full of novelties that weren’t available to most teens in pre-Internet Appalachia: Doc Martens boots, t-shirts with alternative band logos, and endless accessories shops. But because these trips involved rushing from store to store, buying all the suburban goodies that your bumpkin family would need until next year’s mall trip, you had never thought of a shopping mall as a place of casual leisure—the sort of place where people show up to take in the fountain scenery, eat junk food, and stroll around without shopping lists.

  As you attempt to set up the concert apparatus, ensuring your violin will never be heard, you can’t help but notice that the enclosed structure of a mall gives naked commerce a more sinister ambiance than the open-tent market of a craft fair. A craft fair is temporary—an occasion. At the New Hampshire craft fair you were the musical entertainment. But at the Massachusetts mall in Natick your performance competes with the music blaring out of each storefront, and the exhausted young shopkeepers glower out at you from their sunless corrals.

  You begin to play but again struggle to follow the sheet music in front of you; you are still far from achieving the languid, semiconscious style of Yevgeny during an Ensemble performance. Cynthia, a professional flutist, confesses that she has never played the pennywhistle before and it might take her a while to get the hang of it. She squeaks and screeches. Becca reacts by turning up the volume on the CD music. Within minutes, a young mall security guard bellies up to Becca and tells her to turn it down—the shopkeepers in the nearby stores are complaining. Becca smiles sweetly and turns down the volume. As soon as his back is turned, she turns it back up.

  A large group of customers gathers around the CD table and an outlying ring of shoppers listens from the second-floor balcony. They applaud after every song, gazing at you and Cynthia with looks of awe and respect. Between songs, customers ask you to autograph their CD purchases, and you do, never mentioning that you are not the violinist on the CDs. You bask in their admiration, relishing the thought that all of these strangers think you are amazingly talented. Meanwhile, Becca gives out CDs with one hand and takes cash with the other. The customers tell her, “It sounds like Titanic!” and ask her, “Who is The Composer?”

  After an hour and four loops through the six-song set list, the security guard returns. He smiles at Becca apologetically, and she winks at him and laughs. You have to hand it to Becca—she is dedicated to the job. She turns down the volume and then turns it right back up again after the guard leaves.

  The set list repeats and repeats. Cynthia squeaks. You miss your cues. It doesn’t matter. Becca is selling boxes and boxes of CDs, and when twenty-dollar bills begin to overflow from the metal cash box, she starts throwing the cash into a large, cardboard CD box. Sometimes the customers shout, “Are they really playing?” and Becca nods her head yes. And it’s true, you are really playing, though no one can hear a note over the blast of the speakers. You are beginning to relax and enjoy yourself, the way you used to enjoy hours of orchestra practice. The repetition of the music allows you to isolate certain violin skills and focus on improving them: bow hold, vibrato, dynamics, tone, and finger flexibility, a technique in which the right hand floats above the bow as if both are underwater. You are just beginning to experiment with a different finger positioning when something hits you on the head.

  It is a penny. A group of Goth teenagers on the balcony is zinging pennies at you and Cynthia, as if you are the mall’s wishing fountain. You are about to tell Becca that she has to make them stop when the mall guard walks up for the third time. He is now accompanied by a senior mall guard who begins yelling at Becca, loud enough that you can hear it over the relaxing sounds of Titanic: “You have to leave! You’ve been told three times you’re too loud! We got complaints here! That’s right—pack up!”

  Becca’s face turns fiery red. For a moment, you think senior mall guard is about to be gored on account of underestimating the bull. And you wonder if you and Cynthia—like the musicians on the RMS Titanic—should continue to play no matter what.

  Instead, without warning, Becca cuts the power to the music. You and Cynthia drop your instruments to your sides, instinctively maintaining the charade of “real” performance. And then, like an angry bull turned sweet, Becca turns to the crowd and yells: “They’re kicking us out!”

  You expect cheers—at least from the shopgirls and the penny-flinging Goths—but instead there is a chorus of boos.

  “But it was beautiful! Beautiful music!” someone shouts.

  “Let them stay! Let them stay!” others chant.

  But the senior mall guard is adamant. No more music. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. So you pack up the show and head back to New York. As she drives, Becca raps along to Eminem:

  But no matter how many fish in the s
ea

  It’ll be so empty without me.

  She pauses rapping only to take a call on her cell phone from Jake, The Composer’s head manager. She explains the mall guard situation, and you are impressed; Becca makes it sound as if you and Cynthia are Shostakovich and Prokofiev, censored by Senior Mall Guard Joseph Stalin. But Jake doesn’t seem bothered by your exile—your group has still made a considerable profit. He tells Becca to pay you for the entire weekend even though you only worked one day, and Becca hands you $450 in cash. As you head back to your dormitory, your hand keeps touching your pocket to make sure the bulge of twenties is still there.

  Though it will take you years to recognize it, there was an additional form of currency in which you were being paid. The audience members at your concerts fell over themselves to adore you (sometimes literally, tripping as they moved trancelike toward the stage). Many of them wept as you played. Their constant stream of praise and adulation was as relentless as the music itself.

  Many of the customers said they were “addicted” to The Composer’s music, something you found ridiculous. What you didn’t know at the time was that you were becoming addicted to the customers themselves, their endless praise for you, “such a talented violinist,” “an amazing artist,” someone with “a real gift.”

  God Bless America Tour 2004

  Cartersville, Georgia

  Our concerts in Orlando, Miami, and Tampa are canceled due to Hurricanes Charley, Ivan, and Frances. With our next concert five days away in Nashville, we decamp to a Hampton Inn on the outskirts of Cartersville, Georgia.

  There is nothing to do and little to eat. We gather as much as we can from the free hotel breakfast each morning and order pizza each night from a place called “Pepperoni’s,” a name that suggests a living, breathing, walking stick of Pepperoni living in rural Georgia and running a pizza franchise. I go to the hotel gym each day to sweat on the elliptical while listening to Charlie Daniels on my iPod. I wonder how Charlie Daniels feels when he is on tour, all those people demanding the same songs over and over: “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” “The Orange Blossom Special.” Over and over and over again. Year after year.

  Charlie Daniels recorded a sequel to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” called “The Devil Comes Back to Georgia.” Johnny Cash sings it. I listen to it more times on the elliptical than I would want anyone to know about. The premise is simple: Ten years have passed since Johnny first beat the Devil in a fiddling contest. Now the Devil is back for a rematch. My favorite part of the song is when Johnny says he needs to go practice, and we get to hear him struggle to play the fiddle after ten years of not playing. He plays each note uncertainly, four times slower than normal. His hands have, in the words of the song, “grown cold.” He practices more. His hands get warmer, faster. He goes double time, triple, until his fiddling is back up to its original, devil-beating speed. The Devil’s Dream is that he can win, the song goes, but Johnny is the best that’s ever been!

  I used to think that the Devil versus Johnny was just a musical variation on the classic parable. The Devil attempting to steal a soul. Now, on the elliptical machine in rural Georgia, I wonder if it’s more literal, if Charlie Daniels realized something in the years between the original Devil song and the sequel, something having to do with fans screaming requests for the same song night after night, year after year. The Devil coming back over and over again. The fear of having to beat him fresh each night.

  Our hotel is surrounded by a forest. I stare at the empty parking lot through our bedroom window. The hurricane blows horizontal sheets of rain. We could move on to Nashville, where there is more to do and more to eat, but The Composer wants to stay in Cartersville where it is quiet, so he can finish his Christian musical. The musical is based on the Book of Ruth, an Old Testament story that begins with the search for food.

  The Composer makes us a deal: If Harriet and I transcribe the violin parts for his musical, he will be able to finish early. If he can finish early, we will leave Cartersville and go somewhere more exciting.

  “We can go to the Great Smokies,” he says.

  “How about Dollywood?” I ask. “It’s only a few hours from here.”

  “Yes!” he shouts. “If we can finish this, we’ll go to Dollywood!”

  So Harriet and I set up musical transcription stations in our hotel room. We each have our own headphones, MP3 files sent to our email accounts, and sheets of music-composition paper. I listen to a track of chord progressions with vocals layered on top. I listen for the note most likely to be produced on a violin, the note that hovers on top of the sea of chords like a boat. Once I hear where the boat is, I plot its exact location. Using my violin, which I cradle in my lap and pluck, I identify the correct notes. I place these notes in their proper places on the staff-lined composition paper. I count beats with my foot, making sure that whole notes are whole, that three-quarter notes have a dot. It is challenging work. In a chord the notes blend together: A sounds like C, B sounds like D. I listen to the track over and over again, trying to banish from my head any lingering notes of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” so as not to accidentally transcribe Johnny’s fiddle music.

  At some point I realize that the lyrics to The Composer’s musical mention Jesus, even though the Book of Ruth is from the Old Testament. At some point I realize that The Composer has merely played some chords from his keyboard into a sophisticated computer recording system and emailed us an MP3. He has no idea how to write a violin part, which is why he’s asked Harriet and me to do it. The pit violinists of this Christian musical I’m transcribing will never know that The Composer didn’t fully write the music in front of them, couldn’t have if he wanted to. They’ll never know that the violin part was composed by a twenty-three-year-old amateur violinist working for free, and not for love of Jesus but for love of Dolly Parton. Whatever. I want to go to Dollywood. I want to eat something else besides stale bagels and slices of Supreme, which I order from Pepperoni’s because it’s the only way I can think of getting vegetables and protein.

  But we never make it to Dollywood. We don’t even go to the Great Smokies. We stay in Cartersville for five days, until the guys at Pepperoni’s answer the phone and say, “Oh, hi, Jessica, a small Supreme?” Harriet and I complete days of free musical transcription for The Composer, a task that, had we been charging per hour, could have amounted to hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars. We complete free transcription for a musical about a woman who seeks food in a strange land and allows herself to be commandeered into a marriage to settle a property dispute. For this deed she’s a commendable woman, worthy of her own musical. For this deed the man whom she is forced to marry says, “May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter; this last instance of your loyalty is better than the first.”

  Who Is The Composer? II

  What his fans say:

  My wife and I met you at a craft show in Vermont. Since then we have played your music so much we are wearing the CDs thin. Your music helped us get through the death of our son. It has helped us survive and appreciate each moment. God Bless You!

  Composer, I first stumbled on your music at a mall five years ago. I was entranced and moved to tears. Your CD Oceans of April has been with me through three surgeries to remove cancer. I am now in remission and am convinced that your music guided my recovery. I teach sixth graders and they beg me to play your music when they write in their journals. My greatest dream is for you to perform at the D—Junior High School, grades 6–8, so that you may bless our students through your music and they might find the health and peace that I have found through your stunning masterpieces.

  Dear Composer,

  I first heard your music on QVC. My son had just left for Iraq. I never thought I’d have a son go to war. It was the hardest time of my life. Our son lost many of his friends and my faith was tested every day, wondering if he would return. One day I heard your CDs on QVC and one song in particular left me in tears and strengthened my faith. In that insta
nt I knew our son would come home safe and sound. Of course, I bought the six-CD set! Our son served another tour and was wounded, but he came home alive. Thank you for making music that touches the heart and reminds us we are all in God’s hands.

  Lincoln Center

  New York City, 2002

  A few days after your trip to the Massachusetts mall with Becca, she calls to ask if you can work the next weekend.

  “The gig is at Lincoln Center,” she says.

  “Lincoln Center? Wait—the Lincoln Center?” you ask, thinking of the photo of The Composer conducting in Alice Tully Hall.

  “Yeah. He will be the group leader.”

  “The Composer?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Be at the fountain outside the main concert hall by 9 a.m. on Saturday.”

  The marble façades of Lincoln Center loom above you like alabaster temples, the arched windows of the Metropolitan Opera House revealing house-sized chandeliers. You are wearing new clothes and shoes that you have bought with the express purpose of tricking The Composer into thinking you are a polished professional: a cream-colored flowered top, brown wool skirt lined with red silk, and brown wedge heels that sting the backs of your ankles with their unbroken leather. You have curled the wild ends of your hair into a neat bob. As you ascend the gleaming white stairs that separate the Lincoln Center campus from the street, violin case strapped to your back, you notice that rows of canopy tents have been erected all over the main plaza. The tents are full of merchandise: handmade journals, South American blankets, wooden figurines of African animals, Thai food, corn on the cob. There must be some sort of street fair going on, you think. Then, just as you reach the fountain—the glittering aquatic architecture anchoring one of the world’s largest venues for the high arts—you hear the unmistakable siren of a pennywhistle. It dawns on you that you will not be performing in the five-tiered auditorium with velvet seats and diamond chandeliers, but outside on the sun-bleached concrete. Who could have guessed Lincoln Center doubles as a craft fair campground?