The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  I was too busy facing the flood of memories to reply. I waited for the chill of remembered pain to accompany them, was both surprised and reassured to find my calm untouched. It was the greatest possible gift I could have received at that moment, a gift so natural, so quiet, I could only appreciate its power by remembering how it once had been.

  He misunderstood my silence. “You are right to be ashamed. To take a talent such as yours and apply it to the boorish repetition of modern music is worse than absurd. It is a crime.”

  His voice had the same flat deadness that I remembered, the eyes their same blank stare. Professor Schmitz paused to pick a cigarette from his inside pocket, light it, and drag deeply. His words poured out with the smoke.

  “Where is the challenge with this trash, boy? How can a musician face himself in the mirror after prostituting his talent with such nonsense?”

  I found my voice, immensely pleased to discover that it contained the same peace as my heart. “Do you recall a discussion when you told me about the masters being holy men? You said that they saw their work as an offering to God. Do you remember that?”

  Professor Schmitz’s eyes narrowed as he inspected my face. “Perhaps.”

  “This is the same,” I replied. “At least it is for me.”

  The reply seemed to confuse him. “I heard of this, but I could not believe it.”

  “How often did they play their music?” I kept my gaze level with his. “How much did they have to rein in their talent in order to fit the gift to the recipient? It was not that the music was any worse or that the listener was less important because he or she had never learned to appreciate more complex forms of music. It was a new era, and it required a music which spoke to the people who were alive at that time. It is the same here today.”

  “This is worse than I thought,” he muttered, dropping his half-finished cigarette to the ground and crushing it with his heel.

  “That is what I am trying to do,” I persisted, feeling more sure of this than anything in my entire life. “I am trying to fit an eternal message around a contemporary beat, a pattern that will touch the hearts of people alive today.”

  “There is no blindness worse than that caused by religion,” he snapped.

  “Perhaps you feel that way because of a lack of understanding through experience,” I said, not needing to search for the reply. “Would you be willing to pray with me for guidance?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” he replied. The fingers that searched out another cigarette trembled slightly.

  “There is a place here for each of us,” I told him. “A service that awaits everyone. All of our talents have been created for a divine purpose. You with your disciplined precision and me with my love of emotional flow. Having one gift does not make the others incorrect, and you were wrong to deny me the right to play creatively.”

  “I taught you as I was taught,” he snapped. “As you needed to learn.”

  “In a way,” I agreed, “you are right. I learned discipline from you, and only now do I understand how important that lesson is. Before I was too caught up in the pain you caused me by trying to separate my creativity from my need for discipline. Only in faith have I seen how each of these is crippled without the other.”

  “Faith.” He spat out the word. “The greatest lie man has ever concocted. Another word for allowing emotions to wreak havoc, with no check whatsoever.”

  “Faith has given me the strength to admit to the value of your lessons in discipline,” I countered. “And to thank you for them.”

  He looked at me a moment before replying. “My world was destroyed through emotions. Man has yet to progress to the point where he deserves this power of his feelings. He twists them and distorts them in an endless quest for personal gain. He destroys anything and everything in his path. Were it not for emotions, the world would know peace, for emotions fuel the evil hungers. I play without the distortion of this cancer. I refute it. I seek it not.”

  His voice had a droning timbre, a flatness mirrored in the cold depths behind his glasses. “Mankind must grow beyond the power of evil before he may earn the right of emotions.”

  I marveled at my calm. I was truly protected. Neither the memories nor the deadness in his voice could touch me anymore. I straightened, replied quietly, “I understand.”

  “You understand nothing.”

  “You faced your past alone, and you created a lie,” I replied. “So did I. As long as we do it ourselves, we’ll never understand, and never get it right.”

  I leaned up closer to him, said quietly, “You’re wrong, Professor. Dead wrong. You’re killing yourself, and one day you’ll succeed. Is that what you want?”

  He did not back off. “My most gifted student, the one who could truly have achieved world-class fame, and what is he doing? Playing cheap rock and roll with a bunch of religious fanatics. Have you not seen enough of what fanatics can do? You, who suffered through year after year of a place you despised? Can you not see that we still carry the burden of our past mistakes? Mistakes forced upon us by fanatics, who appealed to the fanatic in each of us? It is a danger, a disease, and you are the one who is dying.”

  “There is a way out of your hatred and your fear,” I said. “I know it because I’ve seen it. But unless you are willing to let go of what you hate in yourself, and what you hate in others, you’ll never be free. That’s what has driven you all these years to kill the emotion in others.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Forgiveness.”

  That brought the anger out. “Had you known a tenth of what I have lived through, you would laugh at the word.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “It seemed impossible for me, too. But I’ve learned that if you allow Jesus Christ into your life, He is able to forgive for you.”

  “As a young child I watched a group of monks herded up and led away in the back of an army truck. They never returned. When I was eleven the war ended. Some time later I learned that the monks were all executed in Dachau. This is what your passion and your emotions offer you, boy. It is a sacrilege, do you hear me? It is a waste of a talent that comes to earth only once in a great while. You have a responsibility to this world and you have a responsibility to yourself to make the most of it.”

  “I am,” I replied.

  “By doing what—by playing this trash? By succumbing to the same fanatical disease that has plagued mankind since he first stood upright on two legs? Have you read no history? Has not every warring nation on earth appealed to their gods?”

  “They have,” I agreed. “And they hold their victories up to show the strength of the one they follow.”

  I raised an open hand in front of his face. “I hold out my joy to you, Herr Professor. I would give anything to be able to share this love and this eternal light with you.”

  I dropped my hand and stepped back. “Now, what do you have to share with me?”

  ****

  The crowd greeted us with a roar that I felt in my chest. Jake walked to the front of the stage, his guitar slung upside-down behind his back, hanging from his left shoulder. He raised his fist and outstretched forefinger toward the ceiling; to my astonishment I saw hundreds of fists rise in reply. His own call was shouted back to us by a thousand voices.

  “Praise the Lord!”

  Amy walked up front and center, waved and smiled a hello. Jake gave us the nod, and we swung into “A Cry in the Dark.”

  The applause was loud and long when we finished. Amy called her thanks, waited for quiet.

  “It is only when the Lord is in your life that those deepest of dreams come true,” Amy told the crowd. “When the Spirit soars, when there is love enough to share.”

  Again Jake nodded to Sameh, who counted with his sticks and swung us into “Love Enough To Share.” The cameraman nearest me dropped to his knees, swung up the eyepiece, focused in from below. I looked out at the mass of waving arms and could not help but smile.

  The crowd swayed
ever so slightly, many with eyes shut tight on a world that meant so little. The music spoke to something deep inside, communicating a joy that was far beyond anything here on earth.

  Amy did not let up as the one song ended. There was no need to pause in the giving. We counted down and moved into the only song of that first set which was not an original of our own, Michael W. Smith’s “All You’re Missin’ Is A Heartache.”

  Jake stepped back as the particle beam searched out my face. I watched the reflection from my guitar flicker out over the darkened hall. Sound began to fill the gallery as Mario lifted my power. A moment of building crescendo, and Sameh pounded out the beat. Jake swung down the neck, and on the lowest note the band struck the first chord. I played the discord, the endless desire for that which taunted us, the prince of this world. And Amy began to sing.

  Many in the audience raised hands over their heads, many voices sang out the words. I ached for them, and for those who would not hear. True joy was not of this world. The answer was not in what we could see or taste or touch. We were taunted, my instrument cried. We were struck with the desire of falsehood. The temptations were all around us. We wanted to sin so badly. But we resisted. We tried. We were called by a higher voice.

  And in the moments of peace, we saw why. All we were missing was the lie.

  The response was fierce when we ended. Amy stood and allowed it to wash over her, waited until the crowd calmed down enough for her to speak.

  “We are so very happy to have you all here with us tonight,” Amy said, her voice still a bit husky from the effort she put into the last song. “So very happy.”

  She smiled to their applause, walked to where her Bible lay open on the playback speaker, returned with it to the microphone. She held it up with both hands and said, “I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.”

  They laughed and clapped at that; she laughed with them. “Heaviest book in the world, so heavy a lot of people never find the strength to pick it up. It takes a strong heart, a lot of determination, and discipline. But those who read it know it’s really a love letter.”

  There was a thunder of agreement. Amy raised the Book again. “A love letter written just for you, from the best friend a person could ever have. His name is Jesus Christ, and He’s waiting to lead you home.”

  It was a beautiful experience, to stand and see the shining faces beyond the lights. They seemed so eager, those eyes watching us, so happy. I listened to Amy’s words, watched the crowd in front of the stage grow, felt myself smiling a welcome.

  “I look out today, see so many happy faces, and I praise God for this chance to share an evening with you. So many faces, so many different people. Where is everybody from? I know there are a lot of our brothers and sisters from Holland out there, and Germany, of course. Do we have other countries here?”

  A voice from the front row called out, “Belgium!”

  Another, “Basel, Switzerland!”

  A shout from the back boomed, “Manchester rules!”

  Amy laughed with the others. “Not here, mate.” She waved to the applause, asked, “Who else?”

  “Japan!”

  “The kingdom of Texas!”

  “Italia!”

  A black man stood on his chair in the second row, smiled at us, shouted, “Lagos, Nigeria!”

  “Welcome,” she said, and smiled at his bow and wave. Then to the crowd, “Welcome, all of you. Five thousand people from all over the world, gathered here to party and praise God.”

  She searched for a passage, held it with her finger, and said to the crowd, “I read something earlier while I was waiting to come on tonight.”

  She waited for calm, and went on. “This comes from the seventh chapter of Revelation, verse nine: ‘After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lord.’ ”

  Amy closed the Book. “He’s waiting to bring us home—all of us, no matter where we’re from or what we’re facing. He’s there to help us through the hardest times, there to give us strength and light through our darkest hour.”

  ****

  We had time for a moment of calm, a joyful reflection over how well the set had gone, before Siebren appeared in the doorway of our dressing room.

  “Willy’s put together a little something I think you’re going to enjoy,” he said.

  We hurried with him around the packed hall, down a connecting side passage, through the cable-strewn television monitor room, into a small back chamber. He stopped before a single monitor and video, waited until we had all jammed into the room.

  “This is just a rough cut,” he warned. “There’s a lot left to do before it’ll be ready for release. I just wanted you to have a chance to see what we’ve got to work with.”

  Amy drummed with her heels. “Put it on before I burst.”

  He smiled at her, switched on the set, pushed the Play button on the video, scrambled to one side so he could see both us and the screen.

  Siebren had done us proud. The opening shot started from far back and swooped in fast and smooth as the beat caught hold. As the song continued to mount, the camera moved to each of us in turn. We watched Sameh trace a blur of racing sticks over four of his drums, then Pipo cocky and smiling and shuffling as his hands did a flurry on the congas, then Jake with muscles bulging as he thumped out the bass line.

  “Is this for real?” Pipo clambered down on his knees and moved up closer. A chorus of shouts moved him back out of the way.

  Amy sang her heart out. She smiled and beckoned and danced, the sheer joy of it all shining through. The picture cut to Lothar and focused on his hands, cut back to Amy, then over to Karl and Hans and the little two-step they had worked out for the show. At the end, Amy dropped her head so that her hair fell all around her face, and the camera swooped back out to that first far-distant shot.

  The room erupted. I was so busy trying to shield myself from Mario and Pipo pounding my back that I only caught a glimpse of Jake standing to one side, somber and unmoved. Siebren waved us quiet, shouted us down, waited until the room had calmed, and pushed the Play button one more time.

  The picture blurred, swirled, focused just as Karl, Lothar, Pipo and I began the opening bars to “If Only They Could Know.” The picture passed through the studio’s control room, sweeping by the massive control panel where Siebren and Willy and Mario wore headsets and adjusted knobs and consulted scattered sheets of paper. The camera moved steadily on through the door into the sound room, its grainy picture looking harsh and sweaty. There was a swift shadow-glance at Karl looking ready to blow his first run before the camera ducked under a forest of lights and suddenly switched to utter clarity and focus in on Amy’s face just as she started to sing.

  There was so much love, so much joy. Her eyes looked directly into the camera, the brilliant lighting accenting that beautiful mixture of café au lait skin, high cheekbones, slightly slanted dark eyes, and jet-black hair that spilled down over her shoulders.

  Slowly, slowly the camera swiveled and opened, moving slightly over to one side, bringing into vision the guitar’s tuning keys, then the guitar’s neck and a hand doing a swift yet graceful dance over the frets, down farther and back a little more, and just as Amy hit the final notes of the first verse I came into view.

  Immediately the camera shifted to a grainy slow-motion circle through the room, blurring and shifting to each musician in turn. Flashing faces came into clarity only when they approached the microphone to sing backup on the refrain. Then they moved back into half shadows as they played, as though they were only meant to be half seen.

  The camera returned to Amy as she started the next verse, this one in Japanese, and the lighting on her face shifted slightly, just enough to darken the shadows of her cheekbones and throw her eyes into deeply slanted valleys. Her eyes gleamed from the screen, looking totally alien, enormously magnetic.

  The bridge a
gain, and the camera took in Sameh playing smooth brush strokes, Pipo doing a subtle swaying as he fingertapped the congas, Jake looking strong and huge and playing his bass with what looked like caresses.

  The rough grainy film made the players seem only partially separated from the wall.

  My solo was next, and the picture sharpened from grainy and ghostly to crystal clear and brilliant. I did the first run up the frets, and instead of following my hand, the camera backed off and blurred the run. It held a freeze-frame shot that showed a hundred hands and arms stretching the entire distance, covering all the neck at once. The first thunder-strum and the picture snapped back into focus, allowing a clear image of the next flurry of notes reaching up the neck, then again blurred as I moved back down, this time painting a multiple frame with my entire body, then again lashing into clarity as the solo ended with the three hard down strokes.

  The third and fourth verses were devoted to switches back and forth between Amy and me, freezing and flowing the picture every time I did a rapid move. All the bridges and refrains had the grainy look of an ancient photograph as the screen panned the other players. Then back to a long shot of my six-bar run, ending with an angle over Amy’s shoulder and down the guitar’s neck and directly into my eyes. Close up on Amy, back underneath the lights, a swift smoldering glance at the others, then out the door and through the control room as the sound died away.

  Jake was the only one who did not join the laughing, shouting clamor. He nodded to Siebren, who was too busy being smothered by the others to notice. He waited out in the hall for us to join him, then walked ahead and apart from us as we made a noisy procession back to our dressing room.

  Once we were all back inside he closed the door, motioned for us all to take a seat, waited in dark-faced silence until we had calmed down.

  “Spent a lotta time ridin’ out the need to turn my ambitions over to the Creator,” Jake said. “Tough lesson, one I don’t aim on lettin’ go of so soon. I was in there lookin’ at that video, and it hit me hard that we might really be a success at this. I don’t mean some local hero, either. I mean a name.”