Chapter 25 – Hints of the Story
Back at The Hall, Gwen asked, “Where are Gale and Helstof?”
Roger thought fast, said, “They went out to hire some help. They need a cutterdyer and a seamstress.” Roger had a suspicion where they had gone, and was envious, him still here, working. But he covered for them. Gwen also had a suspicion about where they had gone, but let it slide.
She said, “What’s a cutterdyer?”
The woman said, “It’s a costumer that cuts the bolts of fabric into costume shapes, and dies the fabric the special colors that the costumers always want. Costumers never think commercial fabric colors are good enough, they always want to do custom colors. It makes them think they’re being oh so creative. One time in San Francisco we told them their expenses were too high and they had to use commercial colors. They went ballistic. Walked out for a week. We caved, brought the dyers back. They buy white fabric, then every little piece has to be custom dyed.” The woman shrugged her shoulders. Artists.
“At which restaurant, exactly, are they looking for these people? The Cutter
DyerSeamstress Café?” On second thoughts, Gwen had decided to not let it slide.
Gwen thought, as long as they get the job done, back off. She directed her ire at her husband and the Ps, who through this short interrogation had remained mute. The Ps loved Gwen, but were terrified of her at the same time. They’d never met anyone who was good with both art and guns. “How goes the story?” she asked. Then she thought, what is the story, anyway? It’s about paintings Stravinsky saw in a show in Switzerland in 1914. But what specifically? She said, “Where do you stand on figuring that out?”
The Ps were having fun working through the notes in the score, translating to English, and helping Roger write it down in an intelligible form. Pater said, “We’ve almost got it. We’ve made it through the entire score once. We’ll have to do that again, probably more than once, to get all the details and nuances of the story. But we know the gist of it now.”
Peter took over, said, “It’s not one story. There are four distinct stories, one for each of the four paintings Stravinsky saw, and that made a strong impression on him. We don’t know the titles of the paintings, but we know the artists, we have a description of the paintings, and we have his feelings about the paintings. Those are all in the notes. Dozens of notes for each painting, some general and some specific. It’s all there.”
Roger said, “We should wait until the whole team is together to go through the story in detail. Helstof, Gale, Townshend, Bart, and Selgey all will need to hear that, and we can have that meeting as soon as Townshend gets here in a couple of days. In the meantime, we can go through the score at least once more. But here’s the basic picture. The Van Gogh painting was of a corn field filled with a flock of crows. The Picasso was a cubist piece. The Matisse painting was a Fauve work, and the Cezanne was a landscape. Stravinsky never had seen stuff like this, and it knocked him out. He didn’t exactly understand it, but he liked it, on an emotional level.”
Gwen said, “Ok. We wait for Townshend to arrive, then have a team meeting to go through the stories. What do we need to know about this Whosey guy?”
Just then the back door of the theater opened, and Helstof and Gale walked down the center aisle towards the stage. Everyone except Gwen was envious of their condition. Selgey and Bart came out from the offices in the back. The sloshed ones slumped in chairs, smirking. Gwen gave them the evil eye, but didn’t say anything. Roger went on. “Townshend is a bone fide musical genius. No one has ever played guitar like him, or written songs like him. Absolutely unique. Look, there are many great singers, many great song writers, many fabulous performers. But there are only five truly original bands from the seminal era of the 60s and 70s: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, and The Who. Everyone else is derivative, out of jazz or the blues or some other cultural influence. Those four bands each had a genius or two who created an original sound. And we have one of them showing up here, in a day or two, to work with us. To interpret Stravinsky and play the score on synthesizer. Our production is going to go down in history.”
The Lost Ballet Page 25