Tinker and Blue

by Frank Macdonald

  —

  While Blue, Gerry and Nathan were putting away the equipment, Peter? spoke to a cluster of reporters representing the spectrum of newspapers who probed him about the band, its sound, purpose and newest member.

  “Oh, yes, Barney’s been practising with the band for months,” Peter? replied. “He’s a part of it. Even has his own agent which happens to be me. What I believe is that for music to grow through the atrophied state that it has been caught in for the past several thousand years, new elements have to be explored. I’m sure you are aware that man is not the only creature that sings, but he has not opened his music up to the possibilities that exist all around him. He often copies other creatures’ sounds, but rarely has he invited other creatures to gather around the campfire and share their songs. That is what Blue has done with Barney, invited him to join the band, to contribute, for we must never lose sight – although I fear most people lost sight of it in the dim dawn of early time – that music is not man’s monopoly. All creatures sing to the Universe, and every creature, no matter how small or insignificant, is in greater harmony with the Universe than the most enlightened, the most talented, the most brilliant of men. Blue Cacophony is striving, through Blue’s genius, to restore to us our fundamental reality. We are witnessing a music that belongs to the Universe, is in harmony with the Universe in a way no other music has ever been. I predict—”

  Blue half listened to Peter? trot out his favourite theories and expound upon them. Any question directed at Peter? by a reporter or a friend was a challenge to him to explain the meaning of life. Blue wondered if Peter? shouldn’t wear a sign around his neck warning reporters and other innocents that a philosopher resided within. Ask questions at your own risk. Putting away his guitar, Blue noticed one weary reporter break free and wander toward the band.

  “As a musician, I wonder if you would give me a few words on the exhibit? How does a musician who works in sound perceive abstract art which, it could be argued, could be duplicated by a child?”

  “A few words?” Blue said. “Guess that’s why you’re asking me and not Peter?. But look, buddy, I spent a lot of time studying these paintings and I have to tell you that no child did them. An old woman did. Well, older anyway. Tulip. I saw you talking to her. Now you take that wall over there. Do you know what was on the other side of that wall? My bedroom. Would I have donated it to this show if it wasn’t a masterpiece? There isn’t a form or colour that is out of place with any other aspect of the painting. Watching it for me is like meditating. Tulip gets in touch with the underlying truth of the Universe here. It’s all about harmony. I’d like to think that some of that harmony is in our own music. That’s Blue Cacophony. You ask Peter? and he’ll tell you how to spell cacophony.”

  While the reporter made notes, a small cluster of people had drawn around the interview, Karma with a much quieter Barney, Kathy and Tinker, Capricorn and Tulip.

  “Thank you, Blue,” Tulip said. “I wasn’t even aware you noticed my paintings. My wine, yes, but not my paintings. If I leave a couple of bottles in your room will they bribe you into saying more nice things about my work?” she teased. To which Capricorn added a cryptic question of his own. “Blue, tell me, is there a difference between a horse trader and horse thief?”

  “Let me ask you about your music, Mr. Blue. Is the dog a gimmick you’ll be using regularly?” asked the reporter.

  “Talent doesn’t need gimmicks, to quote the other fellow. As for Barney, well, some people seem to think that after tonight he should be in the band and some people think those people should be shot, but I left my gun home. The band will be meeting tomorrow to discuss Barney’s future.”

  “Then I can report that the dog is not a band member? Once the word gets out, a lot of people will be flocking to your next gig to see the singing mutt. This is your chance to nip that rumour in the bud because I think my associates over there have already decided that the dog’s the story. Who knows how many people will pay money to hear a rock-and-roll dog singing with Blue Cacophony. If you don’t want that to happen, could you give me a denial before people are misled into spending their money?”

  “Hundreds, eh? Well, like I said, the band will be meeting tomorrow to discuss it and I suppose once Peter? gets through arguing his case Barney will be the lead singer and have his own set of drums. How much you figure people would pay to hear a dog sing? They pay an awful lot to hear Bob Dylan, don’t they? Could be Blue Cacophony’s going to the dogs, as the other fellow says.”

  “A last question. Why have you decided against recording?”

  “Well, not everybody in the band is in favour of not making a record, but what I was a saying when I suggested it was that the best legends are the ones we don’t know anything about, like the angels at Bethlehem when Jesus was born. We know there was a whole host full of angels up in the sky singing ‘Silent Night,’ right? No one disputes that because it’s right there in the Bible, but they never made a record, so all we can do is imagine how beautiful it must have sounded. Unheard music is the sweetest, as the other fellow says.

  “We got a saying back home, eh. A horse that’s not for sale is worth a lot more than one that is.”

  “I don’t follow you,” the reporter said.

  “I’m not Jesus Christ so you don’t have to follow me, now do you? Unless you want to hear Blue Cacophony’s music, that is, because it’s not for sale. And you can quote me and the other fellow on that.”

  30

  Blue sat on the mattress, guitar in his lap, watching Karma at work on another panel, his thoughts drifting in a slow rhythm to the lazy swirl of incense that reminded him of High Mass. Where one of the walls had been, their ration of privacy was now defined by a canvas curtain. Blue sipped a beer and steered his thoughts away from the plan fermenting in his belly. Instead, he let snatches of sentences from the newspapers swim through his mind, caught them, let them go, then beckoned them back for encores. Some reviews, of course, he would never allow to survive in his ocean of memory, but other were confused or flattering or enthusiastic enough to merit his repeated appreciation.

  Tulip’s exhibit, to the commune’s surprise, was applauded left, right and centre by the critics, one or two of whom, Capricorn pointed out with amusement, had stolen Blue’s insights concerning the nature of Tulip’s harmony and made them their own. Blue called them weasels for not crediting to him his own quotes. Tulip had mixed emotions about the unanimity of appreciation which applauded her work, missing, she said, “the right-wing fascist reactionary reflexes” that normally counter-attack abstract art, drawing dull parallels between the artist’s work and the proverbial four-year-old child turned loose in a paint pit. “The establishment wants to hang me on their walls,” she said. “Whose victory is that, I wonder?”

  Blue Cacophony inspired a wider spectrum of opinions, ranging from “a night noise” to “more performance than music ... not unlike listening to an abstract train crash,” to “a sound on the cutting edge, nay, the razor’s edge, of an exciting new music era.” With few exceptions, the critics were reluctant to dismiss Blue Cacophony on the basis of relevancy, musical ability or even on the subject of dog-as-musical-instrument. Most publications avoided the trap of trying to assess the musical merits of Blue Cacophony by concentrating on the story – not the group’s music, but its refusal to record.

  Once Blue had told the first reporter that there would be no recordings of his songs, he then fell wholeheartedly into the spirit of the idea, going to every one of the music and art critics present, supporting and reinforcing Peter?’s position. Blue Cacophony would not sign with any record label regardless of the offers being made, Blue informed them, while eluding efforts to pin him down to exactly what offers had been made.

  Impressed by Blue’s anti-establishment convictions, the Rolling Stone critic wrote that “The singer/song-writer of Blue Cacophony is a disciple of non-commercialism and so, if for no ot
her reason, this band deserves both support and encouragement....”

  “They called me a disciple in this paper, Tinker,” Blue pointed out. “Remind me to send a copy to the old lady. She’ll think her baby boy still has a chance to become a priest.”

  “I don’t think that’s the kind of disciple they mean,” Tinker said, but Blue was already rambling on toward other subjects with Gerry and Nathan who sat with him around the kitchen table, reading the reviews and passing them along while they waited for Peter? to turn up for his share of the limelight.

  Peter? did arrive, carrying an armful of the same newspapers, and with the news that Blue Cacophony had two more gigs, clubs willing to pay them, or at least divvy up the cover charge.

  “But I’ve been thinking about it,” Peter? said, “and the thing that would make Blue Cacophony perfectly committed to its art would be the band’s refusal to take any money for its performances. That coupled with a refusal to record—”

  “Aw, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Peter?, where do you get these friggin’ ideas? If anything should be committed around here it’s you,” Blue argued. “Play for nothing! We’ve been so busy practising that we’re not making a dime on the street anymore, and Capricorn is giving me funny looks like I’m not buying my share of sunflower seeds around here or something. It’s one thing not to record, and it’s another thing to hire a dog as my backup singer, but when it comes to no money, it’s one thing too far, as the other fellow says. How about the rest of you guys?”

  “I’m with you all the way about not recording,” Gerry said to Peter?, “and I hate to disillusion you, but I need some money.”

  Nathan expressed similar capitalist aspirations, pointing out that he and Gerry and Blue used to do pretty well for themselves on the street. “We each had our own corner of the world out there. We pooled our talents with you and Blue to see where this road goes, but we have to eat along the way.”

  Peter?, recognizing that his modern Republic had suffered a slight setback, did not push the issue, telling them that one performance site, The Buddha Tree, would guarantee one hundred dollars for the night, and at the place where it all began, the Aquarius Café, the band would get a dollar a head.

  “Blue Cacophony’s first world tour has begun,” Blue cheered, not bothering to note that the two gigs were three blocks apart.

  —

  Blue picked up the book that Karma had begun reading to him after she had given up trying to get him to read it himself. There wasn’t a lot he could find to argue against in Kahlil Gibran’s world, except that he wasn’t Catholic, not even Christian. This book was probably on the Vatican’s list of things Catholics couldn’t read, along with Fanny Hill. Tinker, he noticed, was reading all the time now, working and reading. Still, Blue was careful not to be too critical of Gibran in case he might have been Karma’s brother in an earlier life. Or cellmate in an asylum somewhere.

  The last thought made him chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” Karma asked.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about something crazy,” Blue replied, and scrambling to escape further interrogation he opened the book to a random page.

  “Listen to this. ‘Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by light. But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship.’ So he’s saying here that we have to eat meat, right, but it’s okay as long as we say grace before and after meals. So how come you won’t go for a burger with me?”

  “You know I don’t eat flesh, Blue. I can’t make you or anybody else stop if you don’t want to. It’s something you have to discover for yourself, but when you think about the thousands and thousands of animals who have to die in order for you to live your life, doesn’t it make you sad?”

  “Aw, well, if you’re going to think like that every time you sit down to eat, you’re going to ruin a lot of good meals, girl. But I don’t get it. You’re saying it’s not okay to eat meat, but it’s not a sin if we do. That doesn’t make sense. It’s either right or it’s wrong, right? It’s a sin or it isn’t. It’s not a Commandment, so even if it’s a sin, it’s probably a venial one. Even Jesus ate meat, didn’t he? Didn’t he? So would that be a sin in your book?”

  “Blue, there is only one sin in what you call my book, and that’s our failure to love.”

  “Listen, lady, I can commit a dozen sins before breakfast, and that’s not including the thoughts that go through my head. If you only know of one sin in the whole world, then we live in different worlds. So is that sin of yours eating meat?”

  “No, Blue, it’s what I said. It’s our failure to love. If people loved each other, then we wouldn’t hurt each other.”

  “So murder’s not a sin, or stealing or sex or anything like that? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “They’re just the symptoms of our failure to love, don’t you see? If we loved each other we couldn’t do the things we do. You told me once about the time you and Farmer dyed an old horse’s eyebrows and then sold it back to the same person you bought it from, telling him it was a much younger horse, and sold it for a lot more than it was worth, remember. Well, suppose you had bought that horse from Tinker, would you have cheated him like that?”

  “Hell, no. Tinker’s my best friend. I’m not going to trick him.”

  “Because you love him, right?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go around using words like that about a guy, but he’s my best friend. I wouldn’t trick him, or cheat him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “If that man you bought the horse from was your father, would you have dyed it and sold it back?”

  “And get my arse kicked up around my ears? Of course not!”

  “Because you love your father, right?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not why I wouldn’t do it. He’d kick the supreme shit out of me, Karma. I mean it.”

  “Would you sell that horse to me, Blue?”

  “No,” Blue said evenly. “But you’re saying if I loved everybody in the world I wouldn’t cheat anyone. How can I love everybody? I don’t even know most of them.”

  “But if you thought of everybody as your best friend, if you saw them as people you love, then you couldn’t cheat them, could you? You can only cheat the people you don’t love, so you see, Blue, the sin isn’t cheating or any of the other awful things we do to each other, it’s our failure to love people. That’s all that Jesus or Buddha or any great spiritual leader has had to say to us, isn’t it, to love one another.”

  “If it’s that simple, Karma, how come it takes ten years to become a priest? Even ministers have to study for years just to be Protestants. Because the Bible is that thick, that’s why, and it’s too confusing for just anybody to read. I tried to, and there’s a lot more in it than those three little words. People have spent their whole lives studying exactly what Jesus really meant when he said ‘love one another,’ you know. And here you are, a girl, for Christ’s sake, with all the answers. Just love everybody. Do you love everybody, Karma? Could you love Hitler? Answer me that! Could you love Hitler, huh?”

  “I wonder what would have happened if somebody did, Blue?”

  “Oh, there’s no talking to you, girl,” Blue said tersely, standing up, starting to leave the room.

  “Don’t be angry with me, Blue. I’m just trying to understand who I am, and I can’t know that without knowing what I believe, can I?”

  “How come everybody is so big on understanding themselves, and finding themselves?” Blue asked, turning back toward Karma. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Finding yourself? I don’t even know what that means, Karma, or maybe I’m just lucky, because I know who I am. It’s the things that tell me who I am that are important to me. One of those things is home. I know I talk about it too much for some people around here. I see Capricorn and
other people rolling their eyes when I talk about it, so I know that I talk about it too much, but I’d rather bore them than forget where I come from. And I know who I come from, Karma. I can tell you six sets of grandparents down both sides of family all the way back to Scotland. Some of them looked like me, and some of them acted like me, and if you looked at my birth certificate and theirs, you’d find the same name over and over. I’ve been to school, just like you.

  “I had to read the stories in my English books, but know what, none of them were any better than the stories the old man would tell about his old man, or about working in the mines, or even Farmer talking about why things are the way they are. And I believe what they believed. I was baptized in the exact same church as my two grandfathers, for God’s sake. Besides, just because I tell stories about the nuns and priests doesn’t mean that I don’t love the Church. I do. That’s where I know God, and when you start this business about meditation and one sin and all that crap, I have to remind myself about false prophets. Even this book is called The Prophet, for that matter. It’s full of stuff to get a guy thinking. There’s nothing wrong with thinking, but there’s wrong thinking, as the other fellow says. It’s not easy to hang on to everything I know when everybody else is different. Even Tinker’s changing, everything’s changing, and it scar— bothers me. I don’t want to lose what matters most, and that’s home.” Blue paused, trying to be finished. “And you,” he added apologetically.

  “Blue, I don’t want to take any of that away from you, and most of all I don’t want to take me from you. But when you ask questions, there’s only one way I can answer, and those answers always upset you. I can’t say what you want to hear, but I love you, Blue. I want us to find a way not to hurt each other.”