Then Again

by Rick Boling

  Still dizzy, I turned toward the other wall, which was covered with an array of speaker cabinets surrounding a flat-screen monitor that looked to be at least eight feet wide. Underneath, on one side, stood a Korg Kronos 88-key synthesizer, and on the other, a huge mixdown board covered with hundreds of faders, pots, compressors, and equalizers. A computer terminal sat between these on a curved Plexiglas stand, with a high-backed, sculpted-leather swivel chair in front.

  I’d been so focused on the room’s contents, I hadn’t thought to look for Heyoka, who surprised me when he spun around in the chair and flashed his magnetic smile. “Whaddya think?” he said, repeating his words from the night before. “I tried my best to blend the old with the new here.”

  “It’s … It’s, incredible,” I said, gaining my bearings and leaving the safety of the piano to wander over and stand in front of the harpsichord. I pointed at the slender, hourglass-shaped guitar in the glass cabinet. “That can’t be a Torres.”

  “Oh yes it can,” said Heyoka, his eyes glowing with pride. “First epoch, as I’m sure you can tell by the shape and the tuning scrolls. Bone nut and saddle, gut strings, no signature. I had it authenticated by curators at the Museo de la Música in Barcelona.”

  Antonio de Torres Jurado was the Stradivari of classical guitar builders, and his earlier instruments were essentially priceless. “I thought guitars from his first epoch could only be found in museums,” I said, slipping behind the harpsichord to get a closer look.

  “For the most part that’s true, although a very few do reside in private collections. Many of his early guitars were lost to time, discarded because they weren’t labeled, or destroyed during the Spanish-Moroccan War. Or, in the case of this one, hidden, along with other treasures, behind a cellar wall, only to be later abandoned by a family fleeing for their lives.”

  “Abandoned,” I murmured. “So, how did you happen to come by it?”

  “Ah, that, my friend, is another one of those questions that will require a complex answer. We’ll talk about it later. As for your obvious desire to have a closer look, sorry, but that case is vacuum-sealed and cannot be opened without endangering the instrument’s preservation. Besides, you’ve studied diagrams of many Torres guitars, so no secrets remain to be found. And, unfortunately, playing it would be a disappointment. Unlike the early Cremona violins by Stradivari and Guarneri, which represent the pinnacle of violin construction and have improved with age, the acoustic guitar has continued to evolve from the days when Torres introduced the soundboard concept and fan bracing still used today. Shapes have changed, materials have improved, bracing designs have been refined. In fact, your Ramirez is probably a much better sounding instrument than those produced in the 19th century.”

  “Right,” I said, still fascinated by being within arm’s reach of an authentic first-epoch Torres. In the early days of my career, I’d become obsessed with all aspects of the guitar: its history, evolution, and design. I’d even worked for a while as an apprentice to the renowned luthier, Harley Day, at his shop in St. Petersburg, where I learned to construct and repair classical and Flamenco guitars. The only Torres I’d ever seen, other than in photos and diagrams, was at the Museo de la Música, while on tour in Spain, but I hadn’t been allowed this close to that one.

  Suddenly, I was jerked from my reverie by the sound of my own voice. And when I looked over at the giant monitor, I saw it had come to life with a video of me playing guitar in a studio. As with the pictures of the night before, I recognized the setting but couldn’t place it right away. Until, that is, I realized the song was Sunday Morning Sentinel. I must have made my way over to the sound wall, because the next thing I knew, Heyoka had relinquished the chair, and I was leaning back in it, immersed in the memory of that recording session and the events leading up to it.

  It was the fall of 1972. I’d just returned from honeymoon number two, during which I’d barely escaped death-by-sex with my second former-groupie-child-bride. I was sleeping soundly in the aftermath of another morning attack of Kama-Sutra-style intercourse, when my brain—apparently unconcerned about the body’s need for rest—went into overdrive, spewing out the lyrics to a new song.

  Up to that point, most of the songs I’d written had been met with yawns from record producers because they didn’t adhere to the golden rule of pop hits, which said all songs must include a “hook line.” This one, however, did have a hook line. Not only that, but the line ended with the word “Peace,” a prospect on the mind of almost every young American at the time. The song told an emotional story about the anticipated withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam, and after I had the melody and chord arrangement worked out, I felt sure I was sitting on a blockbuster that could make me a superstar.

  After putting together a demo tape with the help of a friend who owned a local recording studio, the two of us took off for Muscle Shoals, Alabama to try and peddle the song. Back then, Muscle Shoals was a recording mecca of pop music, and after a couple of strikeouts, we were granted an audience with a producer who handled some of the biggest acts in the business. Thus began the saga of one of the stupidest, most egocentric, and costly mistakes of my life.

  Timing was important, since the song’s impact would be lost once the troops were withdrawn—and the expanding anti-war protests were moving the country rapidly in that direction.

  The producer liked the song, but there was a catch. It seemed he had a stable of vocalists to whom he owed his loyalty, and he wanted one of them to sing it. I, on the other hand, was convinced the song was strong enough to make a star out of an unknown artist like me. Reactions from two other producers were similarly positive, however, the same condition applied: they would agree to produce the record and distribute it without delay, but only if they could have their own artists sing it.

  Still intent on finding a producer who would accept me as the singer, we ended up in Nashville, where a major country music publisher by the name of John Denny agreed to produce the song with me as the artist. The only caveat was that he would have to get commitments for airplay from at least seventy deejays across the country before releasing the record nationally. With dreams of superstardom blocking out all common sense, I accepted his offer on the spot, and spent the next couple of weeks collaborating with some of the best studio musicians in Nashville to produce the record.

  Looking back, it was my ego that drove me to accept Denny’s sketchy terms without considering the pitfalls. Had I taken time to think things through, I would have realized that a country music producer’s network of deejays might not be too enthusiastic about airing a mainstream pop single by an unknown artist.

  Though I would never know for sure what might have happened if I’d swallowed my pride and let someone else sing the song, at the very least I could have avoided several months of intense anxiety waiting for a phone call that never came.

  As the video of me working in the studio with Denny and the boys began to fade, I was startled to find myself in Heyoka’s music room. The dreamlike trip back in time had seemed so real, so vivid, it was as if my memories had been digitized and turned into a virtual reality game, with me as the central character.

  Heyoka waited a few moments while I gathered my senses, then said, “Sorry about that, Rix. I know those memories must be painful for you.”

  “No shit,” I said, thinking about the months that had followed that studio session.

  Of course, Denny had only garnered commitments from thirty or so DJs when, in March of 1973, the last American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, and the war, at least so far as the US was concerned, came to an abrupt end. As a consequence, Sunday Morning Sentinel, my star-making commercial masterpiece, lost any chance of becoming even a minor hit and was never released.

  In the aftermath of that colossal act of egomaniacal stupidity, I took the master tape—which Denny graciously offered to send me—packed it away in a box labeled “Dumb Shit,” and went on a drug binge that would probably have killed the average no
n-user. I awoke from that psychedelic fantasyland several months later, lying in a pool of vomit on the floor of a leaky cabin in the north-Georgia woods.

  “So,” Heyoka said, once again jerking me from my memories. “How about some lunch?”

  Still staring at the blank screen, I shook the cobwebs from my brain and muttered the words that had become my mantra over the past decade: “How about a drink?”

  Probabilities

  Standing in a corner of the music room was an odd-looking bass fiddle, larger than life, stringless, with highly polished maple sides and front. I hadn’t noticed the oversized instrument until Heyoka pointed at it with a slender remote, and the ebony fingerboard separated down the center to reveal a well-stocked bar. “Help yourself,” he said. “But I think you probably ought to eat something as well. How about a couple of Coney Island chili dogs?”

  “Right,” I said, wandering over to the fiddle-bar and pouring myself a drink. One of my favorite foods in the world was chili dogs from Coney Island in St. Pete. I’d been eating there since I was old enough to spin around on one of their chrome-rimmed soda-shop stools, and I’d tried for years without success to duplicate their recipe for chili sauce. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you have the original chili-sauce recipe from Coney Island in St. Pete.”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that,” he said, signaling toward a table and chairs that stood in the corner where the two windowed walls came together. As we took our seats, Fred came in wheeling a wooden cart, upon which rested a larger version of the silver domes that had kept my breakfast warm. When he lifted the dome, there, on familiar, heavy, stoneware plates, sat four steaming chili dogs.

  “As you know,” Heyoka said, “the perfect Coney Island chili dog not only requires a generous wooden spoonful of secret chili sauce, it must be constructed in the traditional manner: institutional hot dogs grilled crisp, soft steamed buns for the excess juice to seep into, onions haphazardly chopped, and good old cheap yellow mustard. Go ahead, see what you think.”

  I lifted one of the dogs, careful to support the soggy bun, sniffed it, took a bite, and was transported back to that ancient downtown greasy spoon, with its fly-encrusted screen doors, dusty old ceiling fans, and that little window into the parking lot through which “coloreds” were served back in the ‘50s. I finished off my two dogs before Heyoka was through with his first, and when he offered me the remaining one, I didn’t hesitate to accept. After the traditional belch, I wiped my mouth with an authentic, flimsy paper napkin, and leaned back in the chair.

  “Okay,” I said, “That was great. But I think I’ve had enough of your magic tricks. It's time for the promised explanation.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it is. However, you’re still going to have to be patient with me. I need to set the stage with some things that are going to be difficult to believe. Tell me, what do you know about probabilities?”

  “About what most folks know, I guess. I know that if I throw snake eyes ten times in a row, there’s a good probability the next toss won’t be snake eyes. I know that I’ll probably drink about a quart of your Jack Daniel’s before I hit the sack tonight, and that I’ll probably have a headache in the morning. I know there is a very slim probability that banjo over there is in tune, because I’ve never heard a banjo that was in tune. What else is there to know about probabilities?”

  “Much, my friend. Did you know that this table’s existence depends on probabilities, or as we physicists often say, potentiality? That even though it may feel solid to you, it is ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent empty space, and the only reason you perceive it as a solid object is because of probabilities?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen all that gobbledygook on the science channels with Stephen Hawking and those dudes. Muons and bosons and quarks and flavors. Makes about as much sense to me as fairy dust and leprechauns. You physicist fellows seem to come up with a theory, then go looking for something that will prove it. It’s like you create it yourselves, tell it where and what to be, and when you look for it, there it is, right where you put it in your mathematical formulas. I know my understanding of this crap is about as intellectually perceptive as an armadillo’s might be of a bus that’s about to turn it into roadkill, but I can’t help wondering if any of these things ever existed before you thought them up and went looking for them.”

  “You have no idea how close that is to the truth,” he said. “How close it is to the true nature of matter or energy as seen through the prism of quantum mechanics. The fact is that subatomic particles, the basic building blocks of matter, don’t exist, at least not with certainty in specific places. Until, that is, we go ‘looking for them,’ as you put it. In the meantime they only have a tendency or a probability to exist. What’s really weird is that once we look for them and try to measure them, they show up in a definite place, but only for that infinitesimally small moment. Between measurements, we really don’t know where they are or what path they took to get to the point in space-time where we observed them. To make things even more fairy-dust-like, we don’t know where they go afterward. They simply seem to disappear until the next measurement.”

  “I’m assuming you know how nutty that sounds,” I said.

  “Oh, sure. Even physicists can’t explain it, at least in terms that would apply to what we think of as the real world, the macro world where we see and touch so-called solid objects. Enrico Fermi, a world-renowned physicist and one of the fathers of the atomic bomb, was once reported to have said that anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “So, you’re telling me that this table is almost totally empty space, and you’re basing that fact on something you can’t pin down, don’t understand, and couldn’t explain if you did? By that reasoning I could tell you that I have God in my pocket, and expect you to believe it, even though I can’t show Him to you, can’t tell you how He got there, can’t say where He came from or where He’s going.”

  “That’s a good analogy, but you’re wrong about one thing. Even though I may not be able to totally understand it, I can explain the concepts mathematically. Unfortunately, such an explanation would make about as much sense to you as an opera sung in Swahili. The point is that these things don’t make sense. Just as religious miracles, or paranormal claims, or Native American rain dances make no sense from a scientific standpoint. Still, some people—even some scientists—believe in such supernatural things, and many insist they have proof.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I used to be one of them. Then I grew up and joined the real world.”

  “Well, that might pose a problem. But for the moment—for the purposes of this explanation—I’d like to ask that you try to forget all your preconceived notions of reality. That shouldn’t be too hard considering the fact that you’ve already experienced some things you think were magic tricks. What I’m going to try to get across is not only difficult to explain, it will no doubt strike you as the ramblings of a lunatic. But before you jump to any conclusions, I urge you to savor the taste of chili dogs in the back of your throat, or remember the participatory reality created by those pictures and the video I showed you. Can you do that for me—give me the benefit of the doubt for the next few minutes?”

  I started to chuckle, but when I looked in his eyes I saw a kind of pleading. Nothing in his demeanor suggested an intention to deceive; on the contrary, what I sensed was a fervent desire for me to listen and try my best to understand. And he was right about the chili dogs and the uncanny realism of those moments he’d plucked from my past.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m a skeptic, okay? It’s a skill I’ve honed over decades of being conned and fucked over like you wouldn’t believe. But even though I tend to question everything, I still like to think of myself as an open-minded guy, so I won’t dismiss what you have to say without giving it some careful thought. I may have to think of it as purely hypothetical, but you give me your best explanation, and I promise to listen with as fe
w preconceived notions as I can manage.”

  “That’s all I could hope for,” he said. Then he closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time. Finally, he blinked a couple of times, sighed deeply, and told me this story:

  I said earlier that I’d had a revelation when I was quite young, and by that I was referring to what we Lakota Sioux call a Hembleciya or vision quest. This is a big deal in our culture that normally happens in the early teen years as a rite of passage into adulthood. Mine, however, took place at age seven, much to the ridicule of my friends and elders. Fortunately, I had a medicine man who perceived in me a spiritual maturity others couldn’t yet see. Anyway, like your first introduction to music, that experience changed my life dramatically, so I want to start off by telling you a little about what happened.

  The quest began with some ritual purification and spiritual preparation ceremonies I won’t go into. But the main part involved a solitary trip up into the hills, where I fasted for several days in order to seek communion with my ancestors. Of course, most modern scientists would attribute such a communion to hallucinations brought on by physical deprivation and mental fatigue. On the other hand, these same scientists believe in the more or less fantastical concepts of quantum mechanics we’ve been discussing. Where you draw the line between fantasy and reality—if there is a line—is up to you. All I can say is that what I learned during that quest helped build the foundation for my future as a physicist and answered many questions I would only later know enough to ask. Those questions had to do with the transitive nature of chronological time, the insubstantiality of matter and energy, and the holographic reality of the universe. And although I was a long way from developing the mathematical skills I would one day acquire, I did believe what I experienced was real.