Before They Were Giants

by James L. Sutter

  ... I hit one of the tabs with my toe, the tympani roll tab, hit tempo and sustain keys and boom, suddenly the B flat tympani fill the room, sticks a blur in the glass arms holding them. I long to hold the drum sticks and become the rhythm myself, to see the vibrations in the sound surface and feel them in the pit of my stomach; but to play that roll in Pierson’s Orchestra I just slide a tab to a certain position and push another one down with my toe, so I stop pushing the tab down and there is instant silence.

  ~ * ~

  I do not feel well. The clean red and blue dots in the metal surfaces have become prisms—I blink and they are dots again. Water in my eyes, no doubt. I look at all the keyboards surrounding me. Just a fancy organ is all it is.

  I remember when I was learning to play the trumpet, and the triumph it was to play high C. I left all three valves open and pushed the mouthpiece against my lips so hard I could feel the little white ring that would show when I took the horn away which is the wrong way to play high notes, but I had a weak embouchure—and forced a thin stream of air through my clamped lips to hear a high G, surely the highest note in my power. But then my stiff fingers pushed down the first two valves, I tightened my lips an impossible notch further, and the note slid up to an A as the valves hit their stops; quickly then, I lifted my right forefinger and reached a B. And then finally, before I ran out of air, with my eyes closed and my face contorted and my lips actually hurting, I lifted the middle valve and was magically playing a C, high C; a weak, scratchy note that soon dissolved into dry air rasping through the brass tubes; but a high C nevertheless. It was an achievement.

  I touch a small piece of red plastic. A small plastic gate opens in a hollow plastic tube, compressed air forces its way through a wire-banded pair of plastic lips into one of the four trumpets, then winds its way through the tubes, and emerges from the bell as a pure, impossibly high E, two full steps above the highest note I ever played. I turn off the note. “Great, Pierson,” I say aloud. “Great.”

  ~ * ~

  I begin playing Vivaldi’s Oboe Concerto in F, ignoring the starts of pain that flare like struck matchheads in my arms and legs and neck. I play all sixty strings with my left hand, snapping down chord tabs until as I play the first violin part, the second violins, the violas, the cellos, the basses— they all automatically follow. Passages where they are not in unison have been rearranged, or, if vital, will be played with great difficulty on the individual keyboards below the control. Percussion and brass use the same method, but are played by my feet unless especially difficult. In this way the entire concerto is played leaving the right hand free to play the oboe solo as it runs over the background, a kitten on a marble staircase. The whole process requires intense concentration, which I am not giving it—I am playing quite poorly—and the ability to divide one’s attention four or five ways without becoming confused; but still, four or five ways, not one hundred and ten.

  I swing down the basses’ keyboard so I can play it with my feet. I indulge my bad habit and watch my feet as I play, big toes trapped and pointing downward under the pressure of the other toes, bouncing over the yellow keys and creating low bowed notes that expand out of the rising spiral of big, dark bodies behind me. My arches cramp, and in my guts something twists. I can’t remember the music—the conductor’s score that threaded through my head is gone. I can no longer play. Sweat is breaking out of my face and arms, and the Orchestra is slowly spinning, as it does in concerts—

  ... I am waiting for Mikel and JoAnne to arrive so we can leave for the concert. I am at the battered old upright piano that I brought from my mother’s house right after the funeral, playing Ravel’s Pavanne and crying at it. I laugh bitterly at my ability to act, unsure as always if my emotions are real, or feigned for some invisible audience in a theater wrapped around my head; and I think, ignoring the evidence blinking before me: I can call them up at will when I’m miserable enough!

  Mikel and JoAnne walk in, laughing like wind-chimes. They are both singers in Vancouver’s Opera, true artists. They light up some Baygolds and we smoke and talk about Tslitschitche, the quartet we are going to hear. The conversation slows, Mikel and JoAnne look at each other:

  “Eric,” Mikel says, “JoAnne and I are going to drop crystals for the concert.” He holds out his hand. In his palm is a small clear crystal that looks like nothing so much as a diamond. He flips it into the air, catches it in his mouth, swallows it, grins. “Want to join us?” JoAnne takes one from him and swallows it with the same casual, defiant toss. She offers one to me, between her fingers. I look at her, remembering what I have heard. Nepanathol! I do not want to go blind.

  “Are you addicted?” I ask. They shake their heads.

  “We restrict ourselves to special occasions,” JoAnne explains. They laugh. The idea of it—

  “Hell,” I say, “give me one.” I hit notes on the piano; C,G, G G sharp, G—B,C; and put a crystal in my mouth. It has no taste. I swallow it—

  ~ * ~

  Hallucinations. For a moment there I was confused. I get back onto the stool and regret moving so quickly. Nausea is making me weak. I try playing some Dixieland, an avocation of mine of which the Master disapproves and in which I am (perhaps as a result) quite knowledgeable. It is difficult to play the seven instruments all at once—clarinet, trumpet, trombone, banjo, piano, drums, bass (impossible, actually; watch the tapes take down eight-bar passages and replay them when repeat buttons are pushed; often playing the Orchestra requires skills usually possessed by sound engineers), so I drop all of them but the front line.

  The trombone is a fascinating thing to watch! Unable to anticipate the notes as human players do, the glass arms of the Orchestra move the slide about with an incredible, mechanical, inhuman speed. I am playing the Jack Teagarten solo to St. Louis Blues, and I am hitting wrong notes in it. I switch to the clarinet solo which is, to my surprise, the solo from The Rampart Street Parade (you see how they fit together?) and quit in resignation. I hate to play poorly.

  ~ * ~

  “All you have to do to stop this,” the voice says out loud, and then I finish it in my head, is to get home and swallow a nep crystal. Without a moment’s thought I slip off the stool: my knees buckle like closing penknives and I crash into the bank of keyboards, fall to the floor of the booth. In the glass floor are inlaid bass and treble clef signs. After a while I pull myself up and am sick in the booth’s drinking fountain. Then I let myself drop back to the floor.

  I feel as sick after vomiting as before, which is frightening.

  “Do, do something,” the voice says, “don’t just look at it.” At what? I ask. I pull out the celesta keyboard just before me, the bottom one in the bank. I look up at the ornate white box that is the instrument, suspended in the air above me, dwarfed by the grand piano beside it. The celesta: a piano whose hammers hit steel plates rather than wires. I run my finger along a few octaves and a spray of quick bell-notes echoes through the chamber.

  I try a Bach Two-Part Invention, a masterpiece of elegance that properly belongs on the harpsichord. My hands begin to play at different tempos and I can’t stop it; frightening! I stop playing, and to aid my timing I reach a shaky right hand up and start the metronome, an antique mechanical box that struck Pierson’s fancy at about eighty. An upside-down pendulum, visually surprising because it seems to contradict the laws of gravity rather than agree with them as a normal pendulum does.

  I begin the Invention again, but the tempo is too fast for me (I usually play it at 12,0); the notes become a confused mass, sounding like church bells recorded and replayed at a much higher speed.

  The gold weight on the metronome’s arm reflects a part of my face (my eyes) as it comes to its lowest point on the left side. And my heart—certainly my heart is beating in time with the metronome’s penetrating, woodblock-struck, rhythmic tock.

  And just as undeniably the metronome is speeding up. Impossible, for the weight has not moved on the arm, yet true; at first it was an andante tock . .
. tock, and now it is a good march tempo, tock, tock; and my heartbeat a tempo all the way. With each pulse small specks of light are exploding and drifting like tiny Chinese lanterns across my eyes. I can feel the quick pulses of blood in my throat and fingers. I am scared. The tocks are now an allegretto tocktocktock. I lift my finger up, a terrible weight, and stick it into the flashing silver arc with the gold band across its center. The metronome stops.

  I begin breathing again. My heart begins to slow down. A true hallucination, I think to myself, is very disturbing. After a time I push the celesta keyboard back into its nook and try to stand up. My legs explode. I grasp the stool. Cramps, I think in some cold corner of my mind, watching the limbs flail about. I knead the bulging muscles with one hand and keep shifting to find a more comfortable position; it occurs to me with a start that this is what the phrase “writhing in agony” describes; I had thought it was just a literary figure.

  The cold corner of my mind disappears, and that was all that was left—

  I come to and the cramps are gone. They feel like they are on the verge, though. If I don’t move, I think I will be all right. I wish it were closer to the end.

  I can see my reflection in the tuba’s dented bell. A sorry-looking spectacle, disheveled and pale. The features are architecturally distinct. I can quite clearly see the veins below my eyes. The reflection wavers, each time presenting me with a different version of my face. Some are dome-foreheaded and weak-chinned; some have giant hooked noses; others are lantern-jawed and have pointy heads. Some are half-faced—

  ... I am trying to keep in step with the rest of the Children’s Orchestra, now being temporarily transformed for the Tricentennial celebration into a marching band. A marching band: in the old days they used to dress musicians in uniforms and have them walk through the streets in ranks and files, playing tunes to the tempo of their steps. I can conceive of nothing more ridiculous, as I struggle under the weight of a Sousaphone, a tuba stretched into a circle so chat it can be carried while marching. There are no pianos in a marching band, obviously. Fuming at the treatment a child prodigy receives, I puff angrily into the huge mouthpiece and watch my reflection sway back and forth in the curved brass surface. The conductor is scurrying about the edges of the group, consulting the Parade Manual in his hand and shouting, “Watch your diagonals! Watch those diagonals!” Next to me Joe Tanaka (he is a cellist, drafted as I have been) says, “If God meant us to play and walk at the same time, he’d have had us breathe through our ears.” The halls force us to make a ninety-degree turn and there is chaos. “Step small on the inside!” the conductor is shouting. Each rank looks like a game of crack-the-whip. “Halt!” the conductor shrieks. Still breaking up at Tanaka, I cannon into the girl in front of me and three or four of us go down in a tangle. In the midst of the cries and recriminations I look at the crumpled Sousaphone bell and see the lower half of my face reflected: big mouth, no eyes—

  ~ * ~

  I have a terrific headache. I reach up to the stool and grab it; my hand closes on nothing and I look again; at least six inches off. I must get up on the stool. Arms move up, feet grope for purchase, all very slowly. I move with infinitesimal slowness, as a child does when escaping his house at night to run the halls. Head to seat, knee to footbar, I stop to get used to the height, watching the fireworks display in my eyes. My hands never stop trembling now.

  Now I am up and seated on the stool. I remember a film in which a man was buried to the neck in the tidal flats, at low tide. A head sitting on wet, gleaming sand, looking outward: the image is acid-etched on the inside of my eyelids.

  Do something. I pull out the French horn and oboe keyboards for Handel’s Children’s Prayer. “These are the instruments with colds,” the Master once said in a light moment. “The horn has a chest cold, the oboe a head cold.” Handel is too slow. I switch to scales, C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat; bead, bead; every good boy deserves favor, each good boy does fine; then the minors, harmonic and melodic—

  ... “Drop that sixth,” she yells from the kitchen, “harmonic not melodic. Play me the harmonic now.”

  Again—

  “Harmonic!”

  Again.

  She comes in, grabs my right hand in hers, hits the notes. “Third down, sixth down, see how it sounds spooky? Do it now.”

  Again. “Okay, do that twenty times, then we’ll try the melodic.

  ~ * ~

  I stop playing minor scales, my heart pounding. I collect the oddball keyboards seldom played—glockenspiel, contrabassoon, harp, alto clarinet—and become bored with them even as I gather them. I am sick again in the drinking fountain. Certainly I have been in the Orchestra for a long time. A walk about the room would be nice, but I fear it is beyond me. I am very near the end, one way or another. The tide is rising. De Quincey and Cocteau lied to me—there is no romance in withdrawal, in the experience itself, none at all. It is no fun. It hurts.

  ~ * ~

  There is a knock at the door. In it swings, slow as an hour hand. A short man struts through the doorway. Tied to his middle is a small bass drum, and welded to the top of the drum is a battered trumpet, its mouthpiece waving about in front of his face. Beside the mouthpiece is a harmonica, held in place by stiff wires wrapped around his neck. In his right hand is a drumstick, in his left hand is an old clacking percussion device (canasta) and between his knees are tarnished cymbals, hanging at odd angles. He looks as scruffy as I feel. He marches to a spot just below me, lightly beating the drum, then halts and brings his knees together sharply. When the din dies down he looks up and grins. His face has a reddish tint to it, and I can see through his nose.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “John Pierson,” he replies, “at your service.” Suddenly I see the resemblance between the disreputable character below me and the statue high in the outer entryway. “And you?” he says to me. His hair is tangled.

  “Eric Johann Vivaldi Wright.”

  “Ah-ha! A musician.”

  “No,” I tell him, “I just operate your machine.”

  He looks puzzled. “Surely it takes a musician to operate my machine?”

  “Just a button-pusher. Did you really build this thing?” Time stretches out. We are speaking in a dead silence, stillness. There are long pauses between phrases.

  “I did.”

  “Then it’s all your fault. You’re the cause of the whole mess,” I say down to him, “you and your stupid vulgar monstrosity! When you erected this heap,” I ask him, tapping a glass upright sharply with my foot, “were you serious?”

  “Certainly,” he replies, nodding gravely. “Young man,” he says, emphasizing every third or fourth word with a rimshot, “you have Completely Missed the Point. You claim Too Much for my Work. With my invention it is Possible for One Man to play extremely Complex pieces by Himself. That is All. It is merely a rather Complicated musical Instrument, able to create Beautiful Music.”

  “No way, old man,” I say, “it’s an imitation orchestra is what it is, and pretty poor job it does, too. For example” (I have run through this so many times before): “If Beethoven’s Third were to be played, which one could do it better, your Orchestra or the Quebec Philharmonic?”

  “Quebec, undoubtedly, but—”

  “Okay, then. All you’ve done is turned a sublime group achievement into a half-assed egotistical solo.”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” he exclaims, rimshots for every “no.” “The invention is an imitation of an orchestra, only in the same way a one-man band was an imitation of a band, eh?” He winks suggestively. “In other words, not at all. A one-man band was not to be judged for anything except his own individual performance. It is a fallacy to become comparative.” He takes off and makes a revolution around the Orchestra, playing “Dixie” on the trumpet and pounding the bass drum, and filling all the rests with the cymbals. It sounds horrible. Back again. “Entertaining, no? Contributions?” He grins. “A one-man band was a great institution.”

&n
bsp; “Maybe,” I say, “but none of them ever claimed to be musicians.”

  “They most certainly did! Someone who makes music, young man, is a musician. This purist attitude, this notion of artistic integrity that you have, has blinded you. Art with a capital A! What nonsense! Music is noise that entertains, that makes one feel good. My instruments can do that as well as any.”

  “No it can’t,” I almost shout. “Wrong! This instrument can’t make music as well as the instrument that is in an orchestra, that takes a hundred and ten people to play it. Your instrument is just showmanship, and I am an artist. There is no shame in being a purist.”

  “Bah!” he says. “A purist is just someone living a hundred years in the past. You would have scoffed at the integrity of the organ had you been around at its invention, or the synthesizer.”

  “A purist,” I say, “just likes to see things done right.” I trace the other line down, following arguments like fugues. “And if you’re going to build a solo instrument that makes a lot of sounds, why not work with synthesizers?”