Graceless Notes

..."We can't be friends"

Oppressive gravity attached to those words
and a high price.

$300.00 microphone and stand (ka-ching)
$1500.00 speaker (ka-ching)
Old irreplaceable wood floor (ka-ching)

A price well paid for the healing value.

"We can't be friends"

At one point, earlier in the year, he was going to sell those 6 foot tall speakers so many notes had floated through.

The soft tones of Davis' trumpet and Coltrane's sax as they laid on the rug in front of the fireplace. Rim shots from Blakey and his Freedom Riders when discussions with friends ran rampant in the living room. Celebratory disco when dancing with the girls (he played DJ and snapped photos). Shakuhachi pipe, didgeridoo, rock, pop, classical. They laughed, they cried, they made love, they lived their lives through the music floating from those tall flat panels.

When he hooked them up to see if they still worked and were saleable, she heard the music, once again floating through and, tears flowing, bathing in memories she said, "you can't sell them, they're too beautiful". And so they hooked them up and allowed the music to flow again.

The microphone was a work of art; cherry wood wrapped with brushed nickle. A gift from him, it represented her freedom. A conduit for her voice, when she sang she was transformed as though all the great women of jazz were swirling inside her and exited, sometimes like a soft mist floating across a glen, sometimes like a gale force wind propelled across the water, through her mouth, into that mic, through the wires, revived, delivered.

"We can't be friends."

These words hung between them for a split second before she rolled over on her bed and began to cry, rhythmic even sobs, self indulgent tears flowing and soon she realised that her sobs were being matched by an external pounding, metal striking wood, loud, crashing, tympanic gore. She shook herself from her internal reverie, rose from her stupor and moved toward the noise. She peered around the corner to see him using her mic stand to pound the floor releasing his rage. Every strike screaming WE-CAN'T-BE-FRIENDS! WE-CAN'T-BE-FRIENDS! Her microphone, her transformative vessel, lay shattered on the floor. He stopped when he saw her and in her rage, she picked up a large stainless steel lamp, pulled back her arm, and sent it flying at the tall thin target, the source of the music of their lives.

WE CAN'T BE FRIENDS!

They both looked at each other, exhausted from the explosion of pent up rage, regarding the damage. Splintered floors, a broken counter top, the microphone split asunder from it's base, a lamp lying on the floor beneath a severely dented speaker. It was then that they realised that they would have a new note to start on.

A note of friends...

We can be friends.