The Feeling
#2 of The Insistences of Gabriel
The day I bought my first CD was my most important.
You struck me dumb.
The music, the voice, the complexion of the simplicity of your lyrics.
How does one create?
How does one interpret art like you do?
How does one define art like you do?
What was this song called again? Red Sky?
Something like that.
I don't dare move to check.
I remember the very same phenomena, lying there on my bed and having those words and those melodies render my existence useless. It resurfaces when I enter the guitar shop in the city and hold the instrument again â€" a used, tattered, decaying acoustic guitar. It had been restrung, but the shell and neck has been neglected â€" disuse, I figure.
"Don't tell me you're still considering it, wuff." The older dragon, the only employee in the place, raises an eyebrow at me as he crosses his arms. The ‘wuff' bit is a temporary name â€" both of us are on a polite stranger basis. He notices the careful eye I use to examine the instrument. "Nobody's touched the thing for I don't know how long. You came in yesterday and noticed it." Though his persuasion can't tip my interest, the dragon was right â€" I was in there the day before, and asked to test it out. The dragon kindly offered to restore it to have ready for me to reconsider by today.
I smile at the dragon weakly, looking down again in concentration. I drag my fingers down the strings in a lazy strum, testing a chord. The strings, being new, had fallen out of their original tuning. I adjust them slightly to my perceptive tuning.
I feel him stare curious holes into my skull as I gently graze my claws over the strings once more, a single open strum. Perfect. "How did you know to tune it?" The dragon asks. I don't look up, yet I reply, "I just know."
He snorts. He thinks I'm being modest. Maybe I am.
This is irrelevant.
"Play me something, wuff."
"Huh?"
"I said, ‘play me something.'"
I'm confused as I look up at the dragon. "You really want me to?"
The dragon unfolds his arms and sits on a bench adjacent from my own seat. "Wouldn't have asked otherwise. You can't buy a guitar based on holding it and looking at it â€" you have to play it, too, don't you?"
Can't argue with that. I nod slightly, bringing my gaze back down to the instrument. "Sure. I'll play something."
Hope you don't mind singing.
A pause. I palm four strums to count myself in, and I begin to play the first song that comes to mind â€" a slow, lingering tempo with the kind of melody that one can reminisce to. Unexpected to my makeshift audience, I open my mouth, letting out the first words of the song in a soft tone.
[The wuff was taking it slow with the damn thing. You'd think he'd show a little more skill and versatility for something he allegedly chersished. I remained un impressed he began to play. But then he opened his mouth. "False, words were true, spreading out, and sifting through. Fallen leaves leave helpless trees, when it gets cold."
The same section repeats as I continue with no waver at all, no hesitation. "Humming blank sounds, of the hallways, leading down, to the place that, makes you wonder."
[A bridge. "Like the changing seasons, colors slowly weaving, could you give it up...?"
The wuff could sing, no doubt â€" but why something so simple? Perhaps he wasn't the type to impress, as is the case with most of the customers I met. I left any impression I had at this point behind, and listened.]
"'Cause I've been thinking..." My voice rose as the prior section bled into the chorus. "Of cutting off all my ties,... and just disappearing....and starting a brand new life, where the sun sets three hours...behind."
[Second verse, same as the first. The wuff lamented through the words he remembered. "Winds, crisp and thin, chap my lips, and bite my skin, wrapping me I memories, but I think I'd rather forget them!..."
Who was this kid...?]
"Like the changing seasons, colors slowly weaving, could you give it up...?" I repeat the bridge, followed by another chorus. My fingers drag themselves across the strings as I diligently changed from chord to chord, riff to riff.
"'Cause I've been thinking...Of cutting off all my ties,... and just disappearing....and starting a brand new life, where the sun sets three hours...behind."
I take my time with the last section, plucking as before with the bridge. "If...you...had to, could you give it up, could you give it up...?"
And my voice is done.
[The wuff finished the song with alternated versions of the chords used in both the verse and the chorus. And I listen still, even as he rings in that final note with a solid, defining strum.]
I let the song dissipate into nothing. It was liberating, playing that on this guitar. This supposed piece of junk had my personal phenomena locked away in its inner essence. I think it was cool how things work out like that.
I look up. The dragon has a new respect in his eyes as he smirks, a slight, knowing curl on his snout. He expects what I say next, plain as the day, right as rain:
"I'll take it."
There's a pause. The smirk remains, but it does nothing to mock or abhor.
[As I watched you with the song said and done, I was baffled. You wanted the runt of the litter, the one in the worst shape. I have a feeling it went way deeper than one's junk being another's treasure, or money.
It's quite simple, really, how this came about. And I realized.
You don't just play. You sing. You feel.
You make art.
I'm not gonna lie, wuff.
You struck me dumb.
The music, the voice, the complexion of the simplicity of those lyrics you sang to me.
How does one create?
How does one interpret art like you do?
How does one define art like you do?
In any case...
I'm left only to comply.]
"I guess you will, wuff."
We make the financial exchange, and I walk out with my next good feeling.