Flesh Guitar (24 page)

‘Her last gig, wow. I can see why missing it would depress you.'

‘Depress!' he says it as though the word cannot express a millionth part of the anguish and misery he is still feeling. This isn't just a heartache. It isn't just a mild case of the summertime blues.

‘But why would she choose this dump for her farewell
gig?' Kate asks.

‘Precisely because it was a dump,' Bob explains. ‘Because it wasn't on the map. She didn't want her fans there, didn't want a loyal following, not even an open-minded audience. She wanted to prove to herself one last time that she could conquer an audience, no matter how indifferent, no matter how bone-headed. Then, once she'd proved to herself that she still had what it takes, she wouldn't ever need or try to prove it again.'

‘So is that why she gave the guitar away, because she had no more use for it?'

‘She gave the guitar away?'

The news only hits him slowly, like a tower block being demolished, collapsing in stages into a rising cloud of debris.

‘Sure,' said Kate.

‘She gave away her guitar,' he repeats. ‘Are you sure? The flesh guitar? The one that looks like it's alive?'

‘That's the one.'

This time he screams with anguish.

‘Do you know what that guitar is worth?' he says. ‘You could name your price. You could just think of a number and triple it. And if only I'd been here she could have given it to ME!'

Kate isn't terribly sympathetic.

‘You can't be sure of that,' she says. ‘Besides, I thought it was quite ugly actually.'

‘Ugly,' Bob says despairingly, knowing
that it is his destiny to remain misunderstood.

‘She gave it to a good-looking boy,' Kate says. ‘Besides, you don't even play guitar.'

‘That's not the point,' Bob says.

‘Anyway, I'm sure that real guitar playing comes from the soul not the instrument.'

‘You know,' says Bob, ‘you're learning fast.'

Kate nods. ‘It's too bad,' she says. ‘I thought Jenny Slade was really inspiring, a real role model.'

The BIG thought occurs to them both simultaneously, unfolding like a gaudy flower, but Kate is the first to speak. ‘You don't think I'm too old to start learning the guitar, do you?'

‘You don't look so old to me,' Bob says.

‘I could take lessons,' she enthuses. ‘I could practise really intensively, learn my scales, my riffs, my runs, get my chops together.'

‘For sure,' says Bob.

‘And you could fill me in on the theory.'

‘I definitely could,' says Bob.

‘I'll need to surround myself with some sympathetic musicians,' Kate says, ‘and I'll have to get some stage outfits and publicity photographs and an agent and a record company, and maybe a personal trainer. And a guitar, naturally. And some amplification. And a repertoire. But, of course, what I really need are fans.'

‘Don't worry,' says Bob. ‘You've already got one of those.'

The sleeping drunk wakes again, lifts an invisible glass and yells, ‘Here's to Jenny Slade!'

Bob and Kate do not join in with
this toast.

‘Where is she now?' the drunk asks. ‘Where's she gone, to what godforsaken region? What's she thinking? Is she alone? Is she feeling suicidal? Is she all played out? Is the rest silence?'

There are now tears in his eyes, saliva drooling down his beard.

‘One thing's for sure,' he adds. ‘We shall not hear her like again.'

‘Oh, I don't know about that,' says Bob.

Imagine a cathedral of sorts; an
endless chain of arches, some round, some pointed, some four-centred, some ogee. Imagine them in series, a complex, rhythmical arrangement that cuts and curves and zigzags through space like a maze or the framework for a house of mirrors. And imagine them rising, stacked high in irregular storeys, one row on top of another, reaching up to a great and distant height, the upper levels scarcely visible, disappearing in haze or smoke, mounting up and forming an enclosure that is both labyrinth and coliseum. Every arch is open. There are no doors, no walls, no stained glass. And though the principle may be essentially Gothic, there's also something digital, something computer generated about the structure. The stone has a metallic sheen and in places it seems to be dissolving, pixilating like molten polystyrene.

Imagine further that suspended on wires from the apex of each arch is an electric guitar, each fitted with a radio system and connected to unseen banks of amplification. There are countless instruments, wildly varied; all makes, all models, some pristine and glittering, some wrecked, the basic and the customized, the de luxe and the work-manlike, all hanging in suspended, unplayed
animation.

Slowly, somewhere off stage, further off than the ear can hear, doors are opened. The stable system within the ‘cathedral' is disturbed. Air begins to move through the arches, through the openings. It is a soft, benign motion. The thick, contained air turns, becomes more intricately enfolded. The wires holding the guitars sway and creak.

The movement of air grows and builds, swirling the dust, chafing the stonework. It becomes a wind, strong and mobile and threatening. But what is there to threaten? The architecture is beleaguered, yet still, only the guitars, tautly suspended, can move in time to the deep eddies and gusts of air.

At first the sounds are minimal, mere background quiver and string flutter, or an open tuned twelve string will suddenly be shaken into harmonic life, to give a safe, cascading, multi-voiced chord that seeps into space; the gentle singing of aeolean harps.

Other guitar voices respond; low bass growls, jangling treble. Guitar bodies tremble in the draughts, are raised and dropped. There is the loose twang of swaying whammy bars, the mechanical noises of bridges slipping, of strings unsettling in their courses.

Then an immense gust of air hoiks a guitar through space, a red sparkle double neck, and rams its body against the curving top of an arch, the strings scrape against stone to create stark, chromatic tonalities.

Invisible hands pump up the volume of both wind and guitars, a gale starts to blow through the myriad open-mouthed arches. The instruments are convulsed and battered into new, undreamed-of life. The wind has moved
beyond technique, has become an agent of creative rage that sears and yelps from every unseen place, edging towards physical destruction. Invisible hands, ruined choirs, strings planed and shaved by the razored air. A hollow-bodied baritone guitar snaps like firewood against the masonry of a supporting stone column.

Finally there is only a howling, a wail and squalling of wind and feedback, fused, fierce, alarmingly articulate. Weather and electricity play more eloquently than any group of musicians ever did.

And Jenny Slade runs into the maelstrom, empty-handed and unfettered. She finds herself overarched and overwhelmed, a mute matchstick figure beneath the traceried canopy of noise and stone. She is buffeted by the rage of air and sound, yet she remains untouched, the unmoved mover, calm in her eyes. The air cracks, thunder and lightning, cloud bursts of electricity, a tasty cocktail. Spheres of blue energy bounce towards her like footballs. Jenny waits quietly, knows just when the power will come.

Lightning strikes. The electricity hits her, precise and certain, shoots through her veins, along the neural pathways, hammers the pleasure and pain centres. She experiences ecstasy and oblivion. Jenny Slade finally locates the electrical mainline, feels like she's being bounced right out of her body, feels as if she's being finally freed from the tyranny of her dreams and fantasies, from guitars and amps, from performance and audience, being liberated from time and space. A smile cracks her face. This is as good as it gets.