I tried to force myself into the moment. The second song was always the one that mattered. First song, some people still aren’t paying attention, and you’re still feeling out the room and getting comfortable. The second song is where you win them over.
A light appeared in the back of the house, a single bright spot in the darkness. Interesting, but playing to a guide took concentration, so I put it out of my mind. Another change in the darkness halfway down the room, on my left. We kept going. The chorus came around, and this time I heard a couple of voices singing along. Rosemary, maybe, and maybe one of the contest winners had actually seen me play before? This song had been around a long time. It was possible.
The edges of the dark changed. Something was happening just beyond my vision. I wanted to know what it was, but there was no good way to find out. People were coming closer; that was it. Bodies filled the space beyond the barrier.
The song ended with a build and a sudden drop-off, stopping on the IV chord, no resolution. This time, the applause was far more robust than it had been when we walked out; much louder than I’d expected twenty people could be, but maybe their clapping carried in the empty space. Maybe they’d reached some kind of acoustic sweet spot.
Except that wasn’t it, because they kept cheering, and it was more noise than twenty people could make.
“Next song needs to start,” said the voice in my ears.
Next song was “Look, a Gift Horse,” four to the floor, pulsing like a disco. It had a long enough intro for me to look around, long enough to take a few permitted steps toward Silva. I was supposed to stay with the spotlight, or move slowly enough for it to stay with me, but I deliberately zagged forward before turning, so I could see into the house.
“You’re off track,” said the voice in my ears.
I crossed the stage to Silva, as I was supposed to. Leaned over to play guitar to guitar, and whispered to him, “There are people out there.”
Lots of them. From the stage’s edge, where really, I should be allowed to play, I’d seen them. Two doors were open, one at the back and one on the side, and a steady stream of people poured in.
I made my way back to my mic, mind buzzing. What was going on? The Director in-ear hadn’t said anything yet, but his focus was probably on what his monitors showed, not the actual theater. We were part of a fiction he was creating, which didn’t have any room in it for the reality of the situation.
Whoever they were, I felt their presence. The room’s sound changed, and so did the energy, which was to say energy existed now that hadn’t minutes before. Shapes writhed, shifted, danced. Silva and Marcia felt it, too, or else they felt the change in me and responded. I hadn’t realized how lackluster the beginning must have been.
I’d approached this show as an obligation, something I’d promised without fully committing myself. Body, but not heart, the concert an orchestrated necessity leading up to an orchestrated action. Not once had I considered it to be a real show, of the kind I gave night after night for audiences small and smaller, even though I’d picked the venue deliberately.
I’d lied to myself about not wanting a conjuring. Somewhere out there, in their Hoodies, thousands watched and listened. Some of them because of StageHoloLive and “Blood and Diamonds” and this silly comeback feature, but some because they’d seen a video that made them think I might have something worthwhile to say. Why did I have to keep learning that there was never a moment to phone it in?
I turned my brain off, then. Turned off the part of me that debated where I should be on the stage, and what I should say next, and what song came next, and who was out there listening, remotely or in person. Play for all of them. Play to reach just one of them. Play.
When the song ended, the cheers were definitely louder than they’d been at the beginning. I still couldn’t tell how many people were out there, but they were into it. I wanted to greet them, but we’d been given no permission to talk until the second-to-last song. We launched “Ricochet,” then “Noise on Noise,” then “Light Me Up.” Brought it down for “Leaving Town”; I couldn’t see Rosemary anymore, but she was there in the song. Then “A Minor Second,” and everyone was there in my head, and I sang to April and my family and Alice and the 2020 and all the people who’d passed through my life, or who’d let me pass through theirs. With no filler, we sped forward through the set, barreling toward the one moment I’d truly been waiting for, until we were there.
The space we’d left for “sixteen-bar band introduction” came just before the song. They wouldn’t cut me off at this point, not when we hadn’t played “Blood and Diamonds” yet.
I turned to Marcia and Silva. “Watch me for the changes,” I said, though we’d discussed it already and it didn’t need to be said. They rolled into the groove we’d chosen, ready to follow. The underpinning to disguise my intent, to make it harder for editors to clip any of this out for their on-demand video after the fact.
I shielded my eyes with my hand to see beyond the spotlight. In a normal show, I’d ask to turn the house lights up, but I knew that wasn’t allowed in this in-between space. Still, I could tell they were out there.
“Hi,” I said. “I suppose you’re all wondering why I gathered you here today.”
Don’t be silly, I told myself. You have sixteen bars to do this. You know what you want to say.
I told them about the last show here and why we’d played that night. I told them about the parking lot the night before. And the nights after, waiting to be told we could tour again. About April getting sick, the fear, the protests, the list on my collective’s wall of all the things we lost.
The Director’s voice hit my ears. “That’s sixteen bars. Launch the song.”
I pulled the monitors from my ears and kept going. “I used to own this club called the 2020. Not Before; up until pretty recently. I tried my best to make it a home base for every musical weirdo looking for community outside of hoodspace, and we made some pretty good music there. It isn’t that hard to carve a space like that if you’re willing to break the law, but there’s no reason for it to be illegal anymore. We need to take community back ourselves—nobody’s going to give it to us.”
I told them about the 2020, and how they could do the same or similar for art or storytelling or theater if music wasn’t their thing. Hoping this wasn’t the moment they cut us off, I told them what StageHolo did to venues, and what I thought they needed to do, the little actions and the big ones.
“I think enough time has passed. It’s okay to be afraid, but we don’t have to let it rule us. We’re all afraid; it’s what we do when we’re afraid that matters. People are a risk worth taking. Let’s create something new together.”
That was the cue Silva and Marcia and I had worked out to kick the song for real. Without monitors, I didn’t know if we were still on the air, if the Director was shouting at me or had given up on us entirely, but I didn’t care anymore.
“Manifest Independence.” The glowing lyrics hidden behind a dresser in a hotel in this very town. The second draft, played years later to a bunch of drones at Graceland. Revised again until it became actual song, rather than screed, then revised again, until it said everything I needed it to say. An instruction manual, a guide, a call to action.