The bar in which his first performance finally took place (it wasn’t strictly speaking the first, because there’d been one already, but Cecil chose not talk about it) was a dive where music was secondary, a background to waiting and drug deals. But drugs, and waiting too (they went together), were so intimately related to time that the artist felt he should be able to arouse some interest; all he knew for sure was that he wouldn’t cause a scandal, which was a pity in a way, because a scandal is an intensification of interest, but it wasn’t in his gentle, contemplative nature; and in a place like that, where people were risking everything, they would hardly be shocked by one more disruption of the dominant key. He prepared himself by imagining indifference as a plane and interest as a point: the plane could cover the world like a paper shade, but interest was punctual and real like a pair of neighbors wishing each other good day. He readied himself for the inherent incongruence of the higher geometries. The unpredictable clientele could provide him with a modicum of attention: no one knows what grows by night (he would be playing after midnight, the following day, in fact), and when tomorrow appears today, it never goes totally unnoticed. Except for this time. To his astonishment, this time turned out to be precisely “never.” Invisible ridicule melting into inaudible giggles. It was like that all through the set, and the proprietor canceled his date for the following night, although he hadn’t paid for it. Cecil didn’t talk to him about his music, of course. He couldn’t see the point. He just went back to his room.
Two months later, his erratic work routine (he’d gone from washing dishes to working at a dry cleaner) was enlivened once again when he agreed to perform in a bar, just one night this time, in the middle of the week. It was like the previous bar, though maybe slightly worse, with the same kind of clientele; there was even a chance that some of those who’d been present the other night would hear him again. That’s what he got to thinking (what a dreamer!), misled by his own repetitions. His music reached the ears of fifteen or so drunks, and maybe those of one or two women dressed in silk: small, black, beautiful ears, each adorned with a golden bud. There was no applause, someone laughed stupidly (at something else, no doubt), and the owner of the bar didn’t even bother to say good night to him. Why would he? There are times like that, when music meets with no response. He made himself an idle promise to come back to the bar some other time (he’d been there before), to put himself in the situation, or rather the position, of someone listening to music and knowing that it’s music, so that he could imagine what it would be like: the consummate pianist intuiting each note as he plays it, the slow succession of melodies, the reason for the atmosphere. But he never did; it wasn’t worth the trouble. He considered himself unimaginative, unable even to imagine the reality surrounding him. After a week, the mental image of this latest failure blended with that of the previous one, which left him feeling somewhat bewildered. Could it have been a repetition? There was no reason why it should have been that simple, but sometimes simplification works in tandem with complication.
One autumn afternoon he was walking home, mentally humming something that he would translate into sounds as soon as he sat down at the piano (he paid by the hour for the use of a Steinway upright in a music school, after the lessons), when he ran into an ex-classmate from the New England Conservatory. As soon as he saw and recognized him, the music in his head fell silent. The reality of that individual — son of Norwegian immigrants, big nose, little ears — contaminated the street, the cars, even Cecil himself with empirical details. They started chatting; they hadn’t seen each other for eight years. Neither had betrayed his calling as an avant-garde musician: the Norwegian was making ends meet by giving lessons to children; his constructivist pieces for chamber orchestra hadn’t been performed, even privately; he was still playing the cello; and he had spoken with Stravinsky. Cecil let him talk, nodding sympathetically, though he made fun of Stravinsky in private. He paid more attention when the cellist said, in conclusion, that the career of the innovative musician was difficult because, as opposed to the conventional musician, who had only to please an audience, the innovator had to create a new one from scratch, like someone taking a red blood cell and shaping it with patience and love until it’s nice and round, then doing the same with another, and attaching it to the first, and so on until he has made a heart, and then all the other organs and bones and muscles and skin and hair, leaving the delicate tunnel of the ear with its anvils and miniature hammers till last. . That was how he might produce the first listener for his music, the origin of his audience, and he would have to repeat the operation hundreds and thousands of times if he wanted to be recognized as a name in the history of music, with the same care every time, because if he got a single cell wrong, a fatal domino effect would bring the whole thing crashing down. . The metaphor struck his drowsy interlocutor as suggestive, if a little extreme, and provoked a vague reply. The constructivist was impressed by Cecil’s sibylline presence, his whispering, his woolen cap. Had he made something of his life, instead of being a nonentity, he would have recorded the meeting in his memoirs, many years later.
A year earlier, Cecil had done some arrangements for the famous jazzman Johnny Hodges, who, in return, had offered him a contract for five nights at a hotel, playing piano in his band (which didn’t usually include a piano). The first four nights he didn’t even touch the instrument. The only one who noticed the silence was the trombone player, Lawrence Brown, who, before the start of the fifth performance, smiled at him and said: Hey, Cecil, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that piano has eighty-eight keys. How about you hit one?
The story came up late one night, at a table in the Five Spot, and though it wasn’t exactly proof of his credentials, and had to be explained, the upshot was an offer to play there one night during the week, as support for an avant-garde group. It was a heaven-sent opportunity, and he treated it as such. He gave up his job at the dry cleaner, bought a piano with a providential loan, and practiced almost nonstop, only breaking off to reply to his neighbors’ complaints with polite explanations. He had moved from the rundown tenement on the Lower East Side to a poky room on Bleecker Street.
The cream of the jazz world went to the Five Spot, so he would have an audience of connoisseurs. He convinced himself that the jolt of his playing could transform that audience and produce the applause that he had been denied until then. The theory of cumulative units that his ex-classmate had propounded was precisely that: a theory, an abstraction, nothing more. In reality, there was something magical about an audience, like a genie appearing from a lamp.
The night in question arrived; he climbed onto the stage, sat at the piano, and began. The amplifier died almost straightaway — a technical fault, supposedly. It didn’t matter to him. But his performance was cut short by condescending applause. When he looked up, disconcerted, he saw the avant-garde musicians coming forward with their instruments and their simian smiles. He went to sit at a table where there were some people he knew; they were talking about something else. One took hold of his elbow and, leaning toward him, slowly shook his head. Laughing cheerfully, another came out with a supposedly apt remark: “It’s okay, it’s over now.” And that was all; they stopped talking to listen to the next number.