I found out that the only way I could play the bassoon with a bearable level of pain was with my jaw positioned in a slight state of dislocation. Every day I popped my jaw gently out of alignment and practiced. I didn’t tell my teacher, Bill, for a few months, and the pain gradually diminished. But there was something clearly not right in what I was doing. When I finally told him about the basketball incident, he laughed a sad, kindly laugh. “I guess that’s dedication,” he said. He had a flaxen-haired girlfriend who was also a flutist. I had kind of a crush on her. I think Billy knew. They played the Villa-Lobos “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6” together — a winsome, wide-wandering duet for flute and bassoon. Once the two of them taught me how to smoke a joint. It did nothing for me.
And that’s how I wrecked my jaw.
• • •
I’VE BEEN WORKING on a love song that goes, “I want to go to the beach, I want to take the dog off the leash, I want to stare out to the east, I want to see a new shade of blue, I want to smell the seaweed with you.” The first melody I tried was too close to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” so I rethought it. At one point I stopped singing and said, with amazement, “I’m actually writing a frigging love song.”
I wish I could sing “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5” for you. It’s the famous one. “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6” is for flute and bassoon, and only bassoonists and flutists know about it, but “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5” was an international hit. Heitor Villa-Lobos put on his hit hat that week and produced a masterpiece that everyone should listen to when they are seeking comfort.
Just saying the composer’s name is a musical experience. You need that sh in there: Villa-Lobosh. He was a prolific composer from where — Buenos Aires? Somewhere like that. São Paulo? Oh, Bachianas Brasileiras, right. He was a Brazilian composer. In nine separate short pieces, he took the example of Bach and gave it his own Brazilian bean-salad sexual curvature. And for No. 5, he used eight cellos — I think it’s eight, or twelve, or fifteen, an incredible number of cellos — and one human voice.
You can think of Villa-Lobos sitting there thinking, No, I’m not going to have one cello, or two, or three, I’m going to have a whole lot of cellos. All played by beautiful dark-haired women in loose flowing skirts. And they’ll all be doing pizzicato, plucking their long strings with their heads cocked to one side, bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung bung—a pizzicato obbligato. Obliged to pluck. Pluck on, beautiful cello women! And then coming in over the mandatory pluckage is a melodic line that’s like Bach but it’s been run through the South American flan factory, sung by a singer named Victoria de los Angeles. My father had her record. She’s some kind of full-chested contralto, or maybe she’s a soprano, and she can belt it out. She goes, “Laaaaaaaaaah, daaaah daaaah daah daah dah dah daaaaaaaaah!”
Well, I can’t get that high. Anyway, she sings like a mad tropical bird, and it’s just a fondue of molten wanting and grieving and everything that you wish you could remember and feel and know. “Noh ooh, doo dooodoo dooooo deedoodie dooooooooooo! Dooooooo dah deee da doodie dooooooh!”
Sorry. I don’t even come close. But today I looked up Victoria de los Angeles on iTunes and listened to her sing the Bachianas again, for the first time since I sold my bassoon. It’s an old recording, all mono. I heard the same hiss, the same cellos. I could see my dear father standing between the Bose speakers, listening and moving his arms. All those cello players are dead and gone now, probably. And my father is gone, and Victoria de los Angeles is gone, and Heitor Villa-Lobos is gone now, too. He died when I was two. He wrote too much and most of his compositions are forgotten. But he did dream up this big, bad moonload of greatness for a loving voice and a bunch of cellos. When Victoria of the Angels started singing, I just lost it. It’s spontaneous. It’s the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, is what it is. All carefully written down as notes.
• • •
I ANSWERED THE PHONE. “Hi,” said Roz.
“Hi! Just a sec, let me turn this down.” I was listening to “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” at high volume. “How are you making out?”
“Well, so I’m having it done tomorrow.”
“You’re kidding. That’s so soon.”
“I know. They had an opening at the hospital and the doctor says one of my ovaries is at risk, and I kind of like my ovaries.”
“Me, too.”
“So, it’s tomorrow.”
“Can I be there — or—”
“Lucy’s driving to the hospital with me, and Harris says he’s going to try to be there as well — so it might be difficult.”
“Oh. Hm. Well, what are you doing right now?”
“Nothing,” Roz said. “I’m not supposed to eat anything, so I’m just sitting here staring at a tub of sesame seeds.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“No, and the idea of them feeling around in my innards tomorrow disgusts me. Those gloved groping hands, ugh. I hate surgery.”
“Should I come over and fluff you up?”
“I’m in my pajamas and I’m not going to be much fun. On the other hand, tomorrow’s really impossible, and I don’t want you to think that you’re not part of it, because you are. You really are.”
“Then why don’t I drive over and see you right now? We can watch a movie. I rented the Talking Heads movie, Stop Making Sense. I’ve never seen it. I don’t believe you’ve seen it, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well then, what do you think? We can have a pre-op viewing of the Talking Heads. I think they wear enormous suits with huge shoulders. It’s directed by Jonathan Demme. It’s supposed to be good. We can watch people in huge business suits singing ‘Take Me to the River’ and forget about our troubles.”
Roz chuckled. “That sounds kind of good. Bring your pajamas and we can have a pajama party. And can you bring the dear dog?”
“He’d love to see you.”
“Good, then come over.”
Twenty-seven
I SHOWERED OFF the day’s cigar smell and found a fairly clean pair of pajama bottoms, and Smacko and I drove at a good clip to Roz’s condo in Concord, which is easy to spot because on the steps up to her door are many small mossy pots. Roz offered both of us seats on the couch — idly I tweaked the piping on the armrest while she smelled the dog’s paws, as she liked to do. She was wearing a light bathrobe and pajamas and fluffy slippers. She asked me how my music was going.
“Going fine, going well,” I said.
“Can I hear some songs?”
“I’m still fiddling with them. I put some marimba trills in one of the songs. It’s for you. Actually, several of them are for you. I’ll burn you a CD when they’re done.”
“Marimba trills. How nice.”
Roz had popped some popcorn, but she said she couldn’t have any. Then she relented. “Oh, heck, I’ll have two pieces. They won’t kill me, and I’m starving.” She crunched defiantly.
We started the DVD. It was a concert movie and David Byrne looked completely insane. He had no stage patter. He began singing “Psycho Killer” on a bare stage, with his guitar and a drum loop. I didn’t like it much. I glanced at Roz. She looked doubtful.