The Anteroom
Feel free to analyze the shit out of this one.
The wooden smell of lemons and the ionized smell of bronze and nickel hangs heavy and deep in the close air. With every breath in and every breath out, swirling galaxies are formed in the silver dust, coming together and exploding away into individual flakes of some greater, floating life. The wooden aroma is from the bodies of the art and the metallic is from the strings. Rosewood, maple, and ashes slowly enriching, and as all beings, decaying in the process of maturing. Necks losing rigidity and bodies impregnating on epoxies, lacquers, and polyurethanes, they hang from hooks or stand on strange, three-legged steel constructs. They are here to be bought and sold, hawked and bartered. The oils of untold hands worn into the necks, grinding string to fret with each emotion choked wail to the muses and to heaven and to hell, stains the fretboards. These are real guitars. A Thinline Tele, an old Strat with the cigarette case tremolo, Gretch Jets, 335's, 325's and the humble Dot. They all languish and reign in the dry air of the eternal, sun-drowned pawn shop. This is the room I find myself in.
The guitars, golden and battered in the slanting sunlight, hold dominion over the quiet, boxy hulks below with a heart of darkened wattage. My fingers trace the golden spiral into the dust icing of a Blackface Twin. Around me, tweed is the rule and black pleather the exception. All of these beasts of burden are loaded with a bygone art, long passed from the glory of cheap production and cajoled into the elitism of the boutique. Lights on top of the control panels of these electric, time-traveling craft are dark where they have glowed pink and purple and amber in thousands of jukes and honkytonks.
I pull away my hand, staring at the dust, ground into the spirals of my finger. I am silent. So are the beasts. So are the wooden pietas hanging from the ceiling.
I am looking for something small, portable. I am leaving soon, and to a place where battery power, resistence to the elements, and compact size are so very useful. The heart of the room is a silver Stratocaster, an angelic host. The gleaming of the metal skin is marred by years of tarnish without the honor of a loving polish. It hurts me to see it. Strung along on a jewel-studded cord run in circles and pinwheels and spirals, sits a small transistor amp the size of a pack of cigarettes.
From behind me, I hear sighs of exhaustion and I know I am not alone. This is no mere pawshop, it is the waiting room to a grand stage. Towering beams shoot up at angles supporting an invisible ceiling. The room is the cheap and cobbled together rule of any backstage, the effort of beauty was better spent in the great auditorium. All backstages suffer this fate.
I turn slowly, choked in the stifling room, to see four men dressed in maroon suede and felt. Their close cropped hair or greasy curls are uniformly neat and rest on top of their mahogany skin. Eons of decades have come and gone between their time and mine. They represent a world of shoes polished instead of blinging Jordans and stuffy suits instead of garish sweatsuits. They are the hiphop of their age, exploiters of the exploitation. The fatigue on their faces enumerates the grand stages they have played to white audiences who would lynch them for talking wrong to their cousins. They are the most exploited of all the huddled masses; the acceptable negro. In their method of vocation, they exploit the status quo in return. They are tarnished with sweat and sell-out.
They dutifully ignore me, the blue eyed stranger, as black men always do. In all of the fires of the ghettos yet to grace their children's decade, never will the thousand yard, ignoring stare leave their community. In my time, in the places I have been, I have experienced it often enough. They are afraid of me and what I may do or say. They are also speechlessly exhausted.
I turn back to the small amp, silver and black, with knobs grinding out of it and KORG scripted in block font across the speaker. It is a gadget and most guitarists love gadgets. The knob on the side has the many models of sound to choose from; clean, dirty, M. stack, F. twin, V. clean. I turn it slowly to the first notch. When the needle hits "clean," the unit glows orange in my hand and music falls out of it in a demo of the model. The music scratches at my ears with its unoffending terribleness. It is slow and plodding prewar big band music. The lush orchestra builds the all major chords into a power house of mediocrity. White folks music. I am embarrassed by it, but can't turn it off. Through the syrup of the music, nearly devoid of drums or bassline, a voice vomits through. With the long, over-pronounced vocals of an old Disney cartoon, the man sings, "I am going to Kansahs City, Kansahs City here I come..."
The singer continues while I start to chuckle a little and desperately try to kill the terrible noise. As I peek over my shoulder, I see the nearest musician staring at the box in a combination of disgust, perplexity, and amusement at the abuse of the cliche blues standard. The switches won't move and the lardy voice continues, "They got some crazy little loving there and I am going to get me some."
I rip the chord from the amp, the orange glow fades but the flatulent music remains. I turn around, the spell is broken, all eyes are on me. We are all amused.
I shrug, "At least somebody finally did something different with Kansas City."
The disgusted and amused musician laughed, "I was just thinking the same damn thing."
Then the dream was over.
