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G and C Blues

…….

When the two of them played the blues guitars, it wasnt a great space which separated them. I mean the space between them, as they sat on their walls. It was a walkway that separated them, and it was a fairly wide walkway, and a lot of people used it, at all hours. Even in those early morning hours, like I was telling you about before. You wouldnt think there’d be a lot of people in front of City Hall at such an early hour. And I’m not saying there were a lot of people -on that morning, just past dawn, when I stood and heard their song- but there were quite a few. Which was a little surprising. Some of those people looked at me, or glanced at me. Briefly. Curiosity, mostly. Some maybe were a little annoyed. Sure, I was out of place. I wasnt dressed in business attire. And I probably had the look of someone who hadnt been to bed, and not the look of someone who had risen, and showered, and started this new day fresh. And I guess I looked a little distracted. They knew I wasnt really in their world or of their world -you can tell things like that – I wasnt playing their game, wasnt following their rules. They knew it, some of them. It wasnt just a different drummer I was following. It was the whole darn orchestra. Or hold on, not really… because really, it was just two blues guitars. That’s what I was hearing.

And they were lovely blues guitars. I had no idea that Suzy and Johnny were so accomplished. After all these years, the things you find out about people. I guess everything they’d been through, all that suffering related to conception, gestation and birth, had resulted in a new sound. A different kind of music. But as I told you before, they werent quite harmonizing in the way that they themselves expected to be harmonizing. If you could put that aside for the moment, and listen to each guitar as an individual, and forget the lack of harmony, then maybe you could hear the underlying beauty of the sound. But if you insisted on combining the two, making it stereo, so to speak, then there was a clash. No doubt about it. But oh, that early morning sunlight! I wont ever forget it. It was a fresh clean morning, too. The city grime had gone away somewhere, if only momentarily. The air had that vibrant quality to it, as though it were shivering. Made you want to breathe deep. Maybe I had a smile on my face, or something like a smile, and that might have bothered some people. Not all the people passing were bothered by my happy look, but some of them were. There’s always a couple of odd birds in every crowd, who themselves dont quite fit in, although they’re still traveling with the group. The odd birds werent bothered. The others were.

It’s the Monster I need to tell you about, Sister. He lived at the bottom of the spiral staircase. Which was in the courtyard, in front of the tower which rose up so high. I call him a he, and I think he’s a he, but Monsters have ways of changing themselves, and sex doesnt really apply to them the way it applies to the rest of us. He was an all devouring Monster, and what he devoured most of all was children. People dont realize that this City has been quartered off, divided up into four pieces. That it’s been surrounded, with a great invisible wall, and that the only way you can get in or out is through the four gates, which they call the Four Portals. Which means that the City is a lot like City Hall. Because City Hall has those four archways, like small tunnels, north east south and west, and you cant get into the central courtyard unless you go through one of those four archways. And the Monster is invisible. He has to be invisible, right? Because he couldnt do what he does -at least I dont think he could- unless he was invisible. Invisibility is a very powerful weapon. The Monster, invisible, waits at the bottom of his long, long, deep, deep spiral staircase. And they lead the children down to him. And he devours them. There are some rules about how it all works, but I cant go into that right now. All I know is, the Monster’s at the center of what makes this City tick. And Suzy and Johnny are supposed to be the heroes of this story, the Monster fighters. That’s why they’re invisible, too. That’s why they’re sitting on their walls, though separated by the walkway. And that’s why they live in apartments in City Hall. They live in separate but equal apartments, and to get to their apartments, they have to do down the spiral staircase. But not all the way down. Only halfway down, and then they have to jump off, quietly, each to one side, and invisibly. So the Monster doesnt know what they’re up to.

But here’s the hard thing, here’s the really hard thing I have to tell you about. Sooner or later -and with or without Johnny- Suzy’s gonna have to go down there. Go all the way down there, to the bottom of the spiral staircase, to the place where the Monster waits, the place where he devours the children. I mean if she wants to save the children, and put a stop to all this horror. She has to go down there, and she has to mate with the Monster, and breed a child by him. And this child will have the power to destroy the Monster. And the truth is, that’s what she wants to do. She’s willing to do it. It’s all that she wants to do. But it’s not so simple as simply walking down the spiral staircase. If she went down there now, she’d never succeed at breeding a child by the Monster. He’d simply gobble her up, and that would be that. Or maybe he’d do the same thing, to her, that happened to all those young girls who were given to the king, before Sharazad figured out how to beat him at his game. Screw ‘em, and then kill ‘em. And the next day, move on to the next one. And I decided, that night and that morning, after somebody forgot a book on the bar, that I would write my own book, and it would be about this song I heard on the morning breeze, as I stood there and listened to those two playing their blues guitars. What a song it was, and what a song it is. It’s so fleeting, it’s almost invisible. If you want to hear it, you have to go to great lengths, just so you can up the volume. Sometimes I get real sad -like the way I feel right now- and it doesnt seem possible, it seems hopeless, and I dont feel like I can ever get to the end, and write down all thousand songs, like the way Sharazad told her thousand stories, for a thousand nights. But this Monster is just as real, to me, and to Suzy, as that Monster, that King, was to Sharazad. He’s no joke. Well, maybe he is a joke. Maybe the joke’s on me. After all, I’m the one who’s hearing the blues guitars playing.

…….

next: horizontal lovemaking

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G and C Blues

About Thousand Songs