A Song in Your Head

A Song in Your Head

This is the one. This is it. Hold on to it and whatever happens, do not let go. Remember this melody. Sing it aloud, whistle it, hum it--do not stop for anything. There are two more hours in your shift. How are you going to make it through with this song intact? Forget the customers; you have a higher calling at the moment. Your boss, the owner of this East Side dive bar, is on her eighth gin and tonic, chatting with some divorce attorney who's looking like a stooge in his Armani suit. They sneak glances at you, leering and glaring from the corners of their eyes, mocking you with bursts of awkward laughter.

Don't stop. Keep humming the melody, maybe a bit quieter. Look away from them, but don't stop.

"Hey."

No.

"Hey, barkeep."

Barkeep. What is this, the 1920s? What key are we in? F. Focus on the radio. No, not the radio. What song is that?

"You alive, guy?"

"Not now, asshole!" A bit too aggressive. The radio--what song... where were you...? We're on the edge now. Still got the tune. F F F Fffff D A A A CD CD. Keep humming. Use the song on the radio as a reference. It doesn't matter what it's called, don't waste mental energy on that right now, even though I know it's eating away at you. B. The damn song is in B, of course. Skynyrd. "Saturday Night Special." That's it. You used to play that one in the band, hammering down that B B B bassline all day. Stop. Focus.

Go downstairs, pretend you're doing something--stocking the coolers, whatever. What a weird era in music with all those one-note bass lines plonking along, bom bom bom bom one, two, three, four. Boring, sure, but then you realize getting paid bookoo bucks to finger an open string with one hand, drink a beer with the other, and make weird faces at groupies all night is good work, if you can get it.

Work. What were you doing? Going downstairs for something. No, not actually something. You came down here specifically to get away from Skynyrd and everyone at the bar asking you for stuff. You have a song in your head and it's a keeper. Maybe even good enough to get you out of this bar. How did it go again? F F F Ffff D Aaaa... That was a close one. Focus. We can't lose this.

Go back upstairs--it doesn't matter if you bring anything up. See? Told you. Now your pissed-off boss is asking you to grab more maraschino cherries. Keep humming and singing.

Struck by genius, you rush up the stairs and examine the fluid levels in the bottles on the bar. You figure you need at least 7 or 8 bottles with varying fluid levels. You snatch the open beers from the bartop and take them to the counter behind the bar--your new workshop. Ignore the glances, the shouts, the anger. That's inconsequential collateral damage in your mission. Start blowing, tune up, get the levels right, place them in order, find the rhythm--what do you mean fired?

You feel two pairs of hands, one on each arm, lifting you off your feet and out of the establishment. The whistling continues despite horrified glances from the patrons. All of this will be worth it once you accept your first Grammy. Dust the dirt off your pants and haul ass home as fast as you can, just three short blocks down the street. The song is bursting forth from you. Run up those stairs, scream from the rooftops, get to a keyboard and slam that motherfuckin' red button!

"Hey, J--!"

A friend calls out your name as you nearly knock him over. Your rudeness is justified. No time to lose. He thinks you're a maniac, humming to yourself, barreling through the neighborhood like a drunk bull.

Honk. Screech. Thump.

Your head is spinning. A panicked woman stands over you, hand over her mouth. But you keep singing. You can sing through anything, through injury and illness. The woman sobs as her young daughter stands by, confused.

"Is he all right, mommy?"

Well, are you? You haven't lost the melody, have you? How do pedants say memory works? Each time you remember something, you're recalling the previous version of the memory, not the original event. Something like that. For all we know, the melody could have changed from its original form. The masterpiece, never to be heard. Or worse, written by somebody else. You aren't going to let that happen, are you? F F F F D A A A C D C D. Yeah, that's it, probably. There's a pool of blood, exposed bone jutting through torn flesh, then... shock.

This isn't my home, you think as you peep the street number posted above you. No, your apartment is at the end of the block. Standing is not in the cards right now, so it's time to take a deep breath, and drag your carcass through the home stretch.

A snail trail of blood and assorted viscera follows you to the front steps of your seven-storey walk up. This is it. Keep singing. You look up at your window and--

Applause.