It’s half past midnight on a Thursday. I’m brushing my teeth in the first-floor bathroom of Jesse Hall. As the mundane events of the day tumble through my brain like grains of sand in an hourglass, I hear something. It’s quiet, but unmistakeable. “Ode to Joy.” Beneath my feet. Someone’s playing fiddle in the music practice room. Not super-fancy music-major pyrotechnics. Just good, honest-to-God fiddle.
I like to record music, and since I’m the only person I work well with, I like to do it alone. Unfortunately, my music misses the instrumentation I can’t play myself — pretty much everything but guitar, bass, and keyboards. Here’s a chance to get a real instrument in one of my songs, a musician besides myself. Of course, I have to get the building’s master key (I’m on the staff) to get into the music room. Would that seem weird to the fiddler under my feet? “Hi, I’m Dave, and I like to record music. Care to work with me?”
Or I could just go to bed. It’s late. Work is early tomorrow morning. And my teeth are brushed. What if the mystery fiddler is an exchange student, and I somehow intimidate him or her? What if they say no?
Ultimately, time becomes the deciding factor. As suddenly as it had started, it stops. I spit out my toothpace, race to the office, and grab my master key. At the elevator, I press both the down and up button, in case I catch the fiddler on his way up. He should be pretty easy to see, right? The guy with the fiddle?
I get to the basement and the door of the music room. No fiddling. I open the door, and there’s Nick. He’s a student in my building. We say hi when we pass by each other. We’ve even had one or two philosophical conversations. There’s a fiddle at his feet.
“Hi,” I say. “Wanna make some music?” I don’t have a fiddle part written. I don’t even have a song written.
But there’s plenty of time.
I’ve just released a new single about what happened in downtown Seattle this morning. It’s my attempt to “Born in the USA” the smashers with a chorus that sounds jingoistic but verses that underscore the stupidity of it all. Here it is:
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