Chapter 18 | Heaven and the Whirlwind
To get to Algiers, you’ve got to twist through any number of routes, the majority of which lead you deep into the heart of confusion. Minnie prefers it that way, having been here and back more times than you can count. This latest trek, after her break with Pontiac, sent her careening headlong into a variant of the B7add13 (No5) that when played in the right location through the right amplifier could travel a thousand miles in almost complete silence, landing like a kiss at the other end.
She's sitting, eyes closed, slowly sipping a coffee as a procession of chords streams through her brain. Each has a unique color signature associated with it, a way she's able to catalog every song she's ever heard, whether her own or somebody else's. The world goes on all around her, eyes open or closed. She sees it all, hears colors, smells sound, tastes treble and bass floating on the wind. Blue, yellow, tart, bittersweet, warm pressed flowers in torn pages of an overdue book. Through her sealed eyelids, she scans the horizon, where the Mayflower sits in the bay, about to cast off for new worlds, her beloved Joe captain of the voyage and her shattered heart. The scene remains the same as she opens her eyes and quickly closes them again to keep the water on the inside. He's singing in her ear as if inches away, but his voice is out of sync with the notes bouncing lightly in the breeze.
She puts pen to paper, hoping to capture a moment that eludes her. Used to be so good at this, but the room’s all wrong. Roses are scattered haphazardly on the table, and she's tempted to grab them by the thorns, to cry, to bang her head against the table, to let her heart leap out her throat and dance around the room in celebration of a long lost moment. Oh sweet Joe! A figment of her fertile imagination, once here, now long gone, a disappearing ship on the horizon.
She scribbles a fury of notes in rapid succession. “This I must say. This and this and this.” More notes thrown down onto paper, a mix of love and spite, of heaven and the whirlwind. It's starting to come together, a beginning and an end with the middle torn out. On the edge of the paper stands Joe, like a candle burning all the way down to nothing.
Minnie gets up to wash her face and gaze in the mirror, where she can still see the Mayflower’s reflection in the glass. Soon, it will disappear, leaving indelible traces behind. A ship so big takes a long time to fade. And maybe someday the Mayflower will return, along with Minnie's Joe. But she doubts it.
Minnie closes her eyes and laughs at the stilted notes mocking her on the page. If she crumples them together and stirs them up, then casts them into the fire, perhaps they'll coalesce. There's something here, but she's not sure what.
Sitting back down with paper and pen, the urge to cry and bang her head has passed. The crimson six string in the corner waits patiently for her to complete this latest foray. Inspiration gone, all that's left is to grind through on pure sweat. Another note cast into the flames of perfection. She dares not look up till the work is done, and so she bears forward, digging in as the day drags on. The Mayflower recedes into the distance as she writes it into the heart of a song, to be forever there.
The sea is vast and sometimes cruel. By now, Joe is far past the horizon, beyond the grasp of Minnie's crimson six string. Despite her carefully crafted, reckless melody, and the impeccably balanced acoustics, this song will never reach Joe’s ears. Minnie’s cutting notes and phrases out with a knife, rearranging and gluing them down in an altogether different disorder. She'll be satisfied, eventually, but for now it's time to put down paper and pen and descend to the street, where she can walk the several blocks separating her studio from the sea. The missing pieces might come to her along the way, or maybe she'll stop for a loaf of bread and some dried figs. Regardless, there's nothing left to say here, so she opens her eyes, blows out the candle, pockets her pen, and heads on out the door.
