by C. Reeder
The doting Daily
Demo Queen tries
to get a musical idea
down
on tape in a
powerless
project studio
Basking in the rays of a warm Pacific sun, my light-depraved body floats blissfully on a raft being rocked by gentle surf. Contented, I am like a newborn babe safe in the arms of a loving mother. Friendly dolphins playfully surround me and tickle my toes until I spill over from laughter, and, with a joy that is fast approaching ecstasy, I glance toward a beach as white as new Montana snow.
My love is beckoning to me from our beach towel with a Rum Runner in each
hand. Every nerve ending is tingling with excitement as I swim for shore,
run to him, and, with our lips just inches away... Crack, Crackle, Kaboom!
I curse the thundering storm that is taking me away from my umbrella drinks
and a languid beach on Bali, when one of the hundred flashes of lightning
that electrifies the planet every second zaps my telephone. RING!!!! 'Could
this be God calling?"
Cradling the receiver, I reverently listen for divine instructions. Silence.
God isn't on the line as far as I can tell, or at least not to chat about
the weather. But maybe this is a heaven-sent thunder bolt after all, because
now a creative spark of a musical idea is swimming around in my head with
the dolphins in my fast-fading dream.
I throw off the covers I'm hiding under and stumble around in the dark, frantically
fumbling for the flashlight I keep in the drawer next to my bed along with
the scented candles, a dictionary, pencils, a cassette recorder, tarot cards,
several rolls of undeveloped film from a recent trip, a screwdriver, my lucky
rabbit, and a remote that would turn on the lights if the electricity was
in the outlets instead of illuminating the sky and buffeting the ground around
me.
I find the flashlight, but the batteries are dead, so I reach for the other
drawer where I keep more essentials: a cigarette lighter, night cream, incense,
the latest book I'm reading (which this week is This Business Music for the
third time), manuscript paper, my photo album, and, of course, the batteries.
Light is no longer an issue, and I push the record button on my cassette recorder
and sing my heart out only to discover on playback an older demo still on
tape. I'd forgotten that I'd punched out the holes on the edges so I wouldn't
accidentally record over what was then, but not at this moment, a genius idea
that I didn't want to lose. I wander through the dark house to a drawer in
the kitchen where I keep the Scotch tape (adhesive, not magnetic), which I
will then use to cover the holes and record away. This seems to be a better
idea than going out into a raging storm to look for blank tapes, which I know
are in my car where I left them earlier in the day.
The Scotch tape, however, is empty, and the main suspect for this foul deed
is my 10-year-old daughter, who thinks she can deny anything if no one actually
catches her in the act. The tape no doubt fell victim to one of her many collage
projects.
Oblivious to the storm, my daughter is sound asleep, and looking every bit
like an angel, so my speech about the tape will have to wait. I tip toe out
of her room, careful not to step on her latest creation, which is a work-inprogress
all over the floor, and miraculously my beam of light zeros in on several
cassettes scattered around my daughter's boom box. She must have raided my
tape stash to make cassettes from CDs. She doesn't know about punching tabs
out of cassettes, so I make an executive decision and choose Pearl Jam for
the sacrificial cassette.
Listening to my idea in the light of the next day I still like it and am ready
to work on the demo, but the electricity is still off. Why not try bouncing
ideas back and forth on two little cassette players, sort of 2-track recording,
but only one at a time? I'm sure this does not seem so brilliant to somebody
like a Les Paul, but I don't have his little black box or the juice to power
it.
I retrieve fresh tapes from my car and play the acoustic piano part on one
recorder. Then I play that back and sing the song, while recording on the
other player. This gives me a piano/vocal demo, which is good enough for writing
sessions or even some publishers, but I need more.
I play the piano/vocal tape and lay down a solo idea, then I play that and
sing a background part. Suddenly empowered and free from technological restraints,
I continue on this way going back and forth between my cassette recorders
for three more passes. Luckily the batteries go dead and the battery drawer
is empty after our flashlight feast the night before, because after six passes
the piano is barely audible.
Still, I have more ideas, and being somewhat of a studio junkie who isn't
getting her fix and feeling the effects of withdrawal, I scribble feverishly
on manuscript paper trying to salvage the last remaining ideas.
And, right on cue, the pencil I'm using breaks, surging the right front lobal
area of my head into a sort of dithyrambic throbbing. Undaunted, I search
in vain for the manual sharpener, and by now I am becoming painfully aware
of my codependency on electricity and all the machines that depend on it,
including my electric pencil sharpener. My enabler, the electric company,
is ignoring, what seems to me, an increasingly desperate moment in the Demo
Queen's digital domain.
As I reach for a sharp kitchen knife, keeping it far away from my wrists,
and lean over the kitchen sink to sharpen my pencil the way my wise mother
did 70 years ago, a small, almost imperceptible voice sends greetings from
the ancient part of my brain stem and gently calms my frayed nerves with this
little refrain, "Write on, Demo Queen. Write on." At least that's
how I heard it. Hey ho...