(Lander, Wyoming, 7-29-05)

Back in his kitchen, Marvin dug a spoon into his caramel ice cream sundae while I sipped on an Echinacea tea, as if this small gesture toward my body would redeem me for the bag of Taco Bell I’d just scarfed on the way there after the concert.  “I’m so sorry,” he said, sounding defeated.

“What are you talking about?”

“I expected there to be a lot more people.  And no one bought your CDs.”

“It’s no big deal.”  I took another sip.  “You know, sometimes it’s better to have a small audience.  People can get closer to the music that way.  Or at least the music is harder to escape.” 

Marvin’s wife Jo Ann came into the kitchen and sat beside me.  She seemed like the perfect mirror of her husband — pleasant, courteous, conservative —  but there was more to this couple than met the eye.  The framed military medals and accolades, the photos of the Pentagon, the black and white portraits of Marvin standing beside fighter planes, all shared shelf space with books by Al Franken and others exploring everything from Myths of Authority in Masculinity to Communication Between the Sexes.  When I mentioned being from Vermont, Marvin admitted that he detested Howard Dean but believed in civil unions, which Vermont had pioneered.  Jo Ann had also recently forayed into the world of stand-up comedy.  In fact, she was just returning from an open mic. 

Marvin suddenly pulled out his checkbook.  “I want to make a donation.”

“No, no, please,” I said, sitting up and nearly spilling my tea.  “You don’t have to do that.  You’ve done enough.”

“I’ve done squat!” he fired back.  “And I know I don’t have to, but I want to.”  I could see him writing a check for two-hundred dollars.  He folded it and put it between us.  It made me uncomfortable, just sitting there, burning a hole in the table, and in part to avoid looking at it I turned to Jo Ann and asked, “How did tonight go?”

“Oh, I didn’t perform,” she said, shaking her head.  “I just went to observe.  And good thing, too.  It would have been the wrong crowd.  I’m not on the same wavelength as these younger kids.  All it is with them is F-U-C-K.”  She spelled the word out to avoid cursing.  “I mean, don’t get me wrong, my humor can get pretty risqué, but I just don’t talk like that.”

“Do you get nervous?”

“Not really.  Not anymore.”  She took a second to collect her thought.  “See, in comedy, your audience feedback is immediate.  Either they laugh…or they don’t, so the learning curve is steep, but it’s good because you can create your stage identity quicker.”  Marvin watched her admiringly as she spoke.  “But with what you do, playing the piano, it’s different.  People will always clap because it’s polite.  Even if they hate it, they clap.”  She laughed.  “And when you play, you don’t even have to look at them!  I have to stare at everyone when I’m up there.  But I’m lucky living in a small town like Lander.  I get to come up with a joke, refine it, and within a day or two, go up on stage and try it out.  A joke’s not a joke until it’s told.  You can write all the jokes you want, but they don’t amount to nothing till they’re told.  You gotta test the punch line!”  She stopped herself.  “But of course you know this already.  I read your bio.  You composed all those big pieces.  You know what I’m talking about, how something isn’t really something until it’s shared.”

“I understand,” I answered softly, now fondling the check on the table.  The idea that I was a composer, just like the idea that I was a pianist and so many other things, had been the spotty side-effect of an aggressive, if erratically effective campaign I’d waged for years, since as far back as I could remember.  Whether it was Jo Ann here mentioning the “big pieces” I’d composed, or Ted back at White Oaks Campground in Iowa, suggesting I should run to the titty bar like the rest of the boys, it was all I could do not to laugh out of sheer shock that these people actually believed me, believed my character, believed my bullshit.

The big pieces she mentioned seeing in my bio were, at that moment, all shoved under a bed in Vermont.  Unperformed, unseen, a heap of untold jokes and untested punchlines.  I’d only written music for large ensembles, impossible performance forces I knew I couldn’t wrangle.  Multiple choruses.  Giant orchestras.  And so there it was.  I would spend a year or two working on a piece, sketching it out and then scoring it by hand, note-by-note, measure-by-measure, and then I’d bind it and shove it under the bed.

It’s funny.  I’d never composed a piece for piano.