The “Ahhs” (Barney) — a short story

Barney’s in the band room. Great room. Great door. Great vibe. Apropos of nothing, he decides he loves music. Playing it, specifically. Yeah. Not so much the other thing. You might think that not listening to much music, or enjoying that activity outside of limited, specific circumstances might leave him lacking for a feedback loop as far as playing songs goes. Mhmm. You’d be right. But nobody controls what talents they might have… or the limitations that come with them. So he tries his best.

“You know this one?” Brett had asked fifteen?-ish seconds ago? while pulling the strings of her hoodie so tight that golden yellow hair clumps around her face like a parka.

“Maybe?” Barney replies, his brain instantly forming memories for the tabs.

“Yes you do, just memorize it and play it, and you’ll recognize it.” So Barney looked at the paper again, and a colourful serpent composed of flat geometrically-sided faces exploded in his mind. The serpent isn’t a proper serpent. Its general outline is more like if something molten flowed down a channel that split occasionally, into up to five separate ‘sub bodies’. Simpler songs look like “snakes in a can,” accordions that stretch themselves out while more complex ones might look like many conjoined brooms. It’s essential that they do not ever resemble yarn. The second a song becomes yarn, it’s useless. It must only ever be a very well-designed origami with complex but discreet and defined folds that will naturally expand under their own tension and that sets the tempo. Self-deploying through stored elastic energy, the song goes from potential to kinetic through strain relaxation in its folds. A two or three-second period elapses before he’s able to start seeing how to fold the song. Now, it’s folding itself. Now it’s done.

“Got it,” Barney says.

And she scoffs.

So Barney’s left hand, insulted, grasps the frets his mind can see plain as day and then looks at his right hand like, ‘Stop drooling and hold this thing straight. I hardly need you for hammer-ons, rube.’

Before she’s walked two steps, Angus Young’s famous rapid hammer-on and pull-off pattern is instantly recognizable in the room, even with the amp nearly off. Brett slowly swivels like a computer chair. She was sneering before, or what Barney interpreted as sneering. No way to interpret that now. Not sure he’s ever seen her eyes so wide. She’s very pretty. But it’s like she tries to hide it.

In any case, Brett returns and leans down to turn up the amp with her facial features contorted into concern. Like a radio operator wondering if they could have really just heard that last transmission. Her eyes widen as the total volume of sound logarithmically scaled to a circular knob, explodes up to maximum. What they hear is what you have likely heard before. A familiar song to many. But Barney doesn’t hear anything besides the sound of the paper from how the snake is unfolding in his mind. He cannot hear the music.

And he’s pretty sure the paper said the song went, “(2)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue.”

About halfway through, Brett whispered ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’ while Dev complained that he ‘never has his phone close by when this happens,’ as he’s bounding across the room to get it. He says something about how many views he got last time, so Barney stops understanding what they’re saying, by intention and not. As soon as the mention of cameras appeared, he had to shut his self-awareness down entirely or become paralyzed by self-consciousness. But by now, the snake is unfolding itself, and he can’t miss a single face. Not for the “performance” if this is what… that word means? Certainly not. His left hand would be furious if he cut it off now. Frankly, it’s a bit like drawing, or… urinating. Can’t just do half. Can’t do half.

And the inkjet must have said to repeat it so, “(2)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue.”

In the background, he can hear, vaguely, both Dev and Brett have begun to… “Ahhhh,” melodically, hopefully on purpose? And this isn’t some kind of ritual summoning dirge that just got both his bandmates possessed. Barney can’t sing along to his chagrin. He can imitate voices, sometimes. Blending, mouthing along to the psalms and leaning extra hard on all the Amens and anything else that can be recognized in time. Maybe human singing should be more about intention than execution, outcome, or entertainment. Maybe that’s the wisest outlook. But he will always see it as a skill. One he does not possess and cannot synthesize.

Seeing Bret and Dev so happy without understanding what made it happen makes Barney feel hollow. Empty. He’s a pretender. In a pew, on a sofa, or in a band. He can’t hear the music in his heart theirs, nor distinguish melody, if there is one there. Is that what you’re supposed to do? Instead, songs are notes to him, played by instruments. That’s it. Music, however it’s depicted on paper, gets recorded in his mind in rigid constructs. As rigid as lyrics… which he’s never memorized because he can’t be arsed. But he would like to remember songs! As more than ‘objects’ or things he has to ‘look’ at to recall. If he tried to hold the ‘tune’ by itself, it just fades away. How do people hear music in their heads enough to reproduce it? And why do they seem so positively overjoyed when the song they’re replaying in their mental studio is also reverberating loudly around the room?

Unless that isn’t what they’re doing? How do they know what to sing? And when, without having memorized it? Unless the two of them have memorized this song, secretly? But in Barney’s experience, when you say, ‘I memorized that,’ almost anyone will assume you meant it as “over a period of days or weeks”. Not like, ‘I memorized that… just now,’ as you would expect.

As his mind wanders, Barney’s hand grows mostly numb. He can’t feel his fingertips at all most of the time for how hard they’re getting driven down on the string. All that’s available at this stage is to remain entirely focused on the unfolding shape in his mind. The symbols or textures on the faces represent a specific number only to him, and his consciousness takes a back seat as the obstreperous left hand interprets on its own, smacking the strings with contentment so hard each blow is detectable in his other palm where it squeezes the guitar’s body against his. Somehow he can perceive those tap tap taps, but can’t perceive the spirit of the music. Or why anyone would want to listen to this more than once. It’s like I have no soul, he thinks.

But the printer man told the paper lady, and the paper lady told your brain. She said,”(7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue.”

In the midst of chanting “Ahh” at the top of his lungs, Dev hollers towards the door, “SOMEBODY GET IN HERE! PEOPLE! WE NEED… BACKUP SINGERS! GET ME A FREAKIN’ CHOIR OR SOMETHING! STAT!” Yelling that while placing his phone on the eraser holder of the movable whiteboard, and turning it to face them. It seems odd to Barney that the “ahhs” seem to be getting… louder? Is that coming from the hall? Or his imagination?

“WAIT FOR IT BIG MAN!!” the drummer howls, sliding in behind the name Zildjian in gold foil lettering. Barney knows that brand as one of the oldest companies in the world. Founded in 1623by a literal alchemist in Constantinople, if he remembers correctly! A freaking alchemist!Incidentally, this recollection blows his mind and is more immediately salient than anything happening in physical space around him.

The snake says the paper said, “(7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue (7)blue (0)blue (4)blue (0)blue.” His hands comply without intervention, while he privately recalls that ‘Zildjian’ means ‘cymbal smith’ in Armenian, just as this sequence of colours ends and a new one begins.

Stomping on the pedal so hard his rubber beater must have made Mylar wonder if it oughtn’t have been Kevlar, as Dev evidently attempted to demolish his bass drum having evidently read Barney’s mind and exclaimed, ‘It’s called… ISTANBUL!’ Brett roars,

“THUNDER!!!” and Barney… nearly shits his pants.

Woof.

Doesn’t occur, but, traumatizingly insanely close for comfort. His hair stands on end and both his shoulders stay loitering at ear-level as well after until they explicitly get ordered to return to their posts. Agh! He hates being startled! LOUD. NOISES! No bueno! Don’t startle him! The surge of ACTH going downstream to cortisol, plus all the unnecessary glutamate dumped in his amygdala, ugh, hates it. What his body just did he experiences as sufficiently destabilizing as to come dangerously close to losing focus on the snake. He didn’t though. Nearly, again. Small miracles, right?

The initial shock, and its latent effects, are so unpleasant he genuinely wonders how anyone could like this song? Would he have enjoyed it more if he knew that jump-scare was coming? Who puts a jump-scare in a song? Honestly. Unless that wasn’t an intentional startle effect and he’s… oversensitive?

Hey, did these two know that cue was coming up if they haven’t heard this song yet today? Don’t they need to refresh their memories to remember? Did they listen to it already before coming in today? Isn’t that weird?

Seeking a Stoical silver lining to put a positive spin on his anxiety spike, Barney allows himself to admit the jolt has woken him up a bit. That’s good. He’s even loosely beginning to associate this snake being translated to an auditory memory for once! It’s sketchy, and ancient, but still. Osti d’concept! Remembering songs by how they sound!? Wait? Ah crap, why does all popular music resemble itself? ‘Does’ he recognize… this song specifically now? It’s not clear. Hard to tell. Is this… a famous tune? Flailing around in his imagination for anything that might prove to be a useful recollection is getting him nowhere, so he knocks it off. Yet, there is a growing sensation of ‘something’ inside him as his fingers autonomously (as far as his conscious mind could be concerned) stomp down the creamy maple decks of the fretboard at the behest of skull-girded treasure maps. What is this feeling building? Familiarity? A ghost of familiarity? Can someone just clarify if this tune plays on the radio sometimes? Is it popular?

Looking ‘over’ the expanding, uncoiling (currently) azure serpent streaked with symbols in his mind’s eye, but technically glancing out at his peripheral vision, a mishmash of clothing colours begin to obscure the doorframe, just as the “Ahhs” and “THUNDER!” spike to an ever greater volume. He can’t even make out the pitter-patter or rustle of clothing from the many rubberneckers flowing in.

Watching people play music you invited them to see you play isn’t rubbernecking.

Well, he didn’t ask anybody to come see anything. For the record.

Barney’s left hand hovers over the school guitar’s neck, above its thinnest string, the one farthest away, from his perspective. His index digit’s finger pad resting imperceptibly against the fifth fret, his ring finger prepares to tap hard on the eighth. Way on the other side of the Earth, his right hand’s sleepy index finger is poised above the open string.

As the snake transitions into a new folding pattern, his right index finger raps firmly on the thin, open string, immediately followed by his left hand furiously driving its much more useful and responsive pointing tool against the fifth fret like the plunger in a cold chamber die-casting machine. Back and forth, with a quick, precise motion like a hydraulic ram. Then, without re-plucking it, his finger whispers back down to the string, this time with zero impact force; hardly leaning on it. The smallest unit of pressure possible. Juuuust enough of a featherlight disruption to coax the open note to ring out crisp and clear.

Just stare at the end of the snake, dumbass! Remember, the paper said it went,

“(2)green (0)green (5)green (0)green (8)green (0)green (5)green (0)green (8)green (0)green (5)green (0)green (8)green (0)green (5)green (0)green.”

Barney’s ring finger drives itself viciously into the eighth fret, then immediately kisses the boo-boo to prevent further buzzing, followed by another pull-off, returning to the open string.

“Holy shit, you’re not real,” his band leader, Brett, says. In addition to being more than a little attracted to her, Barney admires Brett immensely for her musical talent. To the extent he’s not sure he heard her correctly. Thus, when she confirms what she said with a look over her shoulder in the following moment, a guitar strap momentarily obscuring her eyes, the praise lands in Barney’s psyche like… mainlined hydromorphone. There’s nothing better than praise. Even money gets old. But praise? Oo. He’s tried to kick the habit, but his whole concept of “being okay,” including basic safety and security, is directly and inexorably connected to the execution of “exceptional” things, in his mind.

“Good.” “Great.” “Outstanding.” These are Bs and Cs. He needs the A plus. The A plus plus. The dropped jaws. The looks of disbelief. He wants the “I would give you a higher mark if it existed, I’m almost angry on your behalf it doesn’t!”-evaluation; nothing else cuts the mustard anymore. Sadly, in his soul, he truly believes that the only reaction or response he can receive from others that will ever mean he’s been truly accepted is… awe. That thought replayed in his mind would seem to bear the trappings of megalomania. If he heard it spoken aloud, that inevitably would be the sensible interpretation on first blush. But adulation isn’t what he seeks; he doesn’t even register it. However, in the absence of a place in society as “special-good,” Barney believed he would end up designated as some kind of special-bad. Or else just “special-special.” Neither being the good kind; knowing the difference instinctually, from the eyes. These eyes he’s getting now, from Brett and Dev, are good eyes. He knows how to tell when they aren’t. Very, very well…

“Ahh-ahh! ahh! ahh!”

The tiny hint of an impression or whatever it was, of the song, is helping in any case; he succeeds in not breaking his bladder’s seal from the adrenaline after making peace with himself that the sound in his ears is not in fact the rumble of the whole building falling down. Dev screams that “It’s happening again!” and “We need backup singers! Chorus! Yo! Sing people! It’s happening again!” while Brett flexes her amateur meteorologist impression into the microphone. Barney’s conscious mind begins to scramble. The emotions are entirely unregulated. He’s surfing on euphoria and searching for the end of the song from fingering position to fingering position. It has to be nearly over, right? He has no idea how long a snake is after it gets folded and he folded this one too quickly to see. Did it look long while he was wrapping it up? Dang. No clue. And his fingers are not used to playing this fast for this long. Please tell him this track was recorded a few years ago, so it’s short? Or better yet some conceptual piece only a few seconds long or something? Is it a conceptual piece? Not — Chopin, but it’s a fairly interesting single note pattern? Yup. Certified: not-totally-boring. You get a thumbs up from this paper airplane enthusiast, Mr…. whoever figured out these notes go so well together. How do people know what sounds good from scratch? Isn’t it mystifying? Mystifying to him at least. Their brains must be so much more active. For the quadrillionth time since he was born, Barney wishes he possessed even a tiny bit of that magical quality known as “creativity.” He can’t even draw things he hasn’t seen before! Children can do that!

“I was caught, in the middle of a railroad track,” Brett whines into the microphone, having adjusted her guitar’s fattest string to better simulate a baseline. She smiles gorgeously amid her wheat-coloured mane as seemingly every other voice in the vicinity yells in her face about the weather.

“THUNDER!”

“I looked ‘round, and I knew there was no turnin’ back.”

“THUNDER!”

She can make her voice sound like anything. Her natural register, if overheard singing quietly to herself, sounds like that mega-famous great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Jonathan Swift’s. Certainly a lucrative timbre to have in one’s repertoire, you’d think someone who loves singing as much as she does would… show that off? But it occurs to Barney that he can’t recall ever hearing Brett sing through a mic in her own voice before. Is this… the first time?

“My mind raced, and I thought, ‘what could I do?’” she wonders, preparing to retune her string.

“THUNDER!”

“And I knew there was no help, no help from you.”

Oh god, finger cramp, finger cramp! He needs a break.

“THUNDER!”

She strikes a chord while shouting a war cry he can’t make out, and Barney lets his fingers stop keeping pace with the snake for a second. Ooof! Ooof!

“AMAZING! YOU’RE A FREAK!” she managed to shout, leaning away between lyrics, “DO YOU HAVE THE WHOLE THING?!”

“WAS IT ALL ON THE PAPER?” he shouts back, a new panic emerging that the snake will suddenly cut short now. Trying not to lose its shape unwrapping, even though his fingers are no longer “subscribed” to every unfold as they had been.

“DO YOU HAVE THE SOLO?”

“THERE’S A SOLO?!”

He just realized how badly he’s had to pee this whole time. Full bladder. So he gets his fingers moving to distract himself.

“Sound of the drums!” Brett roars, striking a chord then arresting it to be struck again just as Dev falls quieter, ironically, “Beating in my heart!”

“The thunder of guns!” she rages, slashing the strings, “Tore me apart!”

Then intoning into a lull broken only by the resumed hammering of his sore fingertips,

“You’ve been… thunderstruck!” wheeling her arm like an axe down onto her guitar.

For a while, Barney has so much vicarious fun enjoying her enjoying herself without any self-consciousness that he literally forgets where he is. But his hands do not. Nor does his focus slip from the shape, still anxious it might terminate prematurely any second. The one-two punch of anxieties her brief aside so expertly delivered actually worked to Barney’s benefit. Being so preoccupied that the snake would end, he forgot about the solo…

Thus, after going through the (albeit very painful by now) motions through two verses, during which he was prompted to wonder, ‘what tone is this lyricist trying to strike here? Is this a song about adversity or on the merits of Texas’s lively prostitutes? “Can I come again please?” isn’t exactly obfuscating on the level of “Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine / And be among her cloudy trophies hung” now is it?! Woof!’ before noticing that absolutely no other face in sight seemed to be thinking along anything like “similar lines” and deciding to drop that line of inquiry. Mostly they were watching Brett tell them they’ve been thunderstruck over and over, hanging her tongue out making the yelping instrument hanging from her neck peal out increasingly funky and frantic pleas for help while everyone in the room emits little halting melodic sighs in unison like they’re trying to warm up the room with their breath.

Brett sticks out her tongue and bares her teeth, while stretching out the word, “Yeaaah!” to make it sexier than any other word Barney can presently recall hearing. He didn’t even know you could do that with normal words!

She strikes her chords, insisting the sex in Texas was so good she was shaking at the knees, then asking politely to… return at a later date, before Barney sees what he’s about to be in for.

She looks over elated as he stares back in horror, not really seeing out of his eyes, just noticing… how fast it’s about to start to unfold. And noting that he can’t feel his left hand. But it’s too fast. Or fast enough. Maybe it’s just right. The ambidexterity he has so long relied upon without truly valuing it sees his right hand come in clutch. It snaps out of its daze and seems to halve his cognitive workload in the process. This is what is so scaring them. What is about to unfold:

The paper said it was something like… “(3)green x\ (3)green x\ (2)blue (9)blue (9)blue (9)blue (2)blue (9)blue (3)green (10)blue (9)blue (9)blue (9)blue/green (11)green (9)blue. (3)green (2)yellow x/ (1)yellow x/ (2)yellow (4)green (2)yellow (2)green (0)yellow (0)yellow (2)green. (1)blue (7)blue (2)blue (10)blue (7)blue (7)blue (3)green (9)green (7)green (3)green (9)green \7 (3)green /9 (3)green (7)green (3)green (9)green (9)blue/green. (3)green (7)green (9)green (11)green p9p7 (11)green p9p7 (11)green p9p7 (3)green (7)green b9r7 (3)green (9)green (1)yellow (0)yellow. (1)blue (17)blue (14)blue (2)blue (17)blue b19 (17)blue (15)blue (17)blue b19 (17)blue (14)blue (2)blue (17)blue (18)blue (17)blue (15)blue. (2)blue (15)blue b17 (15)blue b17 (15)blue b17 \15 (3)green (16)green \16. (4)green (2)green (4)green (9)green (9)green (3)green (7)green (7)green (9)green (7)green (9)green b11 (9)green p7 (4)green (9)green (4)green (2)green (4)green (9)green (9)green. (2)blue (7)blue (9)blue (7)blue (9)blue b10 (9)blue p7 (3)green (7)green (9)green (7)green (9)green b11 (9)green p7 (3)green (9)green (3)green x\ (3)green x\ (3)green \” where lowercase B represents bending the string as reflected in the type of fold joining two faces. Likewise, lowercase P here represents pull-offs, which to him are like spring-loaded folds with metallic edges. Lowercase x represents a pick slide. Lastly, forward and backward slashes are upward and downward slides, respectively, and an X with a slide is a noise slide.

Oh boy.

It’s as though he briefly got a glimpse of what it would look like unfolded just to psych himself up. Here we go. His fingers spider, left hand creating a percussive scratch, as the first joint of his left hand’s fingers tense into pointy, pain-insensitive bird claws. Dragging deliberately down on the string to produce a screech that seems to be echoed by… girls screams? Why?

While watching his hand, as if it belonged to another person, Barney’s prompted to think. ‘Huh, I guess I’m… pretty nimble? Why can’t I exercise this level of fine motor control when I’m working with tiny electronics!’

And his left hand somehow makes it clear non-verbally that it doesn’t find tiny electronics this challenging or interesting.

His mental state feels strange to him, but active and clear as the talons he could hardly claim as his descend upon the ninth fret to pinch multiple strings in unison. His middle, ring, and pinky fingers clamped with compulsion but also precision, three musketeers, before his index finger tests its webbing to reach the eleventh fret while everybody else hangs out up top. The bends begin without nitrogen bubbles in sight. Barney’s ring finger transforms into a scythe to arc high enough not to interfere with anything in between, while also retaining sufficient rigidity to apply its full force horizontally, shoving whatever string it’s seeking sideways. God! It’s like stupidly painful for no reason! Rapid pull-offs see his digits summon shadow clones. It’s his hand and he can’t follow it. It’s obviously coordinated and yet all he consciously sees is the origami unknotting itself. His ring finger pounds on the eleventh fret like a lawyer who doesn’t have the law or the facts on his side, then peels away on pirellis, revealing a mouse trap middle finger poised to kill rodents on the ninth, which then tessellates away to unveil his index finger with a shotgun aimed straight for the head of the seventh — does he have infinite fingers?! How’s there no limit to these things?

On ascending runs, his fingers massage, like trying to coax a precious stone out of the long neck of a goose. Descents are just that; rapid, half-controlled scrambles down the stairs. Upon reaching the seventeenth fret bend, the water chestnut-textured lump of muscles between his thumb and index finger petrifies into limestone as he applies (excruciatingly painful) torque on the high E string, pinky bracing his limping ring finger over its back like brothers in arms.

Almost there. He’s almost there. Dev has been hooting this entire time. How long has he been at this solo now? Two minutes? Three? How long is it? Can fingers fall off if you use them too aggressively without proper warm-up and training? Can they mutiny? Do they have their own ejector seats?

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. That’s his thoughts. That’s the only thoughts that this brain can have. Looking some weirdly coloured and textured psychedelic monsters thaw out into its maximum size while his hand attempts to trigger everyone with arachnophobia. Although, in fairness, throughout this, his right hand has been an excellent sport. In addition to alleviating most of the cognitive strain as soon as it joined in, through means unknown?… huh, his right hand dutifully got up and went to the strings every day. Palm muting when necessary, alternating between plucks and strikes with ease, the pick poised delicately between its thumb and forefinger, adjusting its angle to seduce that perfect tone from each tensioned piece of wire-thin steel.

Is it over? His hand might fall off! Ahh. Is it over?

Oh, thank god.

Barney shakes his wrist and looks around. Everyone is looking at him. This time, the “Ahhs” sound different.

LTT