Today was... Interesting. School basically consisted of
1) Accidentally being kind of mean to this wierd kid who always says hi to me in the halls some reason. Yeah, I feel bad about that. He's a nice wierd kid.
2) Putting off makeup work some more, possibly (but not probably) resulting in the loss of some of Mr. Sampson's respect for me.
3) Stealing an amp from the band room, carrying it around with me to my afternoon classes, and feeling awkward. (My amp recently died.)
4) Failing a physics test, along with the rest of my class, and everyone in the other class. Litterally everyone. People were raising their hands saying things like, "Um, if everyone fails... Do we all just fail?" (Answer: Yes.) and, "...Is there a limit to how long we can stay after school?" (Answer: half an hour.) When I came after school to finish, every seat in the classroom was filled with other people who hadn't finished. (Keep in mind that both classes are quite small, so that's just about everybody.) At the end of the half hour he allowed us, I still had about ten blank spots on my scantron sheet. I filled them all with As. Then I went down to the lobby and sat around awkwardly with my amp and waited to get picked up.
Well, he drops the lowest test grade. So... that's good.
At night, I went to the Tri-M thing. Okay, so first of all, Paul told everyone that it was in A DIFFERNT FREAKING CITY FROM THE CITY IT WAS ACTUALLY IN. We only found this out by calling 411. (Good thing we carpooled.) Yeah, 234 South Main in the city we started out in was an auto body shop. We were... confused.
After fifteen minutes or so of being lost, we got to the actual nursing home. ...Oh man. The place was in tough shape. The building was old and rickety with peeling wallpaper. The people inside looked like they were decaying, and most of them were some combination of bitter, comatose, and crazy. Strange noises floated down the hallways, and as we walked by, old women stared at us from their, little, old, dusty rooms with blank, sagging eyes. Two nurses with Boston accents led us upstairs to the biggest room in the whole building - maybe twice the size of the average bedroom. There was a small, stained, chipped, out-of-tune piano there, along with maybe fifteen people, crammed in very close to one another in their wheelchairs. Most of them were looking at the floor. One woman was chanting nonsensical sylables in a raspy voice. Some others were telling her to shut up. We managed to (barely) fit in our amps, and Matt set up the four piece set he'd brought in the corner next to the piano.
Besides the four of us, there was a mediocre violinist, a bad pianist, and a good pianist (Yoshiko). Presumably, everyone else got lost. (Paul fucking Yu didn't even show up to his own performance, by the way.) We played a few songs at a time in between them, and we played as many songs as we could think of, even if we hadn't practiced them. And then we jammed. We played a slow blues. A fast blues. A minor blues. A blues in three. After the nurse told us that one woman was celebrating her 99th birthday, we played happy birthday. (For something that we've never played together before ever, it went miraculously well.) The people clapped with more energy for us than for anyone else. Some of them tapped their feet while we were playing. After there was nothing else, we thanked them and picked up our amps and packed up in the hallway and started to leave.
But there was one woman who didn't want us to leave. She stopped us in the hallway and said over and over, "Do you have to go? Please don't go. Isn't there something else you can play?" Dave's mother, who was the one who drove us back and forth, tried to tell the woman that we really had to go, that we didn't have anything else, and that it was okay. She kept insisting. She appealed to all of us at the same time. Dave and I exchanged glances, as if saying, "This is awkward. How do we get out of it?" We kind of did everything we could to avoid answering her - that's what you do in those situations, you know? It's instinctive. But Julian didn't. The woman looked up at him with wide, watery, blue eyes and sagging flesh and said, "Please, can't you stay and play something else?"
And he said, "Well - Here, I can play something." He got down on the floor of the narrow hallway, unpacked his saxophone, set it up again and played "Amazing Grace." Not just any Amazing Grace, though. An absolutely beautiful Amazing Grace. I stood a few feet down the hallway from Julian and the woman. My mouth was slightly open. As he played, Dave kept giving me wide-eyed looks that said, "wow, I can't believe he's actually doing this." Even though I was kind of thinking that too, I didn't return them. It wasn't just the fact that he did it that hit me. It was the way he played that song - Amazing Grace - to that woman who probably had no family and no friends and very little sanity, and only wanted a few highschool musicians to stay a little while longer to break up the miserable boredom of her life. The way he played, it was like he was speaking to her - telling her that everything was okay, and believing it. No, better than just telling her. Music is better than words.
When he finished, Dave's mother said something like "Wasn't that great?" obviously trying to be cheery.
"...We really do have to go now though," said Julian.
"No, please, don't go! Now look what I've done. Look what I've done - I've made them leave." The woman started to cry. Dave looked at me with an expression that said, "Let's get out of here, now," and started to move down the hallway towards the old, rickety elevator. I moved towards one of the nurses, who was engaged in conversation with the bad pianist's mother. "Excuse me..." I said, still feeling awkward. "There's something wrong. She's upset - She's crying."
"Don't worry about it," said the nurse. "It's normal - she does it all the time. She has to go to bed now, that's why." Dave's mother motioned for me to come further down the hallway. As I walked, I looked back at Julian. He was still standing in front of the woman, with his saxophone strapped around his neck. His mouth was slightly open, as if he knew he had to do something, but had no idea what that was. He looked down at the crying woman in her wheelchair, looking absolutely terribly concerned, wanting to help but also half wanting to shrink into the wall. Behind him, the nurse and the bad pianist's mother continued talking and laughing. He didn't move. Dave grinned at me in a way that did not at all suggest humor. "Poor Julian - He can't escape. His heart's too big." We reached the elevator, where Dave's mother commanded Dave to stay on the second floor and make sure that Julian "left the place before midnight."
In the elevator, Dave's mother gave me a look that pretty much summarized everything that happened. All I could think of to say in response, after an extended period of searching for words, was,
"That... was so... cute."
And I thought:
Okay, that's it, I'm asking him out.
(I'm not sure if I'll follow through on that. It's just what I thought.)
I had been waiting for Dave's mother on the sidewalk for a few minutes before Julian and Dave emerged from the place. Dave's mother brought the whole thing up on the way home, of course. "Well, you were good Julian - you brought her to tears."
"Yeah, but not in a good way. I mean, did you hear what she was saying? She thought it was her fault. She was saying like, 'I've made them leave.' Oh man, that was awful."
I tried to come up with a compliment. I felt like I needed to say something about how amazingly cool that had been of him. Or maybe give him a random hug. But I didn't do anything.
"I would have played," said Dave. "I mean, I felt bad. I would have played if I hadn't had my bass. I mean, you can't hear the bass unplugged. If I'd had my trumpet or somthing though, I totally would have played for her."
I didn't say anything. I wouldn't have played. Dave wouldn't have either, I'm pretty sure. But Julian did.
I finally said, "This was good in a way though. I mean, these are the people that need us. Performances like this are kind of the whole point of Tri-M. Did you hear them talking about how they can't afford to have carolers come in at Christmas?" There was a slightly unenthusiastic murmer of agreement.
We spent the rest of the car ride talking about mono (Eric might have it, and therefor, so might Alice. Also, Dave might have it from the time we shared a bottle during the picnic in the snow) and how Chaucer is a dirty old man. Julian didn't say much, but he laughed. He didn't look at me when he got out of the car. When we got to my house, Dave helped me carry the band room amp up the stairs to my apartment.
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