News from the front
Miranda leans over me and digs through the mess of cassettes in her glovebox. She smiles.
“I was going to get an iPod until I found out the Queen has one. Now tapes don’t look so bad any more.”
“My sister has three. She found out how to get music on them, but can’t figure out how to get them off, so she just fills them up and buys a new one.”
Miranda regards two tapes with intense concentration, flicking her eyes back and forth.
“What are you in the mood for?” she says.
“I don’t know.”
Eventually she grunts with a resigned satisfaction and crams one into the deck and cranks up the volume Battling a tremendous hiss, the sound of a single acoustic guitar fills the car. It plods through a minor arpeggio in  time, before collapsing into a flattened and diminished progression. A mumbling voice sets a sad melody to lyrics about love and loss. His scratchy delivery is almost perfectly offset by the sound of a theremin attempting to tug the whole song into a weirdo space movie.
I’ve never heard anything quite like this. Where”s the chorus? Where are the beats? Where”s the kind of sunniness I always hear in Texas’s CDs?
But then suddenly things change. The song shifts to major and a string quartet fills out the sound with lush satisfying flourishes.
“Is this still the same song?” I shout.
“Yeah,” she says in a well duh tone and turns it down a little. “Haven’t you heard much Martin Orville Elliott?”
“I haven’t any. What’s this song called?”
“Morbid Fascination.”
“Is it old?”
“Old?”
“Yeah. It sounds like it’s from the nineteen forties or something.”
“No, this is his new record. Came out last year.”
Miranda coaxes the car’s engine into starting and Morbid Fascination fades out. I wonder why anyone would make a record that sounds fifty years old? The next song is a piano and guitar stomp, still sounds kind of old world, but very catchy. That same mumbling vocalist now sings about birds and guns (can you sing about birds and guns?) but it doesn’t seem to matter.
“You obviously like this one,” laughs Miranda.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re bobbing your head like one of those dashboard dolls!”
So it goes.
I mention him a lot when I talk about writing. I think about him a lot when I write.
He published his last novel ten years ago. He told us at the time it would be his last novel. I hoped he was lying. He told us back then he had lived too long. I thought he was full of shit.
He revered Mark Twain. I revered him.
God bless you, Mr Vonnegut. I’m going to miss knowing that you were still around and stirring up trouble.
Read MoreWhat I’m working on right now…
Before you start pointing out logical errors and typos and stuff, remember, this is a first draft. First drafts are supposed to be crummy. Note also that the names have been shortened to protect my ideas:
The line finally starts moving at around half past ten and the line snakes from the open sun to the shade of the auditorium.
‘Oh shit,’ mutters T as they enter, ‘It’s still freaking hot.’
‘They’ve left the air conditioning off,’ says F. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Maybe they’re saving money,’ says T.
‘Here,’ says S, handing her daughter another flyer from the protestors. ‘They’re keeping the pressure on you. Don’t think about it too much.’
They shuffle through into the big open arena, scuttling through a maze of portable seat-belt barriers, passing people from in front of them and behind. F spots a desk with the MusiClash logo, the new one, draped over it. It’s similar to the judges’ desk, but seated at this table will be one of the producers, the first point of rejection. There are four tables working simultaneously, pumping as many people through in the shortest space of time. This is not the most glamorous job in television. A rickety old table plonked seemingly at random in a cavernous auditorium and hours after hour of potential talent given barely a minute to prove their worth. In eight hours these tables will conduct triage on over 1,500 people.
Beyond triage, the maze continues. Most contestants will pass through at least three vetting stations, the final most likely manned by the executive producer before a contestant is finally let loose in front of cameras with the on-camera judges at the helm. They keep them in a separate room behind huge wooden double doors. They’re the same doors every year, from city to city. F figures they must drag the things around the country with them.
Once the young hopefuls breach the double doors, their families, mates, girlfriends, boyfriends sit by the doors on the floor. The only chairs provided are reserved for production crew. A camera is set on a tripod aimed at the door, waiting for the moment someone emerges fresh from a barrage of Lionel Brownstitch’s abuse. Some of the show’s most famous moments come from people who return through the doors, back into the real world. The rejects.
Read MoreThe Books
