And The Band Played On

One by one we lay down our instruments.

Most of us had played ships before we landed this sweet gig. We thought it'd be pie but it's more like mincemeat now than peach. 

I'd always joked that if I could choose how I'd go, it would either be buried in the arms of Mary, my favorite girl, or playing my violin. Or, both at the same time. I showed it could be done. Of course, Mary's my fiance now. She said yes, finally. Not much choice she had, considering, but she's all I ever wanted.

If it was just me picking a last song, it'd damn sure be a hymn. For a paying gig like this one, I suppose a waltz is a proper coda.

Truth is, I love these guys and except for to get out of here completely, I guess this is as right an end as could be. I just met most these guys but I never had no better gang. Theo on the piano's always got my back. Roger, the only cello player here, seems alright even if he is a Frenchie. I don't know where Georges is from. He talks to Roger just fine but one day when I tried out what little French I knew, they laughed at me real mean. They're good men though. Even Wallace is not so bad once you get to know him.

If there's a band in Heaven, well good for them cause that prob'ly ain't where we'll end up. Life is sweeter when it's lived through and through but there's a time to pay the toll, for all of us. The devil, he can go jump in the lake for all I care.

I laugh to myself, surprised that I can still find humor at all. It's just that while I was woolgathering there, I realize now we all laid 'em down. All but Wallace. Of all of us to play until the very end, of course it would be Wallace. It's that violin of his. That instrument itself was crafted by angels. This water may kill him dead but that instrument will never die. 

That high note there is just the right pitch to drown out the screams. The lows are so pure that even this ocean, determined to crush and bury us all, could never drown it out. 

Now Wallace has done laid his violin down. And I'll be damned. Without any counting in from him or a word said, there we are all now whistling and singing and humming just like we still playing. You can't stop a music maker from making music any more than you can stop an ocean from taking what's its own.

We got Theo there singing the beat and the rest of us boys, well, it sounds fine. Just fine.

Where's Wallace? I don't hear Wallace no more. Fact is, I think I don't hear no one no more. Except one.

Who is that still singing? I hear the fear in his voice but he's hanging onto the notes. A little behind the beat but still on pitch. That's a string player for sure, you can tell from–

Why, it sounds like–

Now even that voice has stopped. 

Damn if it wasn't me.

Which means, I'm the last. 

I never sang no solo before but that there was the sweetest music I ever heard. Sure, there's a racket of screams where the rest o' the string section shoulda been and instead of Theo tickling the ivories we got this roaring vortex pulling down 50,000 tons of steel and wood and blood and flesh. But it's sweet and easy, like it's nothing but the nighttime.

My Mary.

Oh my Mary.

Now all the sounds, they've stopped. The silence, it's like a beautiful noise.

I ain't suffering. It feels. It feels like, well, it's soft and sweet and cold and warm all at the same time. 

I lived my life through my ears, my hands on the wood frame, holding that bow and caressing the strings like it was a part of me. And now I feel nothing. I'm sinking but it's like I'm floating. 

I don't struggle.

There's no sound no more, not here in the water. I can't feel my hands or my fiddle. Fact is, what were those things and why did I ever need 'em? 

All I ever needed is here in the dark.

This may be me dying, or maybe I'm already dead, or maybe I'm just being born. 

There's no time now, only me and the water.

There's nothing to forget either because there's nothing I ever really knew.

There's nothing about me that needs to be remembered but yet, I know I will never be forgotten. 

Music is made of chords, themselves made of notes, and those are in turn made from wood and catgut and brass and cork and silver and, hell, prob'ly gold and diamonds. All that could be gone and buried deep down in the water where it will never be found but none of that, not a bit of that is the music itself. The music, what is felt and breathed and carried around as an earworm hummed all day after hearing it once at breakfast, that type of magic can't ever be killed. Music lives even when all that it was made of, and made from, is dead and gone. 

All that I am made of, blood and guts and bone and brain, none of that is really me. I am a song that can't be written down or grooved onto a phonograph. I can't be lost. I can't be broken or killed. 

All the notes I ever lived, all the chords I made them into, my song, my music, is right here. And it's down there in the darkness. And it's up above. It's out there, everywhere, now and always. 

What the earth can no longer have, the waters have gained. I may be waste now but none of it was a waste.

Oh, Roger and Georges and Theo.

All my boys.

And even you, Wallace. 

My Mary.

Oh, my Mary.

Someone tell Mary.

Tell Mary I-