A Perfect Melody

The Individual

I sit sulking in the dim-lit corner of my bedroom, clutching a textbook in one hand and a failed midterm examination in the other. Laughter permeates the room from the children playing outside, but I cannot hear it; they might as well have been worlds away from where I sat. All that mattered to me at this moment was finding a way to pass Physics, a task that seemed all the more daunting each time my eyes caught a glimpse of the 36 engraved in dark red on the top of my test paper. To add even more gasoline to the fire, I had about three papers that were due in two days, a beaten down old Sienna that needed several new (and rather costly) parts and a less than content mother that subsequently released that negativity unto her eldest son. I could feel myself sinking fast, the very ground that I stood on crumbling and thinning to the core with each and every step I took , with no ledge to grab onto in sight.

The Instrument

            The four-stringed instrument resting behind by the bedside casts its shadow along the cold blue wall, threatening to tip its extended neck at any moment to pluck a chord that will shake the foundations of the three-story home. A crucial member of the rhythm section, the Bass guitar wields a pitch one octave lower than that of a standard guitar along the bass clef,

 permitting the tool composed of wood and string to emit a particular deep, bellowing and powerful sound when plugged in to the amplifier. On most days, this Bass laced with a jet black body produces the ideal tone required to properly transpose a song, with its timbre fitting like a glove in hand. On others, however, the tuning just seems out of whack and the strings do not produce a whole sound when plucked; the fret is scuffed and the pitch produced is either way loud or too low. These days have been happening more often than usual, you note, and so you take it to a music shop to have it checked for repairs.

The Individual

            The deadline for the essays has passed, the car sputters like a steamboat and Mom is now relentless. With the walls seemingly closing in me and no balance to find, I become withdrawn from my friends and family, more reserved and generally spiteful towards everyone and everything in my life. My mother, the caring woman that she is, goes ahead and arranges an appointment for me to speak with a psychiatrist on a bitter December afternoon. I am told that it was done with no ill intentions, but instead to provide me with an opportunity to talk with someone who can assist me in arranging my thoughts and dividing up my time “more adequately.” She tells me to be ready to go tomorrow at one o’clock; I cling to the remaining ground and wait for the inevitable.

The Instrument

            An employee with a scowl locked on his face and small scar running up the length of his right cheekbone hands you back the jet black Bass, telling you that the issue has been resolved. Everything should now be back to normal and the sound should produce just as it once did. You race home and hook it up to the amp, turn up the volume and treble, and begin to walk the scale of each chord as you typically do to warm up each time before playing. Sure enough, the strings are firm; the tension seems about right. But you just can’t shake the feeling that something is off as you hit an E and G flat in succession as you have done about a thousand times before. The sound just isn’t as full, not nearly as round, lacking the distinct tone that it had before everything on it began to fall apart. It can still nail a generic pop-punk bass line, but the motivation seems to have been sucked out, as if the Bass is merely going through the musician’s motions without having its heart buried in the song. Still, you play on, play until the blisters appear on your fingertips and the aches infiltrate the rounds of your elbows, play in the hopes that you can recover the sound that is lost…

The Individual with the Instrument

            I am perched in the corner of my bedroom, lights down, with a Coors Light in one hand and my Bass guitar in the other. Tipping the bottle to my mouth, I slurp away the remaining drops and toss the carcass atop a steadily growing pile of its brethren on the bed. I had long since lost track of the time, and I really had no need for it; not on the path I was traveling along, at least. I craved for the life I used to live and the person I used to be, back before I even started college and my mother fell off the deep end. A rewind, if you will, to a scene in which I am comfortably on top of my schoolwork and presenting the best version of myself to those important to me in my life; in the backdrop is my mother, smiling with a glimmer in her eye that has long since been snuffed out, never to be lit again. But that tape is worn out, the picture blurred; the lines are blurred and the actors have lost their bearings.

            It seems as if there is nothing left to do, then, but to play my Bass. It is a memento from those simpler times, a souvenir from my glory a days and a reminder of the past I so long to recover. I pluck a few notes, scale a couple of chords. The weakened, strained tone that emits from the instrument comforts me, provides me with compassion and a place of solace. I am not alone. The stained carpet around my bed is the first to go, cracking and rapidly withering away to nothingness until it is just me and my Bass on the sheets remaining, suspended in a zone of peace and understanding. I am at home, alive again for the first time; the E note sounds rich and powerful as I pluck it with my pointer finger. The walls are closing in and the perfect melody cannot be found, but I don’t care; perhaps we are all searching for that ideal tone, one that we had but failed to hold on to. In this case, we all take to our Bass to remind us.