Nicholson Baker - Traveling Sprinkler

Is there a song in that? Probably not. I don’t want to know about evil, I just want to know about love. Stephen Fearing sang this song in 2007 in a hotel lobby in Paris. Listen to it on YouTube and you will be happy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiJjLdcFF6Y.

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I SO ADMIRE people who can sing. They tell their voice to go somewhere and it just goes there. Or they say, Don’t go there, go almost there and swerve up into position at the last second. There’s an unspeakable intelligence in what they’re doing. No words can describe it.

I went out and spent twenty dollars on sushi at Fresh Market, and then I went to the chocolate factory on Hanover Street and bought dessert: some special pistachio bark sprinkled with chili powder and cayenne pepper and cinnamon. It has magical mood-altering properties, I think, and even if it doesn’t it tastes good. On the ride home I got lucky when I was listening to my songs on shuffle: I came to something by Anna Nalick called “Breathe.” I was sitting at a stoplight and suddenly there was an amazing woman singing in my ears about how life’s like an hourglass glued to the table and what you have to do is breathe, just breathe. Something papery in me crumpled and I crunched my eyes closed and sang tunelessly along with Anna Nalick, and I listened to every word. The last time I’d thought about that song was back in 2009, when I was in a hotel room in Cincinnati after a reading.

It was so good that I tapped the genius icon, the little atom, to make a genius playlist from songs that iTunes in its wisdom thought were like “Breathe.” The Weepies came on, another group I haven’t thought about in a while, singing that the world spins madly on, and then came another good song that I’d forgotten, by Kate Earl, called “Melody.” “Melody” is about how Kate Earl listens to songs all day long and she has nobody beside her to go ooh ooh ooh, but her skin is warm and her heart is full and the music is loud so her hips can swing. I bet they do — those woman’s hips, those hourglass hips, they don’t lie. I think “Melody” was a free single on iTunes one week, that’s how I got it. And here Kate Earl was just singing it for me. I started to dance in the car, taking a right turn into my driveway. She says something very profound and simple: “Every missing piece of me, I can find in a melody.”

This song is a wonder. There are sleighbells in the background for some reason, who can explain it?

NAN CAME SMILINGLY OVER with Raymond and I said, “Hi, folks,” and sat them down at the kitchen table. I decanted the sushi onto plates and brought out the little soy sauce saucers so that we could each of us mix our own personal octane mix of wasabi. The best thing about sushi is the wasabi mustard — it clears your head like nothing else. We talked about the chickens for a while, and whether a fresh egg tastes different from an egg you get from the supermarket. Nan said that before she got the bantam rooster a hawk had killed two chickens, but the flyweight bantam is fierce and fearless and he protects them. Then I asked Raymond how his music was going. He said it was going okay. I asked him if he could show me how he made beats and he pulled his MPC beat-making machine from his backpack and we hooked it up to my computer speakers and he cycled through some of the presets and got a chesty kick drum going and made a quick eight-bar loop. It sounded excellent. Nan and I were rocking our heads, looking at each other with our eyebrows slightly raised while Raymond tapped on the rubber pads with his fingers and fiddled with dials.

“So Raymond,” I said, after a while, “what would you suggest I get if I wanted to make music? Should I get one of these MPC things? I can’t spend a huge amount of money.”

“What kind of music do you see yourself making?” said Raymond, in a grown-up sort of way.

“Well, I bought a cheap guitar and I really like it”—I pointed at my Gibson Maestro, carelessly propped in a corner of the kitchen—“but really I’d kind of like to make a superfunky dance song that people would have to get up and dance to.”

“There are basically two ways to go,” said Raymond, “real analog hardware or software. I use both. Hardware’s nice because you’ve got actual dials and faders and pads, but it’s pricey. Do you have vocals?”

“Yes, I’ve got some vocals. Vocal fragments.”

“Then you’re going to need a good microphone and a USB audio interface. The Saffire 6 is good.”

“His grandparents gave him some money for his education,” Nan explained.

“Thank heaven for grandparents,” I said. “My grandparents bought me a bassoon.”

“A bassoon,” said Raymond. “Do you still play?”

I said I’d sold it a long time ago. “And I have very limited means at the moment.”

“Then you should just go with software. Get Logic. It’ll cost you two hundred dollars and it’s got tons of instruments.”

“Okay.” I began taking notes. “Logic.”

“Yeah, you can pretty much do any bizarro thing you want with it. It’s got a synth called Sculpture that makes glass and wood sounds, and sounds like bouncing marbles.”

“Bouncing marbles,” I said, longingly, writing it down.

Raymond pulled out his computer and showed me a song he’d been working on in Logic. The vocal tracks were blue and the other tracks were green. He touched the A key and showed me how he’d made a white-noise sweep. “There are vocals with these,” he said, “but I’ve got them muted.”

“Play some of the vocals,” said Nan.

Raymond hesitated. “Mom, as you know, they’re a tad explicit.”

“Oh, go ahead,” said Nan. “We don’t mind being shocked, do we, Paul?”

“Let me quick listen first,” said Raymond. I handed Nan the pistachio bark while Ray put on his huge studio headphones — they had a spiral cord — and he listened to his lyrics, moving his head to the side with the beat. He hit the space bar to stop the playback and grimaced. “I’m not sure. I’ll play you a little bit of the chorus.”

He played the chorus. It was something like “Baby I got some beans in these jeans, I got some beans in these jeans!” There was something else about “crucial fluids.”

I laughed, slightly embarrassed for Nan. “That’s good,” I said. “Very catchy. Nice hook. Let’s hear more.”

“I’ve got another song that’s less inappropriate.” He hunted in a folder for the file.

“This is wild and spicy,” said Nan, meaning the chocolate.

Ray played us some of the other song. Something about “My shoes don’t want to fit and I’m waiting for the late bus. Waiting for the bus in the rain.”

“That’s great!” I said, and I meant it.

Nan looked proud.

“What about your songs?” asked Raymond politely.

I reached for my guitar and I strummed a chord. I’d tuned it carefully before dinner. “My singing is no good. I can’t do it.”

“Come on, play us something,” said Nan.

I played a D minor chord, alternating with the no-name chord. Then I sang a snatch of the street sweeper song and two verses of the doctor song.

“Whoa,” said Ray. “I heard a little Radiohead action in there.”

“It’s derivative and awful,” I said. “It’s bad, it’s bad. It’s no good.”

“No, no, it’s good,” said Nan sympathetically.

I put the guitar down. “Eh, I can’t sing, but it’s fun.” I turned to Ray. “If I get Logic, will you show me some tricks?”

“Sure, anytime,” he said. “I’ll show you how to use pitch correction. You can sound almost like Kanye West if you want.”

“I doubt it. Boy, he’s got his hands full with Kim Kardashian.” I gathered the plastic trays that the sushi came in. “What about you, Nan? Do you sing?”