Nicholson Baker - Traveling Sprinkler

I’ve filmed some boats with my video camera, thinking that I could make a YouTube video of “Take a Ride in My Boat” if I had some verses. I used some of the three-syllable phrases Roz had sent me, adjusting them here and there:

hear the word

get up soon

kiss the lips

bite the moon

feel the fruit

find your way

sail the boat

dream of me

Take a ride in my boat

Take a ride

Take a ride in my boat

fix the text

take the stick

crack the nut

make it slick

chomp the bit

drink the beer

wipe the spit

check the gear

crack the nut and drop the pants

milk the meat and learn to dance

Take a ride in my boat

Take a ride

Take a ride in my boat

Take a ride in my boat

Take a ride in my boat

Take a ride in my boat

• • •

I TOOK THE CAR in to a repair place to be inspected. They looked at it for an hour and the man said it needed new calipers and pads and several other expensive things. The total cost would be about twenty-five hundred dollars. “For that car, I don’t think it’s worth it,” he said.

“I see, okay,” I said.

“Just call me Dr. Carvorkian,” he said.

I took it to another repair place farther away. When I got there the head of service was in the glass-walled waiting room sitting next to an elderly woman. I waited for about five minutes at the service counter, and I saw the man nodding sympathetically, listening to a long story that the woman was telling him. Finally he came out and said, “Sorry, I was talking to that lady.” I told him my problem with the brakes. He was a young-faced, perky, smiley man, and he said they’d take a look.

I went into the waiting room. The old woman was still there waiting. “It’s nice and cool in here,” I said.

“Yes, it is, almost too cool,” she said. She asked me what kind of car I had, and I told her. “We’ve always had American cars,” she said. “But my husband passed away in 2006 and last year a woman backed into the trunk of my old Lincoln. The damage wasn’t too bad, but when I got home the car caught fire in the garage and it was totaled. I bought a new Lincoln but I don’t like it as much.”

Then she went away and I waited an hour. The perky man came in and said, “Looks good, there was almost nothing. Your brake fluid was a little low and the brake lines are rusty, so we’re going to need to keep an eye on that. But the calipers are almost new, so that’s good.” He passed me a sheet of paper. The total for labor was $77.90 and the total for parts was $14.35. So my car has passed inspection and it’s good for another year. Another year of life in my car! You just need to find the right serviceman.

• • •

I INVITED Nan and Raymond over for a second round of sushi, hoping that Raymond might teach me some tricks with pitch bending, but Nan said no. Raymond was in Boston seeing his girlfriend at Emerson College. I asked Nan how life was treating her.

“Oh, my mother died,” she said softly.

I said how sorry I was.

“I’m going to miss her. She was a real fighter. She just had too many different things going wrong at the same time. My sister was there. She said it was peaceful.” Nan was going back to Toronto briefly, she said, to help sort things out and sign forms, but the memorial service wouldn’t be for several weeks. “Fortunately Chuck has lots of frequent flyer miles.”

“You were a good daughter to her.”

I heard her sigh. After a while, she said, “I hope so. I guess I’ll be needing some help with the chickens, if you could.”

“Absolutely, glad to do it. The rooster seems to like me. And I’m serious about watering the tomatoes.”

“That would be nice, thank you. And ask Raymond about his songs, if you get a chance.”

HELLO AND WELCOME to Chowder’s Poetry Hopalong. I’m your host and in-home chiropodist, Paul Chowder. We’re in my kitchen, and I’m talking into a seven-hundred-dollar microphone. My ex-girlfriend is probably going to have a major operation, and my neighbor’s mother has died. So that’s what’s happening, and it’s serious business.

Out of worry or trouble or despair must come some enlightenment. Maybe that’s what a chord progression can teach us. Out of the shuffling mess of dissonance comes a return to pax, to the three-note triad of something basic and pure and unable to be argued with. Chong: the chord. E flat major. A flat major. C sharp minor. Chords where only the middle finger is down on the flat ground of the white keys, while up on top the pinky maybe can’t resist adding an impish hint of misdirection — an added seventh or ninth. These are just fancy terms for willful blurring — they’re like the times when the attractive magician’s helper in the leotard disappears into the box and the magician plunges all his sharp swords in, and then she reappears with outstretched arms, smiling her E flat major smile, unscathed after her chordal perils. Debussy’s preludes go all over the place, but they’re tonal — they always come back home.

Music notation relies on things called sharps and things called flats. A sharp looks sharp and spiky — it’s the pound sign on the typewriter, the one above the number 3. A flat looks melted, like a droopy wasp’s abdomen with a line sticking up from it. The round side of the flat symbol points to the right on the stave, whereas the water-balloon notes all point to the left, looking back at where they’ve been. If you see a sharp printed in front of a note, you know to look sharp and shift that note’s pitch up by a half step, whereas if you see a flat in front of a note, you know to droop down flat a half step. So if you see a good-boy G on the stave with a wasp in front of it, that’s a G flat. That’s chess notation. It works, and we can thank the monks and the madrigalists for it. But when you’re making up a melody, you don’t think about sharps and flats. You wave them away. You don’t even necessarily think about chord progressions.

There’s a famous chord progression that goes, in Roman numerals, I, V, vi, IV, I. Meaning that if you’re in C major it begins with a major chord based on the first note of the scale, C, then goes to a major chord built on the fifth note of the scale, G, then to a minor chord on the sixth note, A, then to a major chord on the fourth note, F, then back to a C chord. Schumann used this chord progression, Brahms used it, Elton John used it, the Beatles used it in “Let It Be,” Jason Mraz used it in “I’m Yours,” and Alphaville and Mr. Hudson and Jay-Z used it in “Forever Young,” and on and on. A group called the Axis of Awesome made a medley of many songs based on these chords — fifty million people have watched versions of the Axis of Awesome medley on YouTube. It’s worth watching.

You may think you have something extremely useful when you know how to play these four chords, and you do. But when you’re at the point of making up a tune that’s never been heard before, and finding words for it to shoulder, then knowing the chords doesn’t help that much. You still have to feel your way singingly through.

• • •

ROZ’S CELLPHONE WENT right to voicemail, so I called her home number. Her doctor friend Harris answered. I recognized his voice from the radio. I said, “Hello, this is Paul Chowder. Is that — Harris?”

“Yes,” said Harris.

“Hi, Harris. I admire the work you do.”

“Thanks. I’ve read your poems. Roz gave me one of your collections.”

“Really?” I said. “Which one?”

“I think it had a blue cover. Or maybe it was orange. Or green. Was it green?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.