They sat in silence in the patient lounge of the same optometrist. Then over the little speakers the Steely Dan song Reelin’ in the Years played and after the famous guitar solo arrived, Margaret Thatcher broke the silence.

Maggie: Remarkably efficient.

Ellen: Efficient?

Maggie: Every note appears to have employment.

Ellen McIlwaine laughed.

Ellen: That’s one way to hear it.

Maggie: No wasted movement. No self-indulgence. It accomplishes precisely what it sets out to accomplish.

Ellen: You think it’s a tax policy.

Maggie: Good craftsmanship is good craftsmanship.

Ellen picked up an imaginary guitar.

Ellen: Listen again. Not to the speed. To the leaning.

Maggie frowned.

Maggie: Leaning?

Ellen: Every good guitarist leans into certain notes. They’re persuaded.

Maggie considered this.

Maggie: Yet the solo sounds highly disciplined.

Ellen: Yepper. Freedom without discipline is just noise. The trick is disguising one as the other.

Maggie: That sounds conservative.

Ellen: Blues is conservative. Every player learns the same twelve bars. Then spends a lifetime escaping.

Maggie folded her hands.

Maggie: I admire competence. This guitarist possesses it very much.

Ellen: Competence gets you invited. Personality gets you remembered.

Maggie: So why this solo? People keep talking about it.

Ellen closed her eyes.

Ellen: Because he sounds delighted. You can hear him smiling.

Maggie: Interesting. The notes arrive with unusual confidence. As though each one believes it belongs.

Ellen: Exactly. A frightened guitarist plays scales. A great guitarist makes you forget strings are involved.

Maggie: Tell me something, if someone else had played exactly those same notes…would history remember the solo?

Ellen: The notes aren’t the performance. They’re the evidence.

Maggie nodded slowly.

“I understand.”

Ellen looked toward the speakers.

“You know what my favourite thing is?”

“What?”

“Halfway through, he stops trying to impress anyone.”

Maggie raised an eyebrow.

“He was impressing me all along.”

“That’s because you’re not a musician and you’re listening for achievement.”

“And you?”

“I’m listening for surrender.”

“So greatness,” she said, “is discipline perfected?”

Ellen smiled and picked up her guitar.

“No.”

She struck a single bent note and let it hang in the air.

“It’s discipline forgotten at exactly the right moment.”