A musician named Lena was afraid of herself. This was difficult to explain. Wherever she went the person she feared arrived at the same time. She could avoid difficult promoters, bad drummers and former lovers, but no practical route around Lena. Somewhere inside her another Lena could suddenly become sad for no reason, convinced her career was finished, or possessed by thoughts so strange she would ask herself what kind of person could possibly have thought them. During concerts, the second Lena sometimes appeared while the first was playing perfectly fine. You’re going to forget the next verse, she would say. Your hand feels funny. Why does your hand feel funny? You’re getting old. Nobody wants to hear this song. Lena would continue playing while privately monitoring Lena, which meant there were now at least two musicians onstage and only one being paid.
One night she told Perry, the old saxophonist. “I’m frightened of my own mind,” she said.
“Which part?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The part that’s frightened or the part you’re frightened of?”
Lena stared at him. “Both.”
“Then who’s doing the staring?”
Musicians hate philosophy when it arrives without a rhythm section. Perry picked up his horn, played a terrible note.
“What was that?” Lena asked.
“A terrible note.” Then he played a beautiful one. “And that?”
“Better.”
He put the horn down and said, “Which one is the saxophone?… Unfortunately,” he paused, “you may have the same problem.”
Lena didn’t like this either, but carried it home.
For years she had been conducting an internal audition in which every ugly thought proved something about her character while every generous one was dismissed as temporary good behaviour. If she imagined pushing someone off the subway platform she became terrified she was secretly murderous, but if she imagined giving her coat to the freezing stranger at Bloor and Walmer Rd. she didn’t conclude she was actually a saint. Gradually she thought more on the saxophonist’s display and began treating thoughts like notes. Some so ugly they made the next note interesting. Some didn’t require interpretation.
One evening concert frightened Lena returned. Tonight you’ll collapse, she whispered. You’ll forget everything. Everyone will see what you really are. Lena felt her old terror, but didn’t argue.
“You can come,” she thought. “But you don’t get to play.” Then she walked onstage. Halfway through the first song she forgot a lyric. For one second there was nothing. The audience waited. Then another line came, not the original one, but a new one. She sang it. Something loosened. She understood sometimes it’s just weather passing through. One can hear the thunder without appointing it conductor.