When he was young, Sam played punk rock. Three chords, although on certain nights he reduced this to two because the third seemed entitled. He struck the guitar as if it had insulted his little sister. He shouted into the microphone about government and a landlord named Derek. The audience threw beer. Applause with moisture was how Sam regarded it. His teacher, a drummer named Roberto, attended one performance. Afterward, Sam asked, “Did you hear my anger?”
Roberto said, “I heard the amplifier.” Sam did not speak to him for eleven years.
In time, punk rock grew older. Sam’s knees began to object to jumping off monitors. His ears contained a permanent high note no instrument could reproduce. The clubs became condominiums, and the people who used to shout “Destroy the system.” began working for the system’s communications department. Sam stopped performing. One winter morning, while cleaning his apartment, he dropped a metal clothes hanger. It struck the radiator, bounced against an empty cooking pot and landed on a cookie tin.
Tang. Clang. Tok.
Sam stood still. He dropped it again.
Tang. Clang. Tok.
For several weeks he experimented. He suspended clothes hangers from a broomstick and brushed them with knitting needles. He attached Slinkies to a wooden frame and discovered that, when plucked, they produced the sound of a submarine remembering childhood. He filled old kettles with buttons, dragged chains across cymbals and struck hubcaps with rubber sandals. His neighbours complained that the building was haunted by a hardware store. Sam phoned Roberto, who was now very old.
“I have invented new instruments,” Sam said.
“You haven’t called me in eleven years.” Roberto said.
“I know but you need to hear this.” Announced Sam.
“Are they musical?” he asked.
“Absolutely, listen.”
Sam lifted a clothes hanger and let it fall.
It struck the floor with one small, perfect sound.
“The instrument,” Roberto said, “is the listening.”
Sam understood immediately, though it took him another nine years to realize he had not understood at all. He began performing again. He no longer stood above the audience on a stage. He sat among them, surrounded by objects that had escaped their assigned purposes. A lampshade became a gong. A bicycle wheel became a harp. A Slinky descended a staircase one step at a time, playing the longest drum solo of the evening.
After one concert, a young musician approached.
“Your music is strange,” she said. “Where is the rebellion?”
Sam handed her a clothes hanger.
She looked at it.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
Sam smiled.
“Exactly.”