Orpheus and Eurydice
Orpheus was a better musician than anyone else in the lineup, and he knew it. He slid onto the stage with a swagger and fiddled with the straps of his guitar, pretending to be nervous. I didn’t buy it — I saw him smirking. Then he fixed his gaze onto the audience and began to play.
He had a way of making you feel like he’d come all this way to sing only for you. It caught me by surprise, so I had to look away for a moment. Everyone was staring at him in the same way, enraptured. There we were, and there he was, at his very first performance, in that damp basement club, with its creaky wooden stools and sticky tables, smelling like the spilled booze they haven’t cared to clean since 1976. Looking back, I’m amazed he had the skill even then. But then again, I’ve been privy to some early family videos, and I could see he’s had it since birth.
He sang three songs, fast-paced, pausing just for a breath in between. He didn’t leave room for applause until the end. He didn’t need the applause anyway. He knew what he was doing. He was studying the audience’s reaction with every note. It was our silence he was after, as a counterpoint to his voice and his energy. He wanted us startled and spellbound. And he got what he wanted. I’m embarrassed to say I cried a little. It tends to happen to me when I experience something beautiful for the first time.
Afterward, we all got to our feet at the exact same time, like some invisible force was moving us in unison. I don’t think that dingy club had ever seen such applause before — or ever after. He stood up, stooped his head, and had the decency to look bashful. He turned to go, but we wouldn’t let him. There in the half-dark, half drunk on house wine and his music, we kept on applauding and chanted for one more song.
When I say we were transported, you might think I mean it figuratively, but I don’t. Some real, physical part of us, each of the 40 or so people present that night, was in a different venue entirely. He had moved us all, with a combination of raw skill and calculated intent. A few of us talked about it afterward, awed strangers processing a shared experience. And — this is how I know it was premeditated — for the 10 minutes he held our attention, each of us felt (deeply and intensely) that we were back at the scene of the first concert we’d ever attended. What else could have produced that roar of applause, that unbridled yearning for one more song — please, just one more song tonight?
It’s hard to describe, but I know you’ve already felt it. I’ve seen the ticket sales figures, added up the iTunes downloads and the YouTube views on authorized and unauthorized videos alike. He’s only gotten better since that night. Or, if not better, more finely controlled. Now he can take each of us to exactly the space we need, at that particular moment in time, whether or not we knew we needed it.
We got one more song. Much later, he confessed to me that he’d only had four complete songs written at the time. That’s why he played three before he paused. He never admitted this part aloud, but I know it’s true: he’d also rehearsed that bashful look, that coy half-turn away, counting to ten until he knew for sure (but he’d always known!) that the audience wouldn’t let him leave until he played one more.
At the end of the night, he didn’t have an EP to sell, or T-shirts, not even much of a social media presence. It was a great approximation of being taken by surprise by his success. (Maybe he really was surprised, I don’t know. Maybe he’d been hopeful and unsure. I never know anymore if I’m giving him too much credit or too little.) He stuck around, though, and let them buy him drinks. The bar was making so much money and the audience was so enthusiastic that they stayed open two hours later than usual. Eventually, the bartenders, yawning and dripping with sweat, had to shoo people out the door.
Orpheus went home with a stranger, slept in someone else’s bed. It wasn’t me, not that night. I hadn’t even spoken to him yet, had barely made eye contact. It hadn’t even occurred to me as a possibility.
