The New City

The city never stopped moving.  That is the first thing that was different.  Back home, the city was bustling, to be sure.  But it also had its quiet hours.  At a certain time of night, the whole city would descend into a fairytale dream, only to emerge when the sun rose.  Here, no such sanctuary could be found.  This place did not provide even a moment to breath, to center oneself.  Steven once paused too long at a walk sign and five people brushed into him in apparent contempt of his inability to move faster.

            Everyone here had somewhere else to be.  To be rooted in one spot was apparently lethal.  It was as if the whole place was a long assembly line, and the cogs mustn’t stop, for any reason, for any amount of time.  Steven just wondered where the line eventually ended.  Not that he was interested in going there.  Steven just wanted to cope with this new world enough to not be destroyed by it.

            Susan was the reason he was here.  She got a new, well-paying job that required a significant relocation.  Of course Steven agreed to go with her, one does not easily give up a woman so forgiving of ones flaws.  The new arrangement put Steven in several uncomfortable situations, however.  He was no longer the bread winner in the relationship, and he now lived in a city of 8 million strangers. 

            The first thing was not terrible to get used to.  It just required a bit of humility, which was an easy enough emotion to feign.  The second was much more difficult to overcome.  Steven had always cherished the control he had in his life.  Back home, every little aspect of his routine was coordinated for his optimal suitability.  He found himself having to leave his apartment, and interact with people every day.  He no longer had his car, so he had to take the subway.  That was a metal death machine like no other. 

            Susan constantly told him that change is ultimately good, but Steven had his doubts.  Why did things need to change when they were already perfect?  This new world would be the death of him.  He just prayed no one would bump into him if he moved too fast.

The Music

Steven sighed as he looked around his studio.  Everything was perfect.  Every cord was tucked away in its designated spot, every instrument finely tuned and ready to be used.  Steven had studied space efficiency and work place streamlining.  He was confident that he had the perfect place in which to work his craft.

            He knew it would not last however, and that soon Leonard would arrive.  Leonard, his freewheeling, care-free bass player.  He came in like a hurricane and disrupted his delicate balance.  Half eaten cheese burgers would liter the floor, and liter bottles of cola would be strewn upon the floor, their sticky contents slowly leaking onto the pristine carpet.  Steven was spending a fortune on carpet cleaner just to get the place back to normal.  Having Leonard in his house every week was a huge disruption to what Steven had made for himself.  And yet, Steven needed this unkempt, careless man.

                He was important to the music.  Before Leonard, the music Steven created was competent, but sterile.  Critics were surprised to find that a human had made it, and not a computer. He had been searching for a long time for something to make his music more relatable and real.  He stumbled upon it when he placed a craigslist ad looking for a new bass player.  When Leonard came to him, he had almost no bass skill, eschewing refinement for improvisation and wild lines.  His style clashed wildly with Steven’s reserved, but technically flawless skill.

                The result was something brand new, and entirely unexpected.  It was the sound that Steven had always wanted, but never knew how to get.  This was the reason he endured Leonard’s weekly assault on both his senses and his sensibilities.  The music was bigger than either of them.

               

Parents

Steven did not like to speak of his parents.  As far as he was concerned, they were responsible for much of what he is.  Cold, calculating people, they refused to ever acknowledge the innocence that is the birthright of all children.

            For the first 12 years or so of his life, he did not even know his parents’ names.  His live-in au pair eventually clued him in that these two strangers who occasionally sat at the other end of the table were his parents.  He remembered the night when the family lawyer sat him down and explained what his duties as the only son entailed.  He forced 13 year old Steven to read and sign a 45 page document.

            Whenever Steven had a complaint, or wished his parents presence, he had to submit a letter to the box outside their bedroom.  For his fifth grade science fair he had to wait two weeks for a response.  Even then, it was non-committal.  His father, a successful CEO, ran everything like a business.  This included his relationship with his son.  He treated Steven like the boy in the mail room.

            His mother was a hypochondriac and neat freak, and it was from her that Steven most took after.  She would inspect his room with a white glove, and any speck of dirt was sternly rebuffed.  She was also agoraphobic, which meant that Steven never went anywhere as a child.  His sunny days were spent in the library, listening to one of the few things his parents let him have in abundance, music. 

            Steven thought about all these things as He listened to his bass player, Leonard, tell him stories about the things his parents did.  It was then that Steven started to realize that, perhaps, he and Leonard had more in common that he realized.