Originally written by Ian Chainey
Like so many people I’ve met at Whispering Sunsets, Ted Galligan is working on a masterpiece.
“Time. Nothing. It’s, like, stripped down. Baroque, but not,” he playfully answers when I inquire about his new suite, a glint of mischief dotting his pupils. “Like a thousand independent melodies congealing into one living, breathing organism. More complex than imaginable because it’s so simple. The guitar is the key. You think it’s a kaleidoscope. It’s really a microscope.” This means nothing until you catch the cadence. Then, it’s Ted. Pure Ted.
Ted shakes his long, frizzy hair. Unkempt and curling, one could mistake him for a shaggy spaniel. His mane frames kind eyes – he’s one of the few late-agers I’ve seen, in the flesh at least, owning laugh lines – and a stretch Packard of a nose. It’s not the face of a rock star, though it’s someone who has shared the trenches, heard the whistle. If he makes a sour face during a solo, it looks about right.
We continue to converse, winding up eventually at Voracious Malady, the 20th anniversary of Psychosomatic Palpitation having just passed, as he happily reminds me for his first time, my fiftieth. We volley our arguments back and forth. Ted swears it’s stone cold as far as classic progressive death goes. I mock scoff through an attack of deja vu, trotting out my standby parries:
1. The critic feedback loop has made it important solely for being “important.”
2. Why does all prog death sound the same? What, exactly, is progressing?
Galligan hungrily unpacks my points. He’s inspired, wearing a chess master’s glare. I’m already cognizant of where and when to quit, a grand master of the conversation. Undaunted, he keeps paring away until he reaches the core: I’m an antique fetishist. Old books, old flicks, old references, old tunes. Voracious Malady hasn’t been forgotten enough. I’ll give him that. Psychosomatic Palpitation fits my predilections, by the way. I know far too much about the – in reality, in the land of the living – 45 year old album. Or, was it 50?
Still, no complaints from my side. I’ll play the devil. The fact Ted is this willing to engage me – the pesky journalist sponge, soaking up his fleeting minutes when he wields Midas hands – is surprising, even if the small talk no longer warrants a raised brow. It speaks to his selflessness, another antiquity. Make no mistake, though, his attention isn’t on me.
It took me awhile to see it, to become fluent in Galligan. It’s now hard to miss Ted’s tick. Stay too long, press too hard, and it begins to show itself. And, when I ask why he relates to Psychosomatic Palpitation at such a deep level, using my serious journalist voice, he tocks. He starts to shoot anxious glances over his shoulder at the decaying piano and the contiguous small forest of papers, like a lover admiring his new fix at a party, ensuring their permanence.
I’ve become the flaming hoop. The debate is done. The awaiting act of creation is the reward. Tick.
Galligan soon grows tired of my presence, not out of spite nor malice, but because he can’t free himself from the silent siren. He gradually ignores more and more of my questions and inches back to his score. Once there, he scrawls notes in the margins, delighting in the scratch of pencil on paper, the hidden movement to the symphony of inspiration. I get up. I linger to see if he turns around, to offer a wholly new take on Voracious Malady, something hidden in a steamer trunk in the attic of his brain. A once-in-a-lifetime trick play buried in the playbook. I want Ted to prove a greater Ted remains, not a human half-life. That he’ll shake this off and be better, to lead by example and lead me away from the inevitability of his fate. I want to stop looking at Ted and seeing me.
It never happens. The act remains the same. I stand in the doorway and watch Ted cocoon himself in ivory overtones. The vibrating air pulls on him in the manner of marionette strings, ones connected to invisible fingers keeping Ted up for the two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-seventh consecutive midnight seance. I am no longer here, replaced by Galligan’s now-galloping triumvirate: Muse, music, mortality. I’ve been erased.
It’s a familiar scene, one which plays out according to the exacting and exhausting timing of a long running musical. Plus, there’s something intrinsically melodramatic about Ted Galligan’s situation, something which speaks to our fawning desires transposed upon tortured artists struggling through their creative malaise. In a different decade, he might’ve been trip-metal trumpeter Flaunarak, honking away at the gridlock of writer’s block on an empty bridge; a hero, living art, an ideal conjuring romantic notions in those unblessed and unblemished by talent. Here, though, he is a patient, someone considered too ill to be in society. Yet, even then, he’s a patient in the loosest sense: he isn’t here to get better, he’s here to work. And his work is killing him. It’s killing everyone at Whispering Sunsets.
Similar to our witching-hour routine, Galligan’s stay at the clinic isn’t particularly unusual once you internalize the context. I spoke to the chief, Dr. Benji Woon, during my first day on-site, a year or so ago. He offered the blueprint breakdown of events:
“Ted was a session musician, of course. Lost his family in The Escape, lost his mind in the Fallout, and had been trying to recover it with Muse ever since.”
I think of that byline often. The memory feels fresh. Memories often do when the Gaussian blur of sleep has been ctrl+z’d. If insomnia is good for one thing, it’s that. Confuses the chronology, but it stops the decay.
What isn’t fresh is Ted’s basic backstory. It’s a bio shared by nearly all of the former resident musical geniuses at Whispering Sunsets. If you’re in your downer 20s, you know many of them. That said, there’s a reason you don’t know Ted. The only thing keeping Galligan from induction into that hallowed group is he, well, hasn’t had an official release attributed to his name during his eight year stay. That, and he’s still alive. It’s what makes him special, what separates him from his long-passed peers: Ted is known for living.
Leaving Ted to coax big, expressive block chords into the world like an efficient piano midwife, I again find myself back at Woon’s office, attempting to decompress before rejoining a world cruel in its randomness. The doctor – a downer mid-ager, maybe 33, salt and pepper hair, seemingly permanently fogged glasses, and a handshake desperate to be remembered, but never over-squeezing its welcome – strokes his beard, wistfully staring out his side window at the hustle of the center’s day-to-day. It’s nearing morning and, instead of a multitude of glorious polyphonies bleeding from under patient’s closed doors, serenading nurse-gineers, all he hears is a rolling rumble, the sobs of broken men. Brooks babble, mad men mumble unanswerable questions. It’s a sound which will only increase in volume and density as the new day grows older. It curdles, an unnerving hum into a soul-crushing WUM until patients hatch from their dosed stupor.
Unlike the hospital’s board, whose main function is to cherry pick the best recordings of the patients for release, this wild dynamic shift continues to affect Woon, even twenty years after treating his first addict. Minutes ago, the whole ward was alive and then, with a gulp and swallow of one pill per person, all traces of humanity – personality, feelings, emotions – evaporated. It’s the enduring incongruity of a constantly relived day.
Woon sighs, to me or maybe to himself or maybe no one.
“Tonight?” I answer, gingerly pushing myself out of the foldout chair once meant to be temporary seating, now my expected destination upon every break of new day.
Woon frowns. “Get some sleep, Christ.”
“Wouldn’t seem fair. You forget, I’m scouting today.”
His frown deepens. “Oh, wonderful. Who with?”
“Harrison.”
“Leave your soul at home. Maybe it can sleep for you.”
I walk towards the door. Before I exit, I feel Woon’s hand on my shoulder.
“Steve, really. Get some rest. Ted will still be here.”
I look out the window and my eyes hit Galligan’s. He’s in a wheelchair, parked in the middle of the common room. A nurse is prospecting for a usable vein. Ted makes no motion. Gone is the glint, replaced by the abyss. His face, hours previously carved by a smile, lifelessly hangs, like an old leather jacket relegated to the rear of a closet. He’s coming up. The Muse flows, but Ted is gone. Not a piece remains.
I…I will be there when he creates. Every day. Every time. We’ll be aware. Aware of each other.
“Drug consisting of residue found in certain tube amps located inside the Perimeter. Class A: Illegal to transport and consume unless under strict state-mandated guidance. Our #fries are legal! Click to like and order.”
– Facepedia by McDonalds
“Muse/ The asp/ Coiled fate/ Finally living by dying/ Dying to taste the poison I take.”
– Ronnie Seef, “The G(r)ift” from Psychosomatic Palpitation
The rise of Muse, like the end product it parasitically inspires, has been unique to say the least. It doesn’t have the quick uptake of National Cocaine – in fact, due to a quirk in its molecular makeup, it often takes months to become irreparably addictive and for the user to feel its “beneficial” effects – nor does it offer the deep, hallucinogenic trepanning of the modified meth derivative Shityeah. To make its rise in popularity curiouser, Muse was a pain in the ass to find, nearly impossible to artificially produce unless you happened to be one of the five or six drug dealers listed on the NNYSE, and too dangerous to store in large quantities. And yet, despite these Sears Tower-sized hurdles, it has become the most consumed drug in N’america for two reasons:
1. It’s the only substance we’ve uncovered offering any relief for the debilitating Fallout Depression suffered by 80% of the population upon reaching 35.
2. It opens up the dormant portion of the brain responsible for music composition/creation/performing. This was originally considered a happy accident, an unexpected by-product of a comforting, self-imposed death sentence. It’s now an essential cog in the machinations of a growing industry.
For a lot of us, the industry is all we know. To the ultra-affluent post-Escape youth, Muse has always been there, supplying a cushioned raft to send neighbors, co-workers, teachers, or parents across the River Styx. If the depressed displayed any talent and got admitted into a nice rehab center, great, they finally unwrapped their gift. If not, at least they’ve gained peace: “Sorry for your loss, I guess Dio just needed another angel accountant.” To the rest, Muse is a fantasy out of the 99.9%’s reach. It’s a myth’s epilogue perpetuated by the media’s rose tinting to be socially virtuous, bestowing honor upon the user in a world where judgment only exists in the vacuum of history books that currently go unwritten. In reality, Muse is an artificial mirage of a best case scenario achieved more through luck than action. That isn’t what the status quo wants to hear. That goes against the plan, slams its palms down on the tumbling dice. Save your credits, stoke your addiction with the highly volatile (and far cheaper) Mu$e passed out in the “charitable” group shelters, practice, crash a cushy recording rehab center, and leave behind a hit single and a nice looking corpse. Welcome to the accepted and acceptable fifth act of the N’american life-cycle.
What predestined users don’t take into account, nor care to research, is the true life of a Muser. I’ve been on assignment at Whispering Sunsets for ages, originally working on a puff piece pitch and acquisition concerning a statistical oddity, Ted Galligan, who, to our knowledge, has been exposed to Muse longer than any other living human. What I’ve found, and what will certainly end my career, flips the public perception of Muse treatment on its head. Is Muse a savior? No. Hell no. True, while encountering a lucid, smiling 40 year old is a minor miracle, the Tartarus one must crawl through to assume the celebrated role of genius cast-off severely offsets the scales. The majority don’t make it to the smiling step. The downward slide into an incinerator begins at the moment we yearn for, but can’t return from: total addiction.
To reach that point, the “mountaintop,” Muse users spend months ingesting the drug, usually concentrated into pill form, to build up a base level in their bloodstream. During these long slogs, the user will typically intensely practice the skill set they wish to master, endlessly running scales on instruments, hoping to retain enough involuntary muscle memory to carry over to the self-inflicted withdrawals.
The withdrawals are what we usually see of Musers on holofilm, which, in turn, creates enduring fantasy fodder for the under-30s. Launched headlong into an inspired mania, the “mature dependance” user will work feverishly on their music, wielding unfettered access to their brain’s creative centers, churning out deep, complex, brilliant compositions. (This baffles scientists; the best explanation compares it to levees against the flood of depression.) Before full shutdown takes place, the user must restore equilibrium by, once more, taking Muse, delaying the possibility of another withdrawal for approximately twelve hours. Then, the drug’s chemicals punch their timecards, slowly eating away at the grey matter, creating crude neuron super-freeways to the areas housing artistic skills. That is, if everything goes right.
The common-sense caveat, which speeds along in the nation’s blind-spot, is it usually doesn’t. With a staggering 90% of the population sitting at or below the poverty line, most begin the process by battling depression via Mu$e. Because the unfiltered impurities cause extra demands on the body during the Mu$e cycle, u$ers don’t sleep, thus considerably shortening their lifespans. Subtracting sleep, the neural pathways are paved in an erratic fashion. (“Practice guitar, found my keys,” as the old joke goes.) Be that as it may, once any user type reaches mature dependence, they cannot simply ween themselves off the drug, either. To wit, blood spinning transfusions fail during this final rung on the addiction ladder.
Without Muse, the brain shuts itself down. So, the longer addicts abuse the cycles, the longer they’ll typically live; essentially putting users on a life-support machine made of money. And money is a tough thing to accumulate for an addict who only cares about self-expression confined to the inch-wide world of recording tape. Singles may sell, but a Muser can’t conceptualize the desires of a market. They create for themselves, for the joy of making music, blind to the fact they’re playing Russian Roulette in the search of each hook.
Of course, the strident howl of death is drowned out by the white noise of a Muser’s day. Addicts experience two phases: “awake” (saturated by Muse) and “aware” (engaged in a withdrawal). When aware, only the creative portion of the brain will remain fully active, augmented by serotonin production and access to memory centers associated with the creative process. When awake, the inverse is true: users are unable to produce serotonin or endorphins, their neural synapses curtained behind Muse’s one-of-a-kind sloth. It’s no wonder this period has been nicknamed “the dark.”
If you’re wondering why you’re unfamiliar concerning this Sisyphean brutishness, it’s due to the implicitly agreed upon trade off. Risk and degradation of the quality of life is largely assuaged by the aware user’s creative output. Or, really, the future-ends a user buys into and fully expects to play out. This is now the driving force behind Muse’s popularity: You, yeah you, can be brilliant. Still, it was an obstacle in and of itself until recently, when longer, more fruitful addiction cycles could finally be sustained thanks to greater supply stocks. Originally, the problem was few could stay alive long enough to commit their pieces to tape. Because of the memory block and without the circumventing pathways common in long-term users, hardly anyone successfully translated their ideas to written, understandable composition. Sheets of esoteric symbols would be sighted near a “tacet” user’s body, foreign even to cryptography-inclined avant-garde performers. Ted echoes this period. Despite his relatively high functioning state, he sometimes stares between the staves, grasping for a note like a penny arcade claw grabber.
It’s better now, they tell us. You’ve spent your whole life hearing the evidence. They tell us that.
Things began to change during the government-sponsored Recovery. Pay-as-you-Muse rehab centers emerged, offering the addicted the proper tools for survival – be it in artistic pursuits or general health care – and comparatively affordable rates. The high cost of care/production was balanced using sales and government subsidies as a non-profit ballast. Yet, these same hospitals, like Whispering Sunsets, have drawn ire from Muser rights groups that see such “predatory” operations as unfair, directly violating the past government’s promise to treat all patients equally.
What these groups find contentious is the big hospital “filter” and the what-can-you-do-for-me capitalistic slant on the demographics. Because Muse is an essential, if not the essential, drug needed for battling Fallout Depression, larger hospitals tend to make their own pharmacy grade on site, irradiating the high-usage/-wattage tube amps of their patients to meet the ever growing demand of a continual influx of new users. Doomers and droners, then, typically fill the wings, though their music isn’t well received outside of tastemaker critic circles and is rarely released, while users who gambled and became skilled in other disciplines are pushed towards rural, less-adept clinics where sustainable Muse/Mu$e supplies are fleeting at best. These clinics are nothing more than a farm league for the larger hospitals, allowing organizations such as Whispering Sunsets to pick and choose the best MOR/pop airplay candidates without having to sacrifice their Muse supply or skewing their recorded output/patient death ratios with duds.
In summation, while laboring under the guise of a non-profit organization, Whispering Sunsets is a very commercial operation, offsetting overhead costs – for instance, training nurses in record production techniques to staff the hospital’s in-house studio – by selling pick-of-the-litter singles cheaply, forgoing the usual mark-up to turn profits by intentionally over-saturating the market. On paper it seems lose/lose. Nonetheless, realize, the creator and the consumer are inexhaustible fossil fuels. It’s the simplistic ecosystem of the Nnew World: the consumer will soon become the creator, all credits flowing the same direction for a lifetime. It’s a snake paying for a buffet of its own tail.
Lately, activist groups have ramped up their criticism, targeting a Machiavellian mean streak uncovered through leaked hospital documents. Whispering Sunsets, in particular, came under fire from Muse Refuse for allegedly letting Zachary Reanka, power metaller, to perish from an extended withdrawal by refusing to dose him to an awake state. MR claims this was due to poor sales, equating the practice to the grossest negligence, amounting to little more than blatant slave labor. Woon, who winced when I mentioned the ongoing case, declined to comment, but said there was a shortage of the drug available the week (month?) Reanka died.
“We’re just overloaded with new patients,” Woon told me as we made one morning’s rounds together.
“Just so many people choosing Muse over a life dedicated to other services. And why wouldn’t they? This is a miserable reality. Outside of this place, people struggle to live, struggle to acquire the credits to usher themselves into the second phase of their life. In here, Musers can leave behind an artifact to prove they were alive. Maybe that’s all that matters.”
Woon stopped me and looked into my eyes.
“Who says they’re wrong? Think anyone is going to care about us? Do people think of the shepherd when they put on the sweater?”
Ted Galligan’s two sons loved finding Dad’s name in liner notes and band thank yous. As one of the premier hired guns of the Toronto Sound, he was certainly drawn often. In 2019 alone, one could pick a top ten record blindfolded and get a Ted.
Brad, his eldest, traced his finger across the print, looking for the familiar Ted – Guitar, delightedly squealing if catching it in his sight. If Galligan was away on tour, the albums littered Brad’s bed like a plastic patchwork quilt. “Pieces of dad,” he’d whimper, whenever Ted’s wife Brenda tried to clean up.
A rare invitation to join Ted backstage in New York – extended to the family by current boss Hunted Hunter Hendrax IV, who was touring behind his gospel goth album Saved Old Bones – brought Brenda, Brad, and youngest son Scott to the city a few days before Ted was to arrive. They were setting up impromptu hotel arrangements, Ted assumes.
Then, The Escape. Then, nothing.
Though, the fact that he can remember something, ANYTHING, of his pre-muser life is quite astounding.
That said, Galligan is understandably reticent about the intervening period between his loss and his addiction. When asked, he feigns total focus on his current work and an underlying desperation to leave himself behind. He wants to be a communion in CD form.
Yet, like Ted’s tick, his resistance in using his normal-to-us, amazing-for-Musers skill isn’t a trait one would pick up during first impressions. While Ted is a shell of the person I met years ago, he preservers to buzz with an amiable vibe, willing to engage as long as he possibly can. And, he remains startlingly intelligent, given his abuse. Certain orderlies joke it’s because there’s a bigger brain than the average Joe for the drug to eat through. They’re not half wrong, Ted’s brain has shown a remarkable ability to grow a buffer akin to callouses, far removed from the wild, full-scale rot which quickly consumes most Mu$ers. Nevertheless, he’s losing his battle, both to keep some things hidden and remembering what those things were.
Fully aware one night, probably decades into his addiction (maybe longer?), he pointed to the few remaining vestiges of his former self, pictures of his wife, beaming from her holocube cell, placed on top of his room’s piano.
“Pretty ain’t she?”
I nodded.
“No idea who she is, but Dio, does she make me play. I want the music to take me there. Take me to…her.”
Ted can’t tell me her name, a detail that previously wasn’t a problem. Lacking Ted’s memory as her lifejacket, Brenda is fully submerged, lost to the black ocean of the past. Gone are stories, experiences, anecdotes, unrecorded minutiae. We know Pre-Escape life through clips, books, and promo videos, dispatches once mundane that are now revelatory, gilded with gold by time. But, as the older generation perishes, they cross out history’s humanity. To us, Brenda is a character, about as real as a script, since, like a script, we know her beginning, middle, and end. There are no surprises. Ted knows the complexity of the living, breathing Brenda, when the chaos of unwritten existence ruled.
Except, he doesn’t. A set of pictures have an imperceptible pulse. The man who holds the defibrillator pads is losing his ability to operate the machinery.
These days, Ted looks up at the picture and involuntarily smiles, unsure why. When he’s aware, he compares it to sitting in a quiet room at night, watching the curtain rise from an unseen breeze. When he’s awake, and I hand him the cube, the same smile lifts his lips, briefly pulling him from the glassy-eyed event horizon of total despair.
Night. No. Day? Time. Can’t…make sense of time. Confusing. Time.
Just got back. Not sure why. Unsure. Not sure why. I’m writing. Someone should know, in case.
Woon left the door unlocked. I was in and out. I’m holding it in my hand. I just swallowed it. He said it was the bad stuff, the stuff they wouldn’t miss. Said it was going to mess me up.
Don’t care. Need it. Will write. Will remember me. Will. Must save him. Me. We have to disappear.
Today, I’m accompanying one of Whispering Sunsets new employees on his trip into the city proper. Greg Harrison’s bespectacled face appears to reflect the blinding sunlight back towards the sky, radiating the youthful optimism which makes mid-ager hearts ache, marinating in a cocktail of nostalgia and knowing, expectant regret.
Greg, passing his training only recently, has become a scout for the hospital. Deciding to be more proactive to alleviate a number of rising costs, Whispering Sunsets now sends out young men like Greg, scouring the rural clinics for talent which will sell.
As we cruise between the heavy armored transport vehicles on the way out of Perimeter Hamilton, Greg turns up the satellite radio. The familiar 23/8 skitter of post-nu-djent fills the van as melodies weave from speaker to speaker, matching our speedy maneuvering around the citizens of the highway.
“My buddy found this guy at a shelter!” Greg yells above the din. “Crazy, hoping to get myself a score like this one day.”
It’s all scores to the Gregs, these self-styled John Hammonds of The Recovery.
We reach Muse Clinic #48, located deep within the city. Greg fist-pounds the security guard and nods to the receptionist. #48 hasn’t yielded much – so far, he’ll tell me, glass half full – but he’s unwilling to drop it from the route. #48 is unwilling as well: they’ll receive a small cut of the sales if Greg stumbles across an aware phoenix.
We make our way to the director’s office and take a seat.
“Thought you weren’t coming back,” Director Deon Lamont purrs, his velvety voice bouncing off one’s sternum like a marching band’s bass drum.
“Thought you had nothing left,” Greg responds.
“Huh, well, you know how the cat is, the cat’s dragged in a lot.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Deon reaches into one of his desk drawers and pulls out a remote. Hitting play, he fights to raise his voice over the opening of a thudding sludge progression.
“Steve Dirkwood. Blind. Don’t know if it’s legit-blind or if the Muse just makes him that way.”
The hair on my arms stands on end when Steve’s voice slides down to a growl, decrepit guitar strings ringing out his future funeral procession.
“Greg, I can see you’re unimpressed.” Deon lets out a booming laugh. “Young cats ain’t got the Fallout like us downer fucks.” Deon is looking at me.
Greg counters, sighing, “It’s not that, you just know that shit won’t sell.”
Deon eyes Greg tiredly, as if he’s attempted to mount a defense before and failed too many times. Later I’ll learn this was Steve’s last shot at proper treatment. His body will be incinerated within the week amongst four others, the CD-R we listened to his last will and testament. His guitar will remain with #48, part of a growing collection of orphaned instruments.
Deon starts the next track.
“Fucker thinks he’s Tipton.” Greg waves his hand in front of his face like he’s swatting away a fly.
Deon hits skip.
New song. Slinky cross-rhythms, bouncing on a 4/4 base, tumble from the speakers, a bass line prods huge strums to awaken, encasing the listener in a hermetic chamber of sonorous carnality.
Greg perks up, “Hello.”
Deon holds up his hands, “Just wait.”
The chords begin to tear themselves apart, in the manner of dropping a thermometer and watching the mercury slide across the tiles in shimmering arpeggios. The distortion fades, leaving only a cavernous drum beat and a bass line walking with a little wiggle, a little shimmy. Then, the organs kick in.
“Where we gonna go? WHERE WE GONNA GO?”
Greg jumps to his feet. “You mother fucker, you got a retro?”
The last four #1 charting singles have been from new classic rock artists.
“Ain’t no retro, my friend. He’ll make you think twice, that’s for sure.”
Greg and I quickly walk down the hall, entering the canteen where we discover Tim Dalton. Dalton nicknamed himself Cherry Red in an effort to secure a contract from Warner, before the Escape, before he mainlined Muse. He’s awake, but he’s nothing. He looks absolutely gutted, a deep frown and distant stare firmly molded onto his face. Entwined in his fingers are cheap earbuds, hanging between his skeletal fingers like a rosary. He notices us, turns, and tries to smile. It’s hollow, as if the sandpaper of existence has long ago buffed out any real happiness. It’s nothing more than a mask he wears for our sake.
Greg timidly puts a hand up, middle and ring finger folded down. “Hi there. I’m just going to check your vitals, okay?”
Tim nods. Even this small movement seems to exert too much energy.
Within ten minutes, Harrison has his stats. He looks pensive, pats Tim on the shoulder, and meets Deon in the hall.
“Not long for this world, is he?”
“No,” Deon sighs. “He came in a couple days back. Real late. Part of a group shelter. They brought him to the doorstep, dumped him, and took off. You know how the underground groups are now. They don’t want us meddling, think we’re fucking up the purity. I don’t blame them, really. But, I never wanted to be a funeral director neither.”
Greg and I drive in relative silence to Whispering Sunsets. In a few hours, Greg will present his findings to the board, will attempt to argue against the vitals, and will secure funding for a conditional EP, provided Tim makes it to the clinic and into a studio. All things considered, I can tell Greg wants more. He breaks the rhythmic thump-thump of tires-on-old-highway only once, uttering under his breath:
“Thought that was going to be it. Thought that was going to make my name. Hope he lasts.”
The setting sun highlights the first set of wrinkles on his forehead. The light doesn’t rebound, it soaks in, fueling the oncoming supernovae of his soul.
Open door. In. Out. Swallow it. Write. The company wants my story. Wants to make Ted a star. Wants to make him theirs. He’s mine. Me. Pieces. Pieces. Pieces. Tock.
The fact Ted Galligan didn’t have a hit didn’t worry him. When you’re aware, nothing really worries you; you have the music and that’s enough. You have your job. Your identity. When you’re awake, you feel too drained to think of anything except the inevitable.
I’d been visiting Ted for close to two years, I think, easily the longest resident at Whispering Sunsets and only allowed to remain because of his pre-Escape popularity, his seemingly inexhaustible archived bank account, and the protection of Dr. Woon, who forced Ted to play drone and become an in-house session gunner just in case they needed another reason.
He was there so long, we tricked ourselves into thinking it was a routine. We kept doing it, thinking we’d do it until it stopped working. We didn’t realize the sun would rise on such a day. Time.
One morning, the morning, I sat by Ted while he struggled with his awake cycle.
“Hold…my hand.”
I took his hand in mine, gently cradling his smooth, yet gnarled fingers. Cruelly, years of playing had erased his finger prints.
“You’re…not gonna see this…not gonna see this again.”
“Ted…” I whispered.
“Time…wonder…time.”
I attempted to pull the veil of ignorance over my spiraling thoughts. Routine, right? Time. I guess he’s obviously in no state to talk today. Long night. Long cycle. Ticks. Something. Anything.
I patted his head and left his side.
Anything.
I turned to say goodbye. He looked up and gave me the same vacant, Cherry Red smile, trying to reassure me. Instead, he accidentally allowed me to see into the crystal ball.
I waved. I left.
A nurse approached me as soon as I hit the hall.
“You family?”
“I guess not,” I answered.
“You know he’s dying?”
I nodded.
“Well, he remembers you. He doesn’t remember much, but he knows you.”
Later that night, I walked into the parking lot, sat in Greg’s truck, and silently wept over my dinner.
It wasn’t the sob of an artsy holofilm. It wasn’t practiced. Perfect. Routine. It was ugly. A backed up garbage disposal belching leftovers.
I then unwrapped the tinfoil pouch I made to help ferret away Mu$e from Whispering Sunsets. From Ted, specifically: the bad stock they started giving him when I told Woon my company wasn’t interested. Wasn’t going to release his music. That this was it. I gulped down a pill and thought, Where we gonna go? until I couldn’t think anymore.
The board is deciding what to do regarding the final recordings of Ted Galligan. All agree it’s a brilliant collection, but it’s an anachronistic style and, most troubling, unfinished. Considering the black-ink audience that demands perfection and the ultimate professional delivery, lest messy experimentalism accidentally sours their rare “good” days, it’ll be a tough sell. On the other hand, there’s a market enticing antique-hunting-heads of Galligan’s session work. It’s just hard to gauge whether that’s enough to justify the advertising expense. Those collectors are lone wolves, keeping finds for themselves. For now, Galliagan’s opus, Master in Peace, sits on a hard drive, tossed under a server rack, in the closet between rooms 202a and 202b. Every day, I rediscover it. Every time.
Illustrations by Michael Wuensch.
