Tempo Change

OPENING ACT
And So It Happened

SOUND CHECK
Guidance
•
You Have to Understand About My Father
Wisdom from Gigi
•
Talking to Mom
•
Madrigals
Peace Pizza
•
The Fringers

FIRST SET
Rehearsal
•
Ed the Guitar Guy
•
The No-Talent Show
The Whisky A Go Go
•
More Madrigals
Competition
•
Winter Breakdown

TECHNICAL PROBLEMS
Christmas Eve
•
Day Four
•
Then It Gets Weird
Even Weirder
•
Crazy Goes to College
Spinning Plates
•
Ed the Guitar Guy’s Guitar Place
That Night I Had a Dream
•
The Road to Coachella

SECOND SET
The Real Road to Coachella
•
Coachella
The Show Goes On
•
Beer Garden
Out by the Pool
•
Another Guitar
•
The Prayer

ENCORE
The Call

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL THERE WAS A NOTE BY THE
phone.

My mother had written it. It was in her large, loopy handwriting that always seemed like it was shouting. Sometimes she actually drew flowers or smiley faces and they seemed like they were shouting, too.
Be happy! Chin up! It’s all good!
But the contents were usually completely ordinary, like
Dinner’s in the fridge!
or
I’ll be home around eight!

This time the note was completely different:

Maggie Somebody called from
Topspin
magazine. Something about writing an article. Here’s the number. She wants you to call. XOX

I stared at it for a long time. Finally I picked up the phone and called my mom at work.

“Biscuit,” she said in her chirpy tone. That was the name of the clothing store she worked in, not a nickname for me.

“Hi, Mom. What’s this note?”

“What’s what note?”

“Somebody called from
Topspin
magazine?”

“Oh, yes. Maggie from that magazine. I know it’s a music magazine. Does this have something to do with your father? Or maybe you don’t want to tell me?”

“Mom, I really have no clue. You took the call.
Topspin
is like one of the best indie magazines on the market. What about an article? Maybe it has something to do with Coachella.”

“Why don’t you just dial the number and see?”

“This could be a big deal,” I said.

“Well, just give that Maggie a call. Let me know what she says.”

I hung up and stared at the phone for another minute, then dialed the number. Someone said,
“Topspin
magazine,” and I asked for Maggie and then someone said, “You got her.”

“Maggie?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Blanche Kelly.”

“Who?”

I repeated my name. “You called about an article.”

“Oh, Blanche Kelly,” she said. I could hear the exhale from a cigarette. I pictured her as some hip and tortured type.

“So Blanche,” she said, as if she was picking up from some conversation we had had earlier. “I’m really interested in your experience at Coachella.”

“You’re interested in my band, the Fringers?”

“Who?”

“The Fringers. My band. We played at Coachella. That’s why you’re calling? Somebody saw us there or something?”

“Everybody knows what happened there. It was history-making.”

“Oh.”

“And I want you to write about the whole experience.”

My heart dropped a little. Deep down I’d known it would be like this. There was no escape.

“You want me to write about my father.”

“Yes,” she said. “That would make a great piece.”

There was a protracted silence.

Then she added, “Oh, money. We pay …” Blah blah blah. Some words and terms that didn’t mean much to me. I did some math in my head and figured out what they were going to pay me. Not that much. But this wasn’t about the money.

“I’m in high school,” I said.

“Right,” she said.

“I’m not a professional writer.”

“We know that. But we want your unique perspective.”

“About my father.”

“Right,” she said. “You’re the only daughter, right?”

I was quiet.

“You can write whatever you want. We can fix it up, you know,” she added.

What could I say? That this was going to be happening to me for the rest of my life? In one way or another. While I was still quiet she piped up with “Okay, we’ll pay three hundred dollars.”

I was still thinking, but asked, “When would I have to deliver it?”

“I’ll need it by Monday.”

I laughed. “That’s so soon.”

She said, “I know, but that’s real-world journalism.”

Real world. She didn’t sound too much older than me from her voice and she had figured out the real world.

“So will you do it?” she asked. “’Cause I’ll keep an open space.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I need it on Monday.”

“Best I can say is, if you get it on Monday, then I guess you’ll have your answer.”

I hung up the phone and stood in the living room and thought about what I had to say.

Maggie from
Topspin
said she wanted to know about my own unique perspective. Because of my father.

As I had recently learned, it’s best to be careful what you ask for.

I went into my room and turned on my computer. I stared at its blank but demanding screen. The prompter blinked.

There was so much to say.

Now I had someone to say it to.

So I started to write. I couldn’t start with what Maggie called a “history-making” experience. For me it went back before that day. I started where I felt I had to … back to when the cracks in the dam first appeared, and then the dam burst.

T
O EXPLAIN ME
, I’
LL BEGIN WITH A PIECE OF ADVICE THAT MY
father started giving me at age three.

He said, “Blanche, don’t be a joiner.”

He used to say these things randomly when he was suffering through board games with me or teaching me how to play a ukulele, or at the dinner table or when he was tucking me in.

Later he said these things to me in e-mail.

E-mail allowed my father the anonymity he desired. E-mail came at you from somewhere but you didn’t have to know where. My mother was one of those people who thought that these so-called technological advances were destroying community, face-to-face relationships and all that. But if it weren’t for e-mail, I wouldn’t have been able to talk to my father at all. And maybe that was why she hated it.

My father, see, was in hiding.

This is what he said about joining things:

“Always run as fast as you can from a big group of people and a common idea.”

This philosophy had always served me well until I was sitting in my guidance counselor’s office, the first week of my sophomore year at Laurel Hall Academy, under the perplexed glare of Dr. Morleymower.

“Dear Miss Kelly,” he said. He was an eccentric English guy of indeterminate age. Hiring eccentric English guys was so LaHa. LaHa was the affectionate name we gave to our esteemed institution. It was kind of a joke but it was a fancy joke. Being the youngest and the worst private school in Los Angeles, they tried lots of different tricks to elevate their status. Dr. Morleymower had probably gotten his certification from the back of a magazine, but he had that accent.

“Dear, dear Miss Kelly. I’m perusing your résumé and I’m wondering what any potential university is going to make of you.”

“You mean what they’re going to make of my four-point-two average?”

“Well, of course, you’ve always performed well in the area of academics.”

“I’m at an academy. I thought that was the idea.”

“And yes, I find your sarcastic wit delightful, but that’s not going to be reflected on your college application. You see, there will be a large space for you to list your extracurricular activities, and I’m afraid you’re going to be facing a lot of white.”

“I write a column for the
Manifesto.”

This was the pretentious name of our school newspaper.

“Yes, I’ve read your delightful column entitled ‘Perspective, People.’ That’s correct, is it not? And in it you seem to ramble on about your disappointment in popular culture.”

“It’s a music column. I’m just disappointed in music.”

“I’m delighted to hear that. Do you play an instrument?”

“Yes, I’ve played the guitar since I was six.”

“My, you must be a virtuoso.”

“I get around.”

“And you understand theory and history and all?”

I understood history all the way back to 1955, which was more music history than most kids my age understood. I played by ear and had learned most of what I knew how to do by watching music videos and playing along with CDs. If I did say so myself, I knew my way around the guitar and had never felt the need to take classes. But I knew there was no way to impress someone named Dr. Morleymower with that.