In Which Virgil Joins a Band

Tonight, a play! Why not? A play! Could you, would you, in a play? A play about music & plot twists, paired with an accelerating slide into loneliness.

~DRAMATIS PERSONAE~

R. VIRGIL O’SHAUGHNESSY, a dilettante

GORDON LEE, a saxophonist

ODIN, a guitarist

ALIX, a guitarist & occasional vocalist

ROHINI, a clarinetist & social worker

HAROLD, a multi-instrumentalist & amateur musicologist

ST. MALO, a drummer

∰

[Evening. Summer. Toronto. VIRGIL is walking past a tavern on a side street, near Augusta St. approximately, when he spots GORDON sitting alone at a table outdoors. Dressed in his Fruit of the Looms, VIRGIL might be labeled unkempt, though he’s eminently comfortable. GORDON has a knit cap; otherwise, head-to-toe denim. His cheeks hang, his neck is a question mark, it’s very nearly as if he’s asleep. VIRGIL approaches.]

VIRGIL: Hi ho, Gordon.

GORDON [snapping to attention]: Virgil? How are you? Are we meeting?

VIRGIL: No, I’ve been doing concentric laps of the Kensington Market neighbourhood. I had a feeling I would bump into you, or into someone, sooner or later.

GORDON: You’ve been doing this all afternoon?

VIRGIL: Actually I’ve been here since late morning. I got a wood-fired bagel with a fried egg inside, and it hemorrhaged yolk when I tried to eat it. It was horrendous!

GORDON: Oh really?

VIRGIL: Yes, it’s true. That’s why I said it.

GORDON: Right.

VIRGIL: I didn’t expect you to be down in the dumps like this. Or is it exhaustion?

GORDON: Both. Work was long today, and a friend of mine was rotten to me last night.

VIRGIL: Do Canadians have friends?

GORDON: Everyone has friends.

VIRGIL: That was 70% a joke. The rumour is that Canadians are aloof, even with each other, & their friendships aren’t as bracing as American friendships.

GORDON: Whose rumour would that be?

VIRGIL: The world’s, I suppose. [Pause] Are we friends?

GORDON: Sure, I’d say so.

VIRGIL: I won’t be offended if you need time to consider it. This is only the second time you’ve seen me in your entire life! Born and raised in Etobicoke, you were —

GORDON: I was actually born in Hamilton.

VIRGIL: Indeed? See, I didn’t know that. Maybe we ought to hang out five more times before committing to being friends.

GORDON: If we’ll need five times, why did you ask me if we’re friends?

VIRGIL: Good point.

GORDON: Sorry, that was rude.

VIRGIL: Let’s begin this hang-out: I can share with you how yesterday my sister and I had a *major* falling out. How lonely I am today, probably lonelier than you (no offense). And we can get dim sum, as we typically do.

GORDON: It’s rather late for dim sum. I’m sorry to hear about your falling out.

VIRGIL: And I’m sorry about your thing. Mine was over Harriet’s social media posture, “if you really want to hear about it.” Look, though, she’s back at it. [VIRGIL holds up his phone, which has a picture of Harriet’s face, extremely pallid, some dryness around her mouth, a drink with an orange-ish tint, aperol perhaps, some Queen St. city lights behind her. Caption: “the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!” No alt text is provided for the benefit of the Blind.] So, no dim sum, if I understand you correctly?

GORDON: I’ve already eaten supper. But thank you for telling me about your sister. I can’t say I understand it, but I’m sorry. Anyway, I do have to get to band practice pretty soon.

VIRGIL: Band practice? Can I tag along?

∰

[Another tavern, this one with a more extensive menu. VIRGIL and GORDON approach, and find ODIN eating a grilled cheese. It looks delicious, i.e. with the bread browned and the cheese suitably bubbly. ODIN is wild-eyed, thin-haired. He wears a tasseled scarf around his psoriatic neck. He is considerably older than VIRGIL and GORDON, perhaps 39.]

GORDON: Hey Odin, this is my friend Virgil.

VIRGIL: His friend! [VIRGIL and ODIN shake hands.]

ODIN: The others are running late, Gordon. Grab a drink while we wait. [GORDON heads into the tavern. ODIN burrows into his sandwich, then looks up at VIRGIL, having forgotten, it would appear, that he’s not alone.] Are you a musician, Virgil?

VIRGIL: Not exactly. I played piano in my youth. And music is math, at its root, is it not? My rhythm’s shoddy, though. [noticing ODIN’s melancholy] Are you alright?

ODIN: Yes. It’s just — I cheated on Alix.

VIRGIL: Who’s Alix?

ODIN: My partner.

VIRGIL: Are we friends already? (Our names are sonically similar.)

ODIN: She’s also in Nameless Enemy.

VIRGIL: Is that your band name? [ODIN nods, and VIRGIL debates internally whether to pass judgment on it.] Thank you for confessing your cheating.

ODIN: You’re the first person I’ve told. What’s your name again? Virgil? It was six days ago, Virgil. Why am I telling you? You can’t tell anyone else in the band!

VIRGIL: Why? Aren’t the other members of Nameless Enemy your friends too?

ODIN: Yes, but we’re an incestuous group. We’ve all dated each other. And I cheated on Alix with someone she knows. Sorry. You have a trustworthy face.

VIRGIL: My sister is always sorry when she tells me things. 100% regret within the hour. Yet she keeps doing it. Glad to be your friend in any case.

ODIN: You have enough friends without me, I bet.

VIRGIL: Back home (New York City, by the way), I’ve got oodles. Most of them have moved away, it’s true, but there’s the doorman, Arkady, and the waiter at the diner. I can’t recall his name off the top of my head.

[GORDON returns with two points of copper-coloured air, just as ALIX and ROHINI enter stage south. [They’re all in a neighbourhood called The Junction, incidentally, and the pub is on a quiet street off of Dundas St. W. GORDON and VIRGIL got there by taking the Dundas St. streetcar, then walking a fair bit.] ROHINI is tall. ALIX is short. Both have dark hair & cream-coloured blouses. ODIN looks guiltily at the space before him. VIRGIL glances at his phone: no note of apology from HARRIET. But she isn’t in this play, so she is simply Harriet, without the honour of capital letters.]

[Everyone says hello. GORDON introduces VIRGIL to ALIX and ROHINI.]

VIRGIL: Odin here was just telling me about how much he dotes on you, Alix.

ALIX: Is that so?

VIRGIL: He’s devoted the appropriate amount, I should say. Where did you two meet?

ALIX: Montreal.

VIRGIL: Montreal, Quebec! I’d like to go there on my next visit. I’m from America.

ALIX: It’s Mun-treal, not Mahn-treal, and it’s Keh-bec, not Kwuh-bec.

VIRGIL: That’s useful feedback, thanks.

ALIX: Sorry, I get crusty with Yanks. I’m crusty in general.

VIRGIL: And everyone here is friends?

ROHINI: Chosen family.

VIRGIL: I’ve heard that phrase before. It reminds me, in a way, of margarine.

ROHINI: That’s annoying.

VIRGIL: Are you crusty too?

ROHINI: No, but I’ve worked impossibly hard to get the bad people out of my life & bring good people into my life, so I resent the word “margarine.”

VIRGIL [internally reckoning w/ her use of the word “impossibly”]: If I were a musician, you know what would really get under my skin? Music reviews. Have you ever noticed that they’re exclusively about lyrics & the lyricist’s personal life? Sometimes I read a review to see whether I’ll like an album, and I walk away with no idea what the music sounds like.

ALIX: Music writers are terrible.

VIRGIL: It can’t be all that difficult. Let’s give it a shot. Imagine you were reviewing the music of Nameless Anomie, what would you say?

ALIX: Nameless Enemy. Not Anomie.

ROHINI: We’re not going to describe it.

VIRGIL: Gordon, *you* describe it. You said you play originals, not covers.

GORDON: It’s rock. Kind of —

ROHINI: Anti-capitalist rock.

VIRGIL: Look, if I were to describe The Beatles’ “Michelle,” here’s how I would go about it. Off the top of my head, mind you. I’d describe the instrumentation first. A slow, loping beat. Acoustic guitar. Some French lyrics. Soft backing vocals. A love song with a sadness about it, where there’s a language barrier between the singer & his object of affection. Or is it an even more insurmountable barrier? Do they know each other at all? The instrumentation evokes a car ride through the countryside of France, late afternoon. There’s a ragtime guitar solo midway, not much treble. And that’s about it.

ODIN: Sounds right to me.

VIRGIL: I didn’t talk about Paul McCartney’s mental state.

ALIX: Alright: we play rock music that’s part orchestral, part rustic, with lots of instrumentals. The songs are on the long side, often ten minutes.

VIRGIL [soliloquy]: Music is the highest art form. Perhaps it always has been, but it certainly is in this era. Not because it’s “democratic,” but because it’s non-narrative. The present moment is over-narrativized. O Harriet, if you were here, you would caution me that I’m about to turn these people against me. You are being ANNOYING, you’d tell me. You could be a character in this drama named ANNOYING. (How cruel, Harriet.)

[VIRGIL shuffles his feet and sips his beer, & wrinkles, i.e. furrows, his brow while he toys with his thoughts, and gulps the distant Toronto skyline.]

VIRGIL: Gordon, do you want to come with me? [They go inside the tavern.] Your bandmates aren’t super-nice. Anyway, they’re not as nice as you.

GORDON: No?

VIRGIL: Sometimes I feel like I’m a Russian doll. Like my outermost layer, the one that people see, is good and moral. But below that, I think I’m not very good. But below that, secretly, if I could be what I wanted to be, I’m good. And yet below that, I’m not very good at all. And I feel everybody knows all of this the moment they catch sight of me.

GORDON: That’s a hard way to feel.

VIRGIL: I’ve brought the mood down. That’s never a thing I aim to do.

ROHINI [offstage]: We have a quorum. We’re going to practice!

VIRGIL: How many people are in your band?

GORDON: On a good day, fifteen. It’s a collective. I’m not sure how many we’ll have tonight.

VIRGIL: I don’t do well with that many people. I don’t do well at all.

∰

[The practice space is deeper in The Junction, or possibly the neighbourhood past The Junction. Honestly what if Bloor St. and Dundas St. just extend to the ends of the earth, great meridians? It is dim and carpeted and musty in the room. There is a drum kit, a rack of amplifiers, a coterie of microphones. The sound of other people making music bleeds through the walls, not like blood, so, rather, say it pulses through the walls. Everyone in Nameless Enemy grabs their instruments happily. HAROLD and ST. MALO have joined. They are both big people, one French, one not.]

[ALIX counts off. The first song is a long drone. Most of the melody is provided by HAROLD’S banjo and ROHINI’S clarinet. GORDON’S saxophone blends in with the drone of the guitar, while ST. MALO clicks their sticks on the rims of the drums.]

[But what does it sound like? It sounds mechanical, grinding, like a train, but also folky, but also minor-key, so when it’s all put together, it’s like living in an unfortunate future, where electricity is owned by the state and the average citizen has access only to crude tools. The song ends on a minor 3rd.]

VIRGIL [applauding gently]: What’s that one called?

ALIX: “Sister Joist.”

VIRGIL: What’s a joist?

ALIX: Part of the frame of a house.

ODIN: We need to figure out the coda.

[VIRGIL considers saying, “What’s wrong babe, you didn’t resolve to a 1 chord,” but he doesn’t. There are too many people, all but one of them strangers, & they are talking over one another, & it’s never clear (in this situation as well as others) when it’s VIRGIL’S turn to speak. This is why two-person scenarios are best. Tonight there is so much denim, so many cream-coloured blouses. The leather of ST. MALO and the corduroy of HAROLD — all the patterns are clashing. Life has too many people in it sometimes. The Group of Seven knew that.]

GORDON: Did you like that song, Virgil?

VIRGIL: I did. Thank you for treating me to it.

ROHINI: You didn’t love it.

VIRGIL: My favourite part was toward the middle, when the guitars became more melodic and they were changing chords, 4-5-1, and the bassline, that’s when you were playing bass, Harold, stayed on one note. Is there a word for that? When you can tell that the chords in the song are changing even as the bass instrument is holding to a single note? [Nobody knows.] It feels like a kind of weightlessness. Like you’re held up by a parachute. The bass isn’t falling when it should.

GORDON: Virgil has lots of thoughts about art.

ROHINI [eyes widening] [unkindly]: Anything else you want to say?

VIRGIL: Your clarinet melody at the beginning was nice.

ROHINI: I took that from “The Ellington Suites.” Duke Ellington: the greatest composer of the last century. Him and Janáček.

HAROLD: Excuse me? Charles Ives.

ALIX: Leonard Cohen.

ST. MALO: Ligeti.

[So many people are talking. Too many. It feels like a trash vortex next to an apartment building in Manhattan.]

VIRGIL: Who? I liked the patterns in the song too. I love patterns. Simple patterns.

ODIN: My guitar part was an homage to Steve Reich. Do you know Music for 18 Musicians? I wonder if you’d like that. Who are your favourite musicians, Virgil?

VIRGIL: The Beatles. 1950s jazz. Some classical: Prokofiev, but not Copland. Alfredo Zitarrosa. [He hesitates to mention Coldplay, since Nameless Enemy is clearly a part of The Scene, and Coldplay is highly antithetical to The Scene.] There’s other lowbrow music I like, too.

ALIX: Lowbrow? In what sense?

VIRGIL: Lowbrow how? [He attempts to steer himself away from bizarre mannerisms and odd verbiage. He wants to say: Pop songs, trite lyrics, normal time signatures, standard chords. That kind of lowbrow. Songs that people might sing along to in an arena.]

HAROLD: The Killers?

VIRGIL: Who?

HAROLD: Taylor Swift?

VIRGIL: Is she a real person?

HAROLD: Coldplay?

ODIN: Coldplay are like the golden retrievers of rock music.

VIRGIL: Sounds delightful.

ODIN: You should try Television. Listen to the song “Days.”

ALIX: I don’t believe in highbrow and lowbrow.

VIRGIL: Same. Music is pure joy, compared to the other arts, which can be so self-conscious.

HAROLD: You can’t think that music is un-self-conscious.

ROHINI [laughing mockingly]: Didn’t you hear the song we just played?

HAROLD: Bach, for example: highly self-conscious.

[HAROLD gives a small lecture in which he cites, among other entertainers, the Ballet Russes and Mahler. Others chime in, including ST. MALO, who has strong opinions on atonal music, & ALIX, who finds it atrocious. VIRGIL has difficulty keeping track of all the personalities in the room — we know it from his facial contortions, from how his eyes dart about when people talk, nervously, exaggeratedly, like he’s performing the idea “human society is a tennis match.” As the day advances & the loneliness of dusk envelops Toronto, his face shadows into gray.]

ALIX: Let’s play another. “Tin Heart.” [to VIRGIL] You’ll like this one.

VIRGIL: Why?

ALIX: It’s a love song.

ST. MALO: In reality, it’s a hate song.

[The piece begins with GORDON on saxophone, playing an ever-ascending tone, a Shepard tone, but also it sounds like “Giant Steps.” ST. MALO begins to percuss. A bit of bass from HAROLD now. Everyone in the band wears a careful expression.]

ALIX [singing]: But it can’t be harmony / if it’s always ascending. / It can’t be real to me / if your answer is always “depending.”

[The song is beautiful. VIRGIL turns around and cries.]

∰

[Band practice has ended. They walk as a group along Bloor St. It’s late; there is talk of getting ice cream, although ALIX objects to the idea, steering them instead to her apartment, several buildings off the avenue, not before, however, VIRGIL loads up on coffee, getting a 20 oz. cup, or whatever the milliliter equivalent is. It’s the first true Canadian apartment VIRGIL has visited. The decor is municipal, drab. A small bar takes center stage. The band pours shots of The Hard Stuff and begins to drink. Loud shouts, insistent laughter.]

[VIRGIL pulls GORDON aside. They talk in the kitchen.]

VIRGIL: Did you want to tell me more about your friendship woes?

GORDON: You’re crying. Are you okay?

VIRGIL [realizing that he is, in fact, crying; retreating deeper into the apartment] Am I annoying you? I’m sorry. No, actually, maybe now is the perfect time to talk about this phenomenon that I’ve been noticing. About the narrativization of the present moment. [talking over himself] But really it was that song, “Tin Heart,” that made me sad. But look how ALIX, I mean Alix, has so many posters of old police movies! Le Cercle Rouge. Le Doulos. How odd! But this is what I mean. I’ve been watching thrillers to help myself fall asleep back in New York. (I can hardly sleep wherever I go.) But nowadays, modern shows and movies, there’s always a Twist. The Bad Guy is a Good Guy. Haven’t you noticed? You watch the first hour of the movie, knowing that you’re being introduced to the array of possible Bad Guys. Eventually, when the Twist arrives, and it always does, there’s the revelation of who the actual Bad Guy was. It’s never just a Bad Guy, off by himself, being bad, disconnected from the pack!

GORDON: Why are you crying so much?

VIRGIL: Because it’s terrifying! Which is to say, it’s as if real life, or whatever this thing is, has contracted the same bug.

GORDON: Pardon? Which bug?

VIRGIL: The idea that circumstances are on the brink of folding in on themselves. Everything’s a conspiracy. Everything’s explainable. There’s no mystery. Nobody can be happy or free. And there’s so much chatter everywhere. When I was 16, I listened to music when I walked to school. Didn’t you? And now everyone listens to podcasts, to people chatting with each other. The world is full of experts. There’s no silence. There’s no ignorance. There’s no wandering off into the woods. And it snowballs into this avalanche of awful thoughts in my head, thoughts I feel no kinship with. E.g., everyone is going to leave me. And you don’t like me. And Odin told me he cheated on Alix only because he wants me to be implicated somehow & overrun by insanity!

[VIRGIL is not quite himself. He bows his head and removes a photograph of a dog from his pocket, one he cut out of a magazine this morning and has been carrying around all day. It’s damp from sweat.]

VIRGIL: That’s why music is so good, Gordon. Right? There’s no story, there’s no delusion.

GORDON: Let me get you some water.

VIRGIL: Because, because, because, despite what Harold may believe, and what those in the know may know, music doesn’t ever tell you that the world is a trick waiting to be revealed.

ROHINI [appearing as if from nowhere, as if from a poof of devil smoke!] What are you two crying about?

GORDON: Virgil says Odin cheated on Alix.

VIRGIL: No! [He leads them further into the apartment, chugs coffee, accepts a brown liqueur] I said Virgil. Virgil! Me! I’m a cheater. I’ve cheated on myself. You’ve simply misheard me with your Etobicoke ears!

ROHINI: Do you want to tell me about what you’re going through? I’m a social worker, Virgil. Maybe I can help you out.

VIRGIL: Will you put on The Ellington Suites? I need to hear music.

[They return to the living room, where ROHINI takes out her phone, connects to the stereo, and puts on Duke Ellington. The first song, “Sunset and the Mocking Bird,” is *transporting*. Next, ROHINI orders dessert, i.e. ice cream, on her phone, for VIRGIL’S benefit. But VIRGIL is still crying. Has it evolved, though, into a cry of fraternity?]

GORDON: Say, Virgil —

VIRGIL: Let’s play a game where we describe our family members. I’ll go first. Harriet is my roommate in addition to being my sister. She’s 37, [lowers his voice] much like you all look, and her hair resembles rotini (not Rohini). Please, if you could, somebody, a tissue? Harriet studies Melville and Whitman and others from the 19th century, biting off more than most can chew. But she has a big mouth. Yet it’s a prim little mouth. But she might get a very prestigious job soon. Perhaps I’m too upset to be here in front of everyone. Thank you for playing music for me!

[He rushes out of the apartment, onto the street, but he loiters by the building’s front door in the hopes of intercepting the ICE CREAM delivery. ODIN appears.]

ODIN: You told them I cheated on Alix?

VIRGIL: In roundabout terms.

ODIN: I told you in confidence. Come on, man.

VIRGIL: This is the Twist! I knew it would come.

ODIN: What twist?

VIRGIL: The plot twist where you accuse me of something.

ODIN: It’s not a twist if it’s of your own devising.

VIRGIL: Isn’t it, though? Aren’t we all our own worst enemy?

ODIN: When I was your age, 24, 25, whatever, I had the same compulsion to screw things up for everyone in my path. Cut it out.

ALIX [bursting out onto the street]: What did you do, Odin? Who did you screw?

[A rumble from below — the Bloor Street subway, perhaps. VIRGIL feels the rumble migrate into his toes, and he starts to dance. VIRGIL can’t dance. He searches his mind for a song whose rhythm matches the rumble and comes up empty. So he begins to sing random words, trusting that he will hit upon a thought or a mood. ODIN watches him but is not inclined to intervene. ALIX is yelling.]

[The ICE CREAM man arrives. VIRGIL removes the pint that he had selected and hands the bag to ODIN. Alas, the bag has no spoon, and VIRGIL has no spoon, so (what is to be done?) he eats the ICE CREAM with his hands.]

VIRGIL: Why don’t you kiss under some ice cream?

ALIX: Shut up.

VIRGIL: Okay, okay, so long, okay.

[The ice cream is melting in the night-heat. VIRGIL sucks on his vanilla fingers as he walks east on Bloor. It will be a long walk back to his neighbourhood, but he’s glad to be alone once more. & in truth, he is never fully alone, since he has a JOURNAL, to whom/which he will recount the night. There will be no Twist; there will be a destination, an ending: the lodging in the Annex; there will be a progression, a trajectory: eastward on Bloor; but nobody from the beginning of the day will wait at the lodging’s entrance, revealing, conspiratorially, how s/(t)he(y) were the prime mover of the trials and tribulations that befell VIRGIL.]

[Similarly, Duke Ellington’s Queen Suite will not resolve how you expected, not with a tonic 1 chord but with the drums of “Apes and Peacocks.” A tricky ending. VIRGIL listens to the Suites as he walks. It gives Toronto less of a brutalist character. His neck begins to itch. HIs shoulder too. The raccoon bite! He stops off at a Shoppers Drug Mart, which, for the reader’s benefit, is Canadian Duane Reade, and gets some lotion, and applies it. No comments are made by the staff re: VIRGIL’S vanilla-coated fingers. The lotion feels gelid and unhelpful.]

[GORDON texts VIRGIL a few minutes later to confirm that he is doing alright. He references VIRGIL’S “tears.” But tears come and go. VIRGIL looks to see if Harriet has posted anything recently on social media. There is one, photo-free, that says: “enjoy your transcendentalism when the whale is attacking the starboard side.”]

HARRIET [6+ km offstage]: I don’t need a brother anymore!

VIRGIL [reaching Ossington St;, listening to “Ad Lib on Nippon”; spotting a print of “Winter Morning, Charlevoix County” in a shop window; in morbid soliloquy]: Am I alone? Am I alone forever now?

[He takes out his phone and, wanting to call Harriet but lacking the nerve, instead dials the mirror image of Harriet’s phone number, which, ending as it does in 185, becomes a call to area code 581. This puts him in touch with a stranger in Chicoutimi, Quebec, who begins by speaking in French, but then switches to a medium-accented English. She demands to know who is on the other end of the line and hangs up when VIRGIL cannot provide a good answer.]

[VIRGIL proceeds along Bloor St., purchasing more coffee along the way, eventually arriving at his lodging, where he sits down abuzz and turns into a puddle of tears.]

VIRGIL [soliloquy]: There was too much talking tonight.

∰∰∰

( ( ( P.P.P.P.P.P.S. If you enjoyed this, you could buy me a coffee? ) ) )