The Wages, An Illustrated Story | 23. Songs and Parables | Darkness and Melodies

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A line drawing with six comic frames in various sizes, with some areas of yellow, blue, or pink in the background. In the first three small frames, we see closeups of Brandy singing with great joy and expressiveness. The background is a sunny yellow. In a large fourth frame, Brandy and Joanne sing into microphones, while Brandy plays her Martin 00 acoustic guitar with a strap that says, “Brandy,” and Joanne plucks her Fender Jazz bass guitar. Brandy turns with her hair tossing in the wind, to face her girlfriend Joanne and watch her sing. Brandy’s joyful expression is gone, with her eyebrows raised in sadness, and it looks as if she might burst into tears while singing. Joanne’s sunglasses rest on top of her blonde quiff, and she sings with her eyes closed with cool indifference. The background is sky blue. Next is a large fifth frame. We look out from behind Brandy’s legs at the gathering audience, which has become a small loose crowd about three rows deep, with some listening while others face away or walk past. A woman with a floppy hat with a ‘90s daisy on it eats and popsicle and smiles at the music. A bearded man watches with rapt attention. A boy walks past with a skateboard, ignoring the show. A woman holds up a drink with a straw and looks surprised. A little girl with a bucket hat and sunglasses looks astonished. A woman with a backpack looks bored. The sky blue continues off over other people in the background. The last frame is a small closeup of Crystal. She leans into her drums over her traditional-grip sticks. Crystal purses her lips with quiet worry while she raises her sensitive introvert’s eyes, watching every conflicting emotional signal that floods the scene under her sister’s command in front of her. Crystal’s background contrasts with the other colours with a warm pink. End of description.

I did a few shakes and shimmies, which kept some of the crowd’s attention, and a few people in the audience seemed to be listening closely. I hoped so. I loved this music so much.

If people were just wandering around any old festival and wanted to hear some jangle and twang and watch me shake my ass, fine; but if somebody came to follow the stories down deep into the darkness, and then soar back up into the sun on the melodies, I always tried to do it like that for anybody who cared to follow. Everybody’s welcome, and there were a few folks there for whom I thought this might be happening. As well as being a way to make a living, sharing this experience was something I could not make happen elsewhere. In many ways this was what I needed to keep me sane and in one piece.

It was a sunny afternoon and from the stage I could see a lot going on in the busy park.

I noticed something among the art displays that I could see from the stage while we were playing.

I was curious about one group of paintings; they seemed to all have no details, just squares of single colours, or at least so it looked across the park. Then we were done our set, and we managed to sell a handful of CDs and cassettes, and hawked a few T-shirts too. The food table for performers didn’t open until later, and everyone was hungry and tired, so we just divvied up the cash from the tapes and shirt sales for lunches. Crystal wrote it all down on a note to add to the ledger later, and we decided that the band should all be back together by one hour.

I walked over to the art show section of the festival, and checked out those paintings that had mystified me from the stage. Nobody else in the band was interested in what I said I thought the paintings were.

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The Wages, An Illustrated Story | 23. Songs and Parables | Darkness and Melodies

Previous page | Main Table of Contents | Chapter index | Next page 

A line drawing of Brandy Cinnamon Wages.

I did a few shakes and shimmies, which kept some of the crowd’s attention, and a few people in the audience seemed to be listening closely. I hoped so. I loved this music so much.

If people were just wandering around any old festival and wanted to hear some jangle and twang and watch me shake my ass, fine; but if somebody came to follow the stories down deep into the darkness, and then soar back up into the sun on the melodies, I always tried to do it like that for anybody who cared to follow. Everybody’s welcome, and there were a few folks there for whom I thought this might be happening. As well as being a way to make a living, sharing this experience was something I could not make happen elsewhere. In many ways this was what I needed to keep me sane and in one piece.

It was a sunny afternoon and from the stage I could see a lot going on in the busy park.

I noticed something among the art displays that I could see from the stage while we were playing.

I was curious about one group of paintings; they seemed to all have no details, just squares of single colours, or at least so it looked across the park. Then we were done our set, and we managed to sell a handful of CDs and cassettes, and hawked a few T-shirts too. The food table for performers didn’t open until later, and everyone was hungry and tired, so we just divvied up the cash from the tapes and shirt sales for lunches. Crystal wrote it all down on a note to add to the ledger later, and we decided that the band should all be back together by one hour.

I walked over to the art show section of the festival, and checked out those paintings that had mystified me from the stage. Nobody else in the band was interested in what I said I thought the paintings were.

Previous page | Main Table of Contents | Chapter index | Next page