Sing of the Moon - 4.
“Walk safe!” Lola called after Harlan as he left her apartment. She heard him chuckle outside as she collapsed onto the couch with a pillow, ready to end the night peacefully.
After the creative partner debacle at the beginning of dinner, Lola had worried the night would stay awkward, but before long it had become the same casual conversation their Saturdays always were, and she’d breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed like he’d maybe started to move toward taking her advice tonight, too, which in her book made it the ultimate success. She ought to tell Stevie when she saw him next, she thought. As if on cue, her phone buzzed with an incoming call. She answered. “Hey!”
“Heya,” Stevie said. “You’re still coming to group tomorrow, right? I’ve got some stuff to show for once.”
“Yeah, Tay told me the same thing yesterday,” Lola said, rolling over to face the studio corner of the apartment and glancing at the now mostly dried painting she’d finished earlier. “I might be late, but I’ll be there. I’ve got a new idea to share too.”
“Ooh, do tell,” Stevie said.
“I—“Lola stretched the word out with a grin, knowing it would build anticipation, then dropped it—“will tell you tomorrow.”
“Man,” Stevie said, clearly hiding a laugh, “you’re no better than Harlan.” Lola could picture him shaking his head, pretending he didn’t care, and it only made her grin grow.
The image was quickly pushed back in her mind by Harlan’s name and the reminder of what had happened earlier. “Oh my god, speaking of Harlan, remember how I’ve been trying to get him to work with somebody? To share his work?”
“Yep?”
“I think I finally pulled it off. I…I definitely almost upset him with it this time, but then when he left a few minutes ago he looked so lost in thought. Bet you any day now he’ll come to tell me he changed his mind and he’s going for it.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I wouldn’t do that about this! You know how long I’ve been trying to get him to put his stuff out there.”
“Well, congrats,” Stevie said, sounding genuinely surprised. Then he seemed to have a stroke of inspiration: “Ooh, what if we got him to come to group with us?”
Lola frowned. It wasn’t a bad thought, but…“Let’s get him fully on board with the creative partner idea first,” she said. “I don’t want to push him too far.”
“Good point.” It was quiet for a minute before Stevie spoke again. “Anyway, I’ve got to go, just wanted to see if you were still coming tomorrow. I’ll see ya.”
“See you,” Lola said, still frowning a little as the call ended.
She knew Stevie’s idea was a good one on paper. The city’s amateur art group was deeply important to her, both as the place she’d made her best friend and the place she’d come closest to belonging. But it had never been completely accepting—after coming out as autistic shortly after joining, she’d fallen down a rung on the social ladder. No matter how good she knew she was, the others never seemed to take her completely seriously, and if she brought Harlan along…how would they take it?
Would they let him exist as a person of his own, an artist separate from her and her oddities?
Or would they just see him as an extension of herself, another reason to smile down on her and refuse to give her real feedback or thoughts?
She groaned and covered her face with the pillow. This was too much to worry about today, she decided. She’d talk about it with Stevie or maybe even with Harlan soon.
___________
Sing of the Moon is a stage play and eventual musical first written in prose, a method designed to flesh out each character and each scene before its translation to the stage.
I‘ve done a whole lot of fleshing out of this project since the last post - I’ve finished an outline and got a good number of songs planned out, though not written! As a result, I’ve heavily edited the last two chapters/scenes, and the next few will probably be a lot more barebones in order to get this prose draft done quickly. Onward!
Acting is…Waiting
The first time I stepped onto a stage of my own accord, I felt dwarfed.
The lights overhead were blinding, the empty space around me so huge I almost wanted to spread my arms out just to prove to myself that there was no one there behind me waiting to pounce. I chose to do this?
When the song I’d practiced for so many hours earlier that day started to play, my voice was shallow, the music seemingly miles away, and the words I thought I knew by heart barely came forward in time. Needless to say, that audition didn’t go well.
But somehow, despite the stage fright and the equally terrible dance call later on, the only thought going through my mind as I left the theater was “holy shit, I want to do that again.”
So I did, and I still do, and I keep moving toward the day I can take the stage for a crowd with a spark in my step and confidence in my smile.
My voice still weakens a little when I go up now, and the anxiety when the lights hide the room hasn’t gone away.
But I don’t shrink under the pressure.
I don’t forget the words, and the music follows with me.
Now when I step onto the stage, I almost feel a little bigger.
Sing of the Moon - 3.
It was so close. It was almost exactly what she’d been envisioning, but it was off somehow.
What was it?
Lola squinted, then swiped her brush through a soft green blob on her palette and brushed a thin, almost transparent layer over the dark blue dress on the left of the painting.
There it was.
She’d been working on this one for six months, almost longer than any other piece in her portfolio (the longest had taken eight months and looking back, had really been rather simple, but that was years ago—“simple” meant something very different to her then). Now she’d just have to let it dry, get it packaged up, and send it off. But first, dinner.
The clock read exactly 5:30, and before long she’d have Harlan knocking at her door as he did every Thursday, usually bearing dessert and a long conversation to be had. Lola enjoyed seeing her brother, she really did—the conversation was never bad, and with her own rather reclusive lifestyle, most of her news came from their once-a-week meetups. But staring into her sparsely populated fridge now, she almost wanted to call it off tonight.
She sighed and shut the fridge door to find Harlan’s grinning face inches away from her own, and jumped back in shock. “Jesus!”
“Well, not Jesus, but…the next best thing?” Harlan shrugged, barely containing his laughter.
Lola laughed and reached over to hug him. “You need to let me know before your resurrection next time, dude. I haven’t heard from you since last week.”
“Well, you weren’t answering your texts,” Harlan said, holding up his phone in one hand and a bag in the other, “and judging by your look of despair there, grabbing food on the way here was the right move. Shall we?”
“Yes, please, I’m starving. I spent way too long working today.”
Harlan raised an eyebrow as he set the bag on the table. “Still no chance I can see what you have?”
“You know the deal, Harlan. No peeking until it’s public unless you’re the one buying.”
Lola grabbed a sandwich and unwrapped it, squinting at the tomatoes layered inside before carefully pulling them off. “Besides, if I can’t hear your music, you can’t see my art. That’s an easy tradeoff.”
“Touché.” Harlan groaned and waved her off, but he couldn’t hide his smile. “Man, I can’t wait until Mom comes up to visit and I have three people telling me how to live my life.”
“We tell you because you won’t live it yourself! Go share your work with the world instead of hiding it in your apartment and pretending it doesn’t exist!”
Harlan’s face hardened a bit. “You saw how it went last time. I’m not about to bare my damn soul to the universe for a dollar on a street corner.”
Alright, back it up, Lola. Too much.
“Okay, maybe don’t share it with the whole world, but a little goes a long way. Share it with somebody. When I was starting out painting Stevie was great about asking questions and giving feedback and explaining things. You need your own Stevie.”
“Clementine’s not good enough for you?” Harlan said, faking offense.
“You didn’t even mean for her to hear your stuff in the first place, Harlan,” Lola countered. “You need a creative partner.”
“A creative partner, huh?” Harlan laughed ruefully, then frowned and went quiet for a minute, seemingly lost in thought. Finally he sighed and spoke again. “I don’t know, Lola. I can’t. Not right now.”
Lola leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. “Harlan—“
“Can we please drop it? And move on?” Harlan burst out. “I’m sorry, I’m not mad. But I’m not talking about this right now.”
Oops. Way too much. “Yes. Sorry.”
An awkward silence filled the room, broken only by the crinkling of the wrappers as they returned to their sandwiches. Finally Lola spoke again: “Maybe…I’ll let you see it next time. You’d see it before Stevie.”
Harlan laughed softly. “Before the infamous Stevie? I guess I’ll be ignoring my negative feelings about him to accept this honor.”
“Very mature decision.”
“Very mature.”
A Single Shallow Breath
I can’t feel my hands.
It’s the only thought she can get out, the only thing she can process, the simplest set of words she can string together in the moment. The world is suddenly dark, so dark, and she could swear that just a moment ago there had been more than this, the crushing weight of invisibility pressing her down.
I can’t feel my feet either.
She kicks and struggles and her toes meet hard wood—couldn’t this sort of thing break a bone or twelve with ease? She wouldn’t know. All she knows is that she has to go up, past the wood and the weight and the awful dreadful suspicion that there is nothing else for her broken spirit to feel.
What can I feel?
Any other day, it would be a simple question with a simple answer. But she can’t feel, she can’t see, she can’t know what this is or how deep she is. She scratches, fights, claws her way forward, pulls a deep breath into depleted lungs and forces a response to her own question.
Nothing.
She looks down at her own body, her hands just as unfeeling and lungs just as empty as before. There is no longer the weight of burial dirt and splintering coffin wood to battle, no fear of invisibility or numbness to push her forward.
What am I?
Is she…free? Untethered? Set loose? She doesn’t know. She stands, stares down at the grave before her. The heart she had in life would be beating out of her chest now had it followed her into death. But now she only sighs, a single shallow breath to welcome herself to the afterlife.
A ghost has no use for feelings here.
Sing of the Moon - 2.
Harlan woke again at 7:29 AM, one minute ahead of his alarm and being blinded by the light of the sun through the window. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten back to bed, yet there he was anyway, tangled in the blanket like he’d never gotten up at all.
His morning was slow and quiet, something that would be considered peaceful had anyone else been experiencing it. Get up, make a cup of coffee, feed the cat, stare out the window, scribble a few new notes or lyrics down on a page of sheet music—it was the same every day. But he was itching to go somewhere, to do something, to get away from this house as soon as he could.
He knew he should love it. He wanted to love it. It had been his home for years, after all, and the place he first wrote the songs he still played each night during his conversations with the Moon. Not to mention—
His train of thought was derailed by a knock at the door. He smiled faintly and glanced down at his watch: 10:30. He knew who this was.
“You can let yourself in, Clem,” Harlan called, not bothering to get up from his seat.
The door opened and a head poked in. Sure enough, his suspicions were confirmed. This was his next door neighbor Clementine, a friend of the building owner, sharp as a tack, and perhaps the only person he’d let hear his music since…well, let’s not bring that up now.
He hadn’t actually meant for her to hear it, but a combination of her unusually sharp ears, the building’s thin walls, and Harlan’s own pride had led him to allow it. Now, after so many weeks of her simply showing up in the mornings, he’d come to expect her. And to be entirely honest, he almost enjoyed it.
“How goes it?” Clementine said, her voice sing-songy as she crossed the studio.
“Well, it…goes,” Harlan replied with a sigh. What can you say when you’re so restless you can’t even think?
“Just goes? No big breakthroughs? It sounded like you were doing pretty spectacularly from my perspective.”
“I’m flattered, but no. That one was an old song, definitely not my best.” That was a lie.
He’d written it the night before, something he noodled out to soundtrack the night’s conversation with the Moon. Tell her the truth, he could almost hear her saying. She’s heard your best. She deserves it.
“Well, I think it’s perfect. You should make that your first single.”
“I appreciate the confidence, Clem,” Harlan almost laughed out loud, then deflected. “How are you doing? Besides, you know, coming to bully me into putting myself out there. No chance you’d be interested in coming to Lola’s tonight and letting her join you?”
Clementine grinned, suddenly looking ten years younger. “You know I love your sister, but I’ve a date tonight. My first in ten years, if you can believe it. Maybe I’ll hire you to play our wedding, yeah?”
“Maybe that’ll be the start of my career then,” Harlan said, winking, and then it was Clementine’s turn to laugh.
“I have high expectations for you, young man,” she said as she turned to leave. “You’d better get a move on!”
“Have fun,” he called to the closing door. As it shut, he sighed.
You know she’s right, Harlan.
“Or not. It’s not her decision to make anyway. Or Lola’s, or anybody else’s.”
But will you ever make a decision yourself?
“You sound like them,” Harlan scoffed quietly. “You’re not even here, are you? It’s too early for that.”
He nearly smirked when, as expected, there was no response. At the bright, sunny hour of—he checked his watch: 10:45—not even 11, the sky only held clouds and sunlight.
And with that, he decided, he wasn’t going to think about it again, at least not until that evening when Lola inevitably brought it up. For now, it was time to get out of this stifling apartment.
Sing of the Moon - 1.
He’d gone to bed at 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, the sun well on its way to the other side of the Earth. He’d hoped it would give him an extra hour of sleep, maybe two, before his mind simply couldn’t take it anymore.
But at exactly 1:01 AM, even against his best efforts, his eyes popped open. Right on time.
He got up with a sigh and went to his piano, where the Moon shone brightly onto the keys through the window. “Hey, old friend,” he whispered. A, B, C, D, E, then back again. “Top of the morning.”
I’m glad you’re doing well.
“Well?” He almost laughed. “Sure. Well.”
It was his (their?) standard routine—each morning at 1:01 AM, when Harlan Fletcher’s brain decided sleep was just too much trouble, he’d come back to his keyboard, play the same songs he’d been playing for three years now, and have a conversation with the Moon. A, C#, E. “How is it up there?”
Well, he called it a conversation. D, F, A.
Don’t you wish I could tell you?
If he were honest with you, he’d tell you he was just…tired. Tired of being alone and unsteady and ridden with fear, and the Moon gave him a bit of constance, normalcy, companionship. C, E, G.
If he were honest with himself…well, we wouldn’t have much of a story then, would we?
————
Each morning at 1:01 AM, a man speaks to the moon, and each morning, the moon speaks back. Sing of the Moon is a stage play first written in prose, a method designed to flesh out each character and each scene before its translation to the stage.