Some of the chords come easily to him, others are out of practice, and I can tell it bothers him.
“It’s been too long,” he tells me and– what is that? Emotion?– on his face? Shyness? I didn’t think he was capable of that. But it disappears just as quickly as it had shown.
“It’s never too long. Once you know how, you carry it forever. Like riding a bike.”
“I don’t think this is like that,” Callum argues.
“Sure, it is.”
“The last time I rode a bike I think I went over the handlebars into a bush.”
I laugh and he stares at me, a smile tipping his lips. I blush.
“Okay so it’s not like riding a bike. Bikes get trickier as we get older. But music never leaves a person. It might be locked away but as soon as you open the door, it comes out the same as it always was.”
With that, Callum starts to strum again but with a little more ease this time. After a few chords, he looks up at me with only his eyes, his hands still holding the slow rhythm of what sounds like a Bob Dylan song.
“Question,” he nods up at me.
“Okay. But only if I can ask one too.”
“Fair enough. Shoot.”
I shake my head. “Nope. You first.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“You mean the studio? I didn't know I wasn’t allowed to hang around.”
“I mean the booth. Were you planning on recording something?”
“No. I just wanted to hear how it would sound in a real studio.”
“Ah,” he looks back down at his hands during a bar chord. “So, Hardin isn’t real. Got it.”
“Of course, Hardin is real. But the BlueJay is…shut up. You know what I mean.”
Callum chuckles and I smile before going on.
“I came in here because working with January sparked something in me. It pulled me back into the deep water of what music is all about. What it’s always meant in my soul. I was never accepted for it in its real form. In its true nature. So much like every other aspect of my perfect daughter and older sister roll, I had to mask it as something else. But in here, I’m alone. Or, I was alone,” I smile, and he looks up at me and his lips tip again. I keep talking.
“I was always a good kid. A good student. Never got bad grades or got into any trouble. But when my work was done, I let music fill my head. I’d jot down words in my journal, changing them out until they turned into lyrics, stitching them together until those lyrics grew into songs. Then I’d take those heart strings to the guitar strings and see what I could make out of them.”
“It’s about your sister isn’t it?” Callum cuts in. “That song you were playing. The sun and the moon.”
“It is. I guess I’ve always felt like I am in the shadows and she’s just lighting up the world.”
“The thing about the sun though is that we don’t need much of it to see the way. More than a little burns us. We need shades and shelter, and no one wants to stand around in that. But the moon…people chase the moon, Amanda. The moon never burns anyone yet it’s just as bright. I feel like when the sun goes to sleep that’s when I can really think. Really feel. Contemplate life. The sun is too much and the world in the morning is too crowded. But the moon? Silver and blue, hanging in the dark night sky like a Christmas ornament at the top of the tree…that’s what summons my soul to seize the day. That’s my kind of sunrise.”
“Carpe Noctem,” I say, and he stops to look at me, though his fingers are still on the strings.
“I’m sorry?” he asks.
“Carpe Noctem. It means, seize the night.”
A smile creeps across his lips and my heart strums in my chest. My nerves prickle with the beginning sparks of a fire.
“Your turn,” he says.
