The Sound of Muzak
Death.
Why is it that only when facing it we instantly wish our time here was better spent? Why is it that only when threatened with death we vow to eat well, exercise, meditate and live as cleanly as possible? Why is it that only when realising we are soon to die we regret not eating well, not exercising enough and living like pigs? For we had lives, didn’t we? Before accepting death, we were alive, were we not? We could have done so much, but we chose not to. We could have lived, but instead we chose to die. Yes, we did. We chose to embrace death.
And yet I don’t want to go.
I have no family, but if I did, they would be more precious to me than anything. How cliché, yet how true. I have no friends, not anymore. What, then, will I miss? What are my regrets?
The truth is I’ll miss my music, and I’ll regret never having reached the heights I know I could have reached.
You see, I feel like a fraud. I spent my days tiddling around on drum machines, mashing together pretty sounds and bouncing up and down on stages during raves. I had friends in the business, and they snapped me up at an early age. I thought I was the shit, to be quite honest. There I was, young yet sufficiently talented to be signed to a label. I loved producing music and, in the beginning, never questioned my decision to take it up for a living. Now I wish I’d heeded the advice of so many. I had the chance to train, to study music thoroughly and learn its nuances. It passed me by. I let it pass. Now music is dying, and I’m responsible for it. Not wholly responsible, I admit, but certainly complicit. It’s a cruel irony, to love something so much and in the end play a part in its downfall.
I was once told that music is valid at all levels. That is true, but valid and significant are two very different things. Let me ask you this. What must music always do? It must always tell a story. There are many ways to tell a story, and dance music will always be able to tell you a valid one. But how significant is that story? And how varied? You’ve a thumping bass, a synth or two, a melody and you’re good to go. Now, there’s a lot you can do with that, believe me. But here’s the clincher – there isn’t a lot you can do that ponies want to hear. And therein lies the problem. Beats – my beats, which are now so popular that every producer from Vanhoover to Canterlot is obsessed with replicating them – can only tell you the same old story BECAUSE every producer from Vanhoover to Canterlot is obsessed with replicating them. They’re a success. They’ve made money. They’ve made me rich. And as a result, everypony who can press a spacebar wants a slice. Do you see? It’s about MONEY. It’s not about music. It’s not about stories. Not anymore. Ponies want to hear the sound of MONEY, not music. And they’ll do anything to keep hearing it.
I actually realised this very early on, and very early on I vowed to change. I stopped producing. I went into self-imposed exile. Royalties always found me, which was depressing. I was set up for life – all they did was remind me of the fact that the business was just that. Where was the soul? Where was the music? I was further disheartened. Nevertheless, during my exile, I met a pony who shared my views. She was a cellist, into classical music, and she too was fed up with the business – she was playing the same old story again and again because it made her money. Because it was money and nothing more.
Now, unlike me, she had studied music. She had done things by the book and knew her stuff. We went for a drink together. She showed me her flat. And she also played me a CD – piano music of her cousin’s, who had once composed film scores. And it was beautiful. So simple, a pony and a piano, yet what stories they were. Each twist was introduced and explored with such nuance of emotion that I cried on the spot. It was everything I wanted to hear – a true celebration of music. I asked her what had become of that cousin. She told me he had left town. He’d given up because there was no longer anything to be made selling such music. It had been brushed aside to make way for the sound of money, the sound that was everywhere – in pubs, clubs, sports halls, shops and shopping malls and film and television. I felt so sad – and so guilty. We embraced. It felt good.
So why, then, three years later, after that, was I back on the decks, churning it out again – the sound of money, the silver-pilled ear-wash that could never change? Why, Vinyl, why? Were you really as shallow as the rest of them? Did you really snap at the sight of all that money, or were you forced to? Or was it far, far simpler than that?
I was once told that life is like a corridor filled with doors. You can open each one and look inside, but enter a room and you’re stuck forever. And that’s more or less how it went. I had fans who loved me, agents who had me on contract, billboards with my name and face on them, begging for my return. I had made a mark on the world. I had an image to maintain and a role to keep playing. In fact, it was my duty. Whatever else I wanted to do with my life, it could wait. My responsibilities came first. You want to make some new music, Vinyl? That’s nice, but not till you write us a couple number ones. You want to play a piano concert, Vinyl? Cool, but not till you’re finished with these tours. You’re tired of it all, Vinyl? Think of your record deals, your sponsors, your fans. No, no, no, no, no, you simply must keep it all up, Vinyl, you simply must. And I did. And so did Octavia. So much for our grand ideals. So much for stories. So much for music.
And it took its toll. Repression brings out the worst in you. I fell in with the wrong crowds. I started bad habits and they only got worse. Some nights I would come home so plastered that my agent employed an escort. Harry was his name. I liked him. He was nice. But he didn’t last long, because I didn’t have long left to last. My lifestyle was unsustainable, my so-called music was suffering, my waistline was expanding, my image was dying. And suddenly, I was done. No more fans, no more record deals, no more money. You’d think it would have been liberating, but instead it was just sad. I did this to myself. I did this. I’m sick and dying, and it’s all my fault. And do you know what’s even sadder? My muzak is still popular. Ponies still listen to it. But who gets the money and the credit? Not me. Not anymore.
Nevertheless, no more money and no money at all aren’t quite the same thing. I’d made a fortune, and they couldn’t strip me of it all for legal reasons. I’d written the songs. No matter how much I’d signed away to shareholders, I was still getting a bite. Do you know, it was almost better this way. I was out the business but still well-off enough to do as I pleased. Once the sadness wore off, I did feel liberated. And fat stomach or not, I could still make music. I could still tell a story. And at last I had the opportunity to do it – to escape the life of the past and start anew. I met with orchestras, I convinced them I was serious, and they took me seriously. Next thing I knew I was writing orchestral music. And Octavia, although still playing, helped me. And what music we wrote. Just as with her cousin’s melancholic keywork, we were pouring every shade of pony feeling into those strings, every wild, frolicking breath of nature into our woodwind. The drumming of waterfalls became my beat. The voice of the earth became my vocal. And suddenly we were getting more and more popular, and we threw concerts. They weren’t huge, but they weren’t small either. And suddenly the world was getting interested in me again, but for good reasons this time. Or so I thought.
For once again, I was approached. Once again, I was offered money. A collaboration, they told me, between my music and that of the chart artists. For charity, for a fundraiser – whatever reason they gave, it was always a good one. Nonetheless, I gave them a chance. I went to their studios. And what did I learn there? Already, they were mass-producing it – the next wave of money music, and behind each angry rap verse and quivering high note were my mournful strings, my chirping woodwind, my waterfalls. Were they mine? They could have been somepony else’s and I wouldn’t have noticed. The same old story – again and again. No matter how wonderful it once was, if you keep getting sold the same novel, you’ll learn to hate it. I fled, and I stopped my music one more time.
So what could I do now? I was getting older and fatter. And my creative output, which was never large, was getting even smaller. There was no image left in old Vinyl, but there was heart. I still loved music, because I still believed it didn’t have to be the way it was. I met with Octavia. I told her where I was, and she suggested I take up the piano. Leave everything else behind, she told me. No sheet music, no metronome, nothing to work your mind – just play what you feel. I gave it a shot.
There’s something magical about stacking fourths. There’s nothing conventional that jumps out and whacks you on the nose when you play them. You don’t think ‘Oh, this is that song’ or anything like it. You can just play the notes and revel in how honest and mystical they sound. Mystical isn’t even the word – I simply can’t put my hoof on it. And I think that’s why I like them so much, these stacked fourths. I’m so used to associating certain chords with certain moods. It’s great to hear something I can’t quite place in terms of how I feel about it. No joke, I spent hours just letting rip chord after chord of these things until inspiration struck and I worked them into a functional piece of music. And I was composing again. Look at that. You can’t escape your destiny. Heck, I didn’t want to. I say it again – I love music, and because I haven’t got a family, I will miss it more than anything.
So, there I was, back at it again. Octavia heard me one night, and she loved what she heard. Next second we were talking recording sessions, we were talking tracks, we were talking albums. She even wrote some string passages for me, and god, were they beautiful. And this time there was no mention of the business. We weren’t so much as linking this to money-making of any kind. No talk shows. No ads. No concerts, even. Just pure, unfiltered, unedited Vinyl, sitting at her piano and telling you all a story. That’s what I named the album. Vinyl Scratch – Piano Stories. ‘It’s got to say something’ was a subheading on the disc – I couldn’t resist. I’d spent too long in the pockets of labels and agents. I wanted to be at the front of a new movement in music – one pushing to reinstate the significance that had been tossed overboard. And to distance myself even further from the business, the album sold at one bit a pop. Good, eh?
And then disaster struck. Oh, how typical, but no less damaging for that. Turns out, if you’re famous once, you can never escape its prison. I was all over the newspapers again – but not for anything music-related this time. Shock! Scandal! Vinyl Scratch exposed, etc. I won’t even mention the nature of the horrific allegations these so-called journalists threw at me – but once they’ve hit you, they can’t unstick. I was finished. Nopony would so much as look at another album of mine let alone want to hear what was inside. My release was a flop, and the papers wasted no time in taking advantage of that too. I was an image again – this time one of ridicule. Don’t get me wrong, some ponies knew it was all a load of crap and listened to my stuff anyway, and some understood what I was trying to do. Quite a few liked it, in fact, and that did mean a lot. But I’d had enough. I wanted to leave town and never return. And that meant severing all connections. How could Octavia and I still be friends if we hadn’t that bond of music anymore? I would never compose again. I knew it. She knew it. And that was the last thought we shared.
I didn’t even make it out the door, so to speak. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve lived a life totally bereft of any discipline in your earlier years. I hit the deck, quite literally. I was rushed off to hospital. I received my diagnosis.
And now I’m lying here, in this sterile bed, beneath these sterile sheets, musing on what could have been and never was. I told you – you only get like this when facing death. I didn’t do more with my life, because I wasn’t facing death. And now I can’t do anything other than wait it out. What really gets me, though, is when the nurses stick on the radio and what I’m hearing hasn’t changed – it’s still the sound of money. That’s what upsets me most. That’s the biggest disappointment of all.
‘Vinyl?’
I hoist myself up and lean against the head rail. It’s one of the nurses. She’s holding flowers.
‘I’ll just set them here, all right?’
I nod. She leaves them on the bedside table, along with what looks like a card. No, too chunky to be a card. I wait till the nurse leaves, then reach over, grunting. I prise open the envelope and a note falls out onto my duvet.
Never stop hoping.
I frown and give the envelope another shake. Something hard falls out. It’s a CD case. I pick it up and take a look.
My mouth starts to tremble. My eyes begin to water.
Barely two minutes later, on my request, a nurse is placing the disc into our hi-fi system. I lie back and feel the tears trickle onto my pillow. I shut my eyes and quietly rejoice, for on my lap is the CD case, and on its front are words I never thought I’d read. Words far more comforting than anything anypony could ever say to me. I cry through closed eyes, and thank the world for its kindness.
OCTAVIA – PIANO STORIES