Amethyst Rose: 17

[mdlbear]

Talk about a long, strange trip. In about a month I'll be starting work on my next album, which hopefully won't take nearly as long as the first one has. It will be called Amethyst Rose.

Subject: TOAST: Amethyst Rose: 17
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Date: 04 Aug 2007 23:30:24 -0700

The Mandelbear, a creature seldom seen in the Place these days, slowly
fades into view near the bar.  "Been a while, Mike; this is about the
only day I come in here nowadays."

"Hear you have a CD due out soon," Mike says as he reaches for the
dusty bottle of Bols genever.  "Aren't you a little old to be starting
a career in music?"

"When did I first start thinking about an album of computer songs?
Twenty years or so ago?  Well, they'll be on a UPS truck about this
time on August 8th."  The fractal shakes its vaguely ursine head, and
sips the gin with a slightly befuddled air.  "Besides, 60 isn't that
old.  I didn't notice any hill...

"Yeah, *Coffee, Computers, and Song* is done, and I can turn my
attention to the next one."  

He walks up to the chalk line with a nearly-empty glass in his hand,
flickering between a strangely bear-shaped fractal and an ageing,
white-bearded hacker.  He drains the glass and hurls it into the
fireplace, where it shatters with a satisfying crash.  

"Amethyst Rose!"

"Seventeen years ago tonight our second daughter was stillborn.  For
about the last ten years, I've been figuring that my second album
would be in her memory.  There's going to be about a month of
craziness mailing out pre-orders, but about the middle of September
I'll be able to get started."


He walks over to table 28X, in the corner where the AIs and robots
hang out, and opens a dusty guitar case.  The guitar blurs a little,
uncertain whether to manifest itself as his old Martin O-15, or as a
dreadnought packed with circuitry still about 20 years in the future.
She settles on the latter, and hums a wordless greeting as he eases
her into a drop-D tuning and fingers a D5 chord.

"You have your own sorrows, don't you, my Lady?  I hope you liked what
Callie and I did with your song on the CD."  

As he plays, the X window in the corner shifts to show a forest
clearing.  It's always twilight there, always still and silent; the
trees are made of stone.  A bush with obsidian thorns and leaves of
green jade stands, as it always has, near the clearing's left-hand
edge.  It bears a single amethyst blossom.

The girl who seems to live there is always hard to see; tonight she
seems to be laughing, though whether in joy or mockery is impossible
to tell.  She flits among the shadows of the wood, her laughing eyes a
crystalline glimmer in the twilight.

The album after that will be called Hacker's Heaven, and will be mostly a mix of computer and space songs.

Comments

[mdlbear]

Yes, it was. Memories and dreams...

I may be calling up a lot of them during the next year or two, but it's time I did.