Gutless, pt - 2
By the time she entered her sophomore year, Amy could find notes on the guitar fret as if they were painted on her eyelids. The music traveled from thought to sound with an occasional glance at her music stand, but now all she concentrated on was not staring at Katarina. As a cellist Katarina was amazing, fluid and precise. But when she played her electric bass, maybe because the instrument itself was smaller and she could hold it, she almost became the music.
It was only when Amy joined Ask Alice that she saw Katarina in this light. It was the end of sophomore year, around the same time of that grim E party. Amy knew Katarina and had played music with her since junior high, but this new awareness kept Amy on guard. When Katarina caught Amy looking at her she'd shoot her "Yeah what?" look, and Amy would feel her eyes scramble back to her music stand. Though they never talked about it, Amy began to avoid Katarina outside of rehearsal.
Playing guitar in a rock band like Ask Alice offered Amy a whole new challenge. Playing violin in front of people was one thing, but this change Amy found daunted by two new strings and a different tuning. The guitar forced her to concentrate on chord structures and all the different scales, but it changed the way she felt about being a musician. Louis noticed it after Amy's first gig with Ask Alice.
"You just look DIFFERENT," he was suddenly bashful. "You look like you're mean or something."
"Wow, really?" Amy was fascinated. Her absorbing obsession with the guitar took her from being a child prodigy to another persona completely. Amy liked it. It gave her that feeling.
She first got that feeling in first grade after her first music recital. When she knew she nailed the concerto. The other kid's parents looked at her with those, why not MY kid eyes.
Her own parents left her alone to pursue that feeling as she pushed on and on with scales and arpeggios, anything for the next challenge. But somewhere in eighth grade the thrill began to pale, and she started digging through her brother's old records. Then Marcus gave her his old guitar for her fourteenth birthday.
Life as she knew it changed once she slipped the Fender over her head. She liked the way the body rested on her hip, and how the neck felt in her hand. It felt so much more solid than the violin. She even liked the chord structures and lower notes. It was like being given a whole new language.
This must be what falling in love is like. She'd sit in class, and dream about playing along with the latest find from Marc's record collection. Only the guitar stayed with her and spoke for her when she was too tired, or didn't want to answer any more questions.
When Marc moved out he left all his vinyl. The CD craze hadn't gone away like he hoped, and he was in the middle of updating his whole collection. "Take them." He told her with sadness, and she felt like she had woken up in heaven. The collection offered her years of undiscovered pleasure, and she'd already spent countless hours listening and learning. She loved the looks of the Ramones and their skinny leather jackets. Television seemed particularly moody, and she loved their sound. The Talking Heads and the Velvet Underground were cool, because they had female musicians, but she liked Patti Smith the best.
She was Amy's ultimate hero: half rock'n'roll shaman and half glorified nerd. Amy imagined having the confidence to stare into the camera like Patti on the cover of HORSES. And some of us are just nerds.
Once her passion for the violin cooled, she began to notice what fueled her peers. It wasn't instruments and other musicians. Only Louis got weird about something, and that was dancing.
Amy's peers, at least at school, gushed about pop star guys Amy had never heard of. Amy never knew what was on the TV, and didn't listen to the radio, so that only amplified her ignorance. And by freshman year she gave up.
Playing music was the only thing that got her out of the house, and even that was beginning to tire her. Violin recitals were about as fun as going to the dentist. But one spring day in sophomore year Katarina, the school's cellist, suggested that Amy sit in on Ask Alice as guitarist. Their previous guitarist graduated last year, and the band wanted to gig again at the all-ages venues in the city.
The world of rock'n'roll and playing guitar was slowly swallowing her up. It was as if Amy hadn't realized how isolated she had been until she started playing the guitar and learning about rock bands. The music came closer to articulating her aggressions than violin. And playing rock'n'roll gave her proof that even outside the dusty world of her brother's record collection there was a better life. Amy created a whole fantasy world to come home to in the records. She knew these people's stories, and they seemed so much more interesting than her high school hell.
Her parents knew that the guitar was taking over her life, and after a series of huge fights gave up on pushing Amy any further on the violin. Amy's grades were always ok, and she hadn't gotten into any trouble. It was also the happiest they had seen her since junior high started. But she had to promise that she would play in the jazz ensemble until graduation, and consider a music degree or program in college.
It was a huge compromise on her parent's part, submitting to the guitar instead of the violin. Still to Amy Manhattan's downtown rock scene beckoned. A mere subway ride from Brooklyn, a fantasyland of peer groups and love affairs she'd only seen on the movies.