Free Dancing in the Dark by David Donnell Page B

Vassar; he had however gone to Yale and Juilliard, so he was like a professor, a fellow player, a distant often humorous musical genius and a friend.
    His friendship with Tom was more general and full of huge open spaces where they would talk, with only a few tokes of a single joint perhaps, and only a drink or two of bourbon, although the other Desperados drank like fish, maybe some coffee and they would talk long into the night after a concert that had gone well but left them with a variety of ideas to shuffle.
    One of the things they talked about, naturally, Tom and Hayden sitting up late maybe in Hayden’s room or maybe in Tom’s, Whitney off drinking with someone, Mason off to sleep early, Swift, in Sacramento at least, out at the old town Reservoir with two redheads, he hadn’t believed his good luck, he loved redheads and he loved two women at once, “Two redheads is two many women,” said Hayden, but whatever, sitting up late, a few tokes each on one joint, maybe just two drinks each with tons of ice, that sort of thing, one of the things that Tom and Hayden talked about sometimes was how Tom wrote songs, which Tom did naturally, unconsciously, almost spontaneously, in an easy way that he could never possibly, despite however much frustration, duplicate when he wrote stories, fiction, what the class writers wrote, literature, you know, lit terr atchoore, this pain,that was important: and how Hayden wrote music, arranged music, knew where to put the horns, knew how to start off in one time signature and develop a certain kind of rhythm turning into melody and guitar dominated back-beat, and then suddenly turn the whole thing over to keyboards and sonic percussion.
    Tom’s songs, brilliant scribbles really, were nothing without Hayden’s arrangements, without Hayden’s use of the French Horn on “Summer Cottage & Skunks,” a new Tom song, then where would Tom be? Tom made his respect and admiration very evident; but what wasn’t evident, not always at least, was Hayden’s intense interest in how Tom wrote songs like “Summer Cottage & Skunks,” or any other song for that matter. Because Hayden, who could have become a greater composer than the original Haydn, really longed at times to write songs as well, not that it was his main longing, his main longing was obviously music, music, pure music, pure music of a certain kind, what would later be called a “new American avant-garde.”
    But these were subjects Hayden had to lay aside more than he had planned after he began to tour with the Desperados. And it wasn’t because of Whitney, by any means, or, as in Tom’s case, because of the influence of his father. It was simply that he didn’t have enough time. That big word that, after what happened in Texas, came to mean a lot to Hayden.
    Music, time, and various things Hayden associated with his mother, who loved Hayden’s work, not just because she was his mother, but who always preferred, just to be honest, certain Gospel songs, like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and “We Shall Gather at the River,” and “Swing Low,” and “Joshua at the Battle of Jericho.” And certain Broadway musical songs, even that somewhat broad comic song from
South Pacific
, “There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame,” or “Porgy’s Song,” from
Porgy and Bess
. Songs she had grown up with, sung in church in some cases, that she preferred to the brilliant and explosive music that her most talented and oldest son wrote while he was with the Desperados.
    And afterwards, after, for example, they put Hayden in prison for three years for somewhat brutally murdering, killing, it wasn’t premeditated, old redcheeks ratshit Henner, their fallible and mendacious manager, thenthere was time, to think about the angularity of unexpected chords. And to reflect on the fact that Satie is a great composer, but “Will the Circle …” is also a great song.
    But that’s another story, and of a somewhat different colour, or, as the