"Why are we both running away from what we both tell each other we need

"How did I let you say goodbye to me

"I know that the time’s long gone to say exactly where all of the dream went wrong

"You can go your own way and I’ll dream of mine."

Jim waited about ten seconds, then said, “How’s that?”

A.J. raised his thumbs, having shut off the tape machine. “Not bad,” he replied into a microphone. Jim only heard him in his headphones. “A little flat on the third line, but a dub through the Synclavier should salvage it.”

Jim nodded and removed his headphones. As soon as he was in the control room he asked for the tape to be rewound so he could hear it. A.J. pressed play and let the music start. The piece was oriented towards Jim’s keyboard skills, with no guitar. A.J. played fretless bass and drums, While Jim sang the vocals.

They listened while the introduction flowed by. “Weird tune,” A.J. noted. “What ever possessed you to write in quartal chords?”

“It just happened,” Jim said. “The first chord came out of random pounding at the piano. The bass line just flowed afterwards. I had the chorus written in a matter of seconds.”

“And it works. We may have a single here, dude.”

Jim laughed, then held up his hand for quiet while the song played out. “You’re right about that third line,” he said, “but other than that I’m satisfied.”

“Good,” A.J. replied. “That only leaves us with side four. You know, we’ve got to give that song a title.”

“I know,” Jim replied, “and I’ve been giving it some thought. How about Close Your Eyes?”

“Makes sense. Have you written words?”

“Some. I want to put the music tracks down first before finishing it.”

“How do you want to handle the taping?”

“Piano first, with a click track. We can dub in the rest as we go.”

“Can you handle 35 minutes of click track?”

“I’ll have to. What I’ll do is play the piano, and have a separate track that I’ll talk ideas for the arrangement tracks into. We’ll edit out that track with the click.”

“Fair enough.” A.J. paused, rewinding the tape to fix the one off line. “Query: the song about Karen?”

“No. I’m not sure I could ever do something like that.”

A.J. raised an eyebrow but let it go. “Don’t you think it’s time we released a list of the songs to the record company?” He asked.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Jim responded. “You know what the reaction will be. Three records? Three CDs even!”

“Too many notes,” A.J. said, laughing. “They said the same thing of Mozart. Look at his reputation now.”

“But Mozart died at the age of 36 in poverty.”

“Yeah, but he was respected!”

“Respect? What do you want respect for? You have intimidation in your favor.”

“Just shut the fuck up and let’s re-do that one line.”

Jim walked back into the studio to the Synclavier, and set up the sampling loop to pick up his voice.

"I know the time’s long gone to say exactly where all of the dream went wrong"

Jim looked at the control booth and saw A.J.’s thumbs up. Jim did a quintuple back flip, landing on his feet. A.J. matched the maneuver in the cramped quarters of the control room.

Jim looked at his brother in surprise. “How did you do that?” he asked. “There’s not enough clearance in there for someone your size to do a move like that!”

“Same way we play darts,” A.J. responded.

“What are you talking about? I don’t use the talent for darts.” Jim looked in wonder. “Do you mean that you do?”

A.J. looked equally surprised. “Do you mean,” he returned, “that your playing is natural?”

Jim nodded.

Nearly a minute passed while what took only seconds to transpire went through the heads of both men. A.J. spoke first.

“Jesus!” he whistled. “You’re good.”

“I get told that from time to time. You can focus a certain part of your body?”

“I always have.”

“You’ve been holding out on me. How do you do that?”

A.J. came into the studio. “If I’ve held out on you, it hasn’t been intentional. If you could see as I do, it would be easy to explain.

“The first thing you do is define a focal point in your body. Then define a three-dimensional grid with units defined as hitting points in your body. An x, y, and a z axis need to be defined. All of that must be second nature for it to work.”

“Holy shit!” Jim exclaimed. “Anything else?”

“It’s not that hard.”

“You’ve got more than a twenty year head start! I don’t even use grids at all!”

“Chill out, okay? I can do it, you can do it.

“What I do next,” A.J. continued, “is take the appropriate axes and plug in a formula that defines a line at that point on the grid you want to move. Then change the velocity formula and off you go.”

“So you pushed your feet from behind,” Jim said, “causing you to flip.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” A.J. returned. “I then go from velocity to the gravity formula and let friction eventually slow me enough so I can stop. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“You still have to think of two things at once.”

“True, but I’m not as scared of it as you are.”

“And you have a rubber room in your house.”

“You can use my gym any time, big bro’.”

“Let’s do it.” Jim said.

As the two brothers closed up the studio, A.J. asked, “How do you do the back flips?”

“I launch myself,” Jim replied, “then change gravity for multiples.”

“You can do a normal back flip too?”

Jim simply did one.

“Question withdrawn,” A.J. said with a sigh.

At A.J.’s gym both men practiced A.J.’s technique. Jim was having a difficult time of it, as it was hard for him to release his thoughts to concentrate on two ideas.

“Don’t you ever fly?” A.J. asked.

“No,” Jim replied. “I can glide, but there’s always a fraction of a second in which I lose gravity as I start my flight.”

“Chickenshit,” A.J. said with a smile.

“Oh, fuck off. Let me try it again.”

Jim stood in the center of the room. He thought of a grid and the appropriate xy formula. Then he pushed, using velocity. He crashed into the floor almost immediately. The same thing had happened using force instead of velocity.

“Needs work,” A.J. said.

“I can’t get to gravity fast enough,” Jim replied, catching his breath. “The grid takes too much time to think out.”

“Maybe you should do gravity first.”

Jim stood up. “Worth a shot,” he said. He floated up ten inches, then tried again. This time the spin began, but again he crashed to the ground.

A.J. ran to him. “You all right?” he asked.

Jim didn’t get up, but said that he was. After a moment, he exerted himself and sat up. “Do you use calculus?” he asked.

A.J. shuddered. “As rarely as possible.”

“What would you do if you used the formula for a fluctuating parabola instead of a line? Wouldn’t that work in your curved flight experiment?”

A.J. brightened considerably.

“Hadn’t thought of that, had you?” Jim asked.

“No,” A.J. admitted, “I hadn’t.” He thought about it for a moment. “How would I intersect the curve to follow it?”

“Simply displace your grid.” Jim’s face fell. “You need to think three thoughts simultaneously. Shit! We can’t do it.”

“You can’t,” A.J. intoned. “I have my grid ingrained as second nature. Maybe I can.”

“Can you displace it?”

“I don’t know. I can try.”

A.J. floated up four feet. After a moment, the concentration on his face became evident. After a few minutes more he floated down, obviously worn by the effort.

“I can’t displace the grid,” A.J. said. “It’s too hard. I’m too used to grid the way it is.”

“So we’re stuck,” Jim said.

“I’m not giving up. It just needs a lot of work.”

“Yeah, right.”

A.J. ignored the cynicism and floated up again.