darknessmolten:

devilsfool:

Yes. 

When I first came back, in the 1980s, I was discovering modern music through dirty, grungy, unknown little bands who would play in underground clubs, forgotten basements of warehouses, and garages of abandoned mansions, etc. They reminded me of the Commedia Players of old or of the players in the theatre–messy, cheap paint on their faces, filthy in lovely, bohemian ways. Poor, underpaid, doing it purely for the glory with no thoughts towards money or fame. 

One of those nights I was listening to a band play in one of those places–an old warehouse, mostly rusted steel girders and rotting brick walls at the point, and older musicians that I usually listened to or jammed with, but they’d welcomed me in with a smile and a the offer of a cigarette–and I remember one of the members putting in a cassette tape and playing it. 

I knew it was him the moment I heard it. You don’t forget his music, mortal or immortal, not once you know it. Not once he’s played it for you, only for you, and imprinted those scars underneath your skin. 

If my blood could have run cold in that moment, it would have. As it was, I grew eerily still in only the way that we can, to the point where I recall one of the mortals asking me if I was okay, did I need a drink, did I need some air?

I vaguely remember mumbling some sort of excuse and leaving. I remember the room seeming blurred, not real, the mortal voices and instruments nothing but a piece of artwork dipped in water in the background of my vision as I fumbled my way out of the building. 

You see, I didn’t know then that he had lived. I had no idea. It was the last thing on my mind that Nicolas might still be alive somewhere, might not have perished, and might still be making music on that thrice-damned instrument out there in the world. 

I told myself that I must have been mistaken, or convinced myself that I had been hearing ghosts instead of reality. I have often suffered thus; it would not have been a new feeling for me. 

It wasn’t until decades later, when I practically ran him over in Paris, that I realized that I’d actually heard him in that grungy warehouse in New Orleans. It had been him, yes. He was alive. 

Bastard. 

Was it any good?