The recession hit so fast and so hard that smiles dropped from people’s faces and shattered on the sidewalk. In the middle of jokes and sunshine and children laughing, a man realized that he had lost his ten-year job. A woman realized that she had lost her house, without even finishing the basement. A teenager realized that he would not be going to college next year.
Lindsay was downtown when the recession hit so fast and so hard. She was about to walk into a sushi place after her singing lesson when she realized that she had no money for eating out. She dug around in her purse for her wallet, and found forty dollars and some small change. Her heart dropped as she realized that the forty dollars was her shopping money for the next two weeks, maybe for the month. She looked up from her purse and saw people standing on the sidewalk with puzzled or sad or angry faces. She looked into the cars going down St. Paul Street and saw similar expressions on drivers’ faces. Recession depression settled onto the street like angry, rain-filled clouds. And Lindsay knew she had been born for this moment. She took a deep breath and started walking down the sidewalk, not really knowing where she was headed. She knew she would know it when she found it.
Two minutes later, she saw it starting to happen at a pawnshop on the other side of the street. She had to wait for the light to change before she could cross, and a driver still almost ran her over. Lindsay’s breath was panicked gasps as she reached the small group in front of the pawnshop. An overweight, balding man with “Knight’s Pawnshop” printed on a dirty t-shirt was setting up a battered drum kit. “You a singer?” he inquired gently. He looked into her eyes for a moment, and Lindsay did not have to answer, he already knew. She looked around and saw a black-draped teenage boy dragging a huge amp out of the pawnshop, an instrument in a soft case slung on his back. A fiftyish-looking man with a scraggly beard was plugging another amp into a tangle of powerbars plugged into extension cards snaking out of the shop. An electric guitar, looking just as old and scraggly was leaning up against the shop window. A university-age guy with a shaved head was setting up a soundboard on a makeshift table of milk crates and plywood. A pickup truck piled with speakers slid up and parked in front of the shop and the driver climbed out. The driver must have been seventy years old, a little grandmother taking a break from making cookies or crocheting or something. She looked at Lindsay and said in a whisper, “My William would have wanted you to use these today.” She looked around and made eye contact with the sound board guy, who smiled briefly, undid the tailgate of the pickup truck and hopped aboard with a handful of chords. Lindsay stood back and watched as the setup continued. A melody was circling the tip of her mind, but she could not quite grasp it yet. Her sadness at the recession was dropping her heart lower and lower, but the melody was keeping her on her feet.
The drummer tightened drum stuff. The teenager took a cheap-looking bass out of his case and plugged it into the amp, tuning it. The fiftyish guy tuned his guitar and played a practice riff, a riff that wriggled into Lindsay’s head to tag onto the almost-melody in her head, making it real and singable. The sound guy looked at the pawnshop owner sitting at the drum kit, and nodded. Lindsay knew everything was ready. She raised her hand to lift the microphone up to her mouth, but there was no microphone. She looked up the street, looking for her mic, and there it was, kid on BMX bike, peddling for all he was worth. He skidded his bike to a stop in front of the sound guy and handed him the microphone he had been clutching perilously in one hand. The sound guy plugged it into a chord and tossed it hard to Lindsay. Lindsay caught it, feeling the sting of it hitting her hand. She spoke into it. “Hello, Downtown! We are The Remnant.”
The bass was rumbling and the drummer was tapping and Lindsay opened her mouth again just as the electric guitar started. It was magic, it was magic, it was magic and the melody raised the hair on the back of Lindsay’s neck. The melody was Joni Mitchell and the lyrics were Bruce Cockburn and the sadness was U2 and the hope was Handel. People striding the sidewalk slowed and stopped, cocking their ears. The frowns and anger on their faces faded into neutral. Lindsay noticed the change, and she sang her heart out. By the end of the song, her mouth was almost dry and her heart was racing. A middle-aged Asian woman walked out of a convenience store, across the car-empty street, and handed a pack of bottled water to Lindsay. She uncapped a bottle and took a swig, then glanced at the other band members. The sound guy raised his eyebrows at her, so she tossed him a bottle. The paunchy drummer was still playing, so she put a couple bottles next to him. The bass player opened his mouth, his fingers still plucking and slapping and rolling, and Lindsay poured water into his mouth. The electric guitar player was intense and unreachable, so she put some bottles near him. She picked up her mic again and started humming, waiting for new words to reach her as the song changed behind her. When the words came, she hesitated. The words were angry and sad, words that yelled at people to look up and look around and check on neighbours they barely knew. Lindsay sang the words, letting herself sing fully and angrily and with such a depth of sadness that her heart felt like it was ending a three-year relationship.
Lindsay looked at the audience gathered on the sidewalk and on the street and on the opposite sidewalk, and knew that this angry sad song was right. People’s neutral expressions were forming into awake faces and realization was striking some. This angry sadness is the first step to hope, Lindsay thought to herself. So she continued to sing with all her might, watching faces defrost from years of money and disconnection and apathy. “We are related,” Lindsay sang. “I don’t even like you, but you can have my hope,” Lindsay sang. “You are my fellow sidewalk citizen,” Lindsay sang. The song ended with a bang.
The bass-player rumbled into something new, a rhythm that shattered all anger and all sadness and the drummer fell into the rhythm. The electric player jammed along, then took the lead. She knew this was going to be a long song, so she swigged water, feeling it’s coolness on her tongue. This is going to be a song of hope, and it must never end, she thought to herself, even after we finish playing here. So she sang with renewed energy, the energy of hope, and she had never sung as beautifully or as powerfully ever before. Her feet lifted off the ground as she sang, and one part of her mind watched in wonder as she floated and noticed the street changing. The street changed into a wide field on a bright day, and her feet were floating above a ten-foot-high stage. In the distance, past all the people, all the people, she saw the sound guy floating as well, gripping his sound board with one hand and twisting knobs with the other. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the electric player floating two feet above the stage, somehow staying in control of his guitar. The drummer had to be floating as well, and Lindsay had no idea how the beat was still going on, but she did not dare look away from the crowd. Faces were joyous now, there was happiness there, unconnected to economics. This was the happiness of unity and neighbourhood and people being together.
Lindsay sang songs she had never known before, and the electric player broke a string and improvised and the drum kit rattled and hummed and the bass player had to tune while playing. The sunshine beamed hot on them and Lindsay felt her pale skin starting to burn. And her heart sank, because she knew this was the last song. Her heart did not sink into economic-scale hopelessness, but into a numbing realization that the magic was ending. Lindsay sang about gripping hope and donating to food banks and smiling at strangers. She watched as the open field faded back into a downtown street. Her feet touched the sidewalk with a thump that sent a tingle of pain up her legs. She kept singing, because the song still had several things to say, and she watched people head out from downtown to food banks and their neighbourhoods and volunteer organizations. And Lindsay knew that the recession had not ended. It was just starting and it would be the most difficult thing her generation had experienced so far. She also know that the magic was apparently gone, but that it still remained deep inside people’s heads and consciences and their feet and their hands.
[Just wrote this really rough draft in an hour and twenty-three minutes, after dreaming about an impromptu concert and the transforming power of music.]
Fiction, Flash Fiction, Podcasts | ShanShen, 14 Dec 08 | 
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