“Un papillon…un papillon di seta blu…”
I caught a blue butterfly on a guitar line across the hall, opened the door, tried not to make a sound, not wanting to disturb anyone. I didn’t know Carmine could play like that.
“La la la la…”
I got a blue butterfly from the Amazon in a black case for my thirtieth birthday, a brilliant, electric, impossible color, just like my mother. My friends told me the salesperson said that they didn’t want it because it was missing an antenna. I barely opened it.
“It’s perfect,” they said.
Many teased me that I was a little “special.” I always got warmhearted about it, somehow comforted when people saw that I was different but why was I missing something? Oh, but that’s what we love about you. I was beginning not to. I didn’t know what to do with that because it was…not exactly true…but it was the most beautiful gift I had ever received. My life was a gift…
Um, into the room, on the edge of a duvet a darker shade of blue, he strummed his guitar.
“A butterfly…of?”
Across his neck, he made it: a blue bowtie.
It’s called that?
I sat down. They moved three beds into this room so I could have my own. I felt bad.
“Si, si,” he nodded.
We made the gesture for “imagination,” yes.
“Bello…”
He strummed his guitar.
“It’s about a man…”
“I see yellow…”
“Si, si.”
He turned on the street lamps.
He strummed.
“It’s dark, nothing, niente…”
“The streets are deserted, silent, one last carriage, wheels crack, disappears—crash, into the night. He wears a top hat, two diamonds as…a cane…crystal, a flower…and…on top of his white waistcoat.”
“…Does he really say all that?’’
The bowtie, in suspension.
“Si, si,” he reassured me, played on.
“A window yawns on the silent river and in the white light, a top hat, a flower, and a tailcoat float away…”
“Who IS this person invisible?”
In French.
“No one knows,” Carmine continued his song.
“Bello,” I said.
“You…”
Legend goes that Naples vowed to rise a city of music when their siren failed to lure Odysseus and washed ashore. Naples traces its lineage back to this moment weaved in myth and mystery and music just like my beginnings.
We gave gifts to this creature for her song, in no imminent danger, but she gained the reputation of being an evil songstress when she might have been gifted even a healer.
A story can travel so far away from its origins in other words that it can end up meaning something else entirely.
We think we know the story but we may discover that we were wrong, didn’t have the full picture, even about ourselves.
He wanted me to sing with him. I didn’t want to.
He looked at me as if I wasn’t Maria.
That’s all “you” did.
“I did?”
“Si.”
I didn’t understand his reaction. He didn’t understand mine.
He thought about it. Hey, you know, “you sang me a silly song…”
“What was it…from a cartoon… what was it? It was funny…”
I didn’t remember…
Walnuts…sunlight flickering through large leaves…yellow on the pavement…calla lilies rippling through the air like paper airplanes, cacti and agave, wispy vines crawling over a black fence…
I remembered when I first arrived at Angela and Vico’s. The creaking of their front door…his eyes sparkling fierce…the sea at high noon.
He shot me at nine with a song from ‘69 like a sniper, direct, in the French.
And no sooner did I shut the gate all these years later did he open his front door and launch the same lyric over jasmines, camelias, fleche like feathers, and crawling vines and hook me as a child back in time with my mouth agape and pulled.
“Sento.”
I feel.
The beginning of everything.
Affecting, Carmine described it.
“Touching,” he said, nasal, flat.
I admired the cool clean light.
“I write Carmine, sono chill, you know this word?”
He took the bait, getting cold quizzically.
“No, no,” I cracked up.
But they didn’t let up, not about this.
“Calm.”
I was anything but.
“You stopped singing?”
A race car driving fast around a curve on TV, Franco came at me.
Flora appeared from the kitchen, a warm glow.
Carmine pushed up his glasses. Apparently.
“Maria?”
Flora rang, above, like are you there?
Maybe I wasn’t understanding…
They pursued me; this was strange. Meaning, my demeanor the second…I came back.
I cracked up.
Why was I laughing? Why is she laughing? Are you trying to be funny? It’s not funny. Franco.
“YOU?”
“Si…”
Flora floated.
“YOU DON’T SING ANYMORE?”
“Si,” Flora said, “Maria, si, sing,” she nudged me to say the obvious.
How could I not crack up?
“Eh,” Flora was tight, uncomfortable.
I could only crack up sometimes…
With my story, I could only crack up…sometimes.
I wasn’t expecting this…
“Wasn’t it a Disney song?”
You see, they didn’t stop.
“No lo so!”
“You translated it…”
“Oh?”
“Si.”
He thought.
What, what was that song…
In my eyes, he pulled it back.
“We were on a journey…of some kind…”
A song is a real hook, Vico knew it well…so when he stepped out his front door and launched the line over the vines, Vico caught me as a child back in time, right at that spot, before I could even cross the threshold. “I feel!” I burst into my mother’s smile, Joy. The song had dissipated to all but a line that tugged from time to time but he had hooked me long ago and it never let me go.
I couldn’t believe it!
Oranges hanging above me, I took off like I did when I was a kid, shooting back.
“La la la!!”
He was a goddamn siren.
Dorothea crawlers rushed over the roof of the pink and grey house trees rising tall behind it against clouds thick and periwinkle, palms like daggers, Augusta paddles huge and floppy, olives, and oranges, oranges, oranges. “La la la!”
-
I’m just sharing a little of what I did today. It might be a touch too early to bring in Vico…might want to make this initial scene between Carmine and me a little longer at first…or in parts…
I think you get a lot, too, even in “does he say all that?”
Carmine remains suspended to go back.
You see, why am I acting like that?
I’m acting a little weird, no?
I’m still composing this — down a dark highway, snowmen waving, (on my way to a bar to meet the band) being impaled from so many directions and Vico — the siren — pulling me back with my song. He starts pulling me back early, might block that differently, but I was in the dark…about everything.
“Christmas?”
I just have to craft it because opening the door, going back into the room…Carmine can really play, forget me, what about you? That’s also the beginning.
We’re on our way to the bar…down a dark highway…
So you get the Disney song is about a girl who doesn’t remember who she is and it took my breath away, also now. For different reasons. But Vico is bringing me, welcoming me back in song, that’s where we’re ending up. At a party. Carmine is weaving in Sciummo — “river river river…” since the Anastasia song is “love is a river, no?” It’s about his talent, our duo…By the time I get to the bar…this thread of trying to remember the song about the girl who doesn’t remember who she is…ends.
“Farewell world adieu adieu…”
Carmine will say…a few stars out…headed for the band.
Because…we will come to discover…that Carmine “no,” this band has been together for almost a decade, a really talented musician Carmine. They’re in jeopardy. Uh oh. Wait, it’s Christmas. Shit. December third, my story didn’t go with Christmas, shit.
I’ll find myself at some fair, Santa cheerleaders with pompoms. Men juggling past.
I’m trying to connect the music — me, family, the band. Just to open this up. Coming to realize so much. Alright, didn’t want to do this.
Even the lead singer “you disappeared…”
What? He remembers me. These are Carmine’s childhood friends, too.
“I know they’re happy you’re back.”
What?
Probably by then, “my song for Maria!” Will cry. Vico.
Carmine entering the man of the hour, throwing our emotions, all our emotions everywhere.
-
My song for Maria!!!
-
A bar rises to its feet, you see.
I just have to figure out when I bring Vico in….where to fade out Carmine’s band…
I’ll find myself at a party, a musical celebration, “My Song for Maria.”
Turning around all this. I had a song. Vico never called me by name. I was home. I had a song. They welcomed me back like this. I was blown away. Bravo! Brav.
Did I remember? Vico’s point. Of course I did.
I forgot so much but that line, I had it, could never lose it.
“Obi lan,” and you see, he did that right away, which I don’t know, I’ll have to see if I can do all of this because it’s amazing, overwhelming. He came at me — boom, this is Vico — showing a far far distance. “Obi lan,” he gives me ancient language stat.
That’s what I mean about casting that line way back…you see to come back. Siren. Obi lan.
It’s how these pieces will continue to build upon each other but I’m coming to take this all in…
To Franco — it’s just Naples, okay, my joy alerted them, but sure, people just burst into song, just welcome you back in song. And again, this song for Maria, the surprise when I was nine, is actually for two women…his youngest daughter, Rosa. So a song, music, is bonds…he bonded me with Rosa…and it’s funny. His song for TWO, TWO women.
TWO, Angela toots, TWO.
“TWO WOMEN MERI!”
So music as family, looking around this bar, all of them.
What does it mean to make it, stay together?
And Naples is truly funny, and it’s true, it’s a refreshing side of it.
So I’m just going to keep working on this tomorrow, again, too, you know, it’s like putting ornaments on a tree, we can move a little further up in time, to come a little further back, in terms of figuring out the right placement. It’s fun. It works. And we’re definitely landing…it’s more this build…to keep that thread moving through it.
Thanks for reading!