A Little Goes A Long Way

A Story by Sarah

Story of the dead.

    They say that there's nothing left for this generation to write about. Well, nothing inspiring to say the least. They always talk about things that are inspiring. Teachers are always telling me to write about this war or that eminent leader or why this transcends to that. Now there’s a word that my teachers enjoy: transcend. Throw that thing a few times into an essay and I’ve got it made.

   Anyway, it’s all the same, nowadays. There’s nothing left to write about because every inspiring moment or every inspiring thing has become overtaken by boring people with boring words who only leave a trail of more boring people and more boring words. Life is just a huge bore. That’s why people drink and do drugs, to be honest. To pop that huge bore and swim in a wave of something else. Pretty much everyone wants to be cool, but that’s no big deal. Cool isn’t the case here. It doesn’t even matter. Who cares if you’re popular? Who cares if you aren’t? Either way, you’re striving for a level of coolness that you think suits your boring life.

   Take a look at all these cynical writers writing about why the world sucks. And all these movies romanticizing s**t that shouldn’t be romanticized. All these musicians and artists trying to escape into something that cannot be defined by reality. What are they looking for? Where are they trying to go? What are they trying to prove before the end?

   My point is, I'm not here to talk about wars or leaders because they say it's inspiring. I'm not here to please anyone with stories of love and dreams and all that horseshit. I'm here to tell my story of Diana Burns. There's nothing really special about her if you look at it as a society. She's no Martin Luther King Jr., or Mick Jagger. She's not even a straight A student or an athlete or an artist. Anyway, she's dead now. I guess if you're average, being dead is the next best thing to get people to notice you.

-

   I met Diana at a rock and roll concert. Okay, so it wasn't real rock and roll like The Beatles or Led Zeppelin. Basically, a few kids at my school picked up a guitar and a microphone and decided that they were rockstars and would play a concert for breast cancer awareness. I guess the principal had no problem with screaming teenagers and failed mosh pits if it was for breast cancer awareness. Our principal's name was Natalie Lumbridge and all of her announcements ended like this, "So remember children, do good and be good. See you all around." Then she'd leave and lock herself in her office and get high.

   Natalie Lumbridge had no intention of doing good and being good. Instead, she used posters to make it seem like she did. Every student who passed by her door knew that she was a fake. She hung posters of famous charitable organizations like UNICEF and ASPCA and had little pink ribbons dangling from her doorknob. Inside, you could hear the faint sound of Jarvis Cocker singing "Black Magic".

   Anyway, Diana probably didn't care about Natalie Lumbridge. At least not while that pitiful wannabe band was playing. The guitarist, if it's even correct to call him that, could only play an average of two and a half chords. I say two and a half, because he seemed to be forgetting a note for one of them. Either that, or he could not bend his fingers in that specific way. Diana didn't seem to care though. She had bright red hair and big brown eyes that she emphasized with circles and circles of eyeliner. Her lipstick was dark purple and she wore black. The first word that I thought of when I saw her was: freak. This shouldn't be taken to heart though because I pretty much label everyone as a freak.

   Diana, with her Ronald McDonald hair, was standing right in the middle of the mosh pit, staring up at the band. She was standing perfectly still and that's why I noticed her. Giant football jocks and punks wearing studs were ramming into her here and there and she kept her eyes glued on the band. I had never seen her before around the school and I guess the explanation for that would be that I tended to avoid people altogether. I pushed through the sweaty crowd and stood next to Diana. She didn't see me until some guy pushed me into her. Then, her eyes met mine and she smiled and pointed at the band.

   "Love walks in," she said to me.

   I nodded at the name of the song. "Van Halen. I know."

   The only way I could tell it was "Love Walks In" was the lyrics that the singer was attempting to vocalize. Everything else about the song was wrong.

   "I love this song," she said.

   I smirked. "Not the way they're playing it."

   She looked at me again with those big, brown eyes and shrugged. "I think they're good."

   Then I heard the screeching raucousness of the electric guitar clawing at the amp like a beaten hyena, screaming and begging to escape from its confinement.

   "Mm mm mmm mm - "

   "What?" I couldn't hear her past the goddamned hyena.

   "WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DO YOU LIKE?!" She was now screaming in my ear, with her hands cupped to her mouth. I felt like my ear was now purple from her lipstick.

   I couldn't take it anymore. I turned from her and pushed myself back out of the sweaty crowd. I already knew that was a completely pointless meeting with an even more pointless girl. Furthermore, I knew that standing in that mosh pit would probably result in me waking up the next morning with a century's worth of bruises. Half tired and half exasperated, I decided to leave school. As I headed down to the parking lot, I heard a clacking sound behind me. I peeked behind my shoulder to see black, platform boots clacking and clunking to the same beat as my footsteps. I stopped and they stopped.

   "Why'd you leave?" Diana had huge headphones that hung around her neck and she was chewing on her hair. I didn't understand why she had to do that.

   "They weren't any good," I answered truthfully. We stood at somewhat of an awkward distance from each other because she had stopped walking just when I had stopped. I didn't understand why she had to do that either.

   After a few silent seconds, she stopped chewing on her hair and walked up to me, grabbed my arm, and kept on walking. "What does music mean to you?" she asked me.

   I had no idea where she was taking me. "I have no idea," I said.

   She stopped walking all of a sudden and positioned herself so that she was facing me. She was still holding my arm. "What makes you like a song?"

   I sighed. "I don't know. If the song is good, I - "

   She interrupted me. "No. No, I don't want that answer. That's the obvious answer. Everyone says that. Everyone thinks they listen to good s**t, and it may be true. Maybe there's a music theory reason behind it, or maybe there's a neurobiological reason for it. Maybe some humans are genetically rock and rollers and some are jazz cats and some are Mozart wannabes. But think about it. Did people, way back then, when these biological theories were nonexistent, did they f*****g care what was supposed to be good? F**k no. Sometimes, we just forget that music is simply music and sometimes it just sounds f*****g good. Do you think about the why's and the how's when you're laying in bed, sobbing your f*****g eyes out, and music's the only thing that's got your back? Maybe the musician you hate is the one that's saving someone's life at this very moment. Did you ever think about that?"

   I stared at Diana. "You're f****n' crazy," I said.

   "Crazy?" She exclaimed, "What does crazy mean?"

   I didn't have an answer.

   "When people call other people crazy, it's because they don't understand." She looked into my eyes. "Do you understand?"

   "I can't say I do," I responded.

   She smiled. "At least you're honest. Let's go."

   "Where?" I exclaimed as she dragged me forward, into the parking lot.

-

   We were parked in her garage smoking cigarettes and listening to Elliott Smith and laughing about nothing really. Diana took off her jacket and tossed it onto the backseat. She had tattoos on her arms, but I could not make out what they were of.

   "I don't even know your name!" I suddenly choked out through smokey laughter.

   She chuckled and put out her cigarette. “It’s Diana Burns.”

   “Diana Burns,” I repeated slowly.

   “Yeah, but you can just call me Diana.”

   I laughed, “Well of course.”

   “So what’s yours?”

   “What’s my what?”

   She started putting her hair up into a bun. “Your name.”

   “Oh! It’s Layla.”

   “Lay-la. Like the song.”

   I nodded.

   It was silent for a moment, and then Diana opened the car door. “Come on,” she reached into the backseat and grabbed her things, “Let’s go inside.”

-

   Diana’s room was surprisingly bright and colorful. There were countless posters of musicians laid messily all over the walls. I saw Miles Davis, Hendrix, Joplin, Ellington, The Doors, just so much love everywhere. There was an extremely old looking record player on a desk in the corner of the room.

   “You got any records for your player?” I asked.

   “Records?” She looked at me in disbelief. “Do you even have to ask?”

   “I already did,” I stated bluntly as she walked towards her closet.

   She pulled open the doors and I immediately realized that she didn’t really understand the conventional function of a closet. She had maybe three jackets hung up and a couple of t-shirts and jeans folded on the upper shelf. The rest of the space was completely taken up by stacks and stacks of records. She had everything. She had classics like Tchaikovsky and Bach and Haydn. She had Tupac. She had The White Stripes. She had Thin Lizzy. It was all there. All of the most influential music that I had ever listened to was there in that closet.

   “Where’d you get all this?” Apparently, this was the question I decided to ask after seeing all that music.

   “I collected it.”

   “From where? From who? How?”

   “Places. People. I dunno.” She took Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” out of the closet. “This is the album I listen to when I’m feeling.” She placed it on the turntable. She moved the needle to the edge.

   “Feeling what?” I asked.

   “Everything.”

   There was silence, then, the slow intro of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” began to play.

-

   I never saw Diana again after that. I went to school the next day and she wasn’t there. I found out a few days later that she had committed suicide by locking herself in her car with the exhaust fumes. The school came together and made a little memorial for her with flowers and posters and s**t. Nobody f*****g knew her and they made her posters that said s**t like, “Rest in love Diana” and “We’ll miss you Diana” and “You’ll never be forgotten.”

   She was forgotten in a few weeks. The conversations about her suicide died down and people resumed their boring lives talking about each other’s boring lives. I didn’t forget. I thought about her every single day. That’s just how it is. You meet a person for a day and they leave an imprint on you for a lifetime. And when they die, they die. There’s no romanticizing it. I didn’t know her well, I barely knew her at all, but my heart ached for her and that’s that.

-

   I don’t feel her spirit with me. I don’t visit her grave. There’s nothing but a decayed body in there. And it’s not her body that I’m interested in. Sometimes, I’ll sit on the beach and watch the sunset and smoke cigarettes. That Pink Floyd album will play in my head. I won’t listen to it, not during these moments. But I’ll feel everything. And the lyrics will fill the whispering breeze and the rolling tide, “Wish you were here.” Wish you were here.