Make It Better

After a week that can only be described as "the week from hell... made in hell, for the dwellers of hell, about hell and only hell, hell all the time," I was on my way home on the Hell Line when it pulled into haunted station. They're all haunted, and this one is no exception. Every single day at this station the haunting clang of a steel drum marks time and geography. I've never seen the steel drummer, or drummers, afraid that they might be skeletons, or guys wearing cargo shorts. I'm not generally a connoisseur of the street musician, which in most cases are heavily sanctioned and inoffensive (to everyone but me)—indeed, I've been heard to threaten, at least under my breath, to shove a pan pipe up a pan piper's ass.

On this day, however, I suddenly took notice, and I really have no reason why—it was the usual steel drum cacophony, in fact, it sounded more disjointed and out of control than usual. Maybe that's why I listened. Somewhere out of the chaos a tune formed, and I soon recognized it as the end of Hey Jude. Not generally a song I've paid much attention to the last ten thousand or so times I've heard it, I almost dismissed it right there, but something made me listen. It was the part of the song, just before the final chorus, where it goes higher, higher higher... indeed a lot higher than a steel drum is capable of. But somehow the notes kept rising... I have no idea how, like they were banging on things, ultimately, other than the drum—maybe a Zippo lighter and a gold tooth.

Now suddenly spellbound, I was listening, and the faintest bit of that final chorus could be heard, that "Naaa, na, na, na na na, naa," part, you know, but so quiet I thought I was imagining it. But then just slightly louder, but not confident, kind of incidental, or maybe even a collective thought-chorus of all of us listening. Definitely not official, like the best music is—existing in spite of itself, rising from the ashes, or the dead, or the unmusical and spontaneous. And also the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.