Spare Time (What’s That?) by Steve Liskow

I was six or seven when I heard my uncle Bill play the piano at my great-aunt’s house, and I knew I wanted to play piano, too. Our smaller home had no room for a piano, and my parents wouldn’t let me ride my bike clear across town, especially since Aunt Sarah lived on a main drag on the East Side. When I was in fifth grade, they suggested violin as an alternative. I tried it for a year and hated it.

That was the end of my music endeavors until the Beatles erupted on Ed Sullivan. My parents hated Elvis, rock ‘n’ roll, and everything associated with him and them, too, but I knew all the words to every song on the car radio while I learned to drive.

When I went off to college, the first live act I saw was Martha & the Vandellas. More importantly, the Muddy Waters Blues Band opened for them. They played several songs I’d heard from the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, and the Shadows of Knight. But Muddy played them s-l-o-w-e-r so they sounded real dirty (heh-heh-heh). Weeks after getting my first dose of Chicago Blues, I bought a cheap guitar and the Mel-Bay guitar method and started memorizing chords. Since I was self-taught, my “technique” was mostly a catalogue of bad habits.

Then I transferred to another college, where two guys in my dorm finger-picked Mississippi John Hurt, Dave Van Ronk, and the Reverend Gary Davis. I wanted to play that music, too. Alas, my fingers were short, and I fractured my left wrist playing football. It never healed right so I have limited mobility and strength in my left hand. I still play guitar, though, and perform at local open mics almost every week. Arthritis is an issue now, but I’m still out there. It gives me an excuse to see my friends.

Much to the dismay of my wife and our cat, I found a used keyboard on sale a few years ago and am trying to teach myself piano, too, about sixty-five years late. I read music a little better now and understand theory more fully, but I will never be more than adequate. Doesn’t matter. I love it.

Music inhabits much of my writing. Chris “Woody” Guthrie, the protagonist of several PI novels, is a wannabe guitar hero, and his girlfriend Megan Traine is a former session keyboard player. I met former high school classmate Susie Woodman at a reunion years ago and learned she was a session musician in Detroit. She inspired the character of Megan and gave me lots of background details, including what it’s like to be an attractive woman in what is still a primarily male occupation.

Since Chris plays guitar, all the titles in his series are either song titles or allude to songs. Fifteen of my sixteen novels and almost half of my fifty short stories use song titles or allusions.

While I’m only adequate as a musician, two or three bass players and a percussionist who have joined me on stage at one time or another have no trouble following me because I my playing has a tight rhythm. Music is one of the two sources for that.

The other is theater.

In the early ‘80s, I agreed to fill in for someone in a production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at Wesleyan University. As an English teacher, I’d taught several of Shakespeare’s plays so I was fairly familiar with the language. My apartment also happened to be across the street, less than a hundred yards from the performance space. I was terrible in the role, but loved the experience. I joined a local community theater and helped build sets and hang lights. I performed more, too.

Eventually, I studied acting, directing, and design in grad school. Directing a play, especially Shakespeare’s work, helps you see, hear, and feel when a scene drags. Rhythm is vital on stage, and it carries over into my writing. I can tell when a scene needs cutting or more detail. Because of participating in over 100 productions between the early 80s and about 2010, I can hear when a line of dialogue works . . . or not.

Now I conduct several fiction-writing workshops, including one on writing dialogue. I constantly fall back on music and theater for examples to make my suggestions clearer to my students.

In April, my wife and I saw a performance of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at Hartford Stage Company. Yep, the same play that introduced me to theater forty-some years ago. I even directed that same play in 2003. The following night, Barb and I went to the community theater where we first met long ago and saw several friends perform the premiere of a new work. I could feel scenes dragging and knew how to fix them, but I wasn’t the director.

Later this week, I will take my guitar to another open mic. More importantly, as I write this, I have two stories in complete early drafts. I’ll be going back over them to polish the dialogue, among other things, and tighten the rhythm until those stories sing to me.