Between Here and the Sky- Chapter 4: The Cellar

Looking at the clock in the bottom corner of his screen for the thousandth time that day Marshall declared it to be time to head to the pub. He shut down the computer for the weekend and checked that his drawers were locked before throwing his satchel over his shoulder and crossing the corridor to Yoshi’s office. Together they did the rounds of the department, picking up those who were keen and a few who were not so keen but didn’t want to create a scene by refusing.

They left the building as a mob, Yoshi skipping ahead while Marshall called Piers to let him know they’d already left. They procured a table in the beer garden under the shade of the oak trees as Marshall went to the bar and bought 2 jugs of Golden Ale to kick things off. Karl and Leigh lambasted him- Karl for not getting Amber Ale, and Leigh for getting beer in the first place. Leigh went to get a bottle of red as Karl and Marshall started pouring out the beer.

By the end of Happy Hour the group was down to its core members of Marshall, Piers, Yoshi, Karl and Leigh, the others making their excuses and heading home for the weekend. Marshall had his arms around Karl’s hulking shoulders at one end of the table, going over the details of his latest breakup, while the others entertained themselves with their plans for the forthcoming Postgraduate Student Association cocktail night.

According to Karl the breakup had been due to his inability to go to Leigh’s mother’s 60^th birthday party, and that if he couldn’t commit to something so small, yet so meaningful to her, then what was the point in staying together? In her mind it meant that Karl was afraid of commitment. He had tried to dissuade her- that he had an important timed experiment that had to be done- but she wasn’t listening. So that was that. Karl stared vacantly into the froth of his beer.

The relationship between Karl and Leigh stretched back some years to their time in student politics, when Karl had been VP of the Student Guild having formed a coalition with the not-quite-as-left-as-him Labor Party. He was loathe to call himself a communist and risk being tarred with the same brush as the campus socialists involved in circular group-think and handing out copies of the Socialist Weekly outside the Reid library. Despite his personal manifesto being in a state of continual flux, like-minded people still seemed to be pulled into his orbit like moons around a planet. If he had the self-confidence to match his formidable intellect he would have been a danger to any impressionable fresher looking to shift their ideology from the right-wing dogma of their middle-class parents. As it was he was tearing himself up with Leigh.

Leigh, an avowed Green had been one of the normal members of the Guild Council. She spent much of her time at these weekly meetings trading glances with this larger-than-life character over the polished wooden table while their peers drafted pressers condemning the actions of Japanese whalers and declaring the campus a safe haven for refugees. They discovered a shared source of amusement trading in underhanded and cynical comments while everyone else seemed too caught up in their own moral seriousness. Before long Leigh found herself in Karl’s flat, naked, after several hours debating the Northern Territory Intervention over a cask of rough red. Even from the start their relationship was built on seismic fault lines. They were both as bad as each other.

The drama Karl and Leigh wrote together was at simultaneously irritating and amusing to those caught up in their web. They were wonderful and engaging people and both thoroughly enjoyed a long night out, but their acquaintances were never quite sure of the status of their relationship and, not wanting to bring the topic up in conversation, would ignore the entire thing until someone informed them of the pendulum’s swing.

The evening had reached the fork in the road. Either they could take the low road and continue in the current quixotic frenzy and be written off by dinner time, or they could take the high road, put the brakes on and make a night of it. In the spirit of democracy they argued the merits of each option before putting it to a vote. Leigh voted for annihilation, but it was all for nought. Piers, Marshall and Yoshi were intent on making it to the gig, while Karl agreed predominantly as a means of pissing Leigh off. She rolled her eyes and poured the final dribble of the wine into her glass.

They finished off the last of their drinks and gathered their bags from underneath the table. The boys tried to convince Leigh to come out with them and enjoy a night out on the town, Karl even lowered his lance in reconciliation, but she offered her excuses and made off into the night. She had designs on going around to her best friend’s house with a couple more bottles of wine to curl up on the couch in front of the heater and bitch about life. All the time being surrounded by the boys had built up so much pressure inside her that she needed to vent.

Piers called his brother and got him to reserve another couple of tickets on the door. The four of them would split the cost of the fourth. They caught a taxi into Northbridge and after paying wandered through a back alley into the heart of what passed as the local version of Chinatown. A young spruiker, probably the daughter of the owner, welcomed them into a room where the tables were wedged tightly around each other and the walkways were choked with a gridlock of food trolleys. They approached the maitre de with the number of people to be seated, took a number and loitered out the front trying to topple each other into piles of rubbish bags that lined the redbrick wall.

At the call of their number they slid back inside and around a plastic-covered table and steeled themselves for the onslaught ahead. As the gleaming metallic carts came around they selected an array of baskets filled with various steamed and fried dumplings and giant plates of deep fried squid tentacles battered in garlic they took glee in calling ‘curly fries’. A couple of pots of complimentary green tea were delivered to their table to help wash it all down, rehydrating and preparing them for the night ahead.

It only took them 20 minutes to gorge themselves to the brink of coma. Their eyes glazed over and their jaws hung slack from the mountains of MSG now lining their stomachs. They loosened their belts, slouched in their chairs, stared at the ceiling and smiled contentedly, blissed with the state of the world.

While they were in their fugue the staff bustled around them like birds, clearing away empty bowls, cups, baskets, napkins and plates. A freshly printed white bill was placed deliberately in the middle of the table, a message to ‘pay up and get out so we can do another sitting’. They each put in $15 for the pleasure of the experience and, groaning their appreciation, slid back out into the aisle and waddled out the door.

Hit by the blare of the shouts and noise of James Street a sudden fear overcame them. The fog of MSG lifting from their eyes and they looked out of terrified eyes. Their urge was to dart back the way they came and regain their composure before figuring out a plan to skirt around the sinister heart of Northbridge. Instead they steeled themselves and lifted a façade of nonchalance so as not to let their illusions of masculinity be perceived. Not uttering a word of the fear each was silently battling, they strode purposefully up the street weaving in and out of traffic intent on not making eye contact with strangers, and making it to the other end undamaged.

They were headed towards a regular haunt on the fringes of the city. Nights at The Cellar were typically filled in equal measures by magical musical gems- those that shine so bright you think they will explode- and miscarriages- trashed equipment and bandmates turning on each other mid-song. It acted as a lone beacon to those youths disenchanted with the shiny lights and plastic sounds, the drunken brawlers, the smeared skanks and the strip clubs that pass as popular entertainment. It offered the opportunity to immerse oneself in a counter-culture amongst the painfully cool kids with their tattoos, piercings and avant-garde fashions. But more than that, a place to go to forget yourself, to forget your inhibitions and just act as though you are the only person left in the universe. A place of freedom. To dance without worrying about the eyes of others judging your every move. Because no one was there to care about what anybody else did, so long as there was a spirit and mood created to carry them through the dark of night.

Nightclub bouncers lay in wait for the disorderly teens to descend from the suburbs. They hurried past and made it to The Cellar as the queue was dwindling and people were filing into the outer courtyard. An unorganised line had spread out across the bar as patrons waited impatiently for the staff to tend to their whims. A couple of guys were plugging cords into their synthesisers on the stage inside. Marshall, Piers and Karl got beers with which to recommence their drinking, while Yoshi rued his ancestry and got a pint of water. Small clumps of people randomly dotted the floor of the room, some sitting, some standing, a couple dancing. They assumed their positions towards the back of the dance floor nodding and shifting their weight almost in time with the beat. After a couple of songs they grew restless and returned to the concrete garden to perch on stacks of wooden pallets while they waited for Alby’s turn to take the stage.

An interval between the acts gave the fashionable latecomers a chance to arrive and lean nonchalantly against the walls of the club. Finally the MC summonsed everyone to crush into the dimly lit room. The scientists were washed forwards to end up around the paisley-printed pillar in the centre of the room by the tide of people eager to secure a good vantage point. By the time the house lights went down the room was full, with barely room for the small women to squeeze through to the front and they clutched their beers close to their chests.

A cheer rose to greet Eye’s Quittin’ as they strode through the black velvet curtain to the stage. They shouldered arm and scrunched up their sleeves nervously while they awaiting the drummers signal to begin. The drummer, decked in only Wayfarers and torn denim shorts attacked the snare with a machine gun staccato attack before launching into a relentlessly complex pattern of toms, bass and snare. The bass joined and swirled intricately around the drum rolls. The guitars fed around each other and through all manner of effects pedals- one buzzing and sawing a rhythm, the other trilling and picking out a melody. Jarring counterpoints melted into slick harmony and back again. Timings morphed and stretched the rhythms, melodies and counter-melodies seamlessly. Breath was paused. The banter at the bar surrendered to the intensity on stage. Those closest leaned in to breathe the music; smiles splitting their faces in half. The room was on the brink of falling apart into a billion tiny fragments, held together only by the collective strength of those on stage and the rapturous and glowing faces hanging on their every sound.

Alby and his co-vocalist Zach stalked and preened out in front as though this was what they had been put on this earth to do. They traded front-man duties, the other taking up station at either at the series of pedals and switches on the floor, or beating the second drum kit on the side of the stage to within an inch of its life. They were loud and relentless, pushing the music forward into new and vital places. Feet were moved, hearts were raced, limbs were flailed, brows were wiped. Eyes from every direction burned and illuminated the stage.

The drummer appeared as though overcome by some unseen force that would launch him through the bass drum, across the stage, through the crowd and out the door at any moment, tracks smouldering in his wake. The audience dared not look away for fear of missing the offer of enlightenment radiating from the stage. They were statues during the eerie, woozy troughs, and flailed as though decapitated through the soaring crescendos. They would do anything the music commanded them.

They played the album straight through from start to finish, intricately weaving one song into the next without pause to create a single, overwhelming symphony. They left the stage bathed in layers of reverb, the lights softly breathing through the smoke to the instruments flung haphazardly across the floor. The audience roared their appreciation, and as the drone of feedback subsided Alby and Zach returned to stage. Zach plugged in the acoustic guitar strapped over his shoulder and Alby bent and picked up a trumpet from between the drums. Zach elicited the nostalgic sound of crackling vinyl from an effects pedal and began to pick out a simple two bar melody, and Alby coaxed an achingly pretty sustained note from his muted horn. The three other band members calmly walked on stage, huddled around a microphone and together softly began to breathe the chant ‘it’s all alright’. One by one their voices broke away from the central line, folding harmonies around each other and enveloping the silenced audience in a cloud of bliss. Marshall closed his eyes and soared above the room, swooping and soaring with the music. A perfect dénouement; a cool rain after a hot day.

The band took their bows and sustained applause escorted them from the stage. Out back they were quiet, smiling blissfully and patting each other on the arms for a job well done. Out the front, Marshall’s chest burst with pride over what he had just witnessed, Karl joined the line for merchandise, and Yoshi continued to nod his head in dazed appreciation well after the floor had been cleared. Electric murmurs swept through those in line as they waited to pick up a copy of the album, before dispersing into the night to bury it in their stereos in a desperate attempt to relive the night.