Dan Fishback: A band of friends and the music of conversation

Until they cut the cord, it's part of my body!"

"Why would it take someone seven months to decide she wants an abortion?!"

"I'm much more concerned about a year-old horse than I am about a day-old baby!"

In tableau, four girls sit on the bed, smoking cigarettes, dunking graham crackers into tea, screaming. I came to invite them to the PennForum abortion debate, but find myself saying little, sitting in an old easy chair, listening. They face me in an arc, like a proper a cappella group, looking at each other, but faced outwardly to project. I hear them.

I've been generally quiet, but I have to cut in: "Janis!? You're more concerned about a year-old horse than a day-old baby?!" All simultaneous tirades explode and sputter into laughter. She beams and gestures with her cigarette -- "Hey man!" she shrugs.

Megan insists that abortion should be legal even if the fetus qualifies as a human life. The state, she says, has no business dictating morals. Because the fetus is dependent on the mother for life, it is independent of social morality -- it is private.

Dara grapples with that one. "If that's a human life, then it's murder! And all laws are based on morality."

Ellie nods to both sides and clutches her mug. She's still pissed off because the doctor misdiagnosed the bacterial lump in her throat. Student Health sucks.

The voices collapse in on each other again, seemingly separate and simultaneous, but inexplicably dialogic -- they're talking over each other, responsively. No pauses. No linear point/counterpoint. A playwright would be hard-pressed to map this out on a page. It would scan more accurately on sheet music: Bass, Tenor, Alto, Soprano.

Or better yet, a band: drums, bass, keyboards, guitar. Ellie's nodding head keeps the beat, her vocal rimshots mixing it up; Megan modulates through the low end, keeping the flow steady and sensible; Dara tiptoes up and down the rhythm section like a piano, her bass clef thunderous and her treble insistent; then Janis careens in with an unscrupulous guitar solo, piercing through the otherwise coherent jam with two broken strings and a Marshall stack: "I'm reading this book on Emma Goldman!"

The band punctuates the bridge of "Abortion Song" with an unexpected improvised variation on "The Merits of Anarchy in G Major." "These people were crazy!" sings Janis with power chords. "They weren't just 'No Government' -- they were like 'Hey workers, here's how to make a bomb! Bring it to the center of a crowded intersection and kill random bourgeoisie! You'll have the time of your life!'" Laughter: a few grace notes, the heave of a bass, bah-dum-ching!

"When you think about it, though, terrorism almost makes sense." A laughing drum-roll. Then keyboards and bass harmonize: "Yeah, Ms. Pacifist-Camping-On-College-Green-to-Stop-War!" Some smiling tambourines: "Hey, I like extremes!" Then, the heavy metal, guitar-smashing finale: Janis hurls an oversized pack of cigarettes at Dara. "Ow! Janis, that hurt!"

Later on, I find myself on the bed, under a cloud of smoke. Megan grooves through a slow, jazzy bass solo. "Because I don't honestly think that anything really bad has ever happened to me, my biggest fear is that something will. That I'll get sick and die, or that someone I love will get sick and die. And that's completely beyond my comprehension. I still don't really believe that I'll die. And that's the order in my life. But as soon as something happens -- as soon as something terrible happens to me or to someone I love, then that order will be destroyed. And I don't know what I'd do. I think everyone has their threshold for things like this -- for things that shatter your belief systems. That would be mine."

I listen, still thinking vaguely about the year-old horse and the day-old baby, about Emma Goldman and terrorism. Then I realize I'm late for the PennForum debate. I tell them where I'm going, and I invite them for the last time. They have things to do though, things they don't kid themselves into thinking they'll actually get done, but things nonetheless. I was hoping they'd come with me, ask questions, scream, throw things. I was hoping they'd take the music public. They won't. "Well then," I decide (realizing I have one column left this semester): "I will."

Dan Fishback is a junior English major from Olney, Md.

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