The Time We Have Taken

Michael is sitting with Madeleine in the lounge room of her flat. There is a guitar on the floor. Everywhere, Michael imagines, in all the houses, on all the floors, there are guitars. The guitar and the decade go together. Once, it was the Age of the Piano. Pianos, he imagines, marked the leisurely passing of time in a more leisurely age than this. Pianos spoke of ease and calm in that recently vanished world of their grandparents, the time signature of which was forever adagio. In that once-upon-a-time world where the piano ruled, the hours passed unhurried, and days were long. And the music that came from pianos was as ordered as the lives of the people who played them, and as long as the days through which they lived and played. At least, this is the way Michael, currently lounging on the floor in front of Madeleine, thinks of the piano.

This, by contrast, is the Age of the Guitar. Wherever you may be, a guitar is never far away. But this is not an instrument that is content to mark the slow passage of time as music did in that once-upon-a-time world that resisted the ruffian of change. The guitar is an instrument that shakes things up. The piano is made for living rooms and quiet houses. As much a resident of the house as the family in it. The guitar is like something blown in off the street. It has the look of trouble about it. Like a stranger on the doorstep, who slips into the house, unwanted and uninvited, by dint of sheer front. Unpredictable, with an attitude suggestive of it being permanently up to no good.

He could share these thoughts with Madeleine, and he would, if he knew her just a little more. If he was at ease with her as his lounging attitude would suggest, if he knew her just a little more he could relax, deliver his thoughts on the contrasting characteristics of the Age of the Piano and that of the guitar in such a way as to amuse her. He may even make her laugh (and he is convinced he doesn’t make her laugh enough). But in the end he keeps these thoughts to himself, convinced that thoughts sound best inside the head and silly in the open air, like quotes remembered, stored up and trotted out to impress some girl if the occasion should arise.

There is a guitar on the floor in front of them, and it also possesses, it occurs to Michael, when looked at from a different angle (he’s tilting his head to one side), a certain air of wantonness. This guitar is no longer a ruffian, but a vamp. Lounging there on the floor, all curves and trouble, lying on the floor like a challenge, not so much waiting to be picked up but daring anybody to do so.

Extract published courtesy of Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
© Steven Carroll