Devi.”
In two minutes, Devi had Christa plugged into a one hundred-watt Laney head and a cabinet containing four twelve-inch speakers. “It’s a good solid rock setup,” she explained while they waited for the tubes to heat. “And with the stacked preamps, you can vary the amount of sustain and distortion you get by punching them in and out with the footswitch.”
Christa looked dubiously at the half-stack; then, with a shrug, she turned up the volume knob of her guitar. The amplifier tubes finished heating, and the speakers hissed faintly. “I suppose I have a great deal to learn,” she said. “Whoever thought that a harper from Corca Duibne would come to this?”
And then she played. The middle register was solid, rich, the notes flowing like honey left out in the warm summer sun. Christa broke out into a bright smile, closed her eyes, and let the music come.
Devi was hearing control. It did not matter that Christa could not alter the substance of her sound, that she was limited to electromagnetic pickups, steel strings, and glowing tubes. Her expression and her hands made up for that.
Christa stopped, looked at Scott and Devi. “May I turn this up?”
“Crank it,” said Devi.
“I don’t know how.”
Devi adjusted the Laney until Christa’s guitar was overloading the reamplifier circuitry enough to produce a smooth, violin-like sustain. “If you turn this knob,” she said, “you’ll just get louder. Turn this other one, and you’ll increase the distortion. Step on this switch, and you’ll kick in another preamp.”
Christa turned up and hit a chord that was like a spatter of bright metal. The air in the guitar department was suddenly alive, trembling. She flipped the pickup selector switch on the front of the Strat, adjusted a tone knob, and then went off into a series of cascading arpeggios that ranged from despairing to joyous in the space of a few seconds.
Nodding, she worked across the entire fingerboard, feeling out the response of the amplifier. She struck and held a chord. The rich harmonies shouldered their way through the room. Devi leaned her elbows on the vibrating counter and cupped her chin in her hands, watching, listening.
Christa stepped on the footswitch and increased her sustain. Her blue eyes narrowed as she went back into rapid-fire arpeggios and licks, and she seemed to be thinking of something that angered her. Sounds tumbled over one another, and Devi suddenly felt afraid. Who was this woman? Where had she learned to play guitar like this?
Devi had grown up with guilt and with shame, and those emotions had come to seem natural to her, an integral art of womanhood. Here though, holding a guitar and reeling off power chords and runs with a tight precision that was drawing a small crowd, was a woman who seemed to know nothing of either. Christa was proud—not arrogantly so, not with the posturing of the hundreds of would-be guitar heroes that Devi saw each month, but with a firm, inner conviction. No one, it seemed, had ever told Christa that femininity was a curse, that a woman’s form was a weak vessel, a temptation, a burden. The idea had apparently never occurred to her.
Christa was lost in her music, in the waves of sound that she called up out of the Laney. Another sustained chord while she adjusted the sound, and she was off again. The air in the room felt charged, ready to erupt.
And in a way it did. For as Christa powered out a series of odd-sounding scales, lingering over occasional notes in a strange, deliberate pattern, Devi opened her eyes and saw a roiling, turbulent sheet of gray mist where there should have been a wall hung with guitars. It seemed to stretch off into the distance, as though a hole had been partly torn in the universe.
She gasped, looked back at Christa. The guitarist slammed home one more chord and then allowed silence to return. The gray mist vanished. The wall came back.
People were applauding. No one else had noticed. Christa
In two minutes, Devi had Christa plugged into a one hundred-watt Laney head and a cabinet containing four twelve-inch speakers. “It’s a good solid rock setup,” she explained while they waited for the tubes to heat. “And with the stacked preamps, you can vary the amount of sustain and distortion you get by punching them in and out with the footswitch.”
Christa looked dubiously at the half-stack; then, with a shrug, she turned up the volume knob of her guitar. The amplifier tubes finished heating, and the speakers hissed faintly. “I suppose I have a great deal to learn,” she said. “Whoever thought that a harper from Corca Duibne would come to this?”
And then she played. The middle register was solid, rich, the notes flowing like honey left out in the warm summer sun. Christa broke out into a bright smile, closed her eyes, and let the music come.
Devi was hearing control. It did not matter that Christa could not alter the substance of her sound, that she was limited to electromagnetic pickups, steel strings, and glowing tubes. Her expression and her hands made up for that.
Christa stopped, looked at Scott and Devi. “May I turn this up?”
“Crank it,” said Devi.
“I don’t know how.”
Devi adjusted the Laney until Christa’s guitar was overloading the reamplifier circuitry enough to produce a smooth, violin-like sustain. “If you turn this knob,” she said, “you’ll just get louder. Turn this other one, and you’ll increase the distortion. Step on this switch, and you’ll kick in another preamp.”
Christa turned up and hit a chord that was like a spatter of bright metal. The air in the guitar department was suddenly alive, trembling. She flipped the pickup selector switch on the front of the Strat, adjusted a tone knob, and then went off into a series of cascading arpeggios that ranged from despairing to joyous in the space of a few seconds.
Nodding, she worked across the entire fingerboard, feeling out the response of the amplifier. She struck and held a chord. The rich harmonies shouldered their way through the room. Devi leaned her elbows on the vibrating counter and cupped her chin in her hands, watching, listening.
Christa stepped on the footswitch and increased her sustain. Her blue eyes narrowed as she went back into rapid-fire arpeggios and licks, and she seemed to be thinking of something that angered her. Sounds tumbled over one another, and Devi suddenly felt afraid. Who was this woman? Where had she learned to play guitar like this?
Devi had grown up with guilt and with shame, and those emotions had come to seem natural to her, an integral art of womanhood. Here though, holding a guitar and reeling off power chords and runs with a tight precision that was drawing a small crowd, was a woman who seemed to know nothing of either. Christa was proud—not arrogantly so, not with the posturing of the hundreds of would-be guitar heroes that Devi saw each month, but with a firm, inner conviction. No one, it seemed, had ever told Christa that femininity was a curse, that a woman’s form was a weak vessel, a temptation, a burden. The idea had apparently never occurred to her.
Christa was lost in her music, in the waves of sound that she called up out of the Laney. Another sustained chord while she adjusted the sound, and she was off again. The air in the room felt charged, ready to erupt.
And in a way it did. For as Christa powered out a series of odd-sounding scales, lingering over occasional notes in a strange, deliberate pattern, Devi opened her eyes and saw a roiling, turbulent sheet of gray mist where there should have been a wall hung with guitars. It seemed to stretch off into the distance, as though a hole had been partly torn in the universe.
She gasped, looked back at Christa. The guitarist slammed home one more chord and then allowed silence to return. The gray mist vanished. The wall came back.
People were applauding. No one else had noticed. Christa
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