* * *
—
Life as a college dropout cruised along as my electro-polka gig became routine. It was isolating. I didn’t mingle with staff, and the restaurant clientele averaged in their seventies. My friends were scattered around the country now. Mama and Papa would return home from their jobs around the time I headed into mine at night. It was my first taste of the nocturnal lifestyle and I found I preferred it, even if it was a little lonesome.
With my parents out during the day, I could work freely and loudly on my songs. Though I wasn’t happy with much I’d written, I did have a few I could live with. Two of them have survived: “Video” and “Emaline,” although they sounded a little different then. “Video,” which made its way onto the eponymous Ben Folds Five debut a decade later, started out as a strummy rocker in 4/4 rather than the 6/8 dirge it became, and “Emaline,” which still sounds similar, used to have a lot of lyrics about shaving my head. (By the time of the song’s commercial release on Naked Baby Photos—Ben Folds Five, 1998—those lyrics had given way to a story about dating an unusual girl who is misunderstood by nearly everyone and results in the singer’s own alienation from friends.) I was also playing around with a waltz that became the song “Boxing.” It was all instrumental then, except for the single line of the chorus, “Boxing’s been good to me, Howard.”
After a few months, Veronika’s and the incredible Hi-Tech One-Man Fake-Ass Polka Band began drawing a regular crowd. Loyal and eccentric, the demo skewed gray and happy. It was nearly all couples, because, after all, who goes to a polka bar to pick up chicks?
My favorite regulars were an elderly couple, whose names I’ve long forgotten. Their eccentricity was worthy of a Tom Waits song. They cut a fine Viennese waltz, despite or perhaps because of the husband’s wooden leg, which required a conspicuous kick to the side to straighten it every three beats. He’d fought in World War II. She’d been a schoolteacher for fifty years. They’d lived all over the world. I thought they were the best, and we often struck up a conversation on my breaks.
They even hired me one night to play a party at their home. They requested that I arrive ready to go in my Bavarian getup. And so I hopped into my 1976 AMC Hornet to make a long drive up into the middle of nowhere west of Winston-Salem, looking like an extra from The Sound of Music.
They make this ninety-minute trek weekly just to do the damn Chicken Dance and sling Spaten-Bräu? I wondered.
Their little home was perched on a peak in the foothills at the end of a winding dirt road. They greeted me at the door—he in coat and tie, she in an old-fashioned dress. There were party favors and the wife offered me a bubbly drink before I began. Being offered alcohol was still quite a compliment. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even look old enough to drive.
As it was time to start my first set, I realized that no guests had been invited. This was obviously a private show. Just them, and me. Okay. Slightly odd, I thought, but, hey, it’s a paying gig! I cycled through my four-tune repertoire for a couple hours as they kicked around the living room, with intermittent breaks where we sat and talked. It suddenly didn’t seem so weird. They were just enjoying life. They told me amazing stories of being stationed around the world, and I sipped wine like an adult. This was way better than the grocery store.
* * *
—
As odd as playing private living room affairs for old couples with wooden legs might sound, there was one other couple who takes the cake (German chocolate, of course). I’d seen this odd duo plenty of times at Veronika’s, though we’d never spoken. They had a habit of sitting side by side, facing away from the music. They never got up to dance. One night as I finished off my Power Polka Tetrad, which ended with a feeble theme and variations on “Beer Barrel Polka,” and clopped my way back to the kitchen for my schnitzel dinner and a Coke, the pair beckoned me to sit.
The husband, who looked like Flanders from The Simpsons, motioned to an empty chair across the table. He had a loose tan corduroy jacket and wide collar. His wife was sitting next to him in a hippie dress, her hair stuffed underneath some kind of Amish-looking headwear. They were in their mid-forties, I would say. It all felt very serious and formal. They wasted no time on small talk. The man launched into a bunch of questions:
Did I think it was possible to read minds?
Did I know that rooms had memories?
Did I know what parapsychology was?
I was, they announced, looking at two parapsychologists. They then answered all the questions themselves. They also mentioned they taught at Wake Forest, but it seemed far-fetched to me that Wake had a department for this kind of gobbledygook. Maybe their day job was teaching something traditional like English and this was their hobby? At any rate, they seemed dead serious.
I’m going to put this weird shit into a song, I thought. (I never did.)
They felt obligated, they said, to warn me that I was doing everyone in the room a great disservice as I performed. They told me they sensed I was bored. They told me it was obvious that I thought I was better than everyone else in the room. And no matter how polite my outward demeanor, my inner smug boredom was harshing the mellows of everyone near. This mellow-harshing would radiate from me, into their lives, and to others, and so on. They even insisted that the knock-on effect of this sort of insincerity was at the heart of the world’s problems. War, world famine, prejudice. I wasn’t sure I wanted to take credit for all that!
They were there, they said, to teach me to appreciate the power I was wielding, because I had an unusually strong aura and charisma—well, shucks! Charisma carries with it responsibility. They suggested that when I performed I should always be present, kind, and engaged. They implored me to always remember that the intention with which you play each note has an effect on the people listening. An audience’s time, presence, and attention are great gifts to a performer. I too had a gift to share, but it wasn’t worth anything if I wasn’t mindful. I should never sleepwalk my way through playing music, skipping across each note as if each one was a step closer to getting the fuck out of there. It was far braver to actually care, they concluded—to savor each phrase, to give something of myself, no matter what kind of music it was.
They had essentially declared me to be an existential chicken, not rising to the challenge of performing earnestly with intent. I knew better, they said, and they were certain I was capable of more.
To be honest, I thought they were pretty fucking creepy, and I wasn’t happy I missed out on my schnitzel break. But I had to admit that some of what they said struck a profound chord. I probably was bored and smug inwardly, though I didn’t think it was obvious to anyone else. I figured I was giving it the ol’ showbiz treatment.
Wasn’t I energetic enough?
Nah, that wasn’t the point, they said. I just wasn’t being genuine. I had to admit they were right. I was phoning it in.