The great Wurlitzer (25.7.86)

We had sat there for what seemed an eternity.  Above reared the huge blank screen, as if in mockery.  Behind us the auditorium stretched back into the darkness, and up into the unseen.  The seats were filled with hundreds, possibly thousands of strained faces, all staring at that same blank screen.  And listening to the music.

It came from a man in a small enclosure in front of the screen.  Of that he took no notice.  He was concentrating on playing the ranks of keyboards before him, flipping the serried groups of controls around him.  His body swayed as his feet worked up and down on the pedals, and as he reached across himself to alter, to adjust.  He seemed oblivious of the rest of the world; he was riding his proud steed, his charger, his instrument: the mighty Wurlitzer. 

What a name for what an organ.  It suggests cannonry, clashes of Imperial armies amidst the smoke-filled battlefield.  It has overtones of obscure Hapsburg nobles buried deep in their country estates in the Carpathians.  Or perhaps some lonely middle-european émigré, desperately trying to carve out a career for himself in America; imbued with that New World entrepreneurial spirit he tries to break down the old barriers, to produce something like nothing before: the mighty Wurlitzer.

It is almost as if the epithet were wedded inextricably with the word.  And with it, the unique Wurlitzer sound.  It would be folly to attempt to describe it, its hard reedy consistency, its unbreathing forcefulness.  Yet we who heard it felt that we knew it, and knew it well.  Knew it possibly too well. For during that eternity of waiting, the little man and his mighty organ did not go away.

Or rather he did go away, amidst rapturous applause which he turned slightly to acknowledge.  Little did he suspect that we applauded his going more than his previous presence.  Or perhaps he did, and that gentle smile he graced us with as his instrument sank slowly into the ground was a sardonic smile of sweet victory.  He knew that he would return, and that once again we would applaud as he left...only to return again.

Each time he came back, the music seemed to grow more brutal in its unremitting vulgarity, in the shrillness of its registration...  And the little man with his jaunty body movements, his smiling bespectacled face and his balding hair all seemed to mock us for our impotence, for our helplessness as we sat there, with nothing to do but wait, watch the empty screen, and listen.

And then we realised what was going on.  This was no joke. This was hell.  Hell is not burning fiery furnaces or brimstone; it is not piercing steel or the rending of limbs.  It is worse than that.  It is infinite, unending, unendurable boredom, the boredom of the totally trivial.  There is a phrase which speaks of the banality of evil.  Our little man, with his smile, his slicked-back hair, his tantalising disappearances and his endless renditions of "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts" finally revealed him for what he was: the great Wurlitzer himself.

(29.7.86)

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