Oliver leans toward Lily. “Bram gave me a tour. I love the Donna Summer shrine.”
Lily’s eyes light up. “You like her?”
“I don’t thinklikeis sufficient to describe how I feel about awoman who revolutionized music. There’s music before ‘I Feel Love’ and music after ‘I Feel Love.’?”
“Exactly!” Lily turns to Archie. “Haven’t I said the exact same thing?”
“You have.” Archie looks at Oliver. “She has.”
Oliver keeps going: “What they did with the electronics in that song... The delay on the bass line. The way they manipulated the Moog to sound percussive. It’s the first drum machine click track ever released, as far as I know. It’s all so precise and yet so free. It’s like the musical equivalent of a moving train. It justtravels, you know.”
Lily smiles. “I do know, even though I’m not sure I understand music like you do.”
I don’t dare interrupt them. But I do think of how much I love the song. And also how much I love riding the Tube. Its speed. The rattling motion that makes me feel like I’m going somewhere. That’s all I want. To keep moving forward and farther forward. Headfirst. Always accelerating. Who wouldn’t love a song that gives them that sensation?
Lily asks: “Do you know why the song was written in the first place?”
Oliver shakes his head. “I don’t.”
Lily smiles. She’s excited by the conversation. “Donna was working with Giorgio Moroder on an album that was a tour of music through the decades. They decided if they were going to chart the history of music, they also needed a song to represent the future.”
“Wow.” Oliver closes his eyes. Moves his body. He seems to be playing the song in his imagination. “And they were right, weren’t they? They created the sound of the future. But then, what makesthe song so powerful is the way she delivers the melody in her head voice. So angelic. So human. So incongruous with the electronic world of the song.”
“She’s a church girl at heart. She knows how to channel God when she sings.”
“My mother always said music is our way of communicating with God.”
“Said?”
Oliver bites his lip. “Oh. Uh... She passed.” I can tell Oliver regrets bringing her up. He says he doesn’t want to talk about his mother. And yet she’s still the person most on his mind.
Lily reaches for Oliver’s hand. Squeezes it. “I’m sorry.” They clutch each other. Their hands are over my heart. I’ve never felt happier. Lily adds: “Perhaps all creativity is our way of letting God communicatethroughus.”
I can tell Oliver loves Lily already.
Lily smiles. “And Donna really was in love when she wrote and recorded it. You can fake a lot of things. But not love.”
Oliver’s gaze catches mine when Lily says this.
Archie leans on the kitchen counter. “Music can be a revolution.”
Lily nods. “Musicshouldbe a revolution.”
“When I saw Queen in Hyde Park—”
“Archie, this story again!” Lily throws Archie a playful gaze.
“Well, the boys haven’t heard it, have they?” Archie turns his gaze to me and Oliver:the boys. “The crowds were massive, but somehow Freddie had every one of them in the palm of his hand. I felt pride watching him. As he strutted across that stage in his tight-fitting white leotard, cock bulging—”
“Archiekins, no need to be so graphic!”
“Well, it was.” Archie laughs. “It felt to me, in that moment, that life is limitless. All the rules and boundaries of society felt so weak in the face of a power like Freddie Mercury. When the main set ended, we all cheered for an encore that never came. Two hundred thousand people, cheering and shouting and begging. What we didn’t know at the time is that the bobbies had forced the band into the back of a police van and threatened them with arrest.”
I didn’t know this story. I hear myself respond in shock. “Wait. Seriously?”
Archie nods. “They said it was because the concert was becoming unruly. But let’s be real. They were afraid that one more song from that magical creature might have tipped the scales of power forever in our favor. That’s the power of one song, one person, one moment. Remember that, won’t you?”
Before any of us can respond, Maud gets home. “I’m proper famished.” Maud opens the refrigerator without even glancing at Oliver. “Aw, come on. Where’s the beef stew? I had my heart set on it.”
