Danni

This hardwood forest has the fragrance of safety and peace. Silent, except for the early spring breeze wishing through the leaves, the curious rustling in the underbrush and the enormous gentle sound of the birds in the trees.

I’m sitting on a bench in a woodland clearing, with a panoramic view of greening hills and hollows rolling into the deep distance, as far as the eye can see or the mind can imagine.

A lifetime. The boundaries of mortality are thinner, less durable. This body has contained me for so long and so well. Soon it will be time to give it up.

I remember the words of Daenestra Fiorintino—the singer known only as Danni—many years ago when I was an ego fool. 

“Your work is your practice,” she said. “If it’s not taking you into love, it’s not right for you.” Her eyes smiled. I fell into them.

It’s all about love. Starting out ego and becoming soul. Danni was a life struck by lightning, a soul lost in love. 

***

My life’s work was music. Promoting and producing. Representing. Creating success. I remember a magazine article, written in the early years at the beginning of it all, that described me as a handsome rogue, a vital force in rock culture. A mover and shaker, a guy who blazed a path for others. Today I am indeed a far cry from my younger self.

There was no Internet or email or social media or mobile devices in those extraordinary first days of the emerging pop music scene. Everything was up-close and personal. You could see it, smell it. Intimate. I felt something coming that would take the world by storm.

Looking back, it was a mess. The technology of sound amplification had yet to evolve. The concept of a rock group was just an experiment. Electric music was too new to be comfortable. Tickets were cash only. The concept of venue was challenged, changing. We patched things together as best we could. And the people kept coming to see and hear music.

Those were years of social unrest, of cultural upheaval. People, young and old, rejected the traditional systems that drove guilt and rejection and hate and war. And killing. In the end, of course, we changed little of that.

We assembled the infrastructure that would eventually transform rock music, live music in particular, into a multi-billion dollar per year industry.

Thinking about it now, that wasn’t a very nice thing to do to the world.

***

“I want to tell the story of Emil and Danni,” I said.

Katie Bing, my biographer, and I are sitting in the clearing on the stone bench. We welcomed the early afternoon warmth that occasionally blinked through the leaves and branches overhead.

“We’re supposed to be writing your story.”

“It is my story,” I said. “Just another way to tell it.”

“Where does this story start?” said Katie.

“It was the summer that Spike Bax broke the world with his new ideas and inventions for sound reinforcement.” I no longer think in terms of years. Events and people are how I mark past time. “Newly designed amplifiers sent high-fidelity audio signals to multi-frequency speaker systems. For the first time musicians had on-stage monitors so they could hear themselves. Early days. But Spike changed everything.”

We sat for a while. Katie knew to be still and wait.

“We were at this festival,” I said. “The first really big outdoor rock festival where everything clicked. Where people could hear the music, love the experience.”

“Coffee?” Katie held out a thermos. I accepted.

“Emil Southers and Danni and Liam and Graeme. That magnificent band." 

I thought back to the first concerts, the shows that had introduced the group to the world.

“It was an explosion, a disruption of everything previously accepted about the world of popular music,” I said. “The music was energetic and exciting and honest and, by God, it was astounding new music created by talented musicians who truly loved the experience of performance.”

I warmed my hands around the mug of coffee. There remained a chill in the air, here in the shade. The warmth of spring teased, promised summer without delivering.

“The lyrics spoke for the unrest, the chaos and anger and fear of the times but with hope and love. It was desperately human and came straight from the soul,” I said.

“That festival was their breakout show, right?” said Katie.

“I booked them in a prime headline spot in the lineup,” I said. “That night they were just a band. The next day their future was forged in platinum and gold.”

Katie waited patiently for me to continue. This wasn’t the first time I prattled on about the old days.

“Malcolm stepped in and the band was relentlessly marketed, branded and elevated to the peculiar status known as supergroup, a new phenomenon in pop culture,” I said.

Anger crept into my voice.

“Media and the public were conditioned to idolize them as larger than life rock gods. The stages they performed on became both pedestal and pulpit. Overnight, money and fame flowed unrestrained into their young and impressionable and vulnerable lives.”

Now that I started, it all poured out. I could not stop.

“Sudden wealth and status cracked the group dynamic. Graeme believed that his stardom was a richly deserved reward, that this was the fame and status he had always been entitled to. Liam was overwhelmed at his change in fortune, became lost in the excesses of temptation. Emil and Danni and the others suspected that stardom would distance them from the simple creative joy of making music.”

I breathed deep, to center myself for this next part.

“With infallible timing, Malcolm then introduced the prototype of a new kind of record label contract, a financial instrument that would change everything in the industry, designed for just one purpose—the exploitation of music and musicians for corporate profit.” 

***

“Everything changed. The world, the band, my future,” I said. “It made my career. Suddenly I was fated for this path, for wealth and status. My destiny was sealed for the next forty years.”

“How did Vyxennir Media start?”

“I don’t remember,” I said. I shook my head, felt regret threading through my breath. “That part is all hazy now. It just did.”

“You ended up CEO of one of the largest media conglomerates on the planet,” said Katie Bing, as if it were a good thing.

“Fame changed Graeme,” I said. Katie knew I would not discuss my time as CEO. “We knew him as laughing and easy-going. He joked around and was superbly creative. Then he became an alcoholic and heroin addict. All that went away. He became abusive. Graeme was broken.”

“Danni left the band,” said Katie. “Stopped performing.”

“Yes. She stopped feeling the love,” I said. “All she felt was the business, the mercenary bleeding of their musical souls. She saw what it did to Graeme. It wasn’t taking her into love, so she left.”

***

We spotted serious rain approaching, so we walked back through the woods. We arrived at a structure of considerable size. Built in dark wood tones with expansive windows, it was both cabin and house, equally elaborate and rustic. The building agreed seamlessly with the dense hardwoods around it.

This was Emil’s home. He was gone now. He followed Danni, soon after her body died and her soul became love. Katie and I had our coffee in the main room, a beautiful space detailed in burnished wood and subdued colors of tan and brown and gray and dark blues.

Two sides were dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows that provided an unobstructed view of an endless range of hills and hollows covered by dense hardwood forest. On the right the room was cast in gray stone, the centerpiece being a massive fireplace and mantle, in which a fire was set.

“The band broke up after Danni left,” said Katie. “What did you do?”

It was gracious of her to ask. She knew it was a turning point in my story.

“Went on building Vyxennir Media,” I said. “Eventually, of course, we were acquired by Snapstein-Silverstone, the investment group.”

“Malcolm?”

“Yea. Malcolm was part of that.”

“Then last spring Malcolm showed up again with his pitch for The Reunion The World Has Been Waiting For, right?” said Katie.

“He called it a legacy supergroup reunion,” I said, laughing. Malcolm loved a great marketing scheme, was always looking for the big payoff. “It was a year after…”

“A year after Emil had the stroke,” said Katie. She was remembering with me now, not writing my biography.

“Emil was kind, but sometimes not very patient with people,” I said. “He was opposed to the reunion for a lot of reasons. He was still recovering from a stroke. I think that was most of it. Malcolm met with Emil, here in this house. Probably sat in these chairs. Emil wanted to throw him out on his ear, but he wasn’t like that. In the end he relented. For Danni, I think.”

“Everything changed after that,” said Katie. She was no longer biographer. She was a friend, lost in shared memories of love and grace and courage.

“Everything,” I said.

We sat for a long time, watched the twilight flood the hardwood forest, from home to horizon. I felt lethargic, like gravity was pulling harder today.

***

The next morning we resumed our conversation, this time sitting around the big granite island in the kitchen, fresh-brewed coffee in hand.

“I was already burned out, exhausted by all of it. The Reunion the World Has Been Waiting For was Malcolm’s project, a scheme to once again capitalize on the lives and creativity of people I loved.”

“Get the old band back together one last time,” said Katie. 

“Pundits said it was going to be the concert event of the year, perhaps the largest, most complex and highly produced concert performance undertaking in history,” I said.

“I was one of them,” said Katie. “In the end, I was right.” 

“The whole thing was a massive headache.”

“Why did you quit Vyxennir?”

“I had a foot in different camps for so long,” I said. “One foot at Vyxennir. The other with Emil and Danni and the band.”

“The lawsuits?”

“How could I forget?” I said. “Yes. The legal nonsense. What a mess. Production rights, ownership, revenue shares. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.”

“You helped resolve all that.”

“Spike and I went to visit Hanford Breekstone at Snapstein-Silverstone. A lot of things came together. We bought out Vyxennir.”

I refilled my coffee, stood by the window, stared hard outside.

“Danni was sick by that time,” I said. “Had to make it work. Time was running out.”

***

Katie and I are sitting at our favorite table in The Caliphate, our favorite cafe, for brunch. The people here are always so gentle, so welcoming.

“After leaving Vyxennir I took up residence at Emil’s homestead.”

“Danni’s illness advanced,” said Katie.

“Yes. We weren’t sure she’d make it to the big show.”

“Her final performance,” said Katie. 

“She wanted those last moments in the lights, in front of the world, singing for her very last time. She hung on.”

“You spent a lot of time with her during those days before the show.”

“Everyone was so busy,” I said. “Danni and I sat together for hours without talking. Just sitting. When she did talk it was like a soothing balm, a remedy to the chaos that had infected my life for so many years.”

***

Today Katie and I are sitting in an upper row of the empty Piacevole Anfiteatro, the outdoor amphitheater where Danni gave her final, her most memorable, performance. The weather is mild, a bit warmer.

“When I stepped away from Vyxennir I was lost,” I said. “My entire identity was bound in what I did. Titles and contracts and power and influence…”

“You did a lot of good in your time,” said Katie.

“I did stuff, is all,” I said. “Just stuff humans do to make themselves believe they are important, or at least relevant.”

“Music,” said Katie. “You made music happen.”

“The music is always there, always inside us,” I said. “I just threw some lights on it and turned up the volume.”

“Danni,” said Katie, nudging me back to our recent theme.

“Danni knew I was lost,” I said. “She was so kind. Loving.”

“Do you remember the last time you spoke with her?” said Katie.

“She assured me there was love alive in every fiber of my being. That it allowed me to rise above the wounds and insults and grief and agonies of all my history, to see life with deep humility, to know it is beautiful and terrible and worthwhile and painful and always magical.”

Katie and I sat in companionable silence, thinking about those words.

“I remember her final words to me exactly,” I said. “This is the gift of the storm, she said. To be struck by lightning you must first stand in the storm, yes?"

***

I stared at the empty stage below. My imagination took me back to the night Danni sang her last song, her encore. Her curtain call. It ran through my mind like a movie. I remembered every detail, every smell and taste and sight and sound, as if I were there again. 

A single soft white spotlight hushed the crowd. It lit nothing for quite a long time. Surrounded by gray darkness it was only a promise. It was empty too long, like an uncomfortable pause in conversation, long enough for the audience to become restless. But then there was movement in the shadows.

Emil Southers entered the spotlight. He carried a wooden stool to sit on and a worn, battered guitar to play. He placed the stool carefully and sat, got himself comfortable. He did not look at the audience. He remained motionless, held that guitar, his old friend, for a long time. Finally, he took a deep breath, his hands moved into place.

The first notes rang clear and precise and familiar. The melody took shape, resounded through the dark night. His hands moved gracefully, effortlessly. It grew in rhythmic intensity, through complex shifts of cadence and chord. His muscles flexed, his fingers a blur.

Just an ordinary man, he faced the world alone in the spotlight, all his long mortal history of sorrow and loss and courage and love exposed and vulnerable.

As Emil drew that single elegant, winding melodic passage to its climax, as the final notes of his story echoed in the gentle breeze of the soft night air, a second silky white spotlight appeared.

Daenestra Fiorintino stepped into the spotlight, like smoke from shadow, as if she had always been there, unnoticed. Her presence overwhelmed the very light she entered.

If we could see magic, what would it look like? If magic could speak, what would it say?

Danni slipped gracefully to her microphone and sang.

***

I am alone, sitting on a bench in a woodland clearing. There is the scent of safety and peace. It is time for me to leave this mortal body, this old friend, behind.

Working on my biography with Katie I realized there is no one story of my life to tell. Our lives are many stories.

We are born into narratives crafted by others—family, society, and circumstance. But the chapters we write ourselves reveal the essence of our being. We define our own truths. Our stories are unique, masterpieces painted in the colors of experience, triumph, and failure.

Emil would say there is magic in our lives. He called it music.

Danni would say that we start as ego and end up soul.

They are both correct.

For most of my life, ego trapped me within the narrow stories written for me by other people. When I stepped outside those stories, it was terrifying. As I examined my deep down true self, what would I find? My worst fear was that I would find nothing.

I had it all wrong. Nothing is the blessing I needed. Nothing is the beginning of my journey, leaving ego and becoming soul.

Being love.