Confession, Submission 3 by Ryan Wrenn

He stops a verse in, not hearing it right. Takes a step back and repositions his fingers on the strings of the ancient acoustic. The crowd is patient and quiet. He starts again from the beginning but the guitarist starts again from where they left off. Again they both stop. A small encouraging, laughing cheer rolls across the crowd. The guitarist moves closer to him now, face to face. They look down at each other’s hands watching for cues on when to start. They begin.

A song about a girl he knew for six months ten years ago. A song about a girl he thought mattered then but doesn’t in any way matter now, at least to him. To the people that recognize the opening chords and hum along, then sing along, it may mean more. But now he watches the hands, the long and skinny fingers of this man he’s known for seven albums and thirteen tours and how many years before that when the band didn’t have a name and was really nothing but noise coming from the basement of his mother’s house. Watches them strum out this tune that comes out mechanical to their ears now, so stale is it from repetition. And wonders what it felt like when it did matter. Yet when he begins to sing his face cringes out the words achingly. A twenty foot screen behind him magnifies the feigned anguished for those on the lawn to see.

Here’s the verse he penned on the side of the expressway when it came to him as he drove. He’d pulled over just to write it down. His eyes close as he tries to conjure the air that day in his nostrils. The guitarist slides gracefully into the chorus, still standing close. For a moment they sing together.

The crowd cheers its approval when the song picks up and his voice deepens to a bitter anger for just a moment before returning to the indifferent whine he has become famous for. He squints out through the spotlights. The audience is a shadow swaying along to the rhythm. Massive and empty, like standing on the beach and looking out over the ocean on a moonless night. He feels as if he could fall into them.

The original recording was much too short to be a single so the producers had them stretch and pad out the song with him singing (in various strained tones) the girl in question’s name over and over while the guitarist belted out the hook in sync with the repetition. It sounded better that way, he admitted then and still thinks now. Even if the name seemed to lose weight with each utterance. The critics then pointed out how the song was the culmination of the album’s intensity, it being the last track on a ten-track LP they released in 1994 that eventually went triple platinum. The conclusion, this girl’s name indifferently whined to infinity, the strongest testament to the band’s new sound. Nay, not just the band’s new sound…a new sound in general. Critics today cite the song regularly when the Next Big Thing releases their annual album, and it’s always been a fan favorite at these sold out pavilion concerts.

In his periphery he sees the drummer and bassist come back out on stage for the fiery conclusion. The crowd cheers so loud it drowns out the sound of his own guitar. Lights on stage ignite in a dark rainbow of blues and reds and yellows. Lighters flick to life among the blackness in front of him. He releases his grip from his guitar as the band kicks in. He grabs the mic with both hands and slowly, deliberately, effortlessly, painfully, indifferently whines out a forgotten girl’s name.