Unobtanium
By Ana María Carbonell
Ten differently sized metal boxes—some basalt black, others glittery gold, and at least one metallic peach—shone like freshly polished gems on the floor before me. I had just pushed open the door to our converted garage, his studio, when I saw them. “They’re so beautiful,” I said as he sat at his desk full of computer screens and knobs. He looked at me and smirked, as if to say, “You ain’t seen nothing yet” and got up to pull out another case: this one held a deep burgundy, a midnight gray, and my favorite—an aquamarine. I felt like a beloved whose prince had just presented her with a trove of jewels, or a valentine gazing at her box of chocolates wrapped in differently colored cellophanes or foils, trying to decide on her favorite one. But I knew these weren’t for me. And they weren’t about shimmer and shine. They were about sound—his beloved guitar pedals, the gear du jour he’d been muttering about off and on now for days, maybe weeks, probably months.
Lately, while the two of us went about our respective days together, I would hear about these pedals. Planted on our couch with my laptop, sticky notes, and books, I’d watch my husband scuttle between the studio and the house, mumbling about things like reverb, sustain, resonance. Sometimes he would stop to share his thoughts with me. But knowing I didn’t understand, and not wanting to explain electronic intricacies to a layperson like me, he didn’t leave much room for my questions. Then he would mutter about something else. Maybe an amp. Or a speaker. Again, talking more to himself than to me.
I knew the pedals had been his latest obsession, but I never imagined he owned so many. That afternoon, with at least twenty colorful boxes displayed at my feet (later he would show me even more), I wondered, Why so many? And why does he mull so much? I recalled him sitting for hours in our sunless, cold back office watching YouTube video after YouTube video, reading endless guitar equipment websites, searching eBay and Reverb.com.
When I asked, “Do you really need this many?” his face told me he was far from done, already scheming to buy more. Or, since we were low on money, that he was calculating as to which ones to trade in. Then, with his strong dark hands in front of him, as though holding a large beachball but really trying to grab the elusive essence of what he was saying, he confessed, “It’s that I’m searching for . . . I’m trying to find that . . . tone—that perfect tone.”
Ah, that got my attention. I understand tone. I’m an English professor after all. I teach writing and literature. I know about hunting for the precise word to use at the right moment to get that exact mood. Diction may be my equivalent to his guitar pedal. And, while I am not a musician myself, I am a lover of music, so I also understand something about sound. Without the right tone, the music could be flat. Or screechy. It’s not just what you play—the notes, the beats, the speed—it’s how it all comes out.
Then he said a word I never heard before: unobtainium.
“Music geeks constantly search for it,” he explained. “The unobtanium is that unobtainable gadget needed to produce an unattainable, perfect sound. But”—and here he chuckled—“we all know it can’t really exist.” Yes, I thought. Just as there is always room for finding better tension, imagery, flow, the mot juste, there is always room for that more perfect union of echo, sustain, reverb.
As I was reflecting on all this, suddenly he was gone. Not physically, but before I knew it—and before he even seemed to know—he had retreated into his head filled with those notes, rhythms, and, most significantly at this particular moment at least, tone. I could tell because the fingers on his right hand started tapping his leg; his head barely but repeatedly nodded, as if he were recalling some long-lost memory distracting him from the consciousness and deliberation needed to hold his head steady; and his brown eyes stared blankly beyond or away from me, focusing on nothing in particular that existed outside of himself, or rather outside of his music.
* * *
Sometimes I wish my husband would explain his musical musings to me. But, then again, a few months ago, I was exposed to more details than I had wanted. Due to an iPhone glitch, I became privy to a slew of texts between him and his music pal, Andy: “Everything’s going to sound different with the Lester,” my husband wrote, to which Andy responded, “Yes, but there’s something about a cranked old Fender that sounds great with almost any guitar. I played my 335 through the VibroChamp with an 8″ speaker at home and it was glorious!” And then there was this: “I thought the Strat sounded great with the Celestion. Humbuckers not as much.” Later I learned “humbuckers” do just that—they buck the hum; they stop that distracting buzz of the electric guitar. For me it’s “glorious” when words make sense like that. But back then I knew none of this, so when it got to “I’m gonna try that DT12 asap,” I chimed in: “Guys! This is me. I’m still on your thread. Can you please remove me?”
* * *
That day in the studio, when I had become witness to the extent of my husband’s pedal obsession, particularly after he had unzipped that second case and pulled down even more off the shelf, I did wonder, Should I be worried? But I brushed the thought aside when we parted ways for the day, as we often would, agreeing to meet later for dinner. As usual he stayed in his studio with his guitars, amps, cables and, most relevantly, pedal boards, and I found my way back to the couch with a wool blanket over my lap surrounded by my computer, books, and notepads, my dog curled at my side.
* * *
That evening it was my turn to make dinner. Fall had been settling in, and it was getting dark earlier. I lit two tall, tapered candles after I had already called him to dinner twice from the cold back office where he had transplanted himself from the studio. I knew I was tearing him away from music-related emails, guitar videos, or gear websites.
When he sat down, his quietness and distant stare verified he hadn’t left the music behind. I breathed in deeply: I knew this was going to be one of those nights. I felt that familiar routine we had been trying to break for years (and often could) stealthily nestle into place. There was silence. That silence. We started to eat, and as I picked at my food for a few minutes, I waited for him. To look up. To talk. Instead he hunched over his plate, not really seeing it except for quick glances to scoop up some food. And when he did lift his head, he started doing that shaky nod again, and his eyes began to glaze over as he gazed at nothing at all. He was gone. Lost in his music.
I waited for him to come back—for him to ask how my day was, perhaps talk about his, or simply see me, maybe tell me I looked pretty. Amid the quiet, I leaned back and beheld my nicely set table. The flames from the cream-colored candles caused the water in the glasses to glitter and the white wine in the goblets to glow. The grilled salmon, salad with dried cranberries and feta, and fresh olive bread all made for an elegant yet simple meal. Our dinner was healthy. We were healthy. Unfortunately much of the world was not. We had two young-adult children. At least two people we knew had lost theirs. I wanted us to take stock of our lives, check in, or simply enjoy this moment together as the day dimmed, transitioning from the harsh daylight demanding activity to a quiet evening welcoming stillness and reflection. Staring out our dining room windows at the magenta bougainvillea hugging our house, the thick green bamboo surrounding our property, and the redwood trees in the distance, I sipped my wine before I looked over at him. Again, I waited.
The more time passed and the more air I breathed in without letting enough out, the more my gut tightened and the more wine I drank—I was already on my second glass. The alcohol ran through my blood, soothing my muscles that had become increasingly tense since the start of dinner. I was thankful I had picked the better bottle—a Sancerre instead of a Pinot Gris—since it seemed, at this moment at least, it would be the highlight of my evening. I pushed my fork through the pink flesh of the salmon, a bit overdone, took a few bites. I looked over at him and put my fork down.
I understood, or rather accepted, that his mind was drawn—pulled—toward a musical world few of us could fully understand. He was born for that: an artist who had played music since he was nine—an excellent guitarist, both acoustic and electric, and now a mandolin player too. But he had spent too much of his adult life in an office high above Lake Merritt so he could help others through his work and allow his family to live in the Bay Area, a beautiful yet expensive part of the country. He had wanted to give us all a better life. I respected that. I knew that all he had given our boys—had given me—left little time for his music.
I also knew if I waited a little longer, he would most likely look up, eventually. He would smile with his kind brown eyes, crinkled at the sides, and say something like “What did you do today?” or “I talked to both boys this morning; they’re doing fine” or “Your hair’s looking nice, Babe.” He did that most nights. But that night I wasn’t sure.
Or, I could have gently touched his arm, as he suggested I do at times like this, and with a mellifluous voice that belied the anxiety building up in me, ask, “Honey, can we talk now?” Most times I could do this. But that night my old familiar feeling I had grown up with slithered into my body, camped out as if it had never left. My mom’s silencing phrases like no me compliques la vida—don’t complicate my life—and memories of a father who died young whom I felt I barely knew anyway swirled in my head, along with the Sancerre. That night, I felt lonely. I needed him to come to me: I couldn’t gently ask, nor could I wait.
And so it happened.
“Well? Are you going to say something? Or what?!” I asked (or, rather, demanded).
And as soon as I had said it, I knew it was too late—I couldn’t take it back.
He looked up, his mind still attached to, but moving away from, those ribbons of notes still playing in his head. I could see that, reluctantly, he was letting go of those sounds so close to forming that song he was looking for. Then he said what I knew he would say—what he always said to me at a time like this:
“Honey . . . it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it—it’s your tone.”
* * *
He was right, of course. Tone can be everything.
I, too, was right, in my own way though. I knew I would do this again. And again. Maybe not every night but at least every now and then, enough to pepper the rest of our nights together. I’m sure I fought back, told him I needed him to be more attentive. Eventually he probably responded with something like “Yes, I’m sorry. I know you need that. I’ll try better next time.” And I, too, conceded, probably saying something like “I know deep down you are there for me. I’ll try to be patient; I’ll try to ask differently.”
But, in truth, we both know his music will once again capture his mind, like Calypso enchanted Odysseus’s; he will lose track of who he is with and where he is. And we both know I will get that feeling again—it will bubble up like a primeval fear—and I will roar like Pele high up in Mauna Kea, where not even the vast ocean water can douse her fiery anger.
* * *
That night, we weren’t thinking about our countless other evenings at the dining room table where we’ve recounted our days while planning new ones. We weren’t remembering our shared awe at the boys for who they’ve become and who they’ve always been. How only we fully know their baby selves: the older one ran (not walked) at nine months, and today is still eager for his next step; the younger one looked up at me with his squished one-day-old face and said, “Yes, you will always love me because I am glorious.”
We weren’t remembering how sometimes we laugh so much, we cry, how every day we update each other on the latest political developments, lately more pressing than ever. That we’ve been following the map of the United States, watching red dots spread and contract. That we depend on each other for information, awareness, guidance while we take stock of our boys, elderly parents, friends, the house, ourselves.
I wasn’t thinking about his usual dinner-time questions: “How’s your mom? Who did you talk to today? What did you do, Sweetie?” And neither of us was thinking of the nights we meet upstairs early in our king-size bed.
We weren’t thinking.
* * *
It’s nice to believe that, despite it all, we will find our unobtanium—that just-right love gadget—that will get us to create the perfect sound to resound within every corner and crack of our aging home. But we both know moments of discordance, incongruity, disagreement will always be here and, in our case, they can be harsh, as if the battle of the Gods were on display. Maybe other couples don’t have these moments or, if they do, they’re quieter, more subdued. We, on the other hand, every now and then at least, need to make noise: abrasive, loud, clashing.
And why not? What would “The 1812 Overture” sound like without its cacophonous finale—that bang and clang of drums, cymbals, cannons? Or what about Hendrix’s Woodstock version of “The Star Spangled Banner” with its screechy, screaming electric guitar? (For me, it was never my national anthem until I heard Jimi play it, showing America in her true light, in all her contradictions.) Yet our noise—our clang and screech—of course doesn’t sound as good. If we were like Tchaikovsky and Hendrix, we could say we finally did find our unobtanium, or at least came as close as possible.
Instead, like the music geeks, I know we won’t find it. And who will? But we have found something: this imperfect love, big and accommodating, that includes conflict—our cacophony—alongside the melody we return to most nights when we nestle into bed, hold each other’s hands, kiss each other good night, thankful for one more day together. It contains our contradictions: forgetfulness and fury and kindness and connection. And, most importantly, it holds forgiveness, those pauses, the rest notes in between, as necessary as any other notes we may hit.
For better or for worse—as they say—this is our soundtrack, our love song. Day after day, night after night, it follows us, sometimes in the background as we go our separate ways, others in the fore, like at our dining room table when we sit amid the encroaching dimming light of the evening, surrounded by a magenta bougainvillea hugging our home, lush bamboo encircling our property, and ancient redwoods in the distance facing us, standing tall.
Ana María Carbonell writes and teaches in the Bay Area. Her work has appeared in The Saranac Review, The MacGuffin, Artemis Journal, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. She was also a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books’ literary contest. She lives in Berkeley with other creatives: her musician husband and her wily rescue pup.