This is a work by Anne Wallace titled ‘Dreaming of a Song’ (2005). I have always loved Anne’s work and saw this one on the Art Gallery of Ballarat instagram @artgalbal promoting her exhibition ‘Strange Ways’.  When I commented that it was #intriguing the curator Julie McLaren challenged me to write a Luxville Tale. Here it is. Image used with permission of the artist.

This tale has now been recorded. Let me read it to you at Madame Yum’s Insta TV @madameyum

Somewhere There’s Music.

The silence was bold, like the ocean. Pressing. Like she had been, when she was alive. A presence. Consuming. Julie wondered what her grandmother would say about this situation.

Actually, no she didn’t. The words rang in her head splitting the silent waves. “Sentiment is the cloak of the craven.”

Julie stood at the window as she was told, near the record player. She turned the black disc over in her hands, willing the music to sound without needle. In the quiet she had focus to feel. She missed her grandmother’s whippet smart rejoiners that were dropped weight and target perfect each time.

She thought of her grandmother Ava as a starlet trapped by suburbia. The music from her parties tickled little Julie’s ears, and brought her out of bed to sit small in the hallway. She loved to watch the dancing and smell the cigarettes mixed with heavy perfume. The record player took up the length of the front window whose curtain opened to the street. The light from the record players dials strobed golden while the bass vibrated across the wooden floor and in through Julie’s chest.

Ava would always discover Julie. Seemed to know she was there. She would pick the little girl up with one arm, a drink in the other all while a beau in a tux held Ava by the waist. She would tuck her up in the big armchair and wrap her in a big floral quilt so Julie could watch the dancing up close, and doze despite the raucousness.

Julie remembered picture perfect the night when she woke to see Ava sitting in the other armchair. The guests had left, the music had stopped and Ava was still in her party dress, trying to light a cigarette. The spark caught a false fingernail and it leapt to flame. Ava dunked her firing finger expertly into her whiskey glass.

The flames were replaced by a black plume. As Julie watched Ava smiled to herself and dropped the still unlit cigarette to the floor. The whiskey had taken her attention and was put to her lips forthwith. Black plume and all. A vivid memory of her darling batshit crazy grandmother on redial.

Looking around the room Julie felt the many absences. They hadn’t done a bad job really, but it felt perfunctory. They had only created slithers of the room. A chair with a painting behind it in the far corner. A vase on a pedestal, the faux record and recorder player, and a light beyond to suggest life beyond. But big spaces of nothing between were the lie. No complete memory. Probably like they had staged the rooms for the atomic tests. Dummies standing in for life. Without sentiment.

Outside someone yelled ‘Quiet on Set’ unnecessarily. Then ‘Action’. Julie began to move her hips to music only she could hear as a sentimental tear gave her cheek a glow that might be visible on camera. For Julie sentiment wasn’t a cloak. It was a warm floral quilt she could drape around her anytime she wished to see Ava again.

LUXVILLE TALES story by Erin McCuskey | image by Anne Wallace (used with permission).

The #LuxvilleTales are generated from reader contributed images. Post me a single image themed ‘faded glory’ and I will write you a short tale. Tag it #Luxville & #LuxvilleTales and tag me too! Love Madame Yum