Work in Progress: Isolation Box

This is a section of my current work in progress called “Isolation Box”.

After the pages of notebook scribbles on the Philly sound, there was a stark, sparse page with “Imagine” written in Barlow’s neat engineer’s script. A table drawn with heavy lines had five entries: vocal, piano, bass, drums, strings. Underneath, in a hurried, lighter stroke were entries for “John” and “Yoko”.

“John’s the only vocal, Barlow. You know that. And why is Yoko listed?” Stevie tapped the table, then flipped through the albums chaotically filed on the bookshelves. He found the Lennon disc and set it up on the turntable. The settings came up when he typed the name and track into the Isolation Box plugged into the stereo system.

The simple piano chords came from the speakers. Barlow had written, “Turn down all,” next to the instruments and vocals, but he hadn’t left them as settings on the Box. Stevie looked at the virtual dials and levels that recreated the recording tracks for the song and pulled the levers down to zero. He heard nothing. “Up all the way!” was written next to the “John” entry. Stevie found the “John” lever and pushed it to the top, expecting to hear white noise hiss. Like a fish surfacing from murky waters, a slow steady beat came. No, it was two beats. John Lennon’s heartbeat.

He pushed up the “Yoko” lever and heard her soft beat echoing John’s. When Stevie was in high school, he had seen a biography of which had a video of Lennon recording the song and Yoko sitting near by. He closed his eyes now and listened to their heartbeats fill the room.

The track ended and a guitar crackled through from the next song, unfiltered by the Box. He re-set the stylus to the lead off track and sat in his father’s chair.

“So this is what you were up to,” he said when the track ended again.