Todo Cambia

This story comes with a dedicated playlist, check it out on Spotify.

This story was highly commended by the Short Stories Unlimited competition in May 2023, coming 4th. It is published in the anthology Leaving Home and Other Stories, which you can buy and read among other great stories here.

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People say that my music shop is a relic, a remnant of another era. And they don’t only mean that it’s old in the metaphorical sense. Like how someone might question the relevance of buying physical media from a real-life shop in the first place, let alone having a whole store dedicated to it… No, my shop is actually just old.

It’s one of those last-standing terrace-style shop-fronts. Long, narrow and dark inside, even on the brightest days. Long and narrow like all of the buildings next to it, as though some giant beast, fed up with the banality of suburban sprawl, had grabbed a group of quarter-acre block houses, placed them side by side, then squashed them together. Even the upstairs windows, partially obscured by a wrought-iron balustrade, are tall and narrow.

My music shop isn’t as old as the land it’s on and the stories of the people who were originally here. The people who the colonisers and builders chased away, killed or enslaved. But it’s old nonetheless. It must have been grand when it was first built. Today, the apartment buildings looming behind it and extensions on either side make it seem diminutive, somehow. Small.

Of course, I don’t see any of that anymore. I have had my music shop for something like two decades now, so I no longer see the chipped plaster or tiny weeds springing from the cracks. I see home and comfort. I see routine and safety. I see a mortgage tantalisingly close to repaid. I see obligation and a dream so old that I can’t even remember what it was, let alone tell you if I have actually managed to fulfill it. My shop is a feeling, not a physical thing.

Actually, that’s not entirely true.

I see when things are out of place in my shop.

The jingle of my keys breaks the early morning quiet of the street as I unlock the door and use my shoulder to shove it aside. It always gets sticky on these hot days, so I’m practiced enough to not spill my precious coffee when the wood squeaks and relents. As my eyes adjust to the cool dark sanctuary within, I’m not sure what I notice first – the conspicuously blank section of wall made naked by a missing poster, or the faded sheet lying on the floor beneath it. I pick the sheet up as I walk to the back of the store and place it on the back counter, smoothing a crinkled corner. It’s a poster of Mercedes Sosa that Paula brought back for me from her hometown in Chile. How long ago had that been? I didn’t want to know the answer. Too long. That had been another life full of anticipation and hope, rich with colour.

I stick the poster back onto the wall, filling the stark hole and putting everything back in order once again. I feel my shoulders relax. I had scratched an itch I didn’t realise I had, in the way you might absent-mindedly brush a fly from your skin. Not something which sinks into the depths of awareness.

Much like how I see my shop each day when I come to work, I suppose.

Inspired, I put Mercedes Sosa’s ¿Será Posible El Sur? on the store stereo. As is my usual routine every morning, I crank the volume up loud, knowing the thick brick walls will keep most of the sound from bothering the neighbours. I sit down next to the turntable I restored years ago and slowly finish my coffee, drinking in the beverage and sounds, both liquid in their own way.

I look across the store at my sea of records, each one a fragile treasure. Each vinyl artifact the culmination of years of life and effort. Each one itself an ocean of talent and anguish, of teams of people working to create, capture, package, brand, sell… Only hinting at the stories of the people who created such magic. The musicians who couldn’t get through their lives without creating. Who sacrificed some essence of themselves onto all that vinyl, whether it was to make a new lifeform, or a need to make the world a better place through art.

To produce something which, when gently taken out of its cardboard sleeve and placed just so into a machine before a button is pressed, would expose the ears of those nearby to another place. Each one of these thousands of black disks belying the promise to evoke from our inner-most selves something innately human. The promise of sounds which combine, stretch, disrupt, flow, shudder and cry. Sounds which excite, calm, give release or stop us in our tracks entirely.

Did you know that Clare Torry imagined she was an instrument when she sang her vocalisation to Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky? Now, that’s a journey like no other. Talk about stopping you in your tracks. Talk about music being a vessel for raw emotion. Talk about breathing new life into the world.

The inexplicable rage I felt as a youth was fed by groups like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys and the Ramones. Like an ever-hungry child going through a growth spurt, I couldn’t get enough of it. Sure, I would always have a soft spot for classical music, having grown up with the likes of Puccini and Elgar as a kid, but it was the sounds which inspired revolutions and gave collective voice to demands on governments to do better which really moved me. Billy Bragg, The Clash and Patti Smith were my heroes. Midnight Oil, Public Enemy, The Pixies, and then, Rage Against the Machine and The Cranberries. Redgum’s I Was Only 19 still gives me goosebumps.

Maybe I’m still just that angry kid. I thought I was rebelling against mum and her conservative music tastes when I was kicking down the doors of every sticky-carpeted dive bar I could find, screaming outraged lyrics into any microphone they would put in my hands, and setting fire to obscene placards on the streets outside parliament. It wasn’t until I was staring at the face of my own red-faced teenager that I realised it wasn’t mum I had been storming against all those years ago. It had been the absent father who left her alone with an ungrateful shit like me.

I sigh as I finish my coffee. Time to get to work. I stand up and turn the music back down, then notice a huge crack in one of the walls. How have I not seen that before? It arches down alongside a narrow mirror which is nestled among other dusty, faded posters.

Has that fissure always been there and I just haven’t been paying attention?

As I get closer to it for a better look, it seems to grow wider. At first it seems like it is only a few millimetres thick, but by the time I’m close enough to touch it, I can squeeze several fingers through. I press harder, searching the darkness for some clue – maybe water or even mites of some kind – it feels strangely soft. Almost as though I could pull it apart if I want. The unexpected feeling weirds me out and I take a few steps back, inspecting it from a distance once more.

I catch my face in the reflection of the mirror next to the crack and see someone unfamiliar staring back at me.

It’s as though I am seeing myself in a new light for the first time in years. The lines from the corners of my nose to the edge of my mouth have deepened so much that they can no longer be obscured by my short beard. I’m not sure I had noticed before how many lines I have next to my eyes, either. I wonder if it’s the years cooped up in my cave of music or under the intense burn of stage lights that have turned my white skin into this strange grey pallet reflecting back at me. My shop isn’t the only old-looking artifact around here.

But there’s something more. As I peer closer in the mirror, I see that one of the age-lines connecting my nose and mouth is growing bigger. It’s like an imitation of the fissure on the wall next to the mirror is breaking out on my face.

The line grows in front of my eyes and stretches apart, slowly splitting my lip in half. The rupture spreads up my face, like a thick, black marker drawing a line alongside my nose, between my brows and up my forehead, and snaking down my chin and past my jaw. As I watch in frozen fascination, it pulls further apart, creating a yawning black space in the middle of my face.

But in the middle of that empty darkness, there is a speck, a hint of something… Captivated, I lean in to the mirror to see it better. I feel like a doctor examining a bloody wound for contaminants to pick out.

The closer I get, the bigger the crack grows until it’s all I can see. It’s encompassing my entire vision and I think I might be swallowed whole, but I need to know. What is it? What is the thing in between? Is it light shining through from somewhere beyond? The dark of the yawning space is shrouding the speck, obscuring it and making it hard to focus. Hard to –

My attention is broken by a young man coming into the store.

I look back at the mirror and see my foreign-yet-familiar face reflected back at me once more. The crack and glimmer of something beyond the darkness are gone.

Holding a hand on my cheek, instinctively making sure my face feels as restored as it looks, I return my attention to the visitor. He pushes some glasses up his nose and brushes dark hair aside, frowning just slightly. I stiffen, embarrassed that he may have seen me staring stupidly at what appears to be a perfectly normal mirror.

“Hey, mate.” I say, trying perhaps too hard to sound friendly. “Need help with anything?”

“Oh, hello. I’m wondering, this is Mercedes Sosa, yes?” He gestures vaguely into the air. He’s wearing a look I’ve seen before, as though he has been summoned into my strange cavern by some invisible force he can’t identify.

“Good ear, man. Yeah, it’s her album ¿Será Posible El Sur?”

“I have to tell you, it has been a long time since I heard this!” I think I detect an accent, but can’t pick it in so few words.

“Brilliant album.”

The lad looks around, his brow still furrowed slightly.

“You interested in buying something, maybe?”

“Oh, I’m not so sure.” He picks up a record and turns it over. “I don’t know, what is this?”

I laugh. I have long grown accustomed to young people being completely confused by records. “No worries, if you’re not sure, you probably wouldn’t be able to use it, even if you did buy something. They’re records, like old-school CDs.” I motion for him to hand the cardboard sheath to me, then pull out the large black disc to illustrate.

“Ah yes, yes! I know what this is! My grandmother, she had much of these.”

“Nice one! Yeah, they were more common back then, maybe.”

“Oh yes, I think so. My grandmother loves music so much.” Something next to the counter catches his eye. The fresh stack of records I had meant to price before I knocked off yesterday. Recognition passes over his face as he picks another record up from the top of the pile, then turns to show it to me. “This one, this is Victor Jara?” He says with perfect pronunciation.

“That’s right, you know him?”

“I’m from Latinoamerica – we all know him there!”

There is something about the expression on his face which tugs at me. “Let’s have a listen.” I go behind the counter and replace ¿Será Posible El Sur? with Manifiesto in the record player. The Latino puts his hands in his pockets and I can feel him watching intently as I place the needle and the song begins. The lilting guitar and then phenomenal voice of the Chilean singer fills and commands every corner of the store, and I see tears well in the lad’s eyes.

I dare not say a word. I know better than to disturb the fragility of a moment like this. If I speak, he will be pulled from the musical spell he is under. Sure, maybe he would resist or ignore me. I’ve even seen people remain so captivated that they can still somehow manage shallow conversation from the depths of this spell. More likely, though, my interruption will pull him to the surface, back to reality, and away from whatever journey he is on. He is far away from my dark, musty store. Waves of folk, traditional drums and guitar wash over us and I go on a ride, too.

I can almost smell the weed waft through the air as I recall the first time Paula made me listen to Jara. The sheer beauty of his voice had melted my old-school punk rocker heart – and that had been before I learnt his tragic story of being tortured and killed during Pinochet’s dictatorship. There is something criminal about this world that a person able to produce such beauty, who sings about peace and love, can be so brutally murdered. I was introduced to something so fucked, and yet so exquisite in that moment.

Paula and I went our separate ways a few years ago, not long after Diego had grown up and moved out, but we remained friends and she will always be the one who gave me the precious gift of a whole new world of music. I went from British and Australian punk to Latin American anthems. It had started with Jara and others in his era. The irresistible percussion, the guitar, the folk roots and the fight for social justice which my rebellious sentimentalities connected with like a brotherhood. It was nothing like the frenetic, angry energy of the anarchy and fight that I had been drawn to as a younger man. But I had heard the echo of political protest anthems, all the same.

Even now, I still feel a kinship with their stories and struggle for a better world. One without poverty, injustice and governments which kill their own people.

Even now, as that dream feels stale. Like someone else’s fight.

Jara’s Manifiesto comes to an end with a final guitar strum and my new Latin friend seems to slowly come back to the present. He stands straighter and his attention focuses once more on our surroundings. His eyes settle on me and he smiles, almost shyly. “Señor, thank you very much for this. I am very sorry, but I am in this city for work for a short time, and I don’t have the machine to make these work.”

“No worries, mate, I live to share music. Thanks for listening with me.”

“You are a good man. Thank you.” He pauses and smiles again, just with one corner of his mouth, then walks out. Our moment gone with him.

I leave Jara playing and linger at the counter a bit more, still lost in my own nostalgia. Music has both kept me alive and taken its toll. My body has aged and my memory is shot. I live alone and all I have is this old store with all its musical journeys. Paula and I shared many precious years together, and Diego is shaping up to be a far better man than I ever was. Maybe I should have fought harder for justice. Fought harder like Jara, Sosa, Caetano Veloso, Inti-Illimani, like Calle 13. I would like to think that sharing music with people is my last-ditch effort to influence the world to be a better place for Diego and his generation. To inspire that fight and passion in others.

Just… with a longer life and more UberEats.

I pull out my phone and stare at it. I wonder how Diego is going at uni. I want to call him, but he’s always so busy and our conversations don’t go far. What can I offer someone studying molecular biology? I type a text message instead, and my sigh when I hit send is full of disappointment in myself.

Maybe I should have spent less time in this old, crumbling store and more time with him. Less time among these artifacts of a bygone era, rich with histories, stories and regrets, but obsolete as they age, nonetheless. Nothing compared to the potential future a father sees in his son.

Something pulls me back to the present moment and I remember the crack in the wall. My reflection. I take careful steps back towards the mirror, my heart leaping a little as I wonder – maybe hope? – at what I will see.

I’m not sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed that my face, whole and withered, is staring back at me. I touch my cheek and trace my finger where the abyss had been, feeling nothing but soft, wrinkled skin. No darkness to swallow me up. No promise of answers to chase.

A weariness washes over me. I take a deep breath and return to the record player, putting on some more familiar rock tunes.

Sosa’s Todo Cambia lingers in the back of my mind for a time. But it doesn’t take long for this, too, to fade into the past.