Bass Guitar Head

The Bass Guitar Head narrowly escaped the sudden rain. As soon as he got inside, he sat down on the couch without even removing his coat and began watching the rain.

He was angry after arguing with his friend, who had asked to tune him.

The conversation between them went like this:

‘’Just tune me. That’s all. A few gentle touches should do. You won’t have to work too hard.’’

‘’How many times have I told you not to sleep face down, Victor?’’

Victor was annoyed with his friend for repeatedly pointing out such an obvious piece of advice, something he could have easily thought of himself.

“If you say that one more time, I’ll slap you.”

There was a moment of silence between them afterward. But Victor, thinking he would get even angrier if his friend repeated the same advice just to tease him, slapped him.

Being out of tune always affected his mood as well. Instead of regretting what he had done, he was even more irritated because the slap had loosened one of his strings even further.

“You need to learn how to tune yourself, Victor. I mean, this can’t go on like this. I never know what you’re going to do. One of your strings gets loose, and you get angry. You come knocking on my door at four in the morning because one of your strings was loose. I never know what kind of mood you’re in. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to act around you. One of your strings gets loose, and suddenly you’re ridiculously happy, and I’m like, screw it, maybe I shouldn’t fix it at all. ‘’

Victor took his hand out of the pocket of his overcoat, ready to slap his friend again. This time, he was going to use the other hand, the one he hadn’t used for the first slap, and hit his friend on the right side of his face instead of the left. His tuning was clearly pretty far off; now he was feeling hurt, merciful, and angry all at once. On top of that, he was worried that this slap would throw him even further out of tune. Feeling all four emotions at once, Victor said:

“I’ve got some serious inspiration right now. I’m gonna go home and write a song right now. Just tune me for two minutes. I swear I won’t ask you again.”

His friend refused.

Then, there was a moment of silence again. Victor put his hand back into his pocket and took his other hand out.

The silence continued for a while. Since the weather was cold, the burning sensation on Victor’s friend’s cheek from the slap faded quickly. In fact, when he had received the first slap, the warmth had actually felt good against his cold face, but he hadn’t let Victor know. Woody softened.

“Are all your strings out of tune?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Check and see. I wouldn’t know.”

“What an ignorant bass guitar you are, Victor.”

‘’He can’t even tune himself, but he can write music. What an idiot,’’ Woody thought.

In the end, he tuned his friend incorrectly and sent him home. He figured Victor wouldn’t notice anyway; he was an idiot, after all. He wondered what kind of song Victor would write with such strong inspiration and an improperly tuned bass.

Victor, meanwhile, was still angry when he got home. But anger was all that remained. His other emotions had faded away, and with them, so had his inspiration.

“I guess it’s because I got tuned,” he thought.