L’Chaim, Checkmate

God? That day, He was hanging out in Austin’s most magical corner. It wasn’t heaven, but hey, it had character. And boy, was it packed in. Thirty-two people wore gray robes and oversized hats like yarmulkes on steroids. The others? A mess.

There’s this sysadmin. His pet laptop. A muse-stricken artist. Dreamy, detached. Hippies, because of course there were hippies—scruffy and worn, but with charm. Young ladies, tea-filled to the brim, with sad eyes, thinking of places far away. Sound guys scurrying around this massive, hulking control board.

They weren’t just moving. They were orbiting. The path was weird—tight, complicated, looping from brick wall to whitewashed ceiling, back and forth following the same tired gray carpet like it was a trail.

The ceiling? It was slouching. Sagging. Giving up. It swooped down and smacked into the floor across from a big old brick wall.

In the middle of the carpet was a square made of tape. 3 meters, 20 centimeters on each side. Center stage. It sat there, bold as you please, like it was daring anyone to cross it. No one did. They tiptoed around it, careful, like the thing might bite.

The room was tight. Crowded. So much so that even the music had to squeeze into cracks between the walls, the ceiling, the furniture.

From the corner of this crooked, impossible hall, a ballet tutu glared down. It was awkwardly suspended on a copper-colored chain, hanging down from somewhere in the ceiling. It made you think of fearless theater exchange, distracting you from the purpose of gathering.

In the opposite corner, literally wedged between floor and ceiling, instead of a horizon line, there was a black piano in a cubist shape. It was stripped of its top panel, its valve, and its cornice. The bare crossed strings glimmered faintly under the beams of colorful spotlights. From the piano’s gut, an open, rainbow-colored umbrella jutted out. Not only did it pull you away from the reason for the gathering, it almost dragged you outside, into the hail. Luckily, the reason for the gathering was just yanked back into focus by the deep, universal gaze of a tall, lean man who had his own orbit in the given space.

He wasn’t a hippie, a sysadmin, a servant of the muse, or a sound engineer. He was like the golden mean of everything and everyone, somehow reminiscent of the cubist piano. With vertical cheeks, a sharp chin, short white hair, and kind, thin lips, he confirmed what his global eyes and eyelids hinted at: here, a miracle is being born. Don’t argue.