Because Kirk always has a place with a room for rehearsing. He makes sure to. Doesn't live in places so small that a band can't fit. He thinks ahead, for a whole band. Or a few of them.
Because he's always in a few bands. Even if he weren't, he's got enough instruments to be a few bands by himself. Drumsets, yes, and congas, and djembes, and wood blocks, and tambourines (good ones and bad ones), and washboards, and you get the picture, and things you strike with your hand or a stick, made out of metal or wood or plastic, or things you shake or aren't even quite sure what to do with. “Look at this,“ said Kirk, last time I was over there. Held up a little wooden tube the size of his hand, painted and carved and with a hole poked in it, one end covered tight with something pink. “Listen,” he said. Blew into the hole and made a squealing sound. Not exactly pleasant, but also not unmusical. “It's a balloon,” he said, pointing to the pink covering stretched over the mouth of that tube. It was his breath vibrating against the balloon that had made that squeal.
“Ever seen anything like that?” he asked.
“I had to buy it,” he said.
So he fills up crates and the corners of rooms in his house with these little soundmakers, and he fills up his time playing in a lot of bands. Didn't make too much fun of me when I asked him to play scissors in one song. Didn't make any fun at all when I asked him to clap some rhythm with his hands and no drum. Doesn't mind my arrangement of one song that requires scissors, then tambourine, then scissors, then jaw harp, then clapping, then whistling plus clapping, then nothing. Because these are the kinds of arrangements we're doing in Apocalypse Town now, and you can't do those without Kirk.
It didn't seem weird to him. He only said:
“Which key you want the jaw harp in?”
And that was that.
- t
p.s. I love you, Kosovo music. Some of my favorite kids from Mitrovica, Kosovo... playing a classic by The Runaways. (Frontwoman Jelena Zafirovic is one that town's most promising young songwriting talents.)
p.p.s. I love you too, Houston.
