What's Going On

Once, when the gang had piled back to his flat after an all-nighter, Matt had revealed that it was his music of choice whenever he brought a new hope into his bed. Karen played it when she was getting ready to go out; and Pete thought it was perfect for a late-night comedown. ‘Smoking music, but cerebral,’ is how he had described it. Karen had the right idea and Pete wasn’t far off the mark, but Matt cheapened it. What’s Going On is Tom’s favourite album; a work of genius by a troubled man which troubled people like Tom – he knows this about himself, but can he do anything about it? – take to their hearts and never let go. Months and sometimes years pass without him listening to it, but that doesn’t matter because it is always playing, at some level, deep inside his head. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler), an ever present on the jukebox at his preferred student dive all those years ago, drifts in and out of Tom’s dreams – day and night – just as the album floats from one song to another, accruing meaning and power and passion. In 1997, Tom saved a page from the Guardian which feted Marvin’s masterpiece as the greatest album of all time. This was according to a poll of sixty music industry and cultural luminaries, most of which you will have never heard of; some of them are dead, while others, not having been shamed or cancelled and displaying the kind of longevity that tortures Marvin’s fans, are still working. You might recognise a few of their names.

Tom returns to this scrap of paper every so often. It’s folded into the sleeve notes in his CD of What’s Going On. He opens the case, takes out the parched yellow paper and unfolds it as though what comes next will change his life. The dated font and format make the hairs on his wrists stand on end, and he questions whether Jo Wiley would still nominate Saturday Night Fever as her #1. Matt had also been fond of the disco classic, but Tom doubts it ever featured in the soundtrack to his friend’s nocturnal adventures. He moved to Melbourne ten years after the Guardian article and they don’t email much these days. There’s social media, but Tom’s not a fan. They Skyped once, when that was new, but afterwards Tom felt as though he was mourning something lost forever. They do not FaceTime, and Tom has yet to work out how to add Matt to the dormant WhatsApp group that someone else set up for a second wedding or a festival or a 40th a few years ago. Tom is now the type of person – meaning he has reached that age – to which young people grant ten minutes of their time while they outline the merits of an album like What’s Going On.

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‘You go out there and throw your toys out the pram and have a cry if you want. There’s bigger and dafter bastards than you bawling out there,’ says the nurse steering Tom back into the bear pit that is an A&E waiting area.

‘I’m alright, really,’ says Tom.

‘No offence mate, and this isn’t a medical term, but you were shaking like a shitting dog when you came in,’ the nurse replies.

‘It’s just excitement.’

‘You’ve been in an accident. What have you got to be excited about?’

‘My wife said I should get myself checked out. It was just a bump.’

This is what Karen had said:

‘Fuck, are you okay?’

‘What happened?’

‘Is the car okay?’

‘Did you admit liability?’

‘Yeah, fair enough. It’s good to be honest, but maybe you should have waited.’

‘What do you mean you’re driving? For god’s sake pull over.’

‘Go and get yourself checked out. I’ll call a cab and see you there.’

Tom had admitted liability because it had been dark and wet and he must have been too close to the car in front. He had also been trying to read the notes on the back of What’s Going On Live, but he won’t share this information with Karen. She is sitting in a corner with her back against a wall. A paperback rests on top of the bag on her lap, but she is not reading. Her eyes are too busy to concentrate on the book and her ears must be begging for mercy because the noise is as bad as you would expect in a hospital on a Friday night in what could be any town in the forgotten North of England.

‘Ready?’ Tom asks, as he arrives at her feet.

‘Have you been discharged? Everything alright?’

‘The nurse didn’t say. I don’t know who would discharge...’

‘But you’re alright?’ she repeats. ‘Did they check your head?’

‘I didn’t hit my head.’

‘Let’s go then, but I’m driving.’

Tom relinquishes the keys as they approach the car. He shows Karen the dent in the bumper where he hit the Skoda in front. It was more of a kiss, like a train easing into the buffers at the end of a long and tiring journey. What’s so galling is that he’d been maybe two seconds from avoiding the crash. It can’t have been that bad because the air bags hadn’t deployed and there wasn’t a scratch on the other fellow’s car, as far as he could make out under the weak lights where the motorway became an A-road. He’d taken lots of photos though, and Tom should have done the same, but his head had been scrambled. The other fellow, Nigel something, it’s written down, had pulled Tom off the road as he had circled the car to check for damage. He might have saved Tom’s life with that calm, but swift tug away from the wagons careening along the inside lane. One month hence he will make a claim for whiplash.

‘Four pounds fifty,’ says Karen, as they exit the car park. ‘I thought it would be more.’

‘Uh,’ Tom replies.

‘Turn that off,’ she says. ‘What is it, anyway?’

‘A new release. The only known live recording of What’s Going On.’

‘Oh, right.’

Despite the adrenaline or excitement or whatever it is that has Tom shaking like that dog the nurse had conjured, he has sufficient clarity to judge that now is not the time to tell Karen about the idea which had been rumbling away as he waited to be triaged and which erupted during his forty minutes in a curtained sick bay. Having had nothing to make notes on or with, he has been repeating a mantra since it came to him:

‘The backing track and the harmonies. The backing track and the harmonies.’

Because Tom’s latest big idea is a one man show in which he sings the backing track and the harmonies – in real time – to What’s Going On. Kind of like a duet with Marvin, who was partial to a duet during his all too brief lifetime. Tom’s not sure if it would be classed as performance art, straightforward musical entertainment, or comedy, but it’s the kind of concept that could make a splash in Edinburgh and lead to bigger things, like a TV show. Up until now, Tom has had the sense not to share his ideas, but what good has that done? Two days later, after a relaxed Sunday lunch, he makes his announcement while they wash the dishes.

‘What did you say? Karen asks over her shoulder. ‘Here, dry this.’

‘A one man show,’ Tom replies, as he places a dinner plate on top of a precarious pile. How many plates do two people need?

‘What do you mean a show?’

‘On stage, with music, an audience, bums on seats.’

‘What music?’

Karen might see the sense in dramatising the album – although how would a person do that? – or providing some kind of commentary-by-PowerPoint; but singing the backing tracks? Wouldn’t having a half-decent voice and the ability to hold a tune be some kind of pre-requisite?

‘But it would be a tribute; a kind of glorious failure.’

‘Who says it would be glorious?’

‘And in the failure you would see what it means to me.’

‘The album or the failure?’

‘The album. And maybe the failure, yes, but that’s the point: it’s so sublime, so perfect that no one could ever match it...’

‘According to you.’

‘Not just me. What about...’

‘Okay, let’s not go over that again. But Tom, darling, are you sure you didn’t bang your head the other night?’

‘No! I came up with it just before the crash.’

‘Just before the crash?’

And this is the point, ninety nine times out of a hundred, where Tom realises that this is another pie-in-the-sky idea that a) he should have kept to himself and b) might be symptomatic, as commentators are wont to say, of a wider malaise. This is the moment where Tom admits to a mid-life crisis, a plunge in confidence, a serious mental health problem or some undiagnosed condition that is causing him to want to rip up the lawn to plant an allotment, walk the coastline of Wales, swim across all of the lakes in Cumbria, or take a train to Algeciras, catch the ferry to Tangiers and see how far into Africa he can get with a credit card and a mobile phone. This is where, as Karen would have it – does have it – it ends. Suck it up, Tom, like the rest of us; pick up the remaining pieces of your life and get on with it.

When he was a boy Tom loved to dig in the garden. He unearthed broken glass and pottery, bit of plates and jugs and once a brass perfume bottle (what happened to that?) which he called Treasure. But now he sees it for what it was, and still is: detritus. Is that what we’re talking about when we speak of the remaining pieces of his life? Memories and emotions are disappearing and decaying like materials tossed onto a midden; but who is going to or would want to pick up Tom’s remnants? It’s not like he laid a mosaic under the patio which will be uncovered at some future date by an amateur archaeologist or head-scratching builder who will speculate on the person that left something so exquisite behind. Besides, the patio has been earmarked for the maybe-allotment, so Tom will have to come up with something else if he is to figure out what his life is and has been about; and why shouldn’t he want to make his mark? The people who tell you it’s too late or it’s not worth it are the people who don’t have the courage or imagination to do just that. The show must go on.

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Online review by Simon Flockhart from the Southport Messenger, Tuesday 2nd April 2019: ‘What’s Going On: A Tribute with Harmonies’ featuring Thomas Bolland. “While applauding the performer’s desire to pay homage to Marvin Gaye’s classic, what does one say about a middle-aged white man seated on stage in a small theatre in the North West of England and singing, if we can use that word, the harmonies and backing track to What’s Going On? Readers concerned about cultural appropriation need not worry. This show, which sinks as fast as a failed moon shot, is unlikely to attract patrons, offended or otherwise. Fair play to Mr. Bolland for the magnificent programme that accompanies this production, but his written tribute is the sole highlight of an excruciating forty minutes. The best we can say is that we assume no money changed hands, as family and friends appeared to form the entirety of the modest audience, your reviewer excepted. Kudos to the unfortunate soul on my left who had travelled from Australia, and sympathies to the lady – Mrs Bolland, we assume – tasked with showing punters to their seats, handing out the programmes, working the spotlight and helping the performer offstage...”