ISLA | Chapter Nineteen
Leaving the Age of Wonder
Welcome to Tiny Worlds!
We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.
For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.
November 1983
His father is talkative, jabbering block after block as they head to the corner of Telegraph and Channing.
“Communication evolves faster than we do. Think of cave drawings—pictograms, glyphs. They’re just early writing. Scribbled pictures of the land. People and maybe fantastical beasts just over the hill–even embellished sketches of heroism…” Then he waves his arms in a wide gesture, saying, “I caught a buffalo this big!”
George laughs. He likes this. It’s like hearing his father’s thoughts spool out like a printer that never runs out of paper.
“Pictures are good, but stories told aloud light up your brain in a different way, don’t they? When you hear a story, it breathes on its own. Our nuanced thoughts—our dreams and our fears—leap from our lips in a way they never can as a drawing. A story told well has life. It’s our most common way of communion with each other or with the gods. But, oral stories are only the second most pure form of communication.”
George doesn’t know if he agrees, but he likes the way his father says it—like he believes it.
“By the way, the written word is a distant third, and I’ll tell you why: for most of history, it was out of reach. It took a long time before the printing press made books available to the everyman. Getting your hands on one and being able to read one required money or access. So, the ones who did have access—mostly the church—used it to consolidate power.”
Stopping, his father put a hand on his hip. George had seen it before—an old habit, like the slow-motion fake Fernando Valenzuela used to pick off a runner at first. Not a trick, exactly. Just a pause before something important.
“Somewhere along the way, religion got involved and ran history and allegory through a Cuisinart—twisting them for ulterior motives. The church seized control, shifting the focus from us—that’s you and me—communicating directly with the gods, to someone else doing it for us. We lost our way behind the pulpit, where the written word became both the bearer of truth and a barrier to the divine. Ownership by force. The effect, mijo, is diabolical.”
He pauses for a moment as they let traffic go by.
“Thankfully, another type of magic happened between cave drawings and before the written word. It happened side-by-side with campfire stories, something that nobody could own entirely… music.”
His father stops on the sidewalk, listening. On the wind they can hear music coming and going: whispers of Top 40 radio, the wail of a baby, a violin being played in an apartment somewhere.
“Songs are the kissing cousin of oral stories. They took a different path—one that still reached through the ear, but deeper, bypassing logic. That’s why I think they’re the purest form of communication.”
Nodding along, George sidesteps a group of teenagers blocking the sidewalk. Their pink and purple hair stands out in the bright daylight, glowing. George gives a quick glance to his own hair in a store window, combing the unruly mop with his fingers.
“Songs could have words, or not. Could be bombastic, or not. They were free in a way written stories never were. You could hum them. Plant them. Anyone with half a whisper of a voice could sing. And let’s not forget how much we owe, in a way, to benefactors who paid Stravinsky and Wagner to retell the old tales of monsters and gods.”
“And Holst,” George offers. “He did the one about the planets, right?”
“Yes. He’s newer—maybe not a classic yet. Still good. But he loses some style points for using the Roman names…” His father tisks, favoring the Greeks.
They pause outside on the walkway, just under the bearded namesake with his iconic stare. Rasputin stands above them, silently beckoning them in.
As they walk into the store, his father stops abruptly and takes a deep breath. His eyes close with some version of respect he reserves for libraries, bookstores crammed between office buildings, and this place: a record store.
As far as George’s father is concerned, this place is holy. A synagogue. A cathedral. Albeit one with terrible acoustics. Here, they’re regular attendees, spending hours standing, kneeling, bowing their heads, and rising again. The only guilt found in this space, his father often admits, is in not taking home enough records.
George stops too, a few feet ahead, and sniffs. His nose twists, unsure he’s ever liked the scent. All he smells is body odor, dust and a cloying incense coming from somewhere behind the counter.
Then, as they step further inside, his father continues: “Music—more than books or even paintings—is for everyone. It’s a democratic art form that’s made by everyone, for everyone.. You don’t have to go to a museum or be invited to a gallery. It’s right there…”
His father swings his arms at the neat rows of records along the walkways.
“Rows and rows of small, thin tomes–Bibles, I suppose–about life and the human condition,” his father says. “These are dreams, nightmares, and hope on wax. Music can tell a story any way it wants to—big stories or fragments of time. Heck, they can even stop time completely or tell a story frame-by-frame, down in the minutiae.”
They make their way along the racks, stopping to thumb through a stack every so often.
“Music should give you things to think about, not tell you what to think. And that idea shouldn’t be small.”
His father leans to the nearest bin and closes his eyes, searching. His fingers walk like a little man up the edges of the records and stop, pulling one out. Opening one eye, he looks at the record, spins it like a diamond to look at the back, to see the lyrics.
George sees five overly quaffed, fresh-faced men on the front.
“Ah yes, perfect…” he starts reading the lyrics aloud with over-enunciated eloquence:
She likes her tapes on 10
And it’s the same as her anatomy
She’s on a rainbow cruise
All the way to my room
George listens with a smirk, not sure what it all means. He likes listening to music loud too, but he’s not sure at all why the girl might go to anyone else’s bedroom—or why it mattered.
The record is slipped back into the stack.
“It’s not that love songs—or whatever that is—are meaningless. Well, that one might be.” He pauses, mimicking wiping off his hands on his shirt. “That’s just the musical equivalent of a dog panting for a bone. Music written like that only scratches the surface of love and doesn’t offer anything new.”
His father looks around, thumbing, pulling out another record, glancing, pushing it back in. Record after record, his face drops as his eyes search.
He moves them down another aisle, George following. The records here are dustier, the aisles less busy.His father started pulling out several, placing them neatly under his arm. One with a melted face—streaked like someone dissolving under acid. Another, all ashen white, with a blurred figure leaning forward, like a saint caught mid-fall.
This was his stash to take home, his penance paid and his guilt eased by giving these voices shelter—a chance to let their magic live again, summoned at his whim.
“You’re going to look back on this moment and, at first, think I’m being a snob. That you’re being rooked. You may even think I’m a fuddy-duddy who says, ‘music is getting worse.’”
He stopped, looked at George. “It’s okay. I thought that about my father, too.”
George didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure he knew what to say anyhow.
“But as that machine picks up speed to churn out pretty faces—trust me—they’ll have fewer things to say of real value. What do we get now? A hit factory. All mood, no myth. I don’t mean everything has to be dark and moody like a Joy Division album. Music doesn’t have to be serious. It can be fun. Heck, more than half the stuff on Dr. Demento has more soul than what you’ll find on MTV.”
A stack of albums tumbled in the next aisle—just a soft clatter, someone cursing quietly as they bent to pick them up. Neither of them turned.
“But there will be a moment, when you’re searching for sounds that prick up your ears and make your heart thump, when you and I will agree on something: that seed music plants in your brain—like the thoughts books give you—needs care. You’re going to be bombarded with a lot. More than I ever was. You’ll have to pick which ones stay, and which ones are just sleeping on your couch for the night.”
Outside, a car blared a synth hook through a half-rolled window. Something bright. Catchy. Already fading.
His father’s voice dropped, quieter now.
“Jorge, when myth and fantastic stories stop living beside us—in music…” He tapped the top of a record. “And in the books we read…”
He rested a hand gently on the boy’s head. “Then the only place left is up here.”
His father paused, not for effect but something shifted behind his eyes as his voice softened—not fading, finding the precision in his words.
“But that’s too small a space. Myths—like the gods—need room to breathe.”
George watched as he blinked, as if just now seeing the shape of something.
“To stretch. To run wild, if they have to. Keep them trapped too long without communion, and they’ll act out. Not always in a pretty way. They’ll shake the walls. Make the ground tremble. Rain fire, if that’s what it takes. The earth’ll split open just to make room.”
He looked past George for a moment, as if watching something pass by just out of frame. Then back to the stack of records, flipping one absently.
“They say we’re entering the Information Age.” A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. “But I think, sadly, we’re leaving the Age of Wonder.”
He looked at George now, more certain. “And that’s where the gods live. The ones who gave us song. I bet they miss us.”
George didn’t say anything, just nodded.
At the checkout counter George turned to the massive tank, where starfish clung and bright fish drifted like slow-moving ideas. His reflection wavered in the glass, as if the water might remember him.
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Music
Mars, the Bringer of War – Gustav Holst
Hot Girls in Love – Loverboy
Decades – Joy Division
Sharing music is a love language, I think. It's such an intimate way to see someone, really get to know them, especially once they are no longer with us. George's dad handing down knowledge through his stories and enjoyment of music is love. Beautiful chapter.
A bookshop as holy. Vinyl as Bibles. I like the way George's father thinks, J. For some reason I keep hearing in my head these days, the refrain, "It can't happen here. It can't happen here! It's important you believe me that it can't happen here." (Frank Zappa, Freak Out, 1966)