Vibrations
Matt Rowan & Sarp Sozdinler
You hear voices from the cemetery at night. Today, something prevents you from calling the cops because it’s a cemetery for dead rockstars and all you hear is some mistuned electro chords for Good Vibrations, your dad’s all-time favorite.
Your dad isn’t dead, of course. He’s been living on the West Coast with the wife of your childhood next-door neighbor for the past twenty years. Hearing The Beach Boys in noticeable discord makes you feel close to him in some bleak, nondescript way, like he’s actually dead and his spirit is presently watching over you. You can almost hear him whistling the tunes.
You grab the flashlight your dad bought you as a gift, then step out into the biting Midwest cold. Carol Kaye’s bass notes tickle your bones as the glow of a distant bonfire lures you to the cemetery. Gathered around a recently dug grave, a troupe of costumed impersonators is passing around a bottle of JBs and uttering a few words for the musicians they came here to represent. Atop a dirt mound, a Jeff Buckley lookalike is picking the tunes to Hallelujah on his air guitar, dubbed by an overweight Elvis by his side. You realize one of the neighboring slots is populated by some members of the 27 Club as if to warn you of the age you’re about to turn. Morrison, Joplin, Tupac—all looking half-dead even when they’re singing their hearts out.
That’s when you remember reading that Morrison’s father, too, was an admiral. He, too, famously scorned his son’s burgeoning musical career before coming to terms with it shortly before Morrison’s death. You wonder how his father must have mourned his son after. You wonder if he regretted their years of estrangement. You wonder what it might be like to live with that kind of regret. You know your father has never been burdened with such thoughts.
And Joplin. God knows her family watched her battle drug addiction for years until it took her away for good. You think that must have been the hardest part of it all, having hope of some sort of recovery only to see those hopes dashed in an instant.
And Tupac. Tupac was most like you. Tupac knew what it truly was to feel distanced from a parent.
You ask the impersonators what they’re doing out here, commiserating in a shabby old graveyard in the middle of the night. Shouldn’t they be dancing and singing in some happier place? Maybe not so sunny and bright as traditional depictions of heaven but somewhere better than this at the very least?
“We’re all wherever we want to be, man.” It’s Morrison who breaks the tense, short-lived silence. He looks taller than you would’ve imagined, and more alive than you in some ways. “And right now, we’re where you are, physically and emotionally.”
All of a sudden, Joplin deadpans: “Answer the phone.”
“What phone?” you ask, but even before you understand what’s going on she hands you the receiver with its cord plugged all the way into one of the unmarked tombstones.
“Son,” the voice on the other end of the call says as soon as you pick up. “This is your father, son. I want you to know that I love you, and I’m sorry I’m gone.”
“That’s not my dad,” you say to everyone, handing over the receiver in order to spare not-your-dad’s feelings.
“Yeah, but it was a dad all right,” Tupac says goodnaturedly. “That’s still more closure than a lot of us get these days.”
You nod along just like when your dad asked you to stay behind and take care of your mother after he was gone. Today, you want to go with Tupac and the rest of the troupe in the same way you once wanted to go to California with your dad, but your dad said there’s no need. He said you’d burn in Hell if you followed him, and you now can’t help but wonder if it’s the same hell you, too, headed for, according to your momma. Maybe that’s why you have equated California with hell in your mind for all these years.
You wonder if you’re making some terrible mistake by being around these people, listening to their ridiculous stories. There was a time when your life was less complicated than this, when the mention of dead rockstars and memories of your dad would only overlap on a trivia game night. It finally dawns on you that you might be in a graveyard with actual ghosts, ghosts more real to you than reality has ever been. You know that’s the price you pay to escape reality, your reality, as if before or after had any meaningful difference, each trying to pull you like a tug-of-war in the same way the echoes of your old self pulled you down here, to this graveyard, thousands of miles away from home, from California.
“I think I gotta go now,” you say to the troupe, unsure how they might react after all the help they volunteered, after all the private stuff they shared with you.
Tupac gives you a once-over as if to figure out what stuff you’re made of: bones like your old man or ether like the rest. “You sure?” he then says with his usual coolness, gesturing toward the dug-out grave. “I mean, it’s not like we have a shortage of space anyway.”
The rest of the troupe nods in unison. You hate to disappoint them, but you feel you have no choice. The lights in your house turn on in the distance, reminding you of something you cannot at once put your finger on. A chill bolts through your spine, making you shudder.
“Goodbye, dead people,” you say, to no one in particular, motioning to turn around.
The troupe looks back at you one last time and eyes your indifference for a while before you step back into the darkness, your own darkness, in a way that feels pleasantly new.
Matt Rowan lives in Los Angeles. He edits Untoward and is author of the collections, Big Venerable, Why God Why, and How the Moon Works (Cobalt Press, 2021). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Tiny Molecules, LandLocked, Gigantic Worlds Anthology, TRNSFR, Barrelhouse, Moon City Review, and Necessary Fiction, among others.
Sarp Sozdinler's work has been published or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Fractured Lit, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected and nominated for anthologies, including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He's currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.
Sarp Sozdinler's work has been published or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Masters Review, Fractured Lit, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected and nominated for anthologies, including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. He's currently at work on his first novel in Philadelphia and Amsterdam.