Section One – Doug Baker
So there we were, she liked to say: I look like I don’t know what, coming from the studio covered in paint and glue and he’s wearing a shirt with a frayed collar and some jacket his mother probably bought him ten years before (here, I would nod) and he would pivot to face me every time I moved, like a goalie protecting an invisible net. Oblivious, completely oblivious.
“Do you like it?” she asks, with an air of impatience I wouldn’t have noticed.
“What?”
“Guarding space.”
“I like the space. Not so much the guarding.”
She wrestles with this answer while I prod the conversation forward, “Painting. I guess you like that,” grinning at my own awkwardness, “I mean, you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t like it.”
“Yeah.” She smiles. “I like colors.” She fondles a stain on her grimy sweatshirt.
“Red. Today was a red day.”
Guarding Space by Doug Baker
Written and performed by Doug Baker
Doug Baker has been a fixture in the Triad music scene since the early 80’s, participating in performances as wide ranging as rock bands, free improvisation ensembles, jazz trios and duos, and old-time string bands. Among his past ensembles are The Zinc Kings, Sin Tax, Treva Spontaine and the Grafics, and the Greensboro Big Band.
More recently Doug has returned to his first love of songwriting. “I’ve always written songs, often doing the George Harrison thing in the bands I was in, sneaking one in here and there. But, at this point in my life, I figure, if not now, when?”
Contact:
The Cloud Diary Music Project
We sent musicians a synopsis of Cloud Diary and a randomly chosen scene from among 12 scattered throughout the novel and asked them to respond to the scene, musically or aurally. The piece could be of any genre and any duration. It could be music already recorded, adapted, or written specifically for the scene. Find more information here.
Click here for the full Music Project playlist.