Rhapsody in Blue
"But what does it mean, 'carry a tune'? I mean, who can't?"
"A question, Prince: are you projecting your own very fine talents onto everyone else, or do you consider the nature of a tune subjective; we all find our own central, guiding melodies in life along those myriad many-cobbled paths that lead us all to drink from the well, et cetera...?"
"I think you've been drinking from the well," said Addam, quite shortly and with affront. Very nearly, he pouted.
This was how they got, when drunk: Minoth pontificated, and Addam got stuck on things. The sticking often cut the pontification to pieces, but not always. Sometimes it built it up quite a hill of beans to die on.
"Put it this way." Yes, Minoth was definitely drawling, with tongue and wrist alike. "If you sang your little song, about glorious Torna, which it very much is and will always be, in a perfect world, in which we are not living at this very moment- suppose-- Suppose it didn't have any words. Suppose your pitch was lousy. Would you still want to listen to it?"
"How could it not have any words? All songs have words."
Minoth grinned, a righteous leer. "You've never heard of a song without words, then."
"Because all music is singing."
"All music is singing."
Addam and Minoth nodded to each other, serious as could be.
"But not all singing is music."
"Because some singing is rowdy, and rude, and raucous."
"Nice alliteration, Prince."
"Why thank you."
The conversation petered out there, and the pair sat lazily humming without knowing they were doing it for a few minutes. Summoning courage from a source unknown, Addam began toying with the loose, rotting bark at the end of the log upon which he was seated, but jerked back his hand in an instant when the bark began to toy back.
"Critters?"
"Of some description, it seems." Addam shuddered. "If I were really drunk, I'd have no inhibitions and I wouldn't care, so I must not be."
Minoth considered this. He also, for the moment, considered finding a critter - of some description - to set loose by Addam's leg, to test the theory, but since they weren't on Gormott, there were no Tree Crabs about, so he abandoned the thought.
"If you were really drunk, you could carry a thousand tunes, because you wouldn't know your own strength. You often see this in bars or pubs, alleys, jails. Places where inhibitions have long been squandered. Many such cases."
Addam rubbed his chin with a dirt-encrusted hand. "And is that music, then?"
"Almost immediately, in my experience, it becomes a chorus. So I say yes."
"What about us - a duet?"
"One for the ages, my prince."