22. Down from the Mountain

You that way and you this, but two in company.
——Timon of Athens, V.i

When I think about the events of the weekend of August 28–29 in Athens, I think about a scene near the end of the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. The Finch kids, Scout and Jem, are getting ready to walk home from the school pageant. Scout is still wearing her ham costume. As they step out of the schoolhouse, the narrator delivers an innocent yet foreboding line: "Thus began our longest journey together."

In terms of distance, of course, the journey is no longer than any other time Scout and Jem have walked back from school — but this time they're brutally attacked by a knife-wielding redneck and then rescued by the mysterious Boo Radley — who sticks that knife right where it belongs, thank you very much.

Just in case you're wondering, the redneck in my story has no knife. That's the good news. The bad news is that Boo Radley never shows up.

After Friday's gig I concluded that the worst was over. I thought I'd just try to keep out of Q.'s way and make the most of my final weekend with the band. We hadn't quite been playing up to the standard set by our performance at Monday's showcase, but I hoped we could work on that, now that the distractions were behind us.

For his part, Q. had gone all day Friday without pulling any idiotic stunts (or, at least, any new ones), and actually seemed a little happier than he had on Thursday. We had an interesting-sounding gig coming up on Sunday: the "end game party" at Cosmovision Center, which would coincide with the closing ceremony of the Olympics. (I was a little disappointed to realize we weren't actually playing at the closing ceremony, which was the impression I'd gotten from Q. before we came to Athens, but I was long past worrying about such things.)

On Saturday, Q. and most of the group got up early and went to their Olympic event, leaving me and Sarah to our own devices — which consisted of another visit to the Acropolis, this time with Holly and Logan. Like all days thus far, it was beautiful and sunny, and we started off early enough to avoid the afternoon heat.

Thus began our longest journey together.

At the visitors' entrance, someone handed me a flyer denouncing the impending trip by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to the closing ceremony. Because of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, Powell's presence would amount to a "provocation," the flyer said. I didn't know it at the time, but there'd been quite the demonstration about this the night before. The guys distributing flyers were members of the Greek Communist Party, and they'd also hung a "Powell Go Home" banner over the side of the Acropolis. Later I would learn that the tactic worked — Secretary Powell, citing a busy schedule, canceled his Athens trip.

Gee, I wonder if I could have paid the Communists to display a "Q. Go Home" banner?

You haven't been to the Acropolis until you've gone there with a 7-month-old. Holly left Logan's stroller at the baggage-check room and carried him all the way up and down the Acropolis in a front pack. He loved it, and I don't remember him crying until just before we reached the base of the hill at the end of our visit. Logan's favorite part of the Acropolis was the dirt. We parked him in front of the Erechthion to take a photo, and he immediately scooped up a handful of fine powdery earth and slapped it in his mouth, as 7-month-olds will. I had to laugh. I'm sure there was a good deal of marble dust in that dirt, which could have been sloughed off the Parthenon any time in the past 2,500 years. Not to mention other sources of dust. As the Bard put it:

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!*

Or, indeed, that it should end up in the mouths of babes.

Greeks, by the way, love babies. But they also have a cultural superstition about the "evil eye" which stipulates that you should pretend to despise the things you love so that the evil eye won't deprive you of them. Which means that when Greeks see a baby, they spit on it — or at least pretend to. Holly was quite concerned the first time this happened to Logan, but she got used to it. Sort of. I was all for putting a coin cup on his stroller and charging people 50 cents for the privilege.

On the way back, we retraced the route we'd taken with Desiree, even stopping at the same Cretan café for lunch. Holly told us about a possible afternoon gig, for which she'd gotten some sketchy details from Q. YWAM and some of the other ministries working at the Olympics were hosting a "24 hours of worship" event and had invited Loudmouth to play. It sounded exciting, both for the social aspect of meeting other ministry teams (especially now that Youth in Action and the French King's Kids had left Athens) and for participating in worship with them.

So back to Athens Christian Center we went, to await instructions from Q. Our final Vathis Square outreach was scheduled for that evening, and as time passed I began to wonder how we would manage to play both YWAM and Vathis. I was still wondering this at around 5 p.m. as I walked to the corner grocery to get something to drink (thanks to the heat, this was our number-one leisure activity in Athens).

When I got back, Holly had the answer. Wanna guess what it was?

I don't think Q. was even on the premises at the time, but he somehow got hold of Holly via phone and gave her our marching orders. She and I, with Logan and Sarah in tow, were to take the Metro to the Ethniki Amyna station and then catch a city bus to the YWAM gig, which was in a conference center on the edge of town. We would perform there as a duo. Q. had expressed his belief that the bus ride would be "relaxing for the baby." The rest of the band would play Vathis Square, with Desiree and Justin replacing me and Holly. We were supposed to leave in one hour.

During this phone conversation, Q. also spoke to Sarah. He told her that he'd committed the band to the YWAM gig before we left Seattle. Which seems like an odd card to play in that situation, because it meant that Q. had no excuse for either the late notice or sending only part of the band. (Then again, Q. apparently didn't think he needed an excuse for anything.)

I had mixed feelings, but chief among them was anger. I was upset about missing Vathis Square because (a) I had very few band gigs left; and (b) differences with Q. aside, I wanted to support Elias' outreach work. On the other hand, I felt some relief: those concerts were exhausting.

What really had me cheesed, though, was the instruction to play a duo gig without prior notice or the opportunity to rehearse. Loudmouth material wouldn't work in that format unless it was severely rearranged — an operation for which we had no time. You may recall that I’d already tried to play unrehearsed sets in Monastiraki Square and at Koridallos, and the experiences were less than encouraging. I don't mind being a little sloppy or unprepared if I'm just playing for fun, but if I'm going out representing the Creator of the universe, I prefer to have my stuff together.

But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Q. didn't think the full band needed rehearsal, so if he broke a piece off of it, why should that piece need to rehearse? Later Q. allegedly said that he'd always intended for Loudmouth to be a modular band. If so, he'd been remarkably silent about those intentions up till now. I was all for telling him to stick the duo gig where the moon didn't shine, but fortunately Holly settled me down.

To be completely fair, I should acknowledge Q.'s apparent confidence in me and Holly. I'm sure he wouldn't have asked us to pull a gig out of our sleeves if he didn't think we could handle it. And handle it we did. We decided to play some standard worship songs from charts Holly had brought, which as a worship leader she was comfortable doing. I'd back her up on mandolin, which I'm comfortable doing as long as there's a chart. Knowing a little better than Q. what was and wasn't "relaxing for the baby," Holly left Logan behind with Sarah, the designated babysitter, and the two of us sallied forth to the Metro station.

The trip took over an hour, and because I no longer trusted Q., I didn't fully trust the directions he'd given us. But the bus driver seemed to recognize the name of the convention center when I asked him about it, and eventually he deposited us there — a huge building on the outskirts of Athens that looked like nothing so much as an abandoned warehouse. We worked our way around the side until we found a door that someone answered.

What followed was a welcome respite from our tribulations. The place was packed with missionaries from around the world, all of whom were welcoming and encouraging. About 80 people were sitting near the stage, with plenty of others milling around in back. There were even a few familiar faces. Russ Rosen's band had played just before us, and I spotted Steve, the pastor from St. Andrew's, in the crowd. Pandora showed up later, after Holly and I played. We even met a friend of Holly's from high school, and she introduced us to a djembe player from Ghana named Benji, who sat in with us on our set. We figured that if we were going to wing it, the more the merrier. Benji knew all the songs Holly had chosen, and he did a great job. Because this was a worship service and not a concert, everyone sang along — and perhaps I was able to get my perfectionist side to take a back seat for once. No one was going to know if I missed a chord change or two. People were singing to God and I was helping them, and for a while all was right with the world. I was sorry Sarah hadn't come, and we would have stayed longer if Holly hadn't needed to get back and see her son.

In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have worried so much about having to wing it. Holly and Benji achieved a nice open groove that was suitable for me to improvise some mandolin parts, which is what I do with my own worship band in church all the time. The format was small and simple enough that I didn't have to worry about stepping on anyone's toes, musically speaking. I'll admit that Q. was correct in his belief that Holly and I could handle this gig, as long as you let me maintain that his way of notifying us left a lot to be desired.

Allow me to back up for a second. Before we played, we spent a few minutes talking with Johnathan Macris of Hellenic Ministries, which was hosting the other missionaries staying at the convention center. Johnathan had booked us, but he wasn't happy about the experience, and he took the time to make a few choice observations about Q. It was an illuminating conversation — our first real hint that Q. was earning himself a bad reputation with people outside the band as well as in it. For one thing, Johnathan had been promised a full band and gotten only a duo. For a second thing, I gather Q. had waffled a good deal on what time he'd be sending us. For a third thing, Johnathan had been playing phone tag with Q. for days. Which leads us to...

Today's Pearl of Wisdom: Q. did not bring a mobile phone to Greece, nor did he rent one while he was there. Why? Well, he said, in Salt Lake City he'd spent all his time on the phone, working on bookings. In Athens he wanted to be available to his band members. In other words, Q. wanted to neglect his primary responsibility (handling booking logistics) and spend more time on an endeavor for which he had absolutely no aptitude (building camaraderie within the band, at which he failed miserably — whatever camaraderie we had was achieved mostly when Q. was out of the room).

Of course, not having a phone doesn't obviate the need to make or receive phone calls. It just makes it harder to do so (besides making you look completely unprofessional). When he needed a phone, Q. used either Christian's mobile phone or the office phone at Athens Christian Center, whichever was available. This essentially turned the owners of those phones into his answering service, which they didn't appreciate — and forced them to pay for his calls, which they appreciated even less. Johnathan had tried to reach Q. at the church office for days, but Q. either hadn't gotten the messages or hadn't bothered to return them.

In addition, not having a phone did little to make Q. more accessible to band members. This, after all, was the same guy who ended our only band meeting after five minutes, and then made B. his emissary instead of talking with me directly. He could hide from us when he felt like it, and we couldn't even reach him by phone. Still, he was around just enough to make my life miserable, and he was just inaccessible enough to people like Johnathan to make their lives miserable.

Anyhow, I didn't buy Q.'s rationale for not having a phone. I have a much simpler explanation: He was too cheap. Any questions?

*Hamlet, V.i.