At his mansion in San Antonio, Elliott was practicing with his All-Star Barbershop Quartet - consisting of, from chirping soprano down to heavy bass, Elliott himself, Stephon Marbury, Shaq, and Dikembe Mutumbo. Right when we were dropping in on them, the quartet was practicing an arranged version of a gospel standard - "The Green Leaves of Summer" from the 1960 film "The Alamo". Its melody was a plaintive aria and Elliott went an octave above the others in order to explore the standard's expressive lyrics:
'Twas so good to be young then, to be close to the earth,
Now the green leaves of Summer are callin' me home.
Their version was haunting and somber. After it was finished, Elliott taught the others how to sound like an ambulance siren. For six hours in a row they all learned how to sound like ambulance sirens. After these six hours there was still, to be charitable, quite a lot of progress to be made on all three fronts. With Dikembe, probably the best image to take is of the Jaws theme being sung by the shark itself. Marbury's alarm, strangely, sounded rather like a wounded lark singing the aforementioned standard. Shaq's alarm, to the amusement of all, sounded exactly like the atrocious blend of happy hardcore and double barbershop that passed for modern music these days. Truly a man of his times, whatever those times may be.
Elliott's alarm, the trigger for this whole alarm-learning session, had been dead-on. Its wail was indistinguishable from a real alarm. In fact, for the last three hours of the session, Sean Elliott had been doing most of the talking - recording hundreds of different samples of the wail to try to get the others to see how it was done - wailing, the others thought, with absolutely no regard for human happiness, wailing with a teacher's anxiety towards stubborn minds, all in order to teach his fellows how the alarm should be done. Elliott would constantly and gently mock all of his students, sometimes going way past normal levels of social conduct. After six hours, Shaq had finally just given up, and they all danced for awhile to his own infectious wail. Elliott was a little disappointed in all of this, but danced anyway, and once the dance was finished, he asked the others to try one more thing for him.
"What is it, Sean?" Marbury asked meekly. "My throat hurts, so nothing too intense."
"We're going to do a couple octaves of scales on the alarm noise, just like three or four times. Five minutes, tops. Is that alright?"
Marbury reluctantly agreed. Dikembe dropped his suitcase that instant. Finally Shaq, who had been leaving through a door in a tan trench coat and a rounded black hat, came back into the room, not quite closing the door. Joakim Noah, who had, minutes earlier, snuck through Elliott's security to dance to Shaq's alarm, inexplicably formed a sort of Al Jardine now, providing a second anchor to the group by doubling Marbury's alto.
The first Do-Re-Mi was a Dirk-disaster, certifiable. All around the world, checks were magically voided in response to the awful sound waves. At the return to the starting Do and the start of the second attempt, even cheery Elliott was feeling quite disenchanted. Still he raised his baton to start again.
The second octave found Dikembe in a sudden flurry of improvement from bottom Do to top Do and back, eventually booming a London bombing siren straight out of 1940, a low wail of great destructive promise. "This octave was only a test," it said, "But next time it very well might not be." Combined with Elliott's more immediate ambulance, the vocal blend was beginning to cohere, and Shaq's alarm, even in banality, actually gave the track a sort of instrumental, visceral beat. Starbury was, as always, the last to get it right, but as the second octave neared Mi on the way down, a sort of enlightenment passed over him. The second return to the starting Do was, in clarity and realization, like that defining THX sound effect that precedes some movies - it was a pure tone that had transcended previous musical imaginations for tonic beauty and urgency. Joakim Noah, who wasn't doing much of anything just then, stood dumbfounded and silent and tried to dance but found himself forced into another kind of dance that he had not imagined could exist - a dance that seemed like throwing and receiving the same pass. Sean Elliott, for the third time in as many minutes, raised his baton, this time with authority.
But this time the octave never began. Instead, the singers began an unprompted siren version of "The Green Leaves of Summer" that was immediately a work of extreme beauty. One could hear and almost feel in the air the green leaves of summer - even in the sophisticated chilliness of a San Antonio fall night. The standard had a new canonical version, and it hadn't even finished playing.
A minute into their rendition, though, the singers were interrupted. The door connecting Elliott's aviary to his recording studio had been left carelessly ajar - by Shaq's aborted exit minutes prior. "Whoops," Shaq deadpanned.
Birds of every kind by the thousands flocked now into Elliott's recording studio, and with infrequent movements, they all appeared to hover above the ground. Shaq and Dikembe immediately looked at one another, took off Elliott's recording headphones, crawled lithely to the marked exit and, grabbing their suits and shutting the door, had escaped without incident, and prayed for the safety of the others, while at the same time calling the authorities for assistance.
Noah and Marbury, on the other hand, had blindly run due east and due west, respectively. But in the doors they ran into, Noah found a small room containing a bear, and Marbury found an equivalent room but with a lion. They each quickly ran the opposite direction, and as they passed one another silently laughed at the other's foolishness in going that way. A second later Marbury found the bear and Noah found the lion. Regrouping now at the center, the two looked around and located the exit. Smashing the door open and running through, they were inexplicably safe now. Shaq and Dikembe shut the door behind them. In the room Shaq admitted his negligence with closing the door, and naturally had thought it would be harmless. And indeed it had been harmless for all four standing there.
Sean Elliott's case was very different. For these were *his* lions and pigeons and bears, and he had loved them all. It was his responsibility to ensure their safety. The idiotic and panicked exits of Noah and Marbury had upset a good proportion of all the animals gathered and they seemed to be poised for chaos, even in their stillness. How could he bring the animals to order with just his voice? Elliott thought for awhile, then, in desperation, chirped out a solo siren version of "The Green Leaves of Summer". Having been enlightened by the ensemble version, his version was now just as poignant. Elliott's audience was receptive - the birds and lions and bears all loved it, for it subconsciously reminded them all of the screeching and unfathomable noises of the womb.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, this was exactly sufficient to cause the birds, in a rare psychological drive towards "unbirth", to try and "re-enter" the womb they had once experienced. Sean Elliott's eyes were violently pecked out, and just as he tried to tell them to "calm down birds" his mouth was entered and quickly destroyed. Within minutes the paramedics and Animal Control had arrived, and now were aware of the animals and were ready to take action. Just now they entered the room in haz-mat suits and took control of all the animals. Animal Control realized, just after giving Elliott dozens of very painful rabies shots, that these shots had been unnecessary - Elliott was dying.
In a fugue of productivity Elliott then wrote a very bizarre will, with Starbury and Shaq as reluctant witnesses. As he was dying, the four remaining singers gathered gave a version of Mozart's "Lacrimosa" using his siren technique, which the other three had successfully taught to Noah while waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
'Twas so good to be young then, to be close to the earth,
Now the green leaves of Summer are callin' me home.
Their version was haunting and somber. After it was finished, Elliott taught the others how to sound like an ambulance siren. For six hours in a row they all learned how to sound like ambulance sirens. After these six hours there was still, to be charitable, quite a lot of progress to be made on all three fronts. With Dikembe, probably the best image to take is of the Jaws theme being sung by the shark itself. Marbury's alarm, strangely, sounded rather like a wounded lark singing the aforementioned standard. Shaq's alarm, to the amusement of all, sounded exactly like the atrocious blend of happy hardcore and double barbershop that passed for modern music these days. Truly a man of his times, whatever those times may be.
Elliott's alarm, the trigger for this whole alarm-learning session, had been dead-on. Its wail was indistinguishable from a real alarm. In fact, for the last three hours of the session, Sean Elliott had been doing most of the talking - recording hundreds of different samples of the wail to try to get the others to see how it was done - wailing, the others thought, with absolutely no regard for human happiness, wailing with a teacher's anxiety towards stubborn minds, all in order to teach his fellows how the alarm should be done. Elliott would constantly and gently mock all of his students, sometimes going way past normal levels of social conduct. After six hours, Shaq had finally just given up, and they all danced for awhile to his own infectious wail. Elliott was a little disappointed in all of this, but danced anyway, and once the dance was finished, he asked the others to try one more thing for him.
"What is it, Sean?" Marbury asked meekly. "My throat hurts, so nothing too intense."
"We're going to do a couple octaves of scales on the alarm noise, just like three or four times. Five minutes, tops. Is that alright?"
Marbury reluctantly agreed. Dikembe dropped his suitcase that instant. Finally Shaq, who had been leaving through a door in a tan trench coat and a rounded black hat, came back into the room, not quite closing the door. Joakim Noah, who had, minutes earlier, snuck through Elliott's security to dance to Shaq's alarm, inexplicably formed a sort of Al Jardine now, providing a second anchor to the group by doubling Marbury's alto.
The first Do-Re-Mi was a Dirk-disaster, certifiable. All around the world, checks were magically voided in response to the awful sound waves. At the return to the starting Do and the start of the second attempt, even cheery Elliott was feeling quite disenchanted. Still he raised his baton to start again.
The second octave found Dikembe in a sudden flurry of improvement from bottom Do to top Do and back, eventually booming a London bombing siren straight out of 1940, a low wail of great destructive promise. "This octave was only a test," it said, "But next time it very well might not be." Combined with Elliott's more immediate ambulance, the vocal blend was beginning to cohere, and Shaq's alarm, even in banality, actually gave the track a sort of instrumental, visceral beat. Starbury was, as always, the last to get it right, but as the second octave neared Mi on the way down, a sort of enlightenment passed over him. The second return to the starting Do was, in clarity and realization, like that defining THX sound effect that precedes some movies - it was a pure tone that had transcended previous musical imaginations for tonic beauty and urgency. Joakim Noah, who wasn't doing much of anything just then, stood dumbfounded and silent and tried to dance but found himself forced into another kind of dance that he had not imagined could exist - a dance that seemed like throwing and receiving the same pass. Sean Elliott, for the third time in as many minutes, raised his baton, this time with authority.
But this time the octave never began. Instead, the singers began an unprompted siren version of "The Green Leaves of Summer" that was immediately a work of extreme beauty. One could hear and almost feel in the air the green leaves of summer - even in the sophisticated chilliness of a San Antonio fall night. The standard had a new canonical version, and it hadn't even finished playing.
A minute into their rendition, though, the singers were interrupted. The door connecting Elliott's aviary to his recording studio had been left carelessly ajar - by Shaq's aborted exit minutes prior. "Whoops," Shaq deadpanned.
Birds of every kind by the thousands flocked now into Elliott's recording studio, and with infrequent movements, they all appeared to hover above the ground. Shaq and Dikembe immediately looked at one another, took off Elliott's recording headphones, crawled lithely to the marked exit and, grabbing their suits and shutting the door, had escaped without incident, and prayed for the safety of the others, while at the same time calling the authorities for assistance.
Noah and Marbury, on the other hand, had blindly run due east and due west, respectively. But in the doors they ran into, Noah found a small room containing a bear, and Marbury found an equivalent room but with a lion. They each quickly ran the opposite direction, and as they passed one another silently laughed at the other's foolishness in going that way. A second later Marbury found the bear and Noah found the lion. Regrouping now at the center, the two looked around and located the exit. Smashing the door open and running through, they were inexplicably safe now. Shaq and Dikembe shut the door behind them. In the room Shaq admitted his negligence with closing the door, and naturally had thought it would be harmless. And indeed it had been harmless for all four standing there.
Sean Elliott's case was very different. For these were *his* lions and pigeons and bears, and he had loved them all. It was his responsibility to ensure their safety. The idiotic and panicked exits of Noah and Marbury had upset a good proportion of all the animals gathered and they seemed to be poised for chaos, even in their stillness. How could he bring the animals to order with just his voice? Elliott thought for awhile, then, in desperation, chirped out a solo siren version of "The Green Leaves of Summer". Having been enlightened by the ensemble version, his version was now just as poignant. Elliott's audience was receptive - the birds and lions and bears all loved it, for it subconsciously reminded them all of the screeching and unfathomable noises of the womb.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, this was exactly sufficient to cause the birds, in a rare psychological drive towards "unbirth", to try and "re-enter" the womb they had once experienced. Sean Elliott's eyes were violently pecked out, and just as he tried to tell them to "calm down birds" his mouth was entered and quickly destroyed. Within minutes the paramedics and Animal Control had arrived, and now were aware of the animals and were ready to take action. Just now they entered the room in haz-mat suits and took control of all the animals. Animal Control realized, just after giving Elliott dozens of very painful rabies shots, that these shots had been unnecessary - Elliott was dying.
In a fugue of productivity Elliott then wrote a very bizarre will, with Starbury and Shaq as reluctant witnesses. As he was dying, the four remaining singers gathered gave a version of Mozart's "Lacrimosa" using his siren technique, which the other three had successfully taught to Noah while waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
This started out as the "Three Dreams of Sean Elliott"'s third dream, but quickly devolved into slapstick. Despite this, it is absurd and readable enough to work at least on that level.
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