He hissed through his teeth. “Man, I really don’t like you when you put yourself down.”
“Well, you know, somebody’s got to do it. If I’m not hard on myself, Malcolm, who will be? It isn’t a good thing to be soft on yourself.”
“Who told you that?”
“Somebody smarter than both of us.”
“That could be almost anybody.”
“Exactly.”
In silence, we drank what remained of our Cokes, and then I said, “It’s not a bad thing, Malcolm.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“I’ve been thinking about Vermeer.”
“What about Vermeer?”
“How he was totally forgotten for two hundred years, and now everybody thinks he’s the greatest ever.”
“So you’re ditching the piano for a paintbrush?”
“If Vermeer had been a piano man, a performer, he’d never have been rediscovered two centuries after he died.”
“Man, you?
?re losing me.”
“He was rediscovered because he created something. You see? They didn’t dig him up two hundred years after they buried him, and he’s been walking around ever since. His paintings were rediscovered.”
“Believe it or not, I realized that.”
“If I can’t be a performer, on a stage in front of people, maybe that’s good, because maybe what I can do is write music. Create.”
“You mean write songs?”
“At least the melodies. I don’t know about the words.”
“You’re ten.”
“I’m going on eleven. And I don’t expect to have a hit tomorrow. It’ll take years and years to learn.”
“What kind of songs?”
“Rock ’n’ roll, I guess.”
“That’s what sells. No market for new swing.”
“Rock ’n’ roll is a place to start.”
“Maybe ballads, love songs,” he suggested. “Maybe blues.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Country and western?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have anything against it.”