Harrys asks: “Is everyone fundamentally alone?” It would answer much. This eternal need to bring ourselves intact into the community. Harry needs to another song for his illicit bootleg album so he thinks of his first love, Anna Baker, a girl in high school who like Harry read books. She liked Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. Anna’s brother Alfred joins Harry’s band to play bass. Harry is fifteen. His band is called, ‘The Half-Snapped Elastic Band’.
Jollimore comes off the Crybaby stage and sits with Harry at the bar. Bartender Calvin Swig watches as Jollimore and Harry talk about old times. Jollimore says that Harry’s song After the Funeral had him pull the car off the road in Chicago and weep. He then tells Harry he will need his guitar back. The Gibson j45. Harry nods. He hasn't got Jollimore’s guitar and has ho idea where it might be.
A guitar player is in the audience and even though Harry, when he goes on break, puts the guitar out of tune, the stranger gets up on stage, takes the guitar, turns on the amplifier and dazzles the Crybaby Bar crowd. Applause is from every corner as Harry watches from his stool at the far end of the bar. But he knows that sound, he knows that touch. For since coming to the guitar as a kid he has never forgotten how another plays.
Harry knew love. He was married to trapeze artist Trixi Almeida. They thrice circled a garbage can fire in Toronto and an all-consuming love arrived, with meaning and purpose. But with a mustard seed of disunity came the drought that brought the locusts and the lunches of acorns.
Dracula asks Cinderella to dance. Harry watches the swiftness of cupid's arrow. Camus' absurdity is absurd when love pierces the heart. All is meaning, all is purpose, all is a resurrected life when love pierces the heart and from his vantage point on stage Harry can see all.
Smokey Studios will pay Harry fifty bucks to play at the screening for a new film. Harry has to come dressed as John Voigt in Midnight Cowboy. Harry remembers his father’s words: "Do the big thing. We’ll head on down the highway to catch the Holy Molies. You need road time." They drive the highway and catch the rock band bound for the Woodstock music festival. It's 1969. Harry is fourteen.