The Musical Moonmen

The Musical Moonmen

By Michael Lawrence

Jane sat quaintly on the two cubic foot bale of alfalfa as she gloomily
clenched a dried blade of grass between her two thumbs. She pressed her
thumbs to her lips, but the blade cut it sending a single droplet of
blood down her chin. The meandering livestock of different species and
breed shifted their snouts to the Northeast as a medical doctor
approached, who was standing on one leg upon a flying rooster.

"Gracious golly! Good thing I came right away!" exclaimed the doctor,
clad in a white paper gown and stethoscope, while still floating on the
rooster. "How did you cut your lip?"

Jane got up and stood on the bale of alfalfa. She stared at the moon,
which looked exceptionally curious today. It appeared to be growing
larger.

"Did you hear me?" said the doctor. "How did you cut your lip?"

Alice shook her head and the moon quickly retreated.

"What?" asked Jane, she seized all eye contact with the moon. She
dipped her index finger on her bottom lip breaking the bead of
blood.

"What was it that cut your lip?" repeated the doctor. "Animal,
vegetable, or mineral?"

Jane looked back at the sky. The moon, which was now merely a speck,
stopped receding and began to return. She continued to stare.

"Music," said Jane halfheartedly. "It was music that cut my lip."

"Why that's preposterous! Music! Impossible, inconceivable,
infeasible!" exclaimed the doctor. Foamy wads of spit flew from his
mouth. "Music is not an object! Music is not a physical thing! Music
has no point! No edge! How could it have possibly cut your lip?!"

The surface of moon was only five feet above Jane. She jumped. The
moon's gravity caught Jane and she daintily landed on the soft,
low-gravity lunar landscape.

"Greetings," said a green moonman who was strumming a ukulele. It was a
pleasant, bouncy tune. Jane stood upright and brushed herself off of
the gray moondust. She was nearly three feet higher than the
moonman.

"Hi," responded Jane. She extended her hand to shake the moonman's but
he wouldn't quit strumming the ukulele. As Jane listened to its
high-pitched chords, she could hear a faint approaching trumpet that
complemented its tune perfectly.

An identical green moonman appeared from inside a crater. He had the
mouth of a trumpet sticking out of his belly button as he bounced his
fingers off the keys.

"Greetings," said the green moonman.

"Hi there," responded Jane. "That's quite an interesting tune you're
playing. What's it called?"

"It is the song of our people," said the green moonman with the
ukulele.

"It doesn't have a name," added the green moonman with the
trumpet.

As she listened to this duet, Jane suddenly became aware of more sounds
- a symphony in the distance. A large, self-moving object emerged from
out of a large crater. It was another green moonman playing a pipe
organ. Following behind him were three dozen other moonmen with
violins, violas, cellos, and snare drums. They were, too, playing the
same song. A couple children popped out of a lunar manhole skipping and
were playing kazoos. Their alleged parents with French horns, oboes,
flutes, and a set of glockenspiels followed. This continued until on
until there were thousands of moonmen and thousands of
instruments.

Then, a conflicting noise began to emerge in the distance as if there
was a different symphony going on someplace else. All the violins
surrounding Jane began a tremolo, the horn section got a little more
dramatic, but the same tune was still being played. A couple bugles
called out above the crowd sending the herd of green moonmen running
toward the noise. Jane didn't know what to do so she followed. She only
had to keep a walking pace to keep up with them.

The green moonmen approached the edge of a lunar canyon and stopped. At
the other side, there were thousands of purple moonmen playing a
completely different symphony but with instruments much like the green
moonmen's. A bugle called out on each side, playing a different battle
cry. Both sides ran inside the canyon. Jane followed. Each side's ranks
intermingled with each other as they extensively increased the volume
of their instruments. What resulted was something so forcefully loud
and ugly that Jane was shot out of the crowd by an invisible column of
ugly noise. She could see the individual dots of the purple and green
moonman, but as she flew higher, they soon merged into an ugly brown
color. Jane couldn't distinguish one moonman from another. Their
instruments grew quieter, but it sounded to Jane like a traffic jam
where every angry motorist was pressing their horns. Jane felt a
bizarre fifteen seconds of complete weightlessness, and then she slowly
began to descend. She landed in a lunar cattle field beside a lunar
milk cow. It was quiet except for the hollow metallic ding of the cow's
bell. This simple sound, thought Jane, was an utter relief.

She stretched out on the ground to rest until, suddenly, when she heard
a very loud chord of harmonica. She looked up and saw a short moonman
with a green head and a purple body playing a harmonica with his belly
button. The tune he played was completely unlike either of the green or
purple troops; his was very dissonant, somewhat unorganized, but
strangely beautiful and enchanting.

"Greetings," he said. "My name is Al."

Jane rose and brushed herself off. "Hi, my name is Jane."

"Say, would you care to help me with something?" Al asked.

"Um&;#8230; Okay," Jane said wondering what this little man had in
store for her.

"Okay, thanks," he responded, still playing the harmonica. "Follow me."
He turned around and his little legs quickly started walking. Jane
followed, but her pace was more leisurely.

It wasn't too long before Jane heard the faint, ugly sound of the
convened green and purple moonmen. As Al and Jane approached, the
disgusting noise grew louder and uglier. When the noise grew
unbearable, Jane covered her ears. They approached the canyon, and the
moonmen appeared to be angrier than ever. It looked as if they were
trying to convince each other to play their people's tune. Al and Jane
walked to the center of the group. He took the harmonica out of his
belly button.

"Hold this, will ya?" he said handing Jane the harmonica. Jane, who was
intensely pressing her two forefingers through her ear canal, gave a
rather frustrated look, but quickly removed her left finger out,
grabbed the harmonica, and then quickly replaced her finger.

The upper half of Al's body twisted around, as his lower half stayed
put. About where his backside should be, he undid two buttons. A flap
of thick purple skin folded down revealing a dark cavity. He removed
small piece of cardboard and waved it around. It eventually inflated
into an elevated podium. He then removed a tuxedo collar and bow tie,
and as if it were a simple routine, and put it on. Finally, he removed
a thick stick that resembled a piece of chalk. He pulled at the tip of
it to reveal a 12-inch director's baton.

Al calmly stepped on top of the elevated podium (even then, he was
easily one foot shorter than Jane) and rapped the conductor's baton a
couple times on the podium. However, that was hardly audible through
all the noise these moonmen were creating. Al made little circles with
the baton for about fifteen seconds. Through all that dreadful noise,
Jane could make out the low but unified bass instruments playing long
and calm notes amongst the ruckus. Al, apparently satisfied, moved his
rotating baton to a different location. After about fifteen seconds,
the tenor instruments slowly started playing a single but different and
complementary note from the bass sound. He then moved his twirling
baton to a different location and the alto instruments calmed down and
started playing its own unique note. Next, Al moved his baton to yet
another location bringing the soprano instruments in tune. Jane removed
her fingers from her ears because it was now pretty quiet even though
the various percussion instruments were still way out of whack. Al
stopped rotating his baton and started moving it up and down making
short peaks. Sure enough the percussion instruments began to beat
quietly in unison. Jane smiled.

Then Al suddenly outstretched his arms as far as they could go and the
instruments dramatically got louder and the cymbals were popping. Al
then waved his baton and his other hand all over the place like a true
professional conductor would. The music these moonmen played were
radically different from the tunes they played earlier; it was the same
dissonant song that Jane heard Al playing on his harmonica. It was
unusual but beautiful and Jane liked it.

After several hours of absorbing this beautiful music, Jane noticed
that the place started to glow blue. She looked up to the lunar sky and
saw that the Earth was slowly approaching. In about five minutes, the
surface of the Earth was close enough so she jumped up and landed back
onto the Earth's soil.

Jane could still hear the symphony as the moon slowly sailed away. She
cheerfully smiled and picked out a fresh blade of grass from the
ground. She put it to her lips and happily played along with the music
until she could hear it no more.