A Bullet, A Lever, A Key: Part One

This seven song EP tells the story of my life backwards – from my suicide in a New Jersey hotel room in 2054 to present day 2007, in the backroom of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel after a show. The music is a cross-breed of progressive rock rhythms and hip hop instrumentation. Lyrically, each song travels eight or nine years back in time to depict a telling scene in my tragic timeline. Over the course of the record, various clues unveil the catalyst of my downfall: the decision to leave music for the seemingly greener pastures of corporate life. The album is a rendering of how my life could look if I stopped doing what makes me happy and started following a more adulty path.

- Gavin Castleton

A Bullet, A Lever, A Key is Gavin Castleton’s prog-hop mini-epic about a fictional alternate life where he gives up music to go to college and join the ranks of the cubicle-bound office world. Each of the EP’s seven tracks is named after a different year and the story is told in reverse chronology (“2054,” “2045,” “2038,” “2031,” “2020,” “2011,” & “2007″). The narrative begins with Castleton’s suicide at age 76, so tension is immediately established and most of what drives the story is finding out how the narrator reached such a desperate point in his life.

Since the EP begins in year 2054, the story also has some subtle science fictional elements: an extended lifespan (Castleton’s ex-boss hopes to live to 140 through the use of “enhancers, attachments, and stuff”) and holograms instead of photographs. Though these SF elements could have been distracting, there are only two, and the extended lifespan is particularly interesting because the narrator ends his life at 76, which would typically be near the end of our lifespans anyway. What effects would living through almost an entire extra life have on our society? An increase in the number of suicides seems likely.

On the opening track “2054″, Castleton immediately grounds the listener in the concrete:

For three days I’ve carried all my stuff down from the attic
and cut it up into two piles:
the things that hurt I threw into the bathtub and burned.
The things that made me smile, I cleaned them up,
and set them up in rows around my bed

The use of objects from the narrator’s past works well to establish an emotional connection between the listener and the character. We learn through a bound copy of a dissertation that the narrator was raised by a single mother with four kids, but she still “fought eight years” for a PhD. The mother’s struggle to complete something personally meaningful despite hardship foreshadows the narrator’s failure to continue pursuing his own passion.

The second object is the narrator’s son’s diploma:

Then I picked up Chris’ diploma from Brown University,
and I remember how he asked me not to attend the ceremony,
but I hid in the back when he walked up to get it,
and my heart screamed his name when they said it.

The narrator and Chris are estranged, which creates tension without an explanation, but that the character still cares for his son. He also finds a picture of himself as a young man that he had forgotten about. The photograph is the only thing he has from the period in his life when he was truly happy. It shows him backstage after a musical performance with a girl, and though he doesn’t seem to recognize the girl, he knows they’re in love.

The hopeful look on that face makes me wince.
I haven’t seen that look, haven’t seen that face since.
I take it into the bathroom – light it up and throw it in.

Since this is the only object in the song that the narrator describes burning, it gains additional narrative weight. Seeing an object from this period in the his life causes him pain, and gives the listener a clue to what initially started him on the path toward suicide.

Castleton uses the list of objects to establish a history for the narrator in a short amount of time. Starting any narrative with the narrator’s suicide is risky because it’s difficult to give death meaning without an established connection to the character, and in the even more constrictive confines of a song, the risk is greater.

I smelled Zooey’s baby clothes,
my first program code,
the leotards I wore when I was just four years old,
the first cartoon I drew,
Chris’ first pair of shoes . . .

Similar to Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried,” Castleton uses the list of objects to describe the character and develop an emotional connection to the character for the listener without having to spend a lot of time in development. Listeners understand how the narrator feels about each object because they have similar objects that are important to them. The quantity of objects with emotional significance to the narrator communicate the length of his life and what he’s giving up by ending that life.

Castleton doesn’t mention suicide directly in the song. Only the method is implied:

I empty out the medicine cabinet into my shaky hands.
My fingers look so new for a second I wonder who I am.
I quickly stow them away, back in my pants.

This indirect method of describing difficult subject matter works well, especially since the story is told through the character’s voice. There’s no way to artfully have a character say, “I’m going to commit suicide,” and since the narrator has already made his decision, it would be awkward to mention it directly. The narrator also suggests suicide at the end of the song:

Some people feel like the world wants them around, and that’s fine.
I decided 10 years ago that I don’t want all that time . . .
For me 76 is enough.
For me 76 was too much.

The extended lifespan of the character also adds emotional weight, since the suicide of a 76-year-old is different from a younger person’s. We can assume that the narrator has contemplated ending his life for quite a while, and that he truly may have little to live for. The way he plans his suicide is methodical. He burns everything that hurt him and then sets the few things that make him happy on display, as a memorial to the good things in his life.

The second track, “2045,” describes the end of the narrator’s marriage. His wife delivers divorce papers for him to sign at a hotel room where he’s staying. Since the story is told through the narrator’s voice, we only hear his side of the story regarding the cause of the divorce, but other problems are suggested in the chorus:

It’s pathetic, but everything came down to whether or not I was rich.
She tells me it wasn’t the money,
but I find it funny that losing my job is what toggled the switch.
She says it’s painful to be in the house with me,
but never complained when she had half my salary.
She says that I have a problem with pills;
the real problem is all the credit card bills.

A drug problem is referenced, but the narrator believes his wife, Sarah, only stayed with him previously because of his paycheck. The narrator explains the reasons he used the pills:

I took the pills because they were there,
and they evened me out . . . make me act right.

No, I took the pills because I don’t dare
to be thinking about the mistake of my life.

The “mistake” the narrator mentions creates tension for the listener, and suggests that a single decision he made led to his addiction, divorce, and suicide. Though the “pills” aren’t specifically named, they seem to be for anxiety.

Castleton is able to develop a complex relationship quickly by describing the dynamics within the marriage. Aside from the financial dynamic described in the chorus, the narrator asks Sarah, “How can they expect us to raise our own replacements? It’s insane!” suggesting that he doesn’t feel capable of raising children. Castleton doesn’t allow Sarah to appear completely blameless, however, which would cheapen the impact of the song:

She tells the kids that I ruined her life.
What kind of wife – what kind of human tells that to her children?
About their father!
Even if I did want to get better, why bother?

The narrator’s question about raising children as “replacements,” along with Sarah telling the children their father ruined her life, suggests a complex relationship between two complex characters, and all within a three and a half minute song. That kind of narrative compression is impressive, and makes Castleton’s music worthwhile to examine. Writing a complex, compelling short story is more difficult in some ways than writing a novel, and by word count, Castleton’s lyrics are flash fiction. This Blaise Pascal quote comes to mind, “I would have written a short letter, but I did not have the time.”

I’m sure that quote could also apply to this post, especially if I continued through to its conclusion, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to read about the rest of A Bullet, A Lever, A Key. I would like to encourage everyone who’s reading to purchase the EP so that they can listen along. The digital version is only 6 dollars, and you can listen to tracks “2038″ and “2007″ for free, which I’ll discuss tomorrow.