We start on a road certain of our destination and somewhere along the way get stuck on a detour. It’s where 34-year-old Will Baskin finds himself. Divorced, his life like a climb up a greased flagpole, Will works as a classical deejay in San Francisco, haunted by the playwright he has buried within himself. Then the enchanting but fiery Mariette Lesueur, former dancer and choreographer for Tango Amor, drifts into his life, stealing his heart and sending his world into an emotional spin. Mariette is lost on her own detour, fighting demons from her past. “Will’s Music” by Obie Yadgar is the story about two lovers floating in the wind like leaves and looking to land together.
As a young boy growing up in Teheran, Obelit (“Obie”) Yadgar would often observe his great uncle, the Assyrian writer and historian Benjamin Arsanis, hunched over a table in the yard, pencil in hand, always writing. Years later, Obie himself would discover that he best saw life through the eyes of a writer. With a dual career as freelance writer as well as classical and jazz radio announcer, Obie’s has written for magazines and newspapers. He served his tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Army combat correspondent. He has also written video scripts, and has published two short stories in little magazines. “Will’s Music” is Obie Yadgar’s first novel.
Excerpt 1
William Shakespeare Baskin, failed playwright, believed that if you must detour in your life, slip in behind the radio microphone for the best of all possible paths. That you don’t see the audience made radio even magical, a lot like sweet-talking your girlfriend from behind a closed door, where if you say and do the right things, you have her purring like a Mozart sonata. What’s more, he would be the first to advise that radio made it easier to put away your dream with the rest of your youthful memories.
The morning he fell in love with the mysterious creature, whose sultry voice spun his head all the way to Tierra del Fuego, he had worked in radio 12 years, in three different formats, the last seven years in classical in San Francisco, and doubting more every day that he would make it to eight. With the station rumored for sale, he knew in no time a chain with an appetite for rock and big profit would gobble it up and change the format faster than he could say “Wolfgang Amadeus.” It was a new century and dumping classical music formats still the fashion. They sneak in with their head bangers and tell you to march out with your Beethoven, he had written home in Wisconsin.
Excerpt 2
“What a poetic thought.” She chuckled. “Never done that before. I mean I’ve stayed home with a Russian novel, but I don’t own a samovar.”
After the Mozart, he had picked up the tempo with a Vivaldi violin concerto. Still keeping the studio on-air monitor off, he peeked at VU meters on the console board. Vivaldi flew along. “Mozart brings out the poetry in me,” he humored her.
“His adagios for me.” She sighed again. “They touch my soul like wistful songs gazing into the far distance. They’re like . . . they’re like sunsets out on the Pacific . . . warming my breath and returning it to my body. Sometimes I’m audacious enough to think Mozart wrote his music just for me.”
She had a seductive voice, hypnotic, her pace deliberate as if she examined every word. He could see her as a sexy late night jazz deejay. Jesus, who was she? And he loved the way she said his name, the way she lingered on it, as if wanting it to go on. “Don’t stop, you’re on a roll,” he said.
“Sometimes I get carried away. You have work to do, and I have to get ready.”
She intrigued him. He had to know more about her. “What do you do?”
“Nothing as glamorous as what you do, I’m afraid.”
“I crank it out day in and day out like a piston.” Modesty never hurt.
“Doesn’t sound like it. I like your music . . . and I like what you say. What was that phrase you used the other day? ‘It’s a good day to sit by the window and watch the world go by.’ I liked that.”
“Thanks.” He laughed.
“What?”
“Sometimes I feel the whole thing is so weird . . . so surreal.