Their set was nothing if not harmless. But after years of wrestling with unforgiving mainframes and diffuse guilt, Pam felt like a rebellious self-emancipator for doing something as silly as singing in public. Music wasn’t her art project anymore. It was a skittish but real and ancient phenomenon that manifested unpredictably, like wild birds or butterflies. She looked up to it. It was the influence of Flora’s violin playing. The child had been raised on two-minute songs performed solo a cappella, so she played phrases with climaxes and denouements. Pam in her youth had argued that any given
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