The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

by Mitch Albom

I am Music. And I am here for the soul of Frankie Presto. Not all of it. Just the rather large part he took from me when he came into this world. However well used, I am a loan, not a possession. You give me back upon departure.

There is a reason you glance up when you first hear a melody, or tap your foot to the sound of a drum. All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?

But you cannot change your past, no matter how you craft your future.

Frankie, my precious disciple, was more than a guitarist, more than a singer, more than a famous artist who disappeared for a good chunk of his life. As a child, he suffered greatly, and for his suffering, he was granted a gift. A set of strings that empowered him to change lives. Six strings. Six lives.

EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—through distance, differences, divorce, or death.

Sometimes I think the greatest talent of all is perseverance. But only sometimes.

In every artist’s life, there comes a person who lifts the curtain on creativity. It is the closest you come to seeing me again. The first time, when you emerge from the womb, I am a brilliant color in the rainbow of human talents from which you choose. Later, when a special someone lifts the curtain, you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting passion to sing, paint, dance, bang on drums. And you are never the same.

TALENT IS A PIECE OF GOD’S SHADOW. AND UNDER THAT SHADOW, HUMAN STORIES INTERSECT.

Truth is light. Lies are shadows. Music is both.

She smiled as he said her name, and he smiled back, and without even knowing it, he had joined another band. From that moment on, Aurora York was in Frankie’s music. That day. That night. And forever.

It seems cruel to say that he never saw Baffa again. But it is true. On the same day Frankie Presto found love, he lost his home. Major to minor.

I can only say that some of my saddest sounds have been heard in such places. A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea.

An hour later a police car would arrive, and two officers would again search the house. This may seem highly fortuitous, but when a higher power has plans for you, life can be full of near misses.

Although his cheeks were still soft and his thick hair carried the sheen of youth, the boy’s music displayed a sensitivity beyond his years. “An old soul” is how you sometimes describe it. But talents like me have been inside you since creation. Every artist is old in that way.

Once she was gone, he wanted nothing from this earth. He let himself sink—into melancholy, into drinking, into a haunted, restless sleep. If he could have unplugged his heart and shut the lights on his memory, he would have.

“Is this too fine a guitar for a boy so young?” “No. It must be with him the rest of his life.” “Why?” “Because I cannot be.”

“Remember this, Francisco,” he said. “The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.”

Man searches for courage in drink, but it is not courage that he finds, it is fear that he loses. A drunken man may step off a cliff. That does not make him brave, just forgetful.

I can tell you had Frankie not been there, Django would never have experienced America, or the way it influenced his life and art. This is why Frankie’s bottom string turned blue when they met.

Don’t let go of your music, chavo. Or you will let go of yourself.”

I have said that music allows for quick creation. But it is nothing compared with what you humans can destroy in a single conversation.

Frankie and I were from different parts of the world, but we had one thing in common: we didn’t leave a studio until it was perfect.

“When you want someone to listen to you, will you attack them?” “No, Maestro.” “No, you will not. You will make them hear the beauty of what you are offering, and they will want it for themselves.”

To connect the child and the father. They are special strings.” He lowered his voice. “They have lives inside them.”

For my disciples, the map is simple. All lonely roads lead back to music. I embrace you. I forgive you. I will never leave you. Can humans say the same?

In the quiet of a hospital room, to the sound of an old man’s breathing, Frankie Presto finally understood that, somehow, through those strings, he held life in his hands.

The dog turned and walked to the river’s edge. The muddy current was moving quickly. “Hey, careful,” Frankie yelled, leaning forward, but for the first time ever, the animal turned and growled, causing Frankie to lean back, confused. There are songs that you play that you have to restart, and songs that you play that you never get right. But when a song is complete, there is no more you can do. The hairless dog leaped into the water and paddled away. Frankie watched limply, knowing somehow he was not supposed to follow, even as the last member of his original three-piece band disappeared down the Mississippi River.

I do believe she and Frankie belonged together, even if they rarely stayed together. It was as if they had a secret they were bound to, which made them joyful most of the time and insane the rest.

As a boy, Frankie did not understand. As a man, he understood completely. Over the decades, no matter whose bed he landed in, I was Frankie’s mistress. And I could steal him back from anyone. Anyone. Except Aurora York.

Frankie fell asleep with his nose in her blond hair and his arm around her waist. He had joined many bands. This one was his favorite.

In the simplest harmonies, notes move up and down together, keeping the same distance, like the edges of a railroad track. A more complex version is counterpoint, where two musical lines move independently of each other, still a harmonic balance, but no longer attached as if by an axle.

Aurora’s absence paralleled Frankie’s rise to fame, and while it may seem coincidental, I assure you it was not. She knew she was sharing Frankie’s heart now, not only with me (which she could tolerate) but with ambition (which she couldn’t). I admired the foresight with which she departed, knowing how success would soak Frankie like a wave, and its undertow pull him away. So she left first.

I can only tell you I have been on earth since mankind’s inception, and have produced sounds for every stitch of life’s tapestry, sounds that invoke awakening, pain, love, the four seasons. But in my countless creations, there has never been a sound for “career.” Why do you let it affect me so?

Like Samson pulling the pillars down around him, Frankie crumbled all the things he’d become attached to in an effort to be free of them. Then, in the years that followed, he lost himself in the rubble. He fell into substances, believing, as I have lamented, that my truer powers might be discovered inside them.

“Listen to me, Francisco. Do you think I wanted a life of darkness? Do you think I wanted not to see my fingers or the frets or the tuning pegs, to have to poke around like a lost animal?” “No, Maestro.” “No, I did not. This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times—or you will be useless.”

I told him that as long as he had that kind of music inside him, nothing could keep it from coming out. I meant it. And then I asked, “When was the last time you were home?” And he said, “I don’t really have one.” And I said, “Everyone has someplace they call home.” He held up his guitar. “All I ever had was this,” he said, “and her.”

Inside all humans is the entirety of your memories, the ones you can access and the ones you cannot. Somewhere in the deep of Frankie’s mind was his own abandonment, his own gray blanket, his own whimpering dog.

“Why do the strings make different sounds, Maestro?” “It is simple. They work like life.”

“The point is, you have to decide who you are playing for. I wanted him to think my playing was beautiful, so I stopped making noise and made music instead.” He rubbed his chin. “What do you really like, in your heart?” “Probably more country, or folk.” “Then play that,” Frankie said. “Even if it doesn’t sell?” “Money and music are not friends.” Frankie chuckled. “I know something about that.”

What would you give to remember everything? I have this power. I absorb your memories; when you hear me, you relive them. A first dance. A wedding. The song that played when you got the big news. No other talent gives your life a soundtrack. I am Music. I mark time.

For the first time in years, Frankie was playing freely again, nearly as fast as before, but better, richer, because his music now was passionate, more thoughtful, the notes more carefully chosen, the way a great painter chooses not just a color but the perfect shade.

“The greatest thing, you’ll ever learn Is just to love, and be loved in return.”

the older you get, the more you want your kids to know about you.

And then I remembered Frankie talking about his little girl. And he was right. At a certain point, your life is more about your legacy to your kids than anything else.

I have said Aurora York was my only rival for Frankie’s heart. On that day, she vanquished me. Not a note of music was left inside him. His desperate love for her, with no release, went crashing into his inner walls like the waters of that flood, drowning me out, rendering him silent. He kept seeing her face, asking him to sing in the hospital. He kept seeing her as a little girl, asking him to play in a tree. He kept thinking about the old guitar he had left behind, and its one blue string, still unused. “What if you need to save a life?” she had asked. It was too painful to consider.

“Memories are not in places, Papa. Memories are in your mind.

This was too much to comprehend. He kept imagining scenes he was not a part of, his mother dying in a burning church; his teacher being pushed into the sea; Alberto being robbed; and this woman, this old, broken, gap-toothed woman, somehow being there for all of it, playing his life’s strings like invisible fingers.

Those strings, he now understood, did indeed have lives inside them, but it was not his playing that turned them blue; it was his heart.

Music is in the connection of human souls, speaking a language that needs no words. Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone.