TOM, an outsider musician who releases music but won’t reveal his identity, records a song in the studio with JULIE, his cousin-in-law….

TOM: Those are guitar chords.  That’s what I play.  These are the notes with the words right underneath. I’ll sing the melody, and you try to sing with me.  Not like a duet with harmony.

JULIE: Like I could do that.

TOM: Just pretend you’re singing to the radio.

JULIE: Yeah.  Okay.  I do that.  I can do that.  Sometimes.

TOM begins playing.  TOM sings and soon JULIE sings along.

TOM/JULIE:

All the bones in my yard

The prairie wind whisks them

Clean as a razor blade

Peels the bark off the trees

They shake their white fingers

Shake white fingers at me

 There’s nothing here, nothing

Just trucks at the truck stop

Strangers in snow

Eyes asking questions

Answers I don’t know

Funny bald guy on the weatherman show

Talking sunshine in California

Sunshine in California

Walking in the whiteout

I’m just walking in the whiteout

And I’m crying both my eyes out

Bout the nothin’ everywhere

 There’s an empty in my head

Where the snow blows through

And the drifts slowly cover

Crumpled pictures of you

Your hair grows out white

Your eyes fill with ice

Your breath freezes your lips

The snow up to your hips

And its rising and rising

Rising and rising

And rising

 Walking in the whiteout

I’m just walking in the whiteout

And I’m crying both my eyes out

Bout the nothin’ everywhere

TOM doesn’t so much end the song as just stops playing.  Pause.  He shuts off the recorder.

JULIE: Wow.

TOM: I was going to have you sing that alone, but I kind of like the way it turned out.

JULIE: Singing together?

TOM: Yeah.

JULIE: Me too.  I almost forgot I was even singing it.

TOM: You just did.

JULIE: Yeah.  Wow.

TOM: I say we leave it like it is.

JULIE: You mean sing it together?

TOM: I mean just as we sang it.

JULIE: Right now?

TOM: Yeah.

JULIE: Well, I made mistakes.

TOM: I like your mistakes.  I made mistakes.  I don’t care.  I like it.

JULIE: That’s how it’s done?

TOM: That’s how I do it.

JULIE: What about, I don’t know.  The stuff they do in the studio?  Production?

TOM: I like it straight, coming right off my fingers.  Like direct.  As it happens.

JULIE: Yeah.  It’s like live.

TOM: Like first live.  Like where it’s being born.

JULIE: That’s intense.  I never heard that before.

TOM: No one’s heard it before.  Not until now.

JULIE: No.  I mean, I never heard of anyone doing it that way.  It’s crazy!

Pause.

TOM: Just the way I do it.