That night they played the rain. At first only the guitar played in slow, dizzying patterns that repeated and descended and wafted across the audience who swayed gently in their reveries to the ambience repeating and repeating and spiraling and gently, gently water dripped from the amplifier. The low sounds of the bass joined, reverberating, texturing the soft wavering of the guitar and the rain increased from its light spitting to a drizzle and as more instruments found their own place in the abstract music the rain poured from the amplifiers over the audience who floated in their own dreaming of how the music appeared to them. They were bathed in sound. The drains in the floor were overcome and the water rose to ankle-height, seeping out into the hallways and to the restrooms and to the bar and cups and the stubs of joints and discarded sandals gathered in the growing flood which frothed down the stairs and out into the night. They played on. Clothing was drenched and clung to the bodies piled into that theatre together and the lights spun and danced and the rain shone in shifting colours and the rushing of the water striking water fell in tune with tones that swirled and grew and became sirens and the drum's thunder accentuated the wailing guitar and the showering piano and the washes of bass made the rain fall more heavily and violently in a typhoon until the sound burst and fell back into a laughing pitter-patter and returned to the light drizzle finally all that could be heard was the last drops of rain leaking from the amplifiers and the the water ebbing away down drains and stairs and through the coat-check and halls and out doors and across the sidewalks and alleys lastly into the sewers and storm drains. Inside a cloud hung over the audience as the rain evaporated and gradually dissolved into clear air as the tinning sounds of a last song began.
And the audience filed out into the night, their clothes hugging their damp bodies. Some, in their daze, left their coats behind but were kept warm in the late fall air by their wet clothing all the way to their homes which only dried as the rain music was forgotten.
