Other Broken People

His long white hair is caught up in an untidy ponytail. He is sitting hunched at the bar, radiating his rage. I'm too drunk to notice so when Marcel leaves I move over and invite him to join me at my table. Mistake.

He begins by criticising the musicians in tones, increasingly strident, increasingly indignant. "Copies! Copies of American music. Why can't they sing their own? Where is the Asianess in all this."

He's probably right. But I don't want to hear it right now. I'm pickled on three glasses of wine and I don't want to hear this. I just want to enjoy the music, watch the guys having fun on stage, that cool vibe which moves through the room.

But the Composer is livid. And he keeps muttering imprecations, reaching out every once in a while to take my hand and kiss it. And then he starts attacking me. "You, what are you doing here? How many nights a week do you come? What is it you are looking for?"

All valid questions, no doubt. But at the same time, none of his damn business. The set finishes and I run up to the stage. Tell Albert that it's a little uncomfortable, there's a feral Frenchman out there and I want to leave. Albert glances over, cool as a chilled pineapple, and suggests that I sit in front with the musicians.

So I do. But my stuff is still at the other table. I wait and talk to the guys. They're having a good time...it's all very quiet. I guess they are the antithesis of rowdy musicians. They're just doing a job and doing it well. I wonder why the Composer has to pick on them. A little later I see a young (French?)man come up and talk to him. And then I glance over and he's not there. I duck in, get my bag and the bottle of wine Marcel brought me as a present, and duck out again.

Yay. Now I can sit and enjoy the rest of the show without anxiety. I don't need anxiety. I have wine. But he hasn't gone. Not by a long shot. And now, he's even angrier. Whatever he had to be aggrieved about earlier, I have now just added to it by abandoning him. I could hit myself for being so stupid as to invite him to join me. You don't do that. Not here. You sit alone and enjoy the music. That's what people like us do. We don't want to deal with other people's pain. We're too busy avoiding our own.

And then the boys invite Rafique up for a song. Rafique demurs at first, then goes up and plays Michelle. In Thai. He's taking the piss. The rest of us laugh. The Composer bristles. And then the comments, which were only audible if you were sitting next to him, get louder. A lot louder.

He says: "Go home! I didn't come here to listen to you."

He says: "Stop! This is not a karaoke. I came hear to listen to real musicians."

He continues to heckle and Rafique sings another song. The heckling gets louder. Rafique, unfazed, gets off the stage smiling broadly. "There's always one," he says cheerfully. The other musicians look at each other.

Azmi, who's sitting nearest to me, shakes his head. "I see him at No Black Tie all the time. But he's never like this."

I say: "Yeah, I think he's a famous composer. At least, Mark says he is."

The Composer had written his name down for me, but I haven't Googled him yet. And nobody here, looking at this tired, dishevelled, angry, heartbroken old man, can believe that he was great. That actually, he still is.

Albert and Badar take the stage and start playing a series of slow numbers. The Composer staggers towards the stage, climbs up and kneels in front of the conga drums. Both Albert and Badar, who are gentle souls, raise their eyebrows in alarm.

Edmund's had it. The guy already irritated him with the earlier heckling. And now this? "Oi!" he calls out. "Get down from there."

"Cakap baik sikit bang," says Azmi, the peacemaker.

"You act like this, you only deserve an oi," insists Edmund. Then he goes up to the stage and orders the Composer to get off. Like, now!

The Composer pauses befuddled. "This is your stage?" he asks, clearly offended.

"Go help him downlar, the man will fall," says Azmi.

And Edmund, irrirated as he is, does. He goes and offers a hand for the Composer to get off the stage. He is an old man. And he could fall. Although he had no business up there disrupting the musicians in the first place.

They play on and finally Rafique goes up and joins Albert - the two start off with House at Pooh Corner and then go into a series of James Taylor numbers. It is truly beautiful.

But the Composer, his dignity ruffled, stalks out of the bar in high dudgeon. He stops by a table, probably to tell them that he is never coming here again. Never has he been so insulted.

I look at Edmund and sigh. I hate confrontations. I hate all this tension. I ask tentatively whether Edmund knows who the guy is. No, he doesn't know. And he doesn't care. Just some drunk. I say, apparently, he's some famous composer....also a musician.

And Edmund shakes his head vigorously. No way. No musician would do what he did. And then today, taking a break from my interminable story on human resources, I Google the guy. And I find...not only is he famous, he's world famous...not well known in the Anglo Saxon world...but in the rest...his fame stretches from Europe to South America to Africa to the Middle East. He has composed ballets, symphonies, experimented...the list goes on and on...I find pictures of him on the net - he looked younger and handsomer...a man confident, secure in himself.

What happened? How did he morph into that broken man at the bar, heckling the musicians and climbing up on stage, unloved, unlwecome, a nuisance?

He told me, actually.

It was love.