Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

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******

”Mr. Tommy Mottola—who took the meeting when he did not have to, and who listened to the tape when the listening required overcoming entirely reasonable, justifiable skepticism—I am forever in your debt. Though I am fairly certain my royalty checks have already adequately repaid you.”

The laughter swelled, louder and warmer this time. Tommy Mottola was seen in the audience laughing hysterically, shaking his head, sitting alone without his wife Mariah beside him.. As by the 1998 Grammys, Tommy Mottola and Mariah Carey’s relationship had already effectively collapsed—their separation had been publicly announced in 1997 and the divorce was finalized shortly after in 1998.

”I want to thank James Horner,” Marvin said, his tone softening into genuine reverence. ”Who patiently taught me things about sweeping orchestral composition during the *Titanic* collaboration that I will utilize for the rest of my career. And who has been incredibly generous in his public acknowledgment of my tiny contributions, when total silence would have served his own legend equally well.”

He gripped the edges of the podium, his blue eyes sweeping over the silent room.

”I want to say something about the music itself,” Marvin stated, with the directness that was his mode when he decided to say something historically important. ”Five songs. Absolutely no words. Seven million copies sold. I am acutely aware that these three facts do not fully cohere within the existing, rigid frameworks of how the music industry currently understands what it is, and what it does.”

He paused, letting the silence build.

”I am completely aware that several powerful people in this room voted for me tonight with some lingering, residual uncertainty about whether this category was actually appropriate for me. You wondered whether entirely wordless vocal composition truly belongs in standard pop vocal categories. You debated whether the work is sufficiently conventional to be judged by conventional criteria.”

A heavy pause. The room was utterly spellbound.

”I cannot resolve that intellectual uncertainty for you,” Marvin purred, his voice a low, vibrating hum that seemed to echo in the chest of every person listening. ”What I can tell you is that the music does exactly what music was originally designed to do at the dawn of human history. It reaches people.”

He looked at the room with devastating steadiness.

”It reaches the dark, quiet parts of people that are usually heavily protected. And music, at its absolute best, has always been the primary mechanism for bypassing those defenses. Whether the industry labels it ’pop’ or ’classical’ ’Hip-hop’ or something that simply doesn’t have a marketing name yet... that is the function. The music performs the function. Everything else is merely a corporate category problem. And category problems are interesting... but they are not the point.”

He picked up the golden gramophone.

”Thank you,” Marvin said, his voice dropping to a whisper that carried perfectly. ”To everyone who actually listened in the dark. That is who this piece of metal is for.”

He walked gracefully down the stairs.

The standing ovation that erupted in Radio City Music Hall was absolutely deafening. It wasn’t the polite applause of an industry fulfilling a contractual obligation; it was the roaring, thunderous surrender of an entire art form to its new being.

His mother was waiting at the bottom of the steps. She put her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder, entirely without ceremony or PR performance.

Marvin let it happen, wrapping one arm around her while holding the Grammy in the other. The press cameras caught the embrace perfectly, and the resulting image was—in its simplicity, its warmth, and its complete absence of Hollywood performance—exactly the beautiful, devastating truth that it was.

---

The press room tucked directly behind the grand, glowing stage of Radio City Music Hall was its own territory.

It was not the glamorous, champagne-soaked fantasy of the telecast. This was the engine room of the entertainment media. It was packed shoulder-to-shoulder under harsh, unflattering fluorescent lights with over two hundred and fifty journalists, wire reporters, and photographers who covered the Grammy Awards from the industrial, infrastructural side.

They waited in a sweaty, anxious mass for the dazed winners to be marched through the space, so that the historical record could be secured and the frantic, probing follow-up questions could be answered before the East Coast print deadlines expired.

Marvin entered the press room alone.

He held the golden gramophone effortlessly in his left hand. The instant he stepped through the curtains, the entire room’s chaotic, roaring attention snapped toward him, organizing itself around him with the concentration that had become intimately familiar to him over the last seven months.

The Incubus aura flared, rolling through the cynical New York press corps, smoothing their aggressive, jagged edges and forcing a sudden, unnatural hush over the room.

The questions came rapidly, flying through the air in the organized urgency of people who had meticulously prepared them and were currently operating against the ticking clock of live broadcast deadlines.

”Marvin! Over here! *The New York Times*!” a reporter shouted, pushing her tape recorder forward. ”You opened your acceptance speech by explicitly acknowledging Erykah Badu. That is incredibly unusual for a winner on this stage. Why did you do it? Were you worried that if you didn’t, people would accuse you of stealing the award from a ’real’ adult artist?”

”I said it because it was the truth,” Marvin answered smoothly, stepping up to the microphone.

He set his Grammy deliberately onto the center of the press room table. He didn’t clutch it to his chest defensively; he set it down like a paperweight.

”Miss Badu’s work on *Baduizm* this year is genuinely extraordinary,” Marvin continued, his velvety voice echoing perfectly over the PA system. ”The Best New Artist category was genuinely contested. Saying so publicly does not diminish my win in the slightest. It simply contextualizes the battlefield honestly. I prefer to win wars where the enemy is actually heavily armed. It makes the victory significantly sweeter.”

A ripple of nervous, charmed laughter rolled through the cynical press room.

”Do you honestly think you deserved to win over her?” a reporter from *Spin Magazine* challenged.

Marvin looked directly at the journalist who had asked this. He utilized a terrifying, directness that was not aggressive, but was also completely, uncomfortable for the mortal receiving it.

”I think my work is genuinely, historically excellent,” Marvin purred softly. ”Whether it ’deserved’ to win over the other magnificent nominees is a philosophical question about the relative quality of artistic things that fundamentally aren’t fully comparable. And frankly, I don’t think ’relative quality’ is the most useful or interesting frame for this discussion. The Recording Academy voted. The vote is the vote. I am profoundly grateful for the metal trophy, and I am entirely honest about the bloody context in which I acquired it.”

”But the opening of your speech,” another reporter pressed. ”Saying Badu should also be on stage with you—were you at all worried it would come across to the audience at home as cheap, false modesty?”

”I was only worried it would come across as false modesty if it was actually, technically false modesty,” Marvin smirked, his dimples flashing, completely disarming the room. ”It isn’t. She should have been on that stage. I firmly believe that. And saying it publicly to six thousand people is simply the most efficient, honest thing to do with a belief. Besides, if I was going to practice false modesty, I would have started by pretending I didn’t know exactly how good my album is.”

The room erupted into loud, genuine laughter. ”Seven million copies!” a journalist from *Rolling Stone* shouted over the noise. ”Five songs with absolutely no lyrical words. How do you logically explain that astronomical commercial performance to older industry executives who find it... anomalous?”

”I don’t explain it to them,” Marvin smiled, his eyes gleaming with dark amusement. ”That sounds exhausting. I simply describe what I intended when I composed the music in the studio. The actual commercial performance—the seven million people walking into a store and handing over their hard eanrd cash—is a private transaction between the music and the audience. I am not physically in that room when they listen. Though, given the royalty checks, my accountants certainly are.”

More laughter, warmer this time.

”What exactly *did* you intend?”

He looked at the journalist with absolute, chilling steadiness.

”To reach the dark places in people that are usually heavily protected,” Marvin said softly, repeating the truth he had spoken from the stage. A heavy pause hung in the air. ”The music either successfully does it, or it doesn’t. Seven million people suggest that it does.”

”You have four massive Grammy nominations remaining tonight—”

”I do not predict my own categories,” Marvin purred, adjusting his cuffs. ”It is analytically unsound, arrogant, and frankly, professionally inadvisable. I prefer to let the universe surprise me. It happens so rarely.”

This produced another loud wave of laughter from several veteran journalists who were captivated by his rhythm.

”Can you tell us anything about the second album? Or when it’s coming?” a reporter from *MTV* asked eagerly.

”Well, let us just say that I am working on it,” Marvin smiled mysteriously. ”The lead single will be sitting securely with Columbia’s elite radio promotion team. I am not going to describe the sonic content in any more detail than that tonight, because I prefer that the music speak for itself when it finally arrives and destroys your radios.” A wicked pause. ”But I will say this: It is better than the first one.”

The noisy press room went completely, suddenly quiet.

”Better,” a journalist repeated, almost whispering the word, unable to comprehend something better than a seven-million-selling Diamond record.

”Significantly,” Marvin stated flatly, entirely without elaboration.

He picked up the golden Grammy from the press room table where it had been placed for the photographs. He held it with the composed, ease of someone who had been holding it for exactly three minutes, and had already made complete, peace with its physical and cultural weight.

”I will take exactly two more questions before my mother sends security to drag me back to my seat,” Marvin announced.

”What does it actually feel like to be twelve years old in this massive, intimidating room?”

Marvin looked closely at the journalist who had asked this—a woman from a respected, intellectual music publication. Her expression suggested genuine, profound curiosity rather than the slightly baiting, patronizing quality that the ”age question” usually carried when asked in a different, cheaper tone.

”It feels... accurate,” Marvin said softly, after a long moment of contemplation. ”Which is exactly what it has always felt like. I do not possess a mental reference point for being a fundamentally different biological age in this specific room. I can only be the exact age that I currently am.”

He paused, the Incubus charm pulsing gently, wrapping around her question.

”However, asking what it feels like to be in this room at *any* age—that is a better, more interesting question. It feels like being in a sacred place where the thing I care about in this universe is finally being taken seriously, by the exact people who have spent their entire lives taking it seriously. That is exactly what it feels like. The biological age is entirely incidental.”

The female reporter nodded slowly, deeply satisfied with the profound answer.

”Last question,” the HFPA moderator barked. ”The Oscars are in exactly three weeks!” a journalist shouted from the back. ”Best Original Song! Are you performing live on the global telecast?”

”I am performing,” Marvin confirmed smoothly, his dimples flashing one last time. ”Whether I am actually going to win the Oscar on that stage is a different mathematical question, and one I am not going to answer for you tonight.”

He offered his precise, aristocratic smile. ”But I assure you... I am performing.”

---

The presentation for Record of the Year arrived in the grueling second half of the telecast, long after the pyrotechnic performances had concluded. It was the point in the long evening when the massive room’s collective energy had already cycled through several exhausting waves of intense anticipation and sudden release. The ballroom had finally reached the heavy quality of absolute, dead-silent attention that the major, historic categories always generated.

It was a concentrated, slightly electric awareness. Everyone in the room inherently understood that what was coming next was what mattered the most.

The legendary nominees were read aloud to the silent crowd.

*Sunny Came Home* by Shawn Colvin.

*Wannabe* by the Spice Girls.

*Bitch* by Meredith Brooks.

*Building a Mystery* by Sarah McLachlan.

And *Song of Enchantment* by Marvin Meyers.

The presenter—an iconic artist whose own staggering, multi-decade Grammy history gave the category the exact, massive weight it deserved—slowly opened the gold envelope.

”And the Grammy goes to... *’Song of Enchantment,’* Marvin Meyers.”

This response from the massive room was different from the earlier win’s response. It was vastly fuller. It was warmer. It was significantly less politically contested in its emotional texture.

This was primarily because Record of the Year was not a debate about a category’s rigid definition, nor was it a debate about the nominee’s confusing demographics or young age. It was purely, entirely about the cultural impact of the physical recording itself. And on that specific, undeniable question, the room had made its collective, surrendered judgment with considerably less internal division than the earlier, messier category.

The song had done exactly what it had done to the world. It had reached exactly what it had reached! Billions of shattered, weeping, and healed people simply could not be argued with by cynics. And the Grammy voters—six thousand hardened professionals who had been obsessively listening to music their entire careers, and who intimately knew the difference between a recording that merely ’worked’ and a recording that entirely transcended the medium—had made their final assessment.

Marvin walked gracefully down the aisle to the stage again.

*****

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