Him and I were in a practice space. There were no windows, just guitar amps, bass amps, drums and cables covering the floor (and about five people crammed in). Meeting the band that I was going to sing with, I was looking at each member of the group, then I saw him. He had on a blue suit coat and smiled. I felt at ease immediately. He introduced himself and joked about not being able to turn around. We laughed a little and I said, "I feel like I've seen you before somewhere."
It could have been at a music club, because I was a sound engineer at a venue in town and worked with many bands each weekend. It was possible he was one of the dozens of musicians I had seen performing...among all the blaring music and clinking beer mugs. It was reasonable to presume I had seen him, and now just recalled his face.
He paused. He stood straighter. "You know, I get that a lot." He leaned in closer as he picked up his guitar, and shook his head with aplomb. "People say they think they know me, like all the time."
I laughed again, this time like a nervous piccolo.
"How odd," I said, "maybe you have one of those faces, like a mutt," thinking his features could be a collage, copied, pasted and rearranged with the rubric's cube of genetics until his nose looks like a friend's nose, his eyebrows like an uncle's eyebrows, his cheek bones like a teacher's cheekbones. Perhaps his face was a mix of all faces.
Plus, he was bald, which made his face stand out even more. A unique face, I could insist I'd seen before, yet could not say exactly where or when. He noticed my pause.
"Well, I don't know if my mind is deceiving me, or just failing me," I said.
"Those are two different things," he laughed.
The rehearsal continued and I stole a sideways glance.
It got me thinking, thinking about him. What about a man who everywhere he goes, people think they know him? They say, 'who are you? I've seen your face before.' Wouldn't it seem strange, even if he traveled to a place he'd never been, people would recognize him, and he could essentially never be anonymous? Everyone would think they already know him, yet know nothing about him. He would be known yet unknown, recognized but never confirmed. He would never have a clean slate, yet the chalk marks would be impossible to read, he would be an identity in orbit, hanging on a thread of a memory. His face was never new, just forgotten. Yet he could always take heart in causing a burst of familiarity, bringing forth a smile, then a question. What bubbled up was the difference between recognition and knowledge, curiosity and familiarity, what would it be like to walk those lines?
Music filled the room, and we rehearsed the song I had come to sing, each lyric took my full attention. The electric guitars were ringing in my ears on the way out.
As we parted ways, I waved goodbye. "I'll see you around," I said.
I racked my brain but could not remember where I had seen him before.
Or, I suppose, if I had seen him before at all.