In many ways, it is only the "true" brothers, Alyosha and Vanya, who are in this band. Alyosha on lead vocals, Vanya on guitar. Writing the lyrics and the music while Mitya and I contribute the odd phrase, the odd snatch of melody. I bang away in the back, feeling like a child in the kitchen banging on pots and pans by myself. Far away from my half brothers. Far away from everyone. Escaping notice, hair in my eyes. That's me on drums. Mitya-- well, Mitya's rarely actually there. His eyes are so often glassy, pupils dilated, his gaze fixed on some distant point invisible to the rest of us. Or else he's off with some women or gambling away the money he doesn't spend on drugs. That's Mitya on bass.

Mitya and I are unlike Alyosha and Vanya. We are as dark as they are fair. We sing off key while they are always on. We are eternally doing something wrong, whereas they are doing something right. We are mad. They are sane.

As unlike Alyosha and Vanya as we are, however, Mitya and I are also unlike each other. He is loud. I am quiet. He laughs. I only smile. He is athletic. I am weak. He is handsome. I am ugly. He is the gambler, the wastrel, the prodigal son who will come home and be welcomed with feasting. I am the monster, the traitor, the exile. No one welcomes me home. We are both egoists-- yes, we have that in common, but where his egotism has made him a grand, swaggering, figure, lovable in spite or because of his faults; mine has made me a little thing, an insect, rarely occasioning notice, let alone affection. Stepped on often.

Sometimes I don't know why I stay with them, my brothers. Would they care if I slipped quietly away? I am a good drummer, but there are other good drummers in the world, some better than I. They could replace me with someone else, and the fans would hardly notice. My brothers would most likely grow to feel more for whatever stranger they hired than they feel for me now. So why do I stay?

I stay because although sometimes it feels so surreal, so unnatural, being in a rock band with my brothers, sometimes that strangeness falls away. Sometimes we fade away, our differences and our similarities and our petty disagreements. Sometimes there are no people left; there is only the music. The music becomes everything, and you remember that that's what it means, being in a musical group: music. Music is essential. Everything else is inconsequential.

The music sweeps you up in itself, and then there are the drumsticks in your hands and the vibration moving from the drum up through the drumsticks into you. You know where the sticks must fall next, and your hands make them go there, again and again and again as the rhythm thunders through you. Dimly you are aware of the guitar, the bass, and, singing somewhere, a soft beautiful voice, a voice singing of angels and of avatars. You play along with these other sounds. They fuel you, but they do not rule you. They move to the beat you set. They depend on you. This is freedom, or more than freedom-- mastery. You are your own master now. Master of the furor of the drums, the drums sounding beneath you through you in you for you.

Yes.