Today I felt the curve of the earth. The horizon bowed at my feet.
- -
“You see that?” The old man was talking, breaking the silence in which we had until then uncomfortably existed, amongst the smells of leaky exhaust and ancient leather. “That’s where you want to be.” I looked, but couldn’t see anything important. “Up there, boy! On the wire.” He pointed. “The birds?” I had no idea what he was talking about. The light turned green. “The ones on the wire.” There was a flock of birds in the median. Most of them were on the ground, pecking and eating and jumping – busily doing bird things. Some of them, about twenty or so, had perched high above the rest on a phone line. “That’s where you want to be,” he repeated, “up outta the shit. Up where you can breathe.” I looked at my grandfather – really looked at him – and for maybe the first time in my life I saw him as the person he was. Not as an occasional giver of money and interminable stories, but as a flesh-and-blood human man. A man who had scraped and fought his entire life to live in his own tiny house in the poor part of a town that had grown up around him. A man who should own the respect I had never thought to give him. A horn sounded behind us. “Grandpa? The light’s green.” “Ah shit,” he said, and stepped on the gas – too hard. The old truck lurched, stalled, and coughed to a stop. “Go around!” he yelled, waving his hand out the window. He laughed, and looked at me. “What was I talking about?” “Birds.” “Oh yeah.” He turned the key, the engine sputtered to life and we continued on. “Birds.”
We finished the drive in a very different kind of silence than the one in which we had started.
- -
Gravity’s weight had me defeated, and the core of the earth – I could feel its heat. -Attack in Black
When I started college in 2005, I did what a lot of people who start college do: I looked at a guitar and thought “Oh yeah. I’m gonna learn me some of that.” So I learned a couple of chords from my friend Rob and decided I was a musician.
Now, what I should have been doing had I been actually serious about learning a new instrument was actually focus on learning that instrument. Instead, I focused on writing lyrics to songs I would never record or sing – because I am not a good vocalist and while I practiced guitar long enough to develop calluses on my fingers, I did not practice long enough to learn more than three chords and definitely did not practice long enough to be able to sing and play at the same time.
But I did learn enough to transition between those three chords (It might even be four)! As you can hear in the following clip:
Why I am not rich and famous, I will never know.
So guitar was evidently not my thing, nor was it going to be. Not because I was unable to learn how to play, but because I lack the motivation and discipline to learn an instrument when there are things like video games and television in this world.
I am very good at playing video games and watching television. I would enter into a television-watching contest if there was such a thing. Maybe there is. Stay tuned.
In any case, I did continue to write lyrics to songs that would never exist. Poetry was kind of my thing the first two years of college. Maybe I was kind of angsty. Maybe it was being on my own for the first time in my life. Or maybe it was because I really liked writing poetry. Who knows? I eventually grew out of it.
Whatever the reason, I have decided to share some of this potentially embarrassing writing with you, my very few readers. Keep in mind that I was very heavily influenced by bands such as Something Corporate (& Jack’s Mannequin), Dashboard Confessional, Brand New, Zox, Linkin Park, Jimmy Eat World, Copeland, etc. Please don’t judge too harshly.
Keep in mind too that these were supposed to eventually turn into songs – my friend Rob had a good singing voice, and he was the one teaching me to play guitar. I (maybe even we) had dreams of becoming a famous singing/songwriting duo someday, which were probably crushed when I decided that playing video games was way more immediately gratifying. Anyway – to the embarrassing things!
CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT (Influence level: Linkin Park) (Embarrassment Level: HIGH)
Hiding in the shadows You are all the same Dancing in the moonlight Playing twisted games
Drawn towards the perilous Burning with desire Throwing caution to the wind You fuel the darkest fire
Children of the night You were angels, angels Come into the light And rewrite your life
Sometimes I imagine That you are just a dream Slinking, sliding, slithering You make me want to scream
Running blindly through the muck I’m giddy with the fright I curse the silence of the moon You trap me with delight
Children of the night You were angels, angels Come into the light And rewrite your life
Forgotten by society You shun the modern world Living in proximity Your words are never heard
Banished to the darkness Your pain just never ends Forgotten by your family And Hated by your friends
Children of the night You were angels, angels Come into the light And rewrite your life
Not trying to be normal Not trying to fit in Looking past the darkness To see the light within
Come inside to see All the things you’ll never be Look around and you will learn When your dreams begin to burn
You call yourself my friend But your laughter never ends You are laughing with my pain But your laughter is insane
Can’t you see that I’m about to snap? Helplessly I fall into your trap You twist my words so I can’t say a thing You bind my ears so I can’t hear you sing
I step so carefully On the surface of the sea Jump above and try to dive But I fall into the sky
Can’t you see that I’m about to snap? Helplessly I fall into your trap You twist my words so I can’t say a thing You bind my ears so I can’t hear you sing
I feel your sick delight In the darkness of the night You fooled me for so long Now I find I don’t belong
My life is caving in Around the places I have been Put my mind up on a shelf And please come save me from myself
SPARKS (Influence Level: Dashboard Confessional) (Embarrassment Level: Fairly low) Still one of my favorites.
The city whirls around me Fills my head to burst The sidewalk melts and I dive in headfirst
I wake up and I’m driving Your picture on my dash I see it and I smile for what we had
The radio sings to me sadness While the full moon shines in through the glass And I want to go to sleep so bad it hurts but first I need to be sure that you’ll be there
I pull into a dark house I never want to leave The hospital bracelet hides beneath my sleeve
My thoughts lie down beside me They whisper to my heart But I can’t change how everything’s my fault
The radio sings to me sadness While the full moon shines in through the glass And I want to go to sleep so bad it hurts but first I need to be sure that you’ll be there
The city whirled about me We were spinning in the street I could feel the sparks beneath my feet
The city whirled around you You were flying through the air The last thing I remember was the smell Moonlight on the flowers Was the sight Spinning in the street Of your hair
AMNESIAC (Influence Level: Jimmy Eat World & The Calling) (Embarrassment Level: None!)
Misty Monday morning You walked out of my door Memories are slipping What do we do this for?
Cry out for an answer Helpless futility Memories are slipping This life isn’t free
I picked it up and I tried To fake your brutality But the thing you never realized The answer was always me Cry yourself to sleep tonight Look inside and you will see Your strong guilt-free exterior Is breaking at the seams And the thought of me is haunting all your dreams
Feelings buried deep Locked away forever Memories are slipping Ties you tried to sever
Living on your own You are living all alone Memories are slipping What good have you done?
Look where we are now Did you know that it would end like this? Did you know we were bound to miss? Tangled in all this bliss Like this
You are wasting time You wasted all my life Memories are slipping It serves you right
So there you have it. Some embarrassing pieces of my past. Although those last two (Sparks and Amnesiac) I actually still like quite a lot. My previously-mentioned friend Rob actually sat down and recorded a rough take of Amnesiac with guitar and vocals that I think is pretty dang good considering it was recorded in one take sometime in 2006 on some kind of potato microphone. With a little polishing and practice I think it would sound awesome.
To leave you, here’s a video of that very recording with some doodle I doodled after he recorded it.
P.S. To double-leave you, here is a short poem that was actually published (front page!) in one of the Purdue Exponent’s student literary editions, so I was fairly puffed up for a few days after that.
THE BACK OF YOUR EYELIDS
What do you see on the back of your eyelids? What do you see in your dreams? Follow a road to the back of your mind Where nothing appears as it seems; Where your unspoken secrets are living their lives And only in sleep are they free. How can a question be answered with yes? How can we answer with no? Setting a price on the weight of the world Is like standing a candle in snow. And the melting puddles of our tired lives Will steam up to the stars and glow. Have you ever really looked out the window? Have you ever looked at the scene? We’re building a bridge to the end of the world Just to fall back into the sea. And everyone’s lives are one and the same The killer, the preacher, and me.
