Andrew can't think straight. He has the song in his mind, he has the skills to play a masterpiece, a good voice. He can't put thoughts to paper, he cant fathom his feelings concrete. (He lies face down in bed at night straining to breathe through his cotton pillow, but he enjoys the fight. He is able to concentrate on breathing. Breathing and breathing and nothing else. No failure. The struggle to create something that could come remotely close to his factious thoughts on music is gone. Because all he can concentrate on is breathing to keep him going. Breathing and breathing and nothing else. ) Each note he thinks can be done better. He second guesses every chord, every pause, every change of key signature. He needs reassurance in his times of uncertainty. (It had taken him six months to play a original song in front of his family, a year and a half to play it in front of his friends, and two more years after that to play to an audience more then 30 people). But he can be told an idea. He can flesh it out to fill out a room, move people to feelings they've long forgotten, allow them to reminisce of places they thought they never longed so much to go back to before. A harmony, grand and seemingly forthcoming. He just needs some sort of starting block, he just cant think straight (alone).
Jack can never catch a break. The band that he had devoted himself to never kicked off as much as he hoped it will. Every night he'd wonder why (he'd lay and count the spots where that night's motel's roof leaked though the ceiling and he thought of spilled coffee and why people instinctively walk the paths they do in trifling and trivial hopes of discovering pieces to make sense of their vacant lives. He would wonder if he was doing the same. He would cast those thoughts away as quickly as possible). The opportunities that advanced would be extinguished by rain that delayed a plane or a family issue he couldn't avoid, which would cancel a happening that might happen to give him a coin toss at success. He fostered the beginnings of great ideas in his mind, ruminating over monumental future moments where he could stand back and take it all in (that is the roar of the crowd, once he attained a large enough crowd to roar,) He daydreamed of catchy riffs and belted-out choruses which the audience would revere, sing along to, concede to themself the immersion of the song, the people that carried him so far in his would-be carrier. He just needs some ambition, he can never catch a break (alone).
Nate is lost. He feels chained while his mind runs circles. The gravity of his prior band seems to bend his arms backwards and tie his tongue. The lyrics that seep through his sleep and jolt him to consciousness and through the paper (like he was emerging from a nightmare) cease to falter against the criticism, although no one takes him up on his plea to continue creating music that he longed for. He knows he wont stop writing (for music is his diaphragm, and its damn well needed for him to breath). No one thinks twice about him. He's old news, kindling to heat the flue with. He tentatively tries to sell his product to anyone who might give his work a second glance. All push aside his achievements, and through this hes learned to push aside being tentative. Most if not all said he will never amount to any more then he already had. No one can make a living alone, no one would take a risk on someone who has already peaked. His time, he starts to believe himself, has worn out. Media, his fans, his band members, all the fruitless travels have ground on his bones. (When the moon manifests over the exhausted rustic mountains of his hometown he wistfully wonders what its like to die young, being presumed defective to the columnist and the editor, to live forever, unjustifiably mis-recollecting his forgoing fans and all the unconditional support they have been throwing at him, to panhandle for each copper coin, buckling under the magnitude of all his anxieties and uncovering comfort in memotomy.) Its a selfish, human wish but he wants to be substantial. To be cared about and wanted and well, loved. The only lips hes felt lately are the cold ones of his first, second, third, fourth bottle of beer. He just needs someone to stand next to him, someone who would he would stand next to as well, he is so, so lost. (Alone, that is.)
