Worlds Apart

Chapter Five

Just as my motel had a view straight out into the open desert, I found that the courtyard in Valley Sound had almost the same scene spread out. Only this view was pointing in the opposite direction.

It was a bit disconcerting when I walked out of my motel room in the morning and then made a venture into the courtyard later on in the day. It gave the illusion that there was nothing else out there. For all I could tell, there might as well not have been anything and that the people in this town were in some sort of suspended reality where no one outside the town existed. Everything else seemed so distant.

Sarah had told to me that Belmont was in a valley, completely destroying my image of valleys with flowing grass, bubbling streams and Bambi with a bunch of his siblings frolicking around. It was full of crumbling desert and jutting stones with wispy dry bushes.

When I was sitting out here, staring out into the desert and lost in my thoughts, it made cities like Paris or New York feel like fairy tales. I suppose had I been in a hotel in London, gazing out over the city bustling with liveliness it would have made a place like this feel like something out of a story book as well.

Polar opposites, to say the least.

Letting out an enormous breath, I took a sip from what was left at the bottom of my mug before standing up.

What was appealing about the courtyard was mostly the view. Besides that it wasn’t impressive at all, a complete concrete jungle right in the middle of the building, opening up to the desert behind it. Although it was bathed in shade at this time of day, and that was a definite plus.

With one glance back over my shoulder at the sprawling desert, I let out a yawn before pushing through the door into the building.

I’d gone out there half an hour ago with my head pounding slightly and a cup of coffee in hand for nothing more than a moment to think.

Over the years I’d found that if I took a short break to simply think, it made the music and my voice more natural. I’d never had that problem during the first Red Riot album, because I’d had those songs written for years and they’d been worked on without any pressure. It had only been when we started recording the second album that I started chasing it, trying to force myself to be creative with all the pressure baring down on me to write an album just as good as the first. And the burden hadn’t been put on me just by my band mates, but by a management and record company that I’d never had to deal with before.

Not to mention the fact I’d only been fucking eighteen years old at that time. That wasn’t the pressure that most teenage kids were going through, they were picking schools and courses, I, on the other hand, had been frantically trying to drag my best writing out so that I didn’t ruin not only my career, but my friends’ as well. I hadn’t even been legal drinking age at the time.

I had a feeling that’s where my neurosis about not only song writing but recording came in to play. I’d always been a perfectionist when it came to my music, but that time had been the point when I became almost to the point of psychotic about it. I wouldn’t sleep for days on end, live on nothing but caffeine and cigarettes and hole myself up in the studio. The only times I’d left was when the band had almost physically removed me for time out, and I’d spent the entire time fretting with my mind back at the studio no matter where my body was.

A second album was always a bitch for a band that came out with a debut that had arrived fist swinging. Trying to live up to the first was hell. It was like having an incredibly successful older sibling, that’s why I assumed at least since that wasn’t something that I’d experienced.

The more I thought about it, it made sense that Lizzy had seemed so concerned about me recording on my own. She had more important things to worry about, though, things much closer to home. Such as screeching baby that I advised to keep a close eye on since horror movies that involved children were so much creepier.