ａｓｈｔｏｎ
The shadows echoed of the walls as I sat at my office desk in Melbourne, a piece of blank computer paper and a small wooden pencil in my hand. I rubbed the pencil against the side of my head in thought, and finally gave in and put the small wooden object at the side of my ear. I tapped my fingers against the wooden desk in frustration. What to write!
The lads and I had stopped at Melbourne during our tour. Our trip had been traveled all across the U.K and the America's, so I was exited when I learned we were going back to Australia for the next portion of the tour. I was tempted to go back to Hornsby, were I grew up, for a day or so, but touring demanded my fullest elsewhere. The trip wouldn't have been possible anyways, Hornsby is a good 9 hours from Melbourne and the Coast anyway.
With my teeth pushed against my bottom lip, I began writing some random words on the piece of paper. Writing songs, which I was attempting to do now, isn't just slapping words on a record , hoping to get a good review with a bunch of meaningless words. You actually have to think about it, making the notes do something in your heart, not in your lack of effort. The hardest part of writing is not totally messing things up.
As I began erasing the words on the page, I hear a slow creaking coming from the bottom of the stairs. I turn around, not seeing anything but the curly red tips of my hair. "Ah, the plumbing must be down again." I sighed. Two in the morning, and I'm hearing things. I wouldn't be surprised if some obsessive fan came walking into the room.
I heard the sound again, this time much louder, and I started getting nervous, so I flung the pencil against the far wall against the stairs. The object must've hit something metallic, because a loud clang erupted from the shadows.
That's when I started laughing. And if wasn't like a normal laugh when someone says a really cheesy pun (I get enough of those from Michael and Luke), or a bad joke, it was a laugh that you rarely find when you see something so ridiculously stupid that you literally die of lack of breathing. That's what I was experiencing right now.
I guess some things are so scary, you burst out laughing.
"Sake, Ashton, what's wrong with you?" I felt someone touch my shoulder.
The chair went spinning as I tumbled of the seat. I already knew. Calum's haunting me.
"Heaven's sake, Calum!" I rubbed the part of my arm Calum had poked at, the area now covered in goosebumps. "You scared the crap out of me!"
Calum softly chuckled. "That's what I'm here for, eh" I shook my head with a faint smile on my lips, and began writing again.
Calum pulled up a chair from a table a little ways deeper into the room, and pulled it next to mine. I could hear his footsteps through the creaking wood which was the floor. "Whatcha doin'?" He asked, leaning over the table to get a better look at the page. "Writing somethin'?"
I nodded. "Yeah. I've got the beat down for a song, but the lyrics ..." I shook my head. "They're harder to write than they seem."
"Well, let's hear it then, the structure, I mean" He pulled his arms behind his back in a leisurely manner. "I've got time.
I pulled out a separate sheet of paper with messy notes and pencil marks all over it. "Here." I held the paper with both of my hands, so he could get a glimpse, than quickly placed my sheet back into my own. I had written many different sheets for many different instruments for the song, and I wasn't risking losing any of them.
I pulled out one of my favourite electric guitars, the most if the face covered with steel white, and the majority of the sides of the face were black. The neck was just a plain gray. I switched the setting to low volume so I wouldn't wake anyone before I started playing. I strummed some random cords from the "chorus" of the song, and stopped playing when I reached the ending. "So, how bad did it suck?" I put my hand over my face and laughed.
