The Ideal and the Real

Songwriter's Note - Cold Hard Reality

Reality. It's kind of sad compared to imagination, isn't it? I mean, who would want to know about my story? It's a never-ending telling of reality. Yeah, there's no ending to it. There shouldn't be. It still goes on in the deep valleys of darkness. Not that my life is all depressing and that stuff, but now it mostly is. When I was younger, I had no worries in life. All I did was stay at home and drew all my favourite made-up characters (really weird "ducks" with dog ears and legs) and wrote stories for them. You might wonder, why is this called a "songwriter's note" instead of an "author's note"?

First of all, I did a little pun on the "note" part. "Note" as in "music note". Second, I think it sounds better and more original than "author's note". Finally, I'm better off as a songwriter than an author. Sure, I've written bits of short stories before. But I've written much better songs. I've written... (what is it?) ... eleven songs. After over a minute of thinking about it, I realized that number was more than ten. Which is wonderful! I could produce an album containing all these songs in it. Then I could be well-known! But wait... now I lost my interest for it.

A guy from my choir class named Luke Preston was the reason why I loved music so much back then. Luke was an exceptional guitar player for his age. I've seen his performances when my high school puts on these live performance nights. I had also performed during those nights, but I mostly messed up. It was embarrassing.

Here's the story on how I got started on music: my family wanted me to take piano lessons ten years ago. I haven't liked them at first, but then I liked them a bit. When I was 10, I changed my mind and quit. When Luke met me in high school, that was when things changed. I had big dreams of becoming a well-known musician. I had been wanting to go to a professional recording studio. To feel alive while singing my own songs.

Luke and I started talking to each other in school. There were times when we texted, but there were people closer to him than I was. He probably thought of me as "just another fan" of his music. Which I was, in fact, a true fan. His music was pretty much everywhere: online and in real life. I remembered the lyrics to almost all his songs. Some of my songs were about him and / or were inspired by him. I even told my friends about how awesome he was.

He wasn't that popular in this city, to be honest. Most of his popularity comes from his video views online. Thousands of people around the world have viewed them! When he started getting popular, he ignored me when I tried to talk to him in school. Instead, he talked to the more popular choir students in our class.

I thought my love for him would last forever, but when he started making new connections down in the States with a bunch of older twenty-somethings, I thought that it was time to stop. He met those people last summer, who apparently interviewed him. His interview was posted online on his website as an audio clip. He was requested to play in bars. He said he was still too young to do so, but will consider it once he gets older. That meant he was slowly becoming a bad influence to me. In an article written about him by the locals, he mentioned that he wanted to "become more mature" soon. By that, he meant that he would like to taste wine. Which I'm totally against doing.

Who knows what the choices in his life will bring him? The music he'll be surrounded by is garbage. Too aggressive for me and represents rebellion. I've noticed some of his songs kind of sounded like that in his latest album. He announced that he got a scholarship in one of the top music schools in America and will move there as quickly as possible. "This is gonna be grand!" he exclaims in one of his recent YouTube videos.

The sad part is, he was too excited thinking of the move to America to say goodbye to me. One last goodbye. Just one and I'll be okay. But he didn't. He just moved in the last week of August, hoping that the cool autumn weather down there seems better than this place. I know he has more opportunities down there to get popular.