I went to elementary school with a boy named Josh. He was a white-haired Egon. I think he was in love with me, but in my memory I think every boy was in love with me.Josh liked to write songs. His most important belonging was his keyboard, and close behind were his Michael W. Smith cassettes.
At Josh's birthday party, he played one of his songs for us. It was OK. Nothing great. Not that I'm musical or anything, but it seemed like just a lot of chords, no real melody or depth or seeming storyline to it. But I will never forget the way he described how he wrote this song.
Josh claims that he heard this song while he was dreaming one night. (Probably dreaming about Amy, the REAL love of his life, but he could never get her, so I'm positive that's why he chose me as his second muse). What is important about this verdant storytelling was that he was so animated because both Amy and I were in his listening audience. I vividly remember him saying he heard this song in a dream and whilst still in slumber he knew he needed to get to his keyboard and record the tune before he woke up and forgot it. He says he got out of his bed with his eyes still shut in sleep and rushed to his keyboard and recorded the song. He also claims that as he played the last note, he woke up. He reached out a hopefully shaky finger and pressed "play" to see if he had succeeded, and found that he had indeed recorded his dreamy tune.
I remember this story with a smile often, and it's usually while I'm in the shower. You see, I have written poetry, books, essays, novels, blog posts, e-mails, compelling letters, and many other works of art while in the shower or lying in bed or driving my car, but my memory erases them before I'm able to get them down on paper or in the memory of a computer or anywhere that they can be kept and crafted.
So I laugh at Josh's story of the recorded song, but I'm a bit jealous that he managed to capture a rhapsody he heard deep within his soul when I have not yet been agile enough in my waking sleep to sculpt my own sonnets.
7 comments:
i'm not sure i believe josh chattin.
i think this sounds an awful lot like a story a pubescent boy would tell a girl to get her to think he's pretty rad.
what do you think?
He wasn't rad at all. Not even close. He was the class nerd. But a benign likeable nerd--not the one who got made fun of or beat up or anything. I think his story was very true in his own mind, like some stories and memories are in our own minds. I don't see any harm in letting that be his story--no matter what his true motive.
this is too good to have actually happened -kind of like napoleon dynamite. i mean - did he REALLY say that? with a straight face? seriously - i just feel like it's too good of a story to be true... but if it IS true - it's a gem, and you need to hang onto it for future use...
This is absolutely a true story. I am not creative enough to make this kind of stuff up. And he told it with a straight face and kind of breathlessly, like he had finally gotten up the courage to share his special gift--I really, really think he believed that is how he composed his song.
What's an Egon?
Some clues for Nate:
"Who you gonna call?"
Round glasses
(hold a mirror up to decipher this last one)
DREN
Arg, I'm always SO much better in my head than I am in real life! I've done that, too - fugured out exactly what I want to say to someone, or write poems or songs (or blog posts!) in my head, only to never be able to retrieve them again.
I like your image of a bluetooth brain!
Lucky Josh to have recorded this one!
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