Christmas, eight years ago.
I met a composer from Finland and I've
never really let him go.
You may think faces from a magazine or
daunting idols on the Internet are a passing fad.
For me, this was never the case. Ever
since 10 years old, I was a loser for talent, artificial beauty,
magnificence and the fame that was awarded towards it.
Maybe it was my cursed, ever-ambivalent
relish for love and admiration.
Maybe that was all I ever wanted to be
when I grew up.
Just another face on the paper, a
done-up doll on the TV or YouTube screen for boys and girls to swoon
over. I wanted to be that idol. I had dreams every night about being
that idol.
It was always the last thing to
subconsciously linger in my mind at night. All I ever daydreamed.
Well, dreams come and go. But composers
from Finland never do.
My dogs were my best friends when I was
locked in at home to stay. Dogs whose personalities I fictionalized
into juvenile delinquents and rowdy human beings. Dogs who went out
and got themselves beaten and killed. Dogs I hung out with every
night, listening to music and watching the stars.
Pets come and go. Composers from
Finland never do.
So even after my pets' funerals, my
music remained always with me, the requiem to my loss, the fire to my
electric-adolescent dreams. Imagining the impossible without
realistically thinking them through. I never really learned on how to
even begin, or carried the ambition to carry out just the start of
these dreams. I didn't know people. I didn't have friends.
Well, excuses come and go. Common sense and ambition comes
and goes. Composers from Finland never do.
Eventually, I started realizing my
talents and lack-thereof to establish and consummate the journey to
reaching my achievements and dreams. It was music. It was always
music. After that Christmas I aspired to become this Finnish composer's protege.
I bought the piano. I even had the recording software. Even
up until 21, I still carry the inspiration and overcome the laziness
to just walk on over to my piano, plug in a few chords, and just hope
I press the right-keys on the computer recording software. Manuals
are too laborious a read. I have better things to daydream about
(sex, fuckboys, whether or not I should buy the cigarettes or eat
that caramel on the kitchen counter).
The muse and vice constantly comes and
goes. Composers from Finland never do.
You'd think that some familial
inspiration lay behind the spark of my ambition—the conscious journey through
melancholy and the inspirational creativity that ensues out of such
emotions. Past deaths impacted my life and outlook on life as a
whole. The blame was always there, I've always figured and believed.
Grandmothers come and go. Composers
from Finland never do.
But throughout my teenage life, even
though I was alone, I was always in love. Idols across the pages of
a magazine, marketed towards the gullible--media feeding off of ethos
(loud, angry, but splendidly magnificent music). They gave me reason,
drove me forward, gave me challenges to conquer, new talents, styles,
and techniques to emulate. Music was always my hobby. It was my
passion for a time.
But hobbies and passions come and go.
Composers from Finland never do.
Then the journey towards materialized
(but, nonetheless, still artificial) love commenced in my later
teenage, early adult years. Crushes and love interests were human
men walking the sidewalks and sitting beside me in classes I just
wanted to get through to to achieve, very indirectly, my one ultimate
dream: being on a stage. Being in a magazine. Playing my keyboard
in-sync to my own recording in a music video. Feeling glorious, loved,
and on top of the world. On a stage without any fright, to an
audience full of darkness and lit occasionally by lighters. I had
the music. Some was recorded, some in my head. I didn't have the
people. I didn't have the live experience. I just had the dream.
And the boys beside me deterred me once in a while, but I put all my
focus into my coursework just to get that A and feel, for once, some
substitution for the glory I knew I would feel one day after I took a
bow before a screaming audience with my bandmates, sweaty and tired,
reeking in a good way of booze and excitement.
Alas, good grades and hot classmates
come and go. Composers from Finland never do.
Enter my 20s. I know passion for the
first time besides music. And it was this that fucked me over.
Literally. Even a fuck wasn't as fulfilling as finishing a song—in
full, touchups and instrumentation on point. But even this I couldn’t
appreciate when the boys and, eventually, even girls ignored me. When I fell to the ground on a
concert floor (in the audience), drunk and dreamy of the moment I'd
be the one on stage, like my Finnish hero and all the others before and after him. Throwing up in the bathroom and on my shoes.
Wishing someone was there beside me that I actually wanted beside me.
Forgetting about my songs and those musicians I aspired to be,
performing without fear and only guided by passion, discipline,
self-respect, responsibility, and daunting ability on stage. That
all fled from me the summer I was 20, and nothing else mattered.
Fuckboys, silly girls, and drunken nights were meant
to come and go. Composers from Finland never do.
Christmas, 2014. New muses. Some
realized, some unrealized. Some very far away, few very near. Some
still on the pages of a magazine, or a CD booklet, or on the blog of
some website. And still there is something seemingly replacing the
muse of everything I ever dreamed of. Something so tangible and very
much real (which love is not), very much a part of me, that's replaced this other man who
was always my hero, almost a father figure, someone I've met only 3
times in my life and who's let me down once. Only once, as compared
to this other real substnce, which or who I have more memories with, which or who has let me
down numerous times. Is this killing the muse? Is grown-up, real
love (for lack of a better word: think more along the terms of insane obsession) a replacement for the dreamy, forward-driving, but always
unattainable love? Has this part of me died? With my grandparents and
dogs long dead?
Is my longing for this real person, place, or thing any
excuse to substitute my longing and love to attain that other person
(or idea of this person) who was the reason behind all my dreams in the first place? As
unattainable and unrealistic as they are in theory or reality?
Or does it just seem impossible because
the idea of this very real man is eclipsing what the imagined, magnificent man has
always whispered to me, through his music, to forever strive for,
accomplish, and achieve? Is it right to claim that only one of either
of these men saved me from killing myself one or two times?
Well, first-loves and thoughts of
suicide come and go.
Composers from Finland.
Never.
Even.
Came.
