Draft: Brothers

So when I was younger there was this guitar lying around the house, it was my brother Ally’s I guess, I’d strum the strings and hear the noise, at times my Dad sat in and observed with a scary intensity, his eyes pressed on me, maybe worried that I’d spoil the instrument, or curious to see if as a child, I was musically inclined in any way. Then came the holidays, he’d stand from a distance and seem much more at ease, our cousins and my mum and my brother Ally, he used to sing along sometimes, guessing the words, but never too loud-and it came to a point here that I knew that this was it for me, the thing I’d do for the rest of my life. I wanted to entertain, make that connection and now I realize, re-live that cosy feeling I felt in our living room. Of course, its worth saying that I’m no good with anything else, numbers give me a migraine, I bond better with animals than people, and I’ve just no drive to become a doctor, lawyer, or something like that,I just don’t see myself that way.

So when I was 16 I started a band with three of my mates, they were all kind of iffy on things-but on stage we always played it straight, and Brandon especially, our drummer, was an odd person-he didn’t speak much, and always fell into the background of things, he was such a comfortable presence that you sometimes forgot he was even there, and we suspected he was dumb even-impaired in some way at least, but you’ve never seen anyone so committed, or so engaging on the stage. Brandon only came alive when we performed, and that’s music for you, it does different things for people.

We grew older, began touring college bars and sort of doing it halfheartedly, especially at the end of our freshmen year, that was a real hazy period-until one of us, Jim’ s mother passed. She threw herself from the balcony of their 27^th floor apartment, what’s left was shreds, it didn’t have any semblance of human-but that because I only glanced at the pictures, or somehow dimmed myself out whenever the topic of it came up anywhere. It was tough, and a lot of people at college, our friends and the adults, were there with all kinds of things to say, desperate to find a way to help Jim get through it-but as band members we saw past that, you never really know what a person is going through, I’ll just say that. It was devastating, as a band our melodies became starved, we had no energy to muster a proper vision for the next step-until one of our songs, “Sofia” found its way onto radio one night.

And it happened quite fast, the fans came. Yes suddenly, we had fans. People knew my name! So we were booked for more venues, the crowd usually got real excited when we played that one song during the encore, of course we always saved the best for last, but with time this began to dissipate-still, there would always be those who to our gig a few hours early, stood right in front and bobbed their heads to our every note, I guess here is when I began to feel it. The loss. While we played, I’d sometimes send the body to auto-pilot and step outside of myself, see the entire scene from a neutral, real distant place-the audience thrashing abut, mouthing our words and completely taken by the music-and we played the same songs, and I wondered what it was, what the basis of this relationship was.

If what I was doing kept them here, if it would make sense the next day, or if they knew about the things we were singing about, singing for-how this music meant something for me, Brandon, Tim and Jessie. Once I had my cousins, and Ally, until the night he left for Europe,or so he told us, and never came back and never called and never wrote me anything or left me any note, I’m sure he had his reasons-well, before anything bad ever happened, we sang to keep, preserve something we all shared-and now these people, changing faces, it had ceased to become a conversation I think, or I had nothing left worth saying-either way, I just felt, departed.

What I was doing was lost on me, but I could wing it for a while you know, play the tune and abide the playlist, but where was I exactly? Do you see what I’m saying? I know as a journalist for some fancy shit magazine, you’ve probably allocated at most,half a page for this story, maybe we’d be compiled into a short list of one-hit wonders, you probably got more than you bargained for from this interview,but it’s a story I think is worth mentioning, just something I need the universe to, know. I had become nothing then, a speck in time, shining momentarily, eventually I knew it would all be over-I felt each night as we played, that I was losing bits of myself, shred shrinking and vanishing, slowly being undone by the music. It had turned into something new,it took more than it gave, which is why I stopped playing, and the others said nothing too, we took our stuff and head for home, not hesitant to take up our dumb, menial jobs.

Myself I’m a manager and local Walmart, its been a long time since we stopped playing, and sometimes I hear ‘Sofia’ on the speakers-I feel a bit nostalgic, of course I’m curious to know what would've become of the band if we kept at it, if we would have become different individuals. But mostly, I’m content. I think we made the right choice to quit, and with every day each of us are on our way,I believe, to becoming whole again.

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