When everyone is out of the house�off to work, or school, or away from this filthy city on a weekend trip...
When the walls are still and no ears can find my voice, I sit alone and sing. I play my guitar and I sing to myself for hours at a time.
For me, happiness seems to only exist at the intersection of chords and melody, strum and breath. I feel undeserved joy. Stolen elation that graces my body for only a few short minutes of sound. For just one moment, my weak heart beats strong with life, of life that does not fit me.
I write music, secret movements, hushed melodies. I piece together stolen chords and lyrical sketches to form a catalogue of works that I�ll never finish. I compose soft music, delicate music, moods and tones that seem alien to my personality. Quiet open-mic songs. Tip-toe songs. Amaretto sour songs.
Superdrag chords bring John Davis from my throat, and Radiohead�s B-sides make me lust for a higher range. I mangle my way through a few selections off the Rushmore Soundtrack and curse my crooked fingers. I play �September Gurls�.
September Gurls. I am a December Boy.
It is a part of me that only one person in the world has ever known. A secret part. A hidden half to my whole. Hole?
Not today...I am solid.
I know that she fell in love with me because I sang to her. When my voice would quiver and struggle to hit �Fake Plastic� notes, her heart would tremble. Her eyes would glow when I struggled to perform a half-remembered Elliot Smith tune.
Each song seemed to make her hold me and kiss me softer and closer until we existed only as an embrace.
A few days before she broke up with me, she requested a performance as relief from her studies. We sat there in our jammies, on her futon amid pharmacology notes and I played my heart into every single note. I strummed all the songs that I didn�t enjoy singing anymore, all of her old favorites that tucked us into bed for so many nights together.
At the time, I didn�t understand why she cried so quietly at the sound of my voice, but later it all made sense.
I haven�t brought myself to play and sing in the presence of anyone else for well over a year now, and I�m not sure that I�ll ever have the confidence to share that on a larger scale.
But I hope that maybe she can remember what I sounded like.
