Besides all the wonderful, yet cliche, 90s kid stuff, I grew up with a dream. A dream that was fueled by music and a crowd in front of me. Not only that, but I was able to satisfy that dream, to an extent.
And let me tell you, I may not know the true meaning to life, but I know that feeling has something to do with it.
On nights when most kids were either at basketball practice or studying their time away, I was sitting in my room with my guitar, dreaming, praying to, one day, play my songs (or In Our Suffering's songs) in front of thousands of people.
I desired this not for the material reasons, but because I know that the songs I was writing alone, in my room with my unplugged guitar and a notebook, were coming from my heart and fingertips. These songs may not be Top 40 hits, but they would surely mean a lot to some kid going through the same stuff.
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| "You will remember this day." |
Even now, I find myself fretting and picking with my guitar at my waist as I stand in guitar power stance in my kitchen. Seriously though, the way the kitchen light shines, it makes it look like a stage light and I Love it. I still get the same goosebumps that I did when I was 16, having practice with my brothers. Make fun of me, I don't care. That feeling is phenomenal and I only wish you too could feel it one day.
No feeling will ever compare to that of playing live and seeing people you have never met singing along to a song, not because it is incredibly good, but because they've see you play live so many times that they have started to enjoy your act.
I still have my dream, but it's not the same. I'm older now. Perhaps too old. I had my chance and now it is some other kids' chance to play.
I take issue with the fact that these kids have no one to look up to anymore. They have no more local heroes or venues. The dream is fading fast and that scares me.
We live in a day in age in which kids compete for likes instead of working together to get a local show together. Go ahead and go to your Myspace, log in and listen to some of the bands you were friends with back in the day. Basque in their perfect imperfectness. That's not what you get today.
I urge any kid who has a guitar, drum kit or a mic and a damn dream to band together and make it happen. It's worth it.
It's worth the hassle of setting up a show. It's worth having a band member not show up to a concert and you having to fill in for drums. It's worth having your band and dream destroyed by an ex-girlfriend.
Honestly, I believe in a sense of karma and emotional equality in every action we do, but my years playing guitar, on stage, left me with a credit of happiness.
Despite it ending and my vision being shot down in flames, I can still close my eyes and see all my memories play out in front of me and get the same butterflies I had that day.
For that very reason, I am the luckiest kid in the world.
I lived out a part of my dream.
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