From a semi-autobiographical
novel I wrote in the holidays
between my first two semesters
of university in 2002, reminiscing and fantasising
about that golden period just after finishing high-school.
I think about Delila. For a while there I thought of nothing else. I stopped writing, doing school work or anything else. All I did was see her, talk to her, or think about her. If you want to know the truth I cried when I told her I couldn’t see her anymore. I didn’t like that I couldn’t make my brain work while I was on her. She was addictive, but I don’t think about her like that now. Now all I remember is the good things and all I remember about our breakup was how sad I was and the fact that it wasn’t her fault, but the fault of my desire to concentrate on schoolwork. When I left her I took a good impression with me. For a year now i’ve blocked it all out. I’ve been alone, so alone, with only learning to accompany me. Its all i’ve thought about. But now, I don’t want to be lonely anymore.
I decide to track her down.
I go inside and look through the address book in my mobile. I know already I won’t find anything. I remember deleting all her numbers from my files at a traffic light on my way to practice for my music practical exam with my band. At the time I couldn’t play the song. Remembering that brings it back. I remember the night I played it to her...
*
It was at an open mike night at Mona Pub. We shouldn’t have even been allowed in there, but it was a Wednesday night so the bouncers were much more relaxed about checking ID. It was one of the first times I went to Mona, actually. I still remember how special it felt, how magical. I never put my name on the list, but once the last poor feller had finished, Delila and I went outside to the Beer Garden, and I stood up on the edge of the waterfall and played it to her. People started clapping along with the beat of the song. I couldn’t believe it. It was a moment that I can’t explain to you properly, can’t describe, any more than I can make you believe that it really happened. But it did, and I feel like blowing a kiss to the moon every time I think about it. Halfway through the song I slip and crash, billowing water all over Delila and nearby quiet drinkers. Delila still loved it. She grabbed me by my twenty-cent jacket from Vinnies and kissed me, then jumped on top of me in the water. My guitar got completely waterlogged and I found out later on that it was rendered driftwood by that episode. Luckily Dad bought me a new one when I told him how I broke it. I guess he’s a romantic at heart, too.
*
I go inside and find my guitar by the piano in the middle level. I take it up, and for the first time since we broke up, I play that song. My fist plucking the mysterious intro on the middle strings, I see myself in multiple - the night I wrote the song sitting on my bed for hours. It was the one exception to the rule that the shorter a song takes to write the better it feels. The main themes, of course, when they came, came in bursts. Nothing important was pored or slaved over, it was a matter of putting my hands on the guitar and breathing life into it. The melodies just meandered out of the sound hole almost without effort.
I slip the pick into my fingers and move into the regular rock-waltz rhythm of the verses. I shut my eyes tight and sing the first verse:
I can’t breathe without you
I can’t sleep without you
My world is real only with you.
Words that defined a thousand hours, a thousand moments, a thousand kisses.
My voice rises to falsetto at the end of the final note and I sigh, my mind falling apart. My hand stops, but wavers a little at rest. I watch it like its someone else’s, then clutch it into a fist, the pink pick lost in my hand. I skip over the pre-chorus and play the slow and more compelling, I think, second chorus with the poppy C-D progression that was the last part I wrote of the song. I sing this over it, in a strained and shaking voice
You define me
And never let it end.
But it did end. I stop playing, my chest heavy with sorrow. I am finished. It is over. I breathe a long breath out. My chest hurts from memory. I realise now that I will speak to her. I must hear her voice, if only just once more.
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