I wrote a song the other day. I learned how to play the piano in college, but it turned out to be useless. It was simply my last attempt at holding onto the memories of Song Sori’s voice.
But I had a keyboard that I got from an older music major guy at the time. But I’ve not touched it since graduation. I was too busy writing for a living; I had no time to consider playing music. But whether I played or composed music, it would only remind me of Song Sori, which made me feel sick. (At myself, of course.)
I don’t know what came over me that day. It was the middle of the night and I could not sleep. I got up and made some coffee. I brought the cup over to my work table and sat down. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well try to write something. It had been quite awhile since I wrote anything that wasn’t for work. But nothing came to my mind. I turned on the lights and started cleaning my room, to tire myself out. That’s when I found that keyboard that I had trashed away in my closet.
Giving up halfway in the middle of sleeping makes a person do some idiotic things. I grabbed the keyboard and wiped the dust off. I didn’t have a stand so I just put it on my desk. It was one of those cheap ass ones with only 49 keys. And it still took up most of the space on my table. I connected it to electricity and did a test to hear if sound actually came out. It sounded pretty clear. I mean, since I hadn’t touched it for so long, that also meant there wasn’t anything that could’ve broken it.
I started playing a few songs I briefly learned in college. I can’t explain how my fingers still knew the notes. Debussy, Chopin, Puccini... Then I started playing “O Mio Babbino Caro” without thinking about it. It was such a familiar melody that I had to stop after a bit. My arms started to sweat. I had to control my breathing. I needed to hear something else. Haha, I mumbled to myself. I should’ve picked up a few David Bowie tracks.
I tried to write a song but had no idea where to start. I only knew rock music anyway, so a keyboard wasn’t of use to me. Could I even play a power chord with this keyboard that could barely fit two of my palms? That’s when I thought. I wonder how a keyboard would sound if you play something a guitar is supposed to play. I randomly picked an A flat major key. And I played a IV chord like a guitar would play an arpeggio. It sounded alright. I soon came up with the melody. But what about lyrics? Would I even need lyrics. Of course I do, it’s rock ‘n’ roll. I wanted to imitate the rock music that had killed me and saved me. If I literally write for a living but can’t even put words to this tune, what am I supposed to be?
I didn’t write sheet music. I couldn’t really read it back then. I started writing down the melody and the lyrics on my laptop. I went back to the 16th summer of my life. For some reason, my breathing began to calm down. I felt chill. I closed my eyes and wrote that summer.
In an empty classroom at 4 PM
I lied to myself
That this summer was never going to end
-
I looked out of the cafe window. Wind was blowing, sweeping away the leaflets. Looks like it’s already autumn.
I sighed. In front of me, Jihye sipped her coffee, looking at her smartphone. After that alumni meet, we hang out every once in a while like this. It’s mostly her talking off on her own, while I listen. When she says, “Do you know what the producer said this time?”, I tell her, “No,” and she takes care of the rest. She says, today he told me to do this, he totally doesn’t see me as human, etc. Sometimes she tries to dig into my life and I tell her a few things. I don’t know why I keep meeting up with this chick.
“Hey. Are you listening, Lee Sia?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck. You totally aren’t. Your eyes give it away.”
“If you can tell, why did you call me?.”
“Um... Cause my therapist upped her rates recently?” Jihye changed her voice to a cutesy tone.
“I don’t intend on taking care of your mental health for you.”
“I guess I’m the dumb one for expecting that from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean.” I grind my teeth. This bitch...
“Sigh... Even taking my meds feels like work. Must be the dilemma of the modern man.”
“Dilemma of the what?”
“You know, like. Getting a late paycheck.”
“Or a resentment toward the bourgeoisie.”
“Yeah! At least things are funny with you around.”
“Like I said, what does that mean?”
I looked at Jihye. Her lively face seemed to have disappeared. She stirred her cup with a little spoon and continued talking.
“But you know. You’re one of the good ones, Lee Sia.”
“What?”
“Not many people around stick around with me this long.”
“Oh really.”
“Yup. Eventually they go, I have an appointment this or, I’m busy today that. Shit, they think I wouldn’t know?”
“You are more troublesome than one would think, yeah.”
“...you think I wouldn’t...” Jihye’s face goes dark.
“That’s why you don’[t have a boyfriend.”
“Goddamnit. Yeah, I wouldn’t be here sitting around with your ass if I had a boyfriend.”
“That’s what I told you. It’s because you hang out with someone like me.”
Jihye kept mumbling something to herself, her coffee swirling round and round, but I cannot hear her voice. I drank my cup. Bitter, and most of all, lukewarm. It was terrible. I put it down and sighed. The inside of my mouth felt like death. It was a little cold in here too.
“Ah~ I want to drink.”
“Already?”
“Hey, it’s 6. 6 in the EVENING? A maiden’s time for war.”
“You’re insane. Don’t say that in a coffee shop. It’s getting bitter cause of you.”
“You’re not coming? I might call some of the other guys.”
“Nope. No. I can’t drink anything stronger than root beer.”
Jihye heard this and cackled. She pulled up her phone and kept swiping down. Probably was going through her contacts. I heard her talking to herself, “this guy won’t come today”, “she never actually shows up”.
“Oh, maybe I should call Sori...”
If I still had the coffee in my mouth, I would have spat it out. Instead I accidentally hit the table. When a loud thump went out, Jihye got surprised and looked at me.
“What’s up...?”
“That name. What?”
“Huh? Sori, Song Sori?”
I could not hide the shaking in my voice any longer. “Song Sori!”
“Hey, what the hell, Lee Sia. I’m scared here.”
“Really? You mean it’s Song Sori?”
“Yeah...? I met her because of some work I did in uni...”
“What?”
“Calm. Down. Let me finish.”
I leaned back and pretended to ‘chill out.’
“I met her in a bar a few days ago. She drank like a whale... Didn’t come across as the type, you know. Anyway, I was thinking I’d meet up with her there... again.”
Jihye faked her laughter. She stared at me. I touched my face with my fingers. I probably looked absolutely hilarious. I looked out of the window again. I thought, what is this unbelievable situation? Should I ask more? Maybe ask for her number? Holy shit.
Question I thought I had left behind began creeping into my head again. My head began to overflow with thoughts, and it ached. I felt like I was 16 all over again. But when I opened my mouth, what came out was a question I never thought about at all.
“Is she... Did she seem fine?”
“Huh?” Jihye thought for a second. “Well, it didn’t look like she was drinking out of sorrow. She just seemed to like it. She seemed better off than you right now.
Weirdly, these words that Jihye meant as an insult only comforted me. I sighed in relief. The headache was gone. I one-shotted my remaining coffee, to numb my body.
“That is all?” Jihye asked.
“Yes.”
“It sounds like you heard the name of your high school sweetheart again.”
It was hard to contain my laughter. “Even so, it’s fine.”
“...I guess that’s that then.”
Jihye frowned. I think she felt as if she couldn’t do much for me. Even though all I needed were those words of hers. But, after fiddling with her fingers, Jihye had this to say.
“I wanna say this at least. The bar is a little further down the street from here. There’s a little sign in English, and inside there’s that... the thing that plays music. That’s the place.”
I didn’t say anything back. I only nodded. Jihye lightened up her face. She looked satisfied now.
For the next 30 minutes, we didn’t say anything to each other. Then we went on our way. Not that different from usual. But during that time, she did tell me one thing. It was when I was humming something. It was a melody I had come up with yesterday. “Sinless people / Green trees / It'd be nice if they all just died.”
“What the hell is that cringy tune.
“What?” I was surprised.
“It’s weirdly so you, but it’s still shocking.”
“I...” Before I continued, I took another breath. “It’s a song I wrote.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm, I see...”
For the first time in my life, I was hearing someone else’s opinion about my music. I wasn’t sure how to respond. It didn’t seem like Jihye was awfully interested in music. It just seemed like she was as shocked as me when she heard me singing. And it didn’t seem like she didn’t want to pry in further, because that conversation ended after she said this one thing.
“Well... Still, it’s very you.”
-
I bought a guitar. I must be crazy. (I guess I am, medically speaking.) ‘I just have to starve in the morning for a few months.’ That was my justification. But I knew. I knew I have never gotten my paycheck on time in the last 6 months. (Dilemma of the modern man... I suppose Jihye was right about one thing.) I feel like a girl that ran from home to become a street singer. But I don’t have a home to come back to, or a mother to take me in. All I have is this one room apartment, with a moldy ceiling and a lightbulb that goes out every 3 days.
It was a Tuesday afternoon and I wasn’t busy. I sat on my work table and played guitar. Since a week ago, I started learning how to play chords using online resources. They were all quite easy, except for the F chord. While I was thinking ‘maybe I have talent’, I realized all the chord progressions I’ve been playing were from songs I’ve heard a hundred times before.
Hmm. Nothing I can do about it. Not like anyone’ listening, anyway. I talked to myself. I started singing a melody. The melody itself came naturally. But it was the words that always puzzled me. After I heard about Sori from Jihye, it became hard to think about her again. I kept playing the same chords, the same melody. When I got sick of it, I put the guitar away.
I moved my eyes onto the closet I found the keyboard in. Before I knew it, I was standing in that veranda again. I once again opened that pandora’s box. There was also my high school uniform and the Spring Summer Autumn Winter CD I got from my parents too. As I searched inside, I played the CD on my laptop. A song from the album started to play at random. “I can only feel the deep scent of nostalgia...”
I finally found the notebook. This was what I was looking for all along. I didn’t want to actually find it so I didn’t think about it. I cleared the dust off and opened it. Poems, written with my tears. It perfectly bore the handwriting of my 16 year old self.
I moved to somewhere with better ventilation. I saw that my face got red in the mirror. I cringed as I read these decade old poems. The biggest problem, I found, was that I could still relate to them. If it felt like someone completely different had written them, it would’ve been easier to take in. But I was mad and disappointed in myself for not having changed much.
There was one poem that was particularly noteworthy. It was the one that I wrote a few days before my last conversation with Song Sori, before the end of summer. It wasn’t all that special, beside the fact that it completely synced with the melody in my head. But the song being played in the background was the same song that I was thinking of as I’d written it; ‘The Road I Walk’ by Spring Summer Autumn Winter.
There is a word in English, ‘serendipity.’ A string of unintended, coincidental discoveries.
I sat down in my chair again. I picked up the guitar. After drawing one breath, I started playing it. My voice and tongue soon followed the rhythm.
Spring, summer, autumn and winter
And the one which hurt the most
Summer, stuck as memories
I can only feel the deep scent of nostalgia
-
I wrote another song on the guitar. It’s called ‘The Smiths and The Cure’. Though, The Pixies are actually my favorite.
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