electric guitar than it did on my old acoustic, and when I put some echo and fuzz on it and got a bit of feedback going, it sounded really good. It was a bit slower than the kind of stuff we usually played, slower and more melodic, but it still had a nice spiky edge to it. As I played, I could hear the vocal line in my head, giving it another dimension, and an off-beat guitar line wailing away in the background, and the rock-steady thump of drums and bass…
“What’s that?” someone said.
I stopped playing again and looked up to see Jason standing in front of me. He looked the perfect loser—baggy jeans, baggy jacket, baggy hair—but I knew for a fact that the jacket alone had set him back £300. That’s how it was with us, though—we were the kind of skateboard rebels who had enough money to really look like shit.
“Is that one of yours?” Jason said.
“What—the song?”
“Yeah—the song. What’s it called?”
“I don’t know…nothing really…‘Candy,’ maybe…”
“Play it again,” he said, nodding at the guitar in my hands. “Turn it up a bit. It sounded pretty good. Maybe we could do something with it.”
After that, we spent the rest of the night working on my song. It was really strange, hearing it become something. I’d written plenty of songs before, but Jason and Chris wrote all the stuff for The Katies and they’d always been a bit funny about listening to anyone else’s songs, so I tended to keep mine to myself. I’d suggested ideas for songs now and then, and I usually wrote my own bass lines, but I’d never worked with the group on a song that was mine before, soit was a whole new experience for me. At first, it felt immensely satisfying—it was my song, I’d written it, and now it was turning into something real. It was growing, evolving, and—best of all—it was starting to sound fantastic. But as we kept working on it—adding bits here, changing bits there—the satisfaction began to fade and another feeling took over. I couldn’t work it out at first. It was an empty kind of feeling…the sort of feeling you get when you’ve lost something or something’s been stolen from you…that nagging sense of loss.
Yeah, that’s what it was.
I felt as if I’d lost something.
I’d lost my song.
It wasn’t mine anymore.
Its feelings weren’t mine.
It was still a pretty good song, though. It was the kind of song that sticks in your head for days on end, with a chorus you can’t stop humming, and I suppose that was some kind of compensation. On the other hand, because it was a good song and because I couldn’t stop humming it all the time and because I hadn’t been smart enough to change the title, so it was still called “Candy”…because of all that, I found myself walking around for the next couple of days with a chorus of Candys echoing around in my head.
Which wasn’t the best way to get on with my life without getting too mixed up about her. Not that I ever really thought I could. But it was worth a try.
I finally called her on Friday. I’d been thinking about it all week—trying to decide when to do it, where to do it, what to say, how to sound—but the more I thoughtabout it, the more daunting it became. What if I say something stupid? What if she doesn’t remember me? What if she doesn’t want to talk to me? What if…what if…what if…? In the end, I realized that if I didn’t just do it, I’d never do it at all.
So what I did was, on Friday morning, I set a trap to catch myself unawares. It wasn’t much of a trap, and I didn’t really think it’d work, but I couldn’t see how I’d be any worse off if it didn’t—so what did I have to lose?
The plan was to leave my cell phone behind when I went to school in the morning, just leave it lying around in my bedroom somewhere and forget all about it. Forget about phones, forget about Candy, forget about ringing her. Forget about everything. Then later on, after school, sometime in the
“What’s that?” someone said.
I stopped playing again and looked up to see Jason standing in front of me. He looked the perfect loser—baggy jeans, baggy jacket, baggy hair—but I knew for a fact that the jacket alone had set him back £300. That’s how it was with us, though—we were the kind of skateboard rebels who had enough money to really look like shit.
“Is that one of yours?” Jason said.
“What—the song?”
“Yeah—the song. What’s it called?”
“I don’t know…nothing really…‘Candy,’ maybe…”
“Play it again,” he said, nodding at the guitar in my hands. “Turn it up a bit. It sounded pretty good. Maybe we could do something with it.”
After that, we spent the rest of the night working on my song. It was really strange, hearing it become something. I’d written plenty of songs before, but Jason and Chris wrote all the stuff for The Katies and they’d always been a bit funny about listening to anyone else’s songs, so I tended to keep mine to myself. I’d suggested ideas for songs now and then, and I usually wrote my own bass lines, but I’d never worked with the group on a song that was mine before, soit was a whole new experience for me. At first, it felt immensely satisfying—it was my song, I’d written it, and now it was turning into something real. It was growing, evolving, and—best of all—it was starting to sound fantastic. But as we kept working on it—adding bits here, changing bits there—the satisfaction began to fade and another feeling took over. I couldn’t work it out at first. It was an empty kind of feeling…the sort of feeling you get when you’ve lost something or something’s been stolen from you…that nagging sense of loss.
Yeah, that’s what it was.
I felt as if I’d lost something.
I’d lost my song.
It wasn’t mine anymore.
Its feelings weren’t mine.
It was still a pretty good song, though. It was the kind of song that sticks in your head for days on end, with a chorus you can’t stop humming, and I suppose that was some kind of compensation. On the other hand, because it was a good song and because I couldn’t stop humming it all the time and because I hadn’t been smart enough to change the title, so it was still called “Candy”…because of all that, I found myself walking around for the next couple of days with a chorus of Candys echoing around in my head.
Which wasn’t the best way to get on with my life without getting too mixed up about her. Not that I ever really thought I could. But it was worth a try.
I finally called her on Friday. I’d been thinking about it all week—trying to decide when to do it, where to do it, what to say, how to sound—but the more I thoughtabout it, the more daunting it became. What if I say something stupid? What if she doesn’t remember me? What if she doesn’t want to talk to me? What if…what if…what if…? In the end, I realized that if I didn’t just do it, I’d never do it at all.
So what I did was, on Friday morning, I set a trap to catch myself unawares. It wasn’t much of a trap, and I didn’t really think it’d work, but I couldn’t see how I’d be any worse off if it didn’t—so what did I have to lose?
The plan was to leave my cell phone behind when I went to school in the morning, just leave it lying around in my bedroom somewhere and forget all about it. Forget about phones, forget about Candy, forget about ringing her. Forget about everything. Then later on, after school, sometime in the
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