Crescendo
noun
- 1. a gradual increase in loudness in a piece of music.
It's not often that I find a piece of blank paper in the journal that I carry around, but you have never known me to be prepared. The last weekend of the month is when I think I have the best chance of seeing you here. You'll walk through on your way to the bus station, ready to travel a hundred miles away. You are lucky that you get that breath of fresh air, if only for a few days at a time. I don't think the body is meant to breathe in the same dust and the same smells for too long.
I felt that way when we were younger, living on quaint properties in the California mountains. We would go outside to visit and revisit the same scenery day after day. Sit on the porch. Fly a kite. Run along the hills. Feed the chickens in your backyard. Take notes on which stray cat was soon to have kittens. Gather the neighbor kids to play a sport. That was childhood. That was growing up. And through it, you always helped me see more in the world than what was set out before us.
But things were simple, and it left something to be desired. What life lives beyond these walls? I never could get that thought out of my mind. That is why I left. I was searching for something I didn't think I could find here. I'm sorry I pulled away first and that I wanted more or that I didn't know what I wanted.
And now I wonder, if you saw me, would you even recognize me? I am not the boy you knew three years ago. Life has shaped my face into something I hardly can tell is me. I am different now, with perhaps a chip on my shoulder after growing old enough to see the world for what it is. Things are not much brighter on the outside. There is not a special sunset that blankets and comforts the world in the evening. The connections I've made are empty, and I'm not even left with many stories to tell. But I write it in my songs. I write about the lack of things.
I spend a lot of time drawing, too. I draw the things around me or how I wish they would be. I've tried to draw you, and it makes me wonder how much you've changed.
Three years. I am not even sure if you take that bus anymore or if you travel even.
I struggle to find the words to express what it is I want to say, and I don't know if I will ever write a song that will be a string of the right notes and chords to build you a road back to me. But I do know that I will never stop trying.
I hope that as the music plays, it gets louder and louder, and it calls you here to me.
He wrote the last few words small, so they would fit on the paper. With the last line filled, he sighed, set the paper aside and began playing music.