La La La Love Me Some Music

My friend Bill and I make music.  (Not like, 'we make beautiful music together', but actual chords and words and music.  I can already tell he's going to kill me for writing this entry...).  He comes up with the part on the guitar and then I write the lyrics.  The whole thing started as kind of a joke when we first met and I found out he played every instrument known to man and he found out I sang.  We were at his apartment downtown and just on the spot wrote this song called "Brown" (brown's my favorite color and I always thought it got a bad rep so I just started rhyming any word I could with 'brown'.  The result was a 5 minute homage to the color and if I can say so myself, it's startlingly  fabulous).  It was at this point that we realized we could actually go somewhere with this.  So we started having our little "jams", which for me was a big deal because I had barely even sung in front of anyone before, let alone wrote personal lyrics.  I'm pretty sure Bill believes in me more than I believe in myself when it comes to the whole music thing.  But that's why he's the best person I know.  Bill is as musically talented as he is attractive- the answer to both being unbelievably.  I have never met anyone who could just pick up an instrument and on the spot create such a beautiful sound.  It drives me crazy that he's not famous.

Music numbs me.  It is why I have notes permanently tattooed on my back.  It is why I cannot get into my car or get dressed or put on make up or clean my room without turning on a song.  The feeling I get when I listen to music is the same feeling you get when you, I dunno, pop an Adderol for the first time, or when you drink three beers and then chain smoke half a pack of cigarettes.  Music to me is the same feeling I get when I fall into a deep kiss with someone- something warm and tingly shoots through every pore of my body and I melt.

Bill gets very calm and still when he writes music.  I get very fidgety.  Bill gets this serious look right across his eyebrows and looks up, then bows down his head.  I scratch my knees and bite my nails and switch positions on the floor or couch every fifteen seconds.  Watching Bill play is what calms me down.  It's so easy to get lost concentrating on how his fingers pluck through the strings, and he comes up with a beautiful, heart-wrenching song and then I feel like a jerk for ruining it with my I-hate-boys lyrics.  But I guess thats just my way of dealing.  Like every time I have to drive that road that leads past The Ex's house.  I get really quiet and my body physically reacts.  I get angry and sad and regretful and fuzzy.

So I try to write a song.  But I can't because it feels too vulnerable.  Even though Bill knows everything about me and everything about The Ex, I can't bring myself to allow me or anyone else inside my head.  And then all of a sudden He calls and wants to see me and while he's explaining to me why he and his girlfriend didn't work out, he says to me, "See Lex, the only reason you and I didn't work is because we didn't work."  And then I feel stupid for spending the last year and a half agonizing over my broken heart when apparently it was as simple as "we didn't work".

So again, I try to write a song.  And I do.  But I'll never show it to Bill because I know that when we try to put it to music, much like that screwy little relationship of mine, it just won't work.