Page 29 of Songbird: Black Kite
I pursed my lips thoughtfully, not quite sure I wanted to answer him.
Because I had nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
It had been five years since our band had gone onhiatus, and I had spent the vast majority of that time wallowing in my own self pity. I hadn’t written a single line. Not one phrase or even a fucking rhyming couplet.
It was like I had thrown my creativity away and hadn’t even bothered to look for it.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure that I could find it again even if I did.
Creation was work. It took parts of you, pieces of your soul that you willingly gave up when you wrote the words down on paper. Taking your experiences, your emotions, joys and hurts, and putting them out into the open for the world to consume was an act of bravery.
And these days, I was living like a coward.
Thinking about writing had my thoughts drifting to Wren’s latest letter. The way she’d talked about taking all the shit in her life and writing songs about it. Purging her soul onto paper to free herself.
She’d been absolutely correct when she had assumed that was how I worked.
So, maybe it was time to follow her lead and pick up a pen one more time.
Noticing my lack of reply, Gavin sat forward on the couch, elbows on his knees.
“No worries, man. You’ll come through in a pinch. You always do.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure this time. My insides were all fucked up. Not that they weren’t fucked up when I’d written other songs, but there was something different in me now, something hardened and cautious that hadn’t been there before.
The other albums, I’d been young and idealistic, angsty in the way that only a teenaged rock star could be. I was mad at the world, and I wasn’t afraid to let people know it.
Now, though, I was really only mad at myself. And while that could make for a good song in the right hands, I wasn’t sure I was ready to explore my own self-hatred out loud just yet.
We fucked around for a while longer, just playing and talking like we used to do, back before all the bullshit, and for the first time in a long time, the coiled tension in my chest began to relax.
Maybe I could do it. Maybe I could write two songs that would round out the final album, get it released, and finally cut ties withCastor Recordsfor good.
But not tonight. Tonight, I just wanted to jam with my boys.
Sometime around midnight, Alex busted out the good scotch, and we headed out to the yard, letting the soft lights of the patio lull us into quiet retrospection.
“Remember that time in Omaha?” Alex asked, leaning back on his lounge chair and staring at the darkened sky. You couldn’t see the stars, even this far from downtown, but he stared up at them anyway. “When the opening act didn’t show, and we had to find a replacement last minute? They ended up kicking some serious ass.” Looking to me, Alex asked, “Where the hell did you end up finding them again?”
“In the bathroom of a dive bar.”
“Oh, shit!” Gavin laughed. “Was that in Omaha? I thought it was Oakland?”
“Nah. It was Omaha. I remember because after the show, we had that set of hot twins in the dressing room? You don’t find twangy country accents like that in Oakland.”
I laughed along with them, remembering the show they were talking about, but not because of the hot twins—I’d been married to Tori at that point, and regardless of how we’d ended up that way, Ihadstayed true to my vows, even if she hadn’t—but because of the replacement opening act we’d found.
Mick had been in a panic, his suit looking rumpled and his shirt collar dingy with sweat. He’d been on the phone with the label, trying to get a replacement act in time for opening, but nothing was coming through, and he was starting to lose his mind.
Tori had been on a tear of her own, ranting about how I wasn’t spending enough time with her, as though we weren’t in the middle of a coast-to-coast tour with all my focus on performing every fucking night. No, her selfish ass wanted more, always more, and I had to keep reminding her that it was the music that came first. Always.
In the end, I had been sick and tired of all the noise, and Charlie and I had snuck off, finding some shitty little dive bar the way we liked to do. It was getting late, cutting it pretty fucking close to when I’d need to be back at the venue when I’d gone to take a leak. The wall over the urinal was pasted with fliers, a rainbow of advertisements for events that the bar had hosted, and one in particular had caught my eye.
It was a local rock band, and based solely on their look in the poster, they appeared to match our vibe. The bottom of the poster listed their socials, and as I zipped up my jeans, I’d pulled out my phone, going right to their Instagram and scrolling through. The first video I came across surprised the shit out of me. They were young, like we used to be, but really fucking good for all that.
Four videos later, and I was in the back seat of the car, firing off messages to the band’s profile, crossing my fingers and grinning like a loon.
Chapter seventeen
