This is now the hardest time in life when I don’t have music as my release. Tragedies, traumas, infatuations and all the way to love have been lived with music I’ve written, now there’s nothing. It’s been like this for 10 years which feels like an eternity. Seeing myself froze when my fingers are touching guitar strings or piano bars frightens me. Especially in an entrepreneurial way of life in the tech startup industry. Mental health is all you have in this business.
Whenever a song I written or co-written is played, I relived all the emotions, circumstances and state of mind at the time it was written. It’s a great reminder of how I got through it all. Universal love has always been an integral part and mostly the driving force to write.
I bought 2 guitars in the last 2 years; an acoustic Yamaha APX-600 guitar and a Fender Aerodyne Stratocaster. Both of them not really in much use, sitting idly in their cases. Both are fantastic sounding guitars.
While writing this blog post, I realize it’s not the touch that I lost but the backbone of all my song writing: allowing myself to feel different spectrums of emotions without any self protection or even the slightest care about anything but what I’m feeling. The first sentence is very long, 10 years long.
Here’s the first song I wrote that shows exactly that, lyrics below.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
Verse #1:
You're a story I'm avoiding to tell
Cos it's giving me a hard time doing
You're a guitar with broken strings
But I always got more for you
Pre-Chrous:
You're not as big as a person
But you're covering my eyes all the time
You're a website without words
Cos the picture says thousands of words
Verse #2:
You're a chocolate too bitter too much
Yet you centered with sweets as you melt
You're a marlboro that's never be quit
Cos the cancer is all that I need
Chorus:
Too much so right
Too bright so fine
Bridge:
Sitting here inside the void being me instead of we
Leaning back to where it all starts on a bright Sunday night
Going up the heights when promises are made to fade
Walk with me as I rewire myself, I want to write music again, therefore I need to release all my tensions, worries and insecurities by taking an example from the songwriter in me. I’m making an effort to do justice for the songs I’ve written by telling the readers how it came to be.
Many thanks to my friend Jaime Angelique who sang the song flawlessly. Thank you cuy!
Before the song was written, I was living on a rented room somewhere near Atmajaya University in Sudirman, Jakarta. At the time, I made a rebellion choice of leaving home. I was angry about a lot of things but as I remember it, I was angry for not having support from my family.
Years before, I broke up with someone I really like and I said I love her but never really understood what love meant (still don’t understand now). All the pain I felt was mostly because I realized that I was young and dumb. Felt a resentment towards myself without acknowledging or telling it to the girl I like (or love?). Pain converted itself to anger towards myself because of the denials I told myself.
The title of the song is meant to be spoken on a loudspeaker to myself. It’s as good as it gets for me for the relationship with her. She’s way smarter in not accepting my shit and moved on. To be honest, I’m proud of her, she experienced hardships over the next periods of her life but she’s as strong as she can be without any complaints. Even loosing her dad at a young age and later her mom at a relatively still young age didn’t made her lose her spirit for life. It takes a lot of self believe, she’s an example to be followed.
Through the verses, pre-chorus and the chorus, I didn’t hide behind fancy words. I told them as it is. While the verses and pre-chorus were quite sad words but the chorus is actually an appreciation of her.
It felt too much and too bright for me while for her, it’s just the way she loves (or like) someone. That is the first time in my life I had trouble being loved by someone else other than my family. I realize I always have this feeling of unworthiness which makes me feel that I’m as worthy for love as a dog. Who doesn’t love dogs right? But no matter what you tell a dog, the dog will never understand you more than a dog can.
The last part of the lyric, the bridge is regret packaged with pure gullible thoughts of the past without hoping for anything but telling her that I acknowledge all her frustration towards me at the time. The most beautiful part of the song is this part, honesty with a little bit of sugar coat.
In Jakarta at the time, the way to have a relationship with a girl is to ask her to be in one. That bridge was written reliving the moment she accepted me after I drove her home. I went to a place near my high school where my friends hang out every weekend and on that night I told my closest friends that she accepted me. It was pure euphoria on my end, it felt great that my closest friends were happy for me. My car at the time is a navy blue Toyota Kijang Diesel called Devi. Devi would prove to be problematic over the years but lots and lots and lots of great memories with Devi.
It’s true that after this song was written, there were other songs I wrote that involves her but only in this song she was the main character. Writing this song helped me to get closure at least for myself. It’s saying to myself that it’s all right I fucked up, get up and appreciate her.
It’s pretty brief for a walkthrough of how the song came to be because at the time I feel I was not ever getting back with her. Although I thought it was closure for me, the next song after this made me question myself. Stay tuned for my next post. Cheers!