You are the only one

-->

When we were young and got those celeb magazines and thought “If only I could be one of those” because there were so few of them and they were so special and lived an opulent life and were covered in jewels and adulation and we all want to be just like them, but then reality crashed down on us.

Look in the mirror and you are just a simple goober from a backwater town where the biggest event is the State Fair or the Tobacco Parade, so you strike out to follow your dream.

Just say you decide to become a rock and roll musician like the ones coming over from England who sell you all their records that you listen to for hours and hours trying to mimic their reproduction of southern blues that was always available to you if you only listened on a crummy arch-top guitar with ancient strings bought from some old 40’s band member of your fathers.

So after bleeding fingers and annoyed parents and neighbors complaining about the racket, you decide to form a band of brothers who also don’t know how to play but have the proper variety of instruments and can create a horrible noise. You give yourselves a name that fits the times, walk around in Italian pointed toed boots and tight pants emulating the images on large cardboard and black and white small screen fuzzy television and decide you guys are the answer to the new sound.

You start to gather together reproducing the sound from the vinyl until you decide to write your own poetry. With copies of chords and notes and even words you scribble mockingbird tunes thinking it is great.

Then you meet the neighbors kids who also have more expensive instruments and a manager who got them business cards and they wear those pointed toed boots and tight jeans and have gigs set up at high school dances and go-go clubs.

The realization continues to find out that on every block on ever street throughout the small backwater town there are hundreds of kids, just like you, who are playing loudly copying the identical vinyl you have cherished as your own sound and all are wearing pointed toed boots from Italy and tight jeans and all the girls scream to their lyrics just like you wanted them to do to yours.

To crush the dream, there are thousands of towns and cities in the state and out that are having the same tsunami of reaction to the sound waves and only a few, a minimal few, who will have certain connections or money or famous parents or outstanding looks or the luck of the draw will make the pages of the teen magazines. And of those few, a handful will last more than a week.

But you still like your soundtrack of a personal life and think it is unique even though it isn’t a chart buster and you are not delivered to stadiums in limousines to the accolades of panting princess hoping to spend a few minutes in your company.

 The strumming guitar and writing out thoughts that only you feel and in today’s world of magic can be easily recorded with techniques only known by a few before then eternally played back for self entertainment.

It is a simple pleasure but what really makes you happy? You are the only one.