Music is my Real Talk

Alright let's talk
Let's talk real

Real talk: I wish I had more time
Real talk: I  hate it when people say , "don't worry about it."
Real talk: I didn't want to turn 18
Real talk: I think that most teachers don't have souls... Ironic...

Real talk: I'm losing my hearing

Real talk: these little white buds are going to make me go deaf

I think I speak for most teenagers out there, when I say that my headphones and my ears are a like those couples that hate each other, but can't break up.

I don't need my ears

I can hear through my calluses, and be with people through theirs.
And I would never consider myself a musician.

I walk the halls with my guitar strapped to my back not because I'm trying to show off, but because it's shield. But because half way through the day, when I'm not sure if I'm still alive, I can utter the broken emotions of others to guide me back into my own eyes.


Real talk
Real talk

Real talk: My depression used to be a pit, a shovel and the devil.  It used to be a scoop of dirt a day; ice cold fingertips clawing at lose ground as I reached for handfuls of empty desperation.

Being buried used to scare me. But when the next scoop made no difference to my already covered eyes, only then did I know how to fear.

Its cliché but the empty blackness, the void... Is worse.

Real talk: I've seen both, but I'd rather know what I'm feeling then be anxiously horrified by what I'm not.

I don't need my hearing.

Because just maybe if I turn the music up loud enough I won't be able to hear myself mourn.

Maybe, for just a split second, the angry beating of the drums can become the angry beating of my heart.  And when the violins slip their way into the chords, I can't help but be reminded of the sound my tears make when they glide from my eyelids.

Notes are pleas- frets are prayers -  and those little arrows that signify the strum pattern, those are my final words.

"Let me feel something."

I'm losing my hearing, yes. But  I'd be glad to lose my ears  If it meant that I wasn't losing my heart.

Cousin

I remember being seven- I remember staying up waaay past our bedtimes and having only the night sky and our bare feet to guide us back to our homes. I remember running for hours playing-quite frankly- stupid games, but loving every second of it. I remember our feet being so light that we might as well have been floating over the grass because we were freer than most. I remember being free.

I remember Sunday, summer nights. I remember the playful warfare between us and the older cousins. I remember every game being another chance to try to scare the living daylight out of our siblings, and oh how we loved that.

 I remember being carefree. I remember thinking, “I wonder, if I can push this sleepover weekend three days.”I remember calling you every weekend, your mom giving me the same excuse every time. You were both so annoyed.

I remember the “deep” conversations we would have about our simple crushes or what we really thought about [insert cousins name here].

 I remember growing up.

I remember telling ghost stories, not realizing that we would one day be the dead-eyed ghosts that would haunt our childhood vibrancy.

I remember the days our two older cousins left on missions and you and I left tears in our eyes.

I remember feeling robbed.

I remember wishing for those Sunday nights back, so I could watch the sun rise and set simultaneously one last time.

But I couldn’t.

All I could do, was remember.

Letters to Them

Dear Heart,

I'm sorry. I wanted to write about my strengths, but lost my vision after I saw him rhyming, her kissing, them dancing, and all the while you and I were still trying to find one another. Brain wrote me a while back, and said, “ Oh, Tyler. Don’t you get it? Your strings have already been plucked by the greats. Your pen hates your clichés and your blog thinks you need to stop taking yourself so seriously.” I probably should have come to you for therapy, but was to ripped apart by regret. Sometimes I feel like that’s the only thing brain makes me feel anymore.

I also remember a time- about three months ago- I wanted to quit my job, but my brain told me to shut up and get realistic. I know you don’t like brain( and lots of times I don’t like brain), but we actually kinda need him.

We don’t really spend enough time together, Heart; I want to change that.

            Probably not till the end of the term, though. Brain’s got me in a freaking boot camp at the moment.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Tyler

Dear Tyler,

I’m not going to pretend like I’m not hurt, by how much time you’ve been spending with brain. But I also know you guys are doing great things, and I wish I could play more of a part in it.

            It’s not entirely true we don’t see each other, anymore. In fact, just today, we caught a glimpse of each other’s eyes, when you mastered that song on the guitar. We waved at one another, remember? But then you got distracted and left. It’s fine, though. It didn’t sting as bad as it has in the past.

           I’ve got to be completely honest about something- got to get something off my chest. I’m still in pain about our encounter two nights ago.

           I was in that poem with you, friend. We worked so hard on it- remember how we lost track of time and the hours glided by like curls of fog in the wind. But you put it away. You crumpled it up and put it in the trash, and for just a moment it felt like you were taking me, and crumpling up me, and tossing me in that trash bin. That hurt.

           I still enjoy your company and sometimes wonder if you enjoy mine,

Heart

Dear heart,

I’m not sure what to say.

Brain hated it. He talked about how people would start to view me as over dramatic or mentally unstable.

I’m sorry.  Maybe brain and I don’t get along as well as I thought.

Sincerely,

Tyler

Dear Tyler,

Stop freaking writing notes to your heart. You have homework.

Goodness,

Brain

I Remember Watching Her Break

We’re all humans. Why are some people so brutal?

17 years old.  She cries to me, because she hates herself. She feels so disconnected. So hated. She tells me that her life feels worthless to her. I can’t tell if she actually means it. I worry for her. I’d do anything for her.

16. Her bulimia has almost got the best of her. I’m not sure what to tell her accept a cliché , “You’re perfect the way you are, Bailey.” Because it’s not like I need more than one bandage to reattach a heart.

15. Her words cut into me- our first real argument- and I don’t go to school the next day. I can’t help but wonder how she got to be so harsh.

14. I start talking with the pretty girl in the back, who likes my best friend. She’s changed a little from when I last knew her. Still doesn’t have many friends, and struggles to reach out.

13.

12. She looks happy.

11.

10. She doesn’t fit in.

9. A boy yells, “Bailey licked the water fountain!” Everybody laughs and moves over to the fountain that she didn’t ‘lick’. I know she didn’t actually lick it, but I wait in the longer line, anyway. She cries in the corner.

8. I see a boy push her over

8.  Five guys start the chant, “Ug-ly Bai-ly, Ug-ly Bai-ly, Ug-ly Bai-ly”. I can see how she is wilting.

8. They make fun of her for having cheerio breath.

8. The teachers don’t say anything

8.Like a shadow, I don’t say anything. Like I could ever cast my vote, simply as “present”.

                                                “Present” isn’t a vote.

7.

6. First grade. I meet a happy little girl in a happy little dress.

She looks friendly

, but I decide not to talk to her.

…She’s just a little too quirky for my first grade, egocentric eyes.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1. I didn’t know her before first grade, but she tells me that she was happy-

 just as little kids are

Before the humans,

-Violent and Critical,

Broke Her,

As though

she wasn’t

one

of

us.

Riptide

By Hector Vance

I once got caught in a riptide

My feet yanked out from under me,

salt water stinging my eyes, my hands dragging across the sand.

I once got caught in a riptide,

A question like, “Do you love me?’ was a disgusting profanity, a curl of water that pulled my view from the shore.

I once got caught in a riptide

It was only after it violently wrenched my heart in half that I understood it was called a RIPtide.

I once got caught in a riptide.

The halls were crevasses and the classrooms were caves, and yet, although it seemed like there would be handholds- the only person holding my hand was the sick grasp of death.

I once got caught in a riptide.

I speak for that screaming moment when they bowed their heads, and my head went stiff , my eyes stuck open, I couldn’t do anything but glare, and I prefer to think that was never glaring at god,  but when I was young I learned that god was ubiquitous so if I scream at the sky, or sing to my friend in the ground,  god hears every word, every thought.

It’s a riptide

Riptide.

I once got caught in a riptide.

I once got caught in a riptide.

Riptide.

I once got caught in a riptide.

I once got caught in a riptide.

We all came into this world screaming.

Hector Vance

I never wrote an introduction.

“A single, solitary figure creaked back in his rocking chair amongst an utterly empty room, except for the large brick fireplace shoved tightly against far wall. Ash stained and broken, it towered over the frail man like a roaring giant.”

I never could quite emulate the greats- Alta June, Nutella Waffles, Beatrice Macandless.

“His name was Hector Vance, but he HATED the name Hector Vance. Like poison to his lips. It was bad memories and broken relationships; the reason he hated the world.”

I never wanted to reveal my pen name.

“He was a creaky, stingy, elderly, rotted fellow and often very much minded being recognized as such.”

 I never will understand why I have such a connection to Hector Vance.

“The world is full of insane people, Vance thought, each one having their own dangerous wants and wishes. Life is a horror film and mine is a story about one man and a whole lot of blood-thirsty mutts.”

Truth is...
Hector Vance was a character in one of my novels-
A novel that only lasted twenty four pages- yet still had the depth to
successfully carry an entire character on its shoulders.

I never got to write Hector's story.
Not until now

I am Hector Vance
MY story is not written yet,
But I will get to see my book, read it front to back,
 slowing down only at the sweet moments.
The butterflies in my stomach, the tie around my neck, the
starvation for knowledge

Growing old
And staying happy even still.

                Soon enough I won’t be Hector Vance.

                Soon enough my story will develop enough to make a new character.

                                Tyler Cook.

                                      And honestly, I think that that character should be a bit more interesting.

“Sure, you’re strong in stature, but, my friend, your mind is weak.” 

Hector yawned, “I like to think people change,

                                                                                … Don’t you?”

By: Hector Vance

Her Eyes

I fear…

I fear you

                                I fear your soft brown eyes,

                I fear the way they make me feel,

                I fear the way you think, the way you peer to the future with them, the way you pass me in the halls- your stone cold eyes being dragged around by ropes and levers, because they're far too heavy for you to hold all by yourself.

                Your eyes are nets that I can’t help but get caught in- even when you don’t look at me.

                                But I fear…

                I fear the way you hate them.

                You once joked that you thought they were the color of crap, and didn’t let me respond because you knew I’d say some forced broken complement.

                But now I offer you my compliment- so utterly not broken.

                You’re eyes are a song.

            You’re eyes are dreams, so deep that I could spend hours wandering through them. Sure, sometimes they don’t make sense. Sometimes things happen that I don’t count on- sometimes it just feels like a haze, but all the time I wander through them, regardless.

                You’re eyes captivate me.

                Your eyes feel sacred- Maybe that’s why you don’t let people stare into them too long. Maybe that’s why it feels like I’m being excommunicated every time I catch a glimpse into your soul.

                                But I know you fear, also ..

                Yes, I see your eyes are afraid.

I see that you can’t hold your gaze with anyone, but maybe your eyes falter because, in the night while mine rest, yours are skipping between your real life and that fake one we never talk about.

That one where you’re happy

The one where you’re yourself.

                But I’m STILL afraid..

I’m afraid, because when I look into your eyes- with the oceans and the nets and the dreams and the worlds and the deep meanings, beyond beautiful almond colored iris's, I Don’t See...

I don't see me.

 -HV

                                

What Life Is

Life isn’t blank eyes or dulled senses.

Life isn’t following expectations or, “I think I’ll stay in tonight.”

Life isn’t superficial interactions, steely eyes, hoods pulled so high over my head that you won’t even catch a glimpse of my insecurities.

               

                The only part of life I’m about, are the ones where I feel alive.

                The one’s where I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins.

                Life is summer night, a barbeque in the distance, a warm breeze and enough time on our hands that we can see sun rising and setting simultaneously

                Life is the calluses on my fingertips, gliding across the strings and bouncing up and down the frets like they’re dancing.

                Life is those moments where it just feels--right.

                

Go Ahead and Enjoy My Honesty

Honestly, I think it’s time I had an honesty session.

                To start off, I very honestly don’t want to be writing this blogpost- Is that terrible? It seems to me that many are thinking it, but no one wants to actually put it into words. Well, here I am- I have been dreading writing on this blog for the entire day, cause honestly I’ve had a dreadful day. Funny how even after one of the worst weeks of Lone Peak’s life, everyone just falls right back into step. I honestly don’t want to. Again- is that terrible?

                Honestly, I’m just writing this so it’s as entertaining as possible. Honestly, I hope this is decent to annotate.

                Honestly, lately I’ve been contemplating how I can make a difference. I don’t want to be numbered amongst the crowds of robots, laughing when they’re supposed to and crying when their supposed to- at least not anymore. Maybe it’s just the fact that my knee jerk reaction has been the same superficial greeting sense the eighth grade. “Hey man, how ya doin’?”

                Maybe it’s just the fact that “Hey man, how ya doin’?” was one of the last things I said to Terik.

Honestly, I deleted and rewrote that line three times.

Honestly, I think it’s a shame that writers need to filter so much. Honestly, I wish that there was never any criticism on art.  I think that if someone gives their poetry or their musical ability to a crowd of people, who can even judge that piece of art, but the creator himself. What he’s dangled out in front of a sea of critics, is simply his emotions. Whether his poetry has every cliché ever written, or his music sticks to the basic four chords, that how he is feeling. I don’t care if it’s not the most well-rounded, grammatically correct piece ever written, it is him. Too often someone will quit playing the piano or hold back his book of rhymes simply because, “I’m no good.” Honestly, every piece of poetry or sheet music should be framed and put on display, so that others can be given a glorious moment to look through this artist’s eyes.

Honestly, it feels like I’m the only one that thinks so, because once I had a teacher who told me, “Hector, your poetry is too simple. It doesn’t have enough techniques in it.” Who said I wanted to use techniques? This is me. This my poetry.

Honestly, I could go on for pages, saying all of my thoughts and fears.

Honestly, I just wish people would stop putting masks over their faces, because I would like to see more faces. I would like to see more honesty.

               

Bricks for Breaking

They say bricks build things…                                                                    

                                                                                I guess in this case, they built me.

So, here’s a brick for my father.

A brick for the perfect man who raised me.

His steely eyes only blink if they have to.

Here’s a brick for the first girl who broke my heart.

Sometimes giving someone second chance, is like giving them second bullet.
 I just prayed that the gun would jam.

Here’s a brick for my first grade teacher.

Believing I was weak because of “sticks and stones”.
At least broken bones mend.

Here’s a brick for everyone who ever said, “suck it up”.

Screw society‘s standard of strength.

                 Taking in so much air, ended up creating a painful void.

Here’s a brick for every relationship I've ever messed up.

I’ve got more than I can count.

I didn't try to do this...

Here's a brick for my fifth grade school bully.

 A brick for my well-rounded brothers.

A brick for my profane manager.

A brick for my dead grandpa.

A brick for the judgmental eyes and the death glares.

But it's the bricks that built me. 

So here's a brick for the pain.

and a brick for the breaking.

I think i speak for us all when i say, lets just hope tomorrow has less bricks.

Trees Can Be Blue

By: Hector Vance

                I liked the blue crayon.

I always liked the blue crayon.

                They would say to me, “I love your drawings, Hector,” and “you’re very good at drawings, Hector,” and “why don’t you make more drawings, Hector.” And I would smile and look at my feet, pleased with myself.

                And then they would add, “But, dear child, why don’t you find another color? The ground is not blue. People are not blue. Trees are not blue. “

                … I would shrug

“See, trees are green and sometimes yellow and when it gets cold outside, trees can even be red. But trees are not blue.”

                                “But I like blue…”

                “Yes Hector, we all have our favorite colors. But in no place that I’ve visited, can the trees be blue.”

                She would smile at my ignorance.

                                Trees can be blue

                                In the places I visit, tress can be whatever the freaking color I want them to be.

They didn’t know that when I closed my eyes I didn’t see the dark undersides of my eyelids, but instead was teleported into a new world; that each time the night came I could once again go back to the freedom of life.

That my brain was a sponge, not a filter. That I did not edit through life or sift past people, simply because they didn’t fit a mold; maybe that’s why kids are so happy…

That when I needed to clean my room, each toy would come back to life as they marched into their bins.

That doing my chores was a game.

That grownups were boring.

That each dollar was another ticket to heaven- an opportunity with endless options, weather I would get a soda, a candy or some cheap item at the dollar store.

That each night I would lie awake in my bed and dream of new worlds and soldiers and things that didn’t have boundaries or rules- but blue trees.

And I would smile at the grownup’s ignorance.

As I grew, I realized- much to my own distaste- they were right.

The darkness that enfolded my eyes, were just my eyelids. I realized that I had to filter through people and that I hated cleaning my room. And that I hated doing my chores and the grownups, they weren’t half bad.

And trees were not blue…

Here amongst adults and school and the real world the trees were not blue.

                               

                                Blue trees, can you imagine?

                                                How could I have been so ignorant?

How to Tell if You Know What Fear Is

 According to Hector Vance

                                (All real experiences, if I may add…)

o   Fear is 1% battery power

o   Fear is standing on cracking branch in a twenty foot tree

o   Fear is holding a power washer to a box of dishes and suddenly realizing that the stream has just met the curve one of the spoons.

o   Fear is your code not working, and you have absolutely no idea why.

o   Fear is your code working and you still have absolutely no idea why.

o   Fear is accidentally petting someone else’s cat on the underside of their belly, which is NOT declawed.

o   Fear is a seemingly unforgivable fight with a friend

o   Fear is walking into the territory of a freak, depressed parrot darting towards your face.

o   Fear is answering “52!”, out loud, in front of the entire class, when the teacher asks “How old do you think I am?”

(By some stroke of luck, I was exactly right. Miracles do exist, people.)

o   Fear is remembering you left the sink on, as the manager pulls up.

o   Fear is watching the years pass

o   Fear is seeing myself struggle

o   Fear is seeing a friend struggle

o   Fear is hearing the words, “Sometimes, I think about suicide.”

o   Fear is mood shifts and blood tests

o   Fear is knowing that I will have to do it all again tomorrow, and I’m not sure if I can handle that.

Why is it Bad to be a Robot? Well, the wires.

“You knew the game and played it, it kills to know that you have been defeated,
I see the wires pulling while you're breathing.
You knew you had a reason,
It killed you like diseases,
I can hear it in your voice while your speaking... you can't be treated.
Mr. know it all, had his reign and his fall,
At least that is what his brain is telling all”

“He told me I should take it in,
Listen to every word he's speaking,
The wires getting older I can hear the way they're creaking,
As they're holding him,

Well, I could see it in his jaw,
That all he ever wanted was a job,”

“Light at the beginning of the tunnel, but he tells me that I'm dreaming,
When he talks I hear his ghosts, every word they say to me,
I just pray the wires aren't coming (here to strangle me)”

“I'd say he needs medicine,
Sick of screaming let us in,
The wires got the best of him.”

                                                -Quote from Wires by The Neighborhood

“Being able to appreciate an art is sometimes just as good as being able to do an art.”

                                                                                                                                                                                -Jave Maddox

The Best Friend I Ever Had

The Best Friend I Ever Had

By Hector Vance

The best friend I ever had was the most intrusive, insulting person I ever met.

The best friend I ever had, had words like snakes- ten foot long boa constrictors that viciously wrapped themselves in and around their victim’s rib-cage, crushing the bones and leaving a crumpled mess of a man, sobbing and heaving in as much decent air as he could take.

The best friend I ever had, had a temper like you've never seen. He could break me down with his hate, spittle spewing from his mouth like the unorthodox screech of bloodthirsty hounds at first sight of the weak calf in a heard of four-hundred.

The best friend I ever had could play with my emotions like children’s active, little hands grabbling through mounds of sand; each finger like a hook, uprooting my insecurities, one grain at a time and ripping each one from the other. Moods like Anxiety. Embarrassment. Self-loathing.

The best friend I ever had hated the world, hated me, and, undoubtedly, he hated god.

I despised the best friend I ever had…

                                                                  For lots of the time.

He was a fifteen year old insomniac, with a love for life and an attitude that shined like the sun. He had friends like most people had insecurities and he surrounded himself with good people as actively as others built the walls.

He was kind of a snob

But I loved him anyway…

                                                                             For lots of the time.

                Through elementary, I was always alone- I was lost amongst thick jungle of creative thoughts, of soldiers, and characters and poetry. Trees protruded through the ground, growing tall and fast- me helplessly getting caught in them as I sauntered.

Always sauntered.

I never rushed to escape, never rushed to get back to the other children, because I was fine. I was fine getting tangled in my dreams, being swallowed up by great lakes of contempt, Introverted, love for myself.

I think I was so intertwined into the trees and the vines and the jungle as a whole that I forgot to peer just a little farther than edge of my woodland, simply to see that most people didn’t like forests.

The best friend I ever had loved them, though.

He was terrible and brutal to me, but he loved the jungle just as much as I did.

The best friend I ever had was the only person in the ENTIRE world who could criticize me, who could belittle me; and even though his words were the harshest, most destructive, most vile profanities; that ripped into me, shredding me into a billion pieces, and strewing me across the pavement, at least he understood me.

                The best friend I ever had, had words like snakes, but they weren’t lies spawned from the selfish greed of a man simply trying to prove a point

                The best friend I ever had, had a temper like bloodthirsty mutts, but in time he would forgive what others considered unpardonable. He would tell me, “Humans make mistakes. We’ll try again next time.”

                The best friend I ever had would play with my emotions, but who else’s were they to play with, when they were a complex equation, completely unsolvable by every mathematician, by every psychologist, by every man who had ever taken claim over the title doctor on the whole planet.

The best friend I ever had, knew sometimes the answer couldn’t come from the outside when both the equation and the storm were on the inside.

You ask me to be lyrical, I’ll do it.

You ask me to be original I’ll do it.

You ask me to throw my work amidst a sea of poets, done.

You ask me to follow the prompt, eh.

            You ask me to find my Paris, I’ll do it.

You ask me to hand out my work among hundreds of critics, I’ll do it.

You ask me to introduce myself

… done.

Introducing the best friend I've ever had.