Music (Part 2)

There are other times though when the music has influenced the scene that has then become logged as a memory. The first one of these examples is this:

It was shortly after I had split up from my wife and I wasn’t taking things particularly well. My best mate was still in the country (I know right, what best friend deserts you for fairer climes?) and I had my daughter for one of my holiday stints. We had travelled out to Chichester where he lived so that she could see her Godfather and so that he could attempt to cheer me up.

We had a pleasurable enough day, despite my mood throughout. Anyway, during it, my daughter was sat at the computer, a two monitor set up with keyboard and unit, as well as a drawing pad as Alex likes to do a lot of drawing. Alex had youtube playing a playlist he had set up. This song came on as part of it and my daughter started singing along to it. Now, whenever I hear that song, that scene and my daughter singing it pops into my head.

Another was when I had a friend over a little while after getting my own flat as I’d promised to cook a meal to prove to her that I actually could. So after a bit of tinkering, clanging of pots and the odd profanity here and there where I caught myself on the edge of a tin lid, I had cooked up a rather respectable spaghetti bolognaise.

While serving, I quickly decided to run the drinks into the living room, which was serving as my diner. I had placed a square dining table on top of the beige coloured carpet and seated two chairs opposite each other. She had sat in the chair facing the entranceway, as I had no door partitioning the living area and hallway, and I remember her toying with her brown hair, staring intently at the offending strands through green eyes while quietly singing along to “Here without you” by 3 Doors Down. I remember standing in the archway listening before she looked up and saw me, immediately stopping with her song. Smiling, I had walked to the table and set the teas down on it, telling her that the food would only be a couple more minutes.

Music brings me back to those moments, stirring sensations that sometimes I had thought were long forgotten. Music and I are inseparable which is why I find it so strange when I meet someone who lives their life without it.

Return of the RP

Today, I was brought back to my roots. The place where one of my greatest creations was born. About eleven years ago, I went onto a forum for those who loved Square Enix games, or more to the point, it was a fan base for Final Fantasy. There, in the boredom of a Computing class that was really not for me, I started a story in Square Enix Forums’ Creative section.

It was an experiment using the second person where I made the reader the evil character and any sections that involved the antagonist became about what you were doing. Safe to say, it failed miserably. Mainly because second person is so difficult to write believably. In addition, you are telling people what they are doing and no one likes to be told that. However, this is beside the point, I had from this experiment a character that I then carried into the Roleplaying section of the site.

The people I met there helped me craft not only that character, but my skills as a writer. The thing people don’t necessarily get with Roleplay writing, is that although you may come up with the original idea for the narrative, you have no control over the general flow of the story. It is in the hands of all those that wish to participate to help craft and guide the story, not losing sight of possible plot points but everyone writing the story from the perspective of their character. So you would have different avenues, different perspectives, different methods to achieving the story’s aims and many of them were ways that you as the original creator could not have thought up to begin with. It also created intense character dynamics as not only were you learning your own character, but how to write with other people’s as well.

It was with a heavy heart, all those years ago, that I saw that hobby pass away. Firstly I focused on my own writing, and then before I knew it life had taken over. In addition, many of my writing friends fell to the wayside, their own lives taking them away from the realms of writing and creativity, the dreams of the characters they created falling into the abyss of ‘childhood play’. Before I knew it, I was very close to the only Roleplayer from that period of my life, still writing.

However, recently, there has been a resurrection. With a couple, it has been my writing of these 400 words and the story of Creativity where I revived some characters long thought dead to their creators. Others, had been focusing on their own works, believing the same as I that the passion for writing had perished in the hearts of the others.

So, tonight, on a site I thought had long since died, but kept alive by a good friend of mine in the hopes that we would all one day return, I gave my character, Ranger, back to the lands of nostalgia and threw him into the vortex for a new portal entrance into a brand new roleplay.

And to be honest with you all, it felt good to write with him in a manner that didn’t need to have a devised plot or direction. It felt good, to play once more.

 

(PS – Yes, I know this reeks of a filler, however, I felt that it needed to be said. For any interested in reading or even joining in with the fun. Go to http://z11.invisionfree.com/Mao/index.php?act=idx