Die in Tune
Prologue
Words. Words could easily be some of the most complex things in existence on the face of the earth. They are so simple, yet so intriguing. By definition, words are a bunch of letters joined together that have one or more meanings. They can be spoken, written, yelled, sung… They can basically be transmitted in any way you desire. Words can make you happy or even make you sad. Yet, after everything is said and written, some people find comfort in the absence of words: silence.
Kaleb: It is in fact a word, like any other. It might be my name, my identity, but it will forever remain a word, just like my surname: Sturm. Everything is a word. My age is a word: seventeen. Everything that surrounds us is just a bunch of consonants and vowels combined to form words.
I will never understand the true mystery of words. Never.
All I will ever know, or ever be certain of is this: words are my escape.
No, not drugs or alcohol. Those addictions are pointless and unhealthy. Words are all I need and I write them down in blank sheets of paper in the form of prose. Phrases carefully structured with correct grammar and no spelling mistakes: that’s how I like to write.
Now why would I want to escape all of this? Why would I want to escape being ignored by my oh so busy parents who are barely around? Why would I want to escape the nights I spent in bed with people I didn’t love, because I was confused and had problems that no one ever understood? Why would I want to escape the constant verbal insults and the arrogant and conceited stares from my fellow classmates? Why would I want to escape my constant meetings with my psychiatrist, because my parents can’t figure out what’s wrong with me? Why would I want to escape this shit hole people for some reason call life?
The answer is really simple: why wouldn’t I?
Why would people expect some complex answer, full of complicated, intricate words? Or better yet, why would they expect me to tell them my story, to narrate all the sad, sorry events that lead to this point? People should know better that I would just laugh in their face. Cross that. I would stare at them and then I’d laugh.
That’s the typical answer you’d get from a guy like me: nothing more, nothing less. I don’t like boring people with extensive egocentric monologues, as you will see from this point on.
I love you, don’t you love me?
And then people wonder why I’m so fucked up… Those words don’t ever stop echoing in my head. Memories hidden under layers of my fictional worlds created only with my imagination. Longing to be forgotten. Surfacing to be remembered.
I love you, don’t you love me?
I grab a sheet of paper and don’t talk. Just write.
Write just like my psychiatrist, Dr. Murphy, advised me: “If you don’t want to talk, just write…” I never actually told her anything. Maybe it was an act of rebellion against my parents, who forced me to go there, because they don’t have the patience to sit down and talk to me. Just talk.
I would sit in her office for an hour or more writing. Writing about anything that comes into my mind. Nothing would matter, except me and the piece of paper before me. Dr. Murphy would just sit and analyze with her blank, cold stare, that contrasted her usual warm smile. Analyze and take notes. Notes she would then show to my parents. I can almost imagine those notes…
He doesn’t want to talk.
He doesn’t want to cooperate.
He doesn’t feel comfortable in exposing his emotions.
He has trouble in confiding his problems with people.
He doesn’t like answering to questions about his life.
And in the end something like this:
All the signs show that he is bipolar.
That’s something I‘d imagine her writing, just by searching into the depths of her eyes. I could read people easily. But people couldn’t read me. I was the hardest book to read. The one people gave up upon having a glance at the first paragraph or maybe even first sentence. The one who would never reach the best-sellers list or get the slightest recognition. That is me: the repulsive, unreadable book.
And everyday I walk the same hallways at school. Sometimes, I get strange glares from other people trapped in the same institution of education as me. This is just another reminder of the failure I turned out to be. Another reminder of rejection. Another reminder on how I appreciate silence.
Silence: how I long for it, how I dread it.
I love you, don’t you love me?
Scratch that. I don’t fear silence, I just want it.
I was now in my classroom staring at the blank blackboard, ignoring the words spoken by the teacher. Ignoring the whispers coming from behind, beside and in front of me. I am the island surrounded by a sea of whispers.
I could almost imagine my letters, my words surfacing on the blackboard’s emptiness: white chalk over a black background. Then, I felt my hand reaching, involuntarily, for my pencil. Words were running through my veins, erupting in them, wanting to be written onto a clean sheet of paper. I started writing. Writing at a high speed, feeling the adrenaline of it all.
This was my roller coaster. My loops and high, accentuated, sudden drops.
Then, as I wrote and became absorbed into one of the things I was writing, a world started appearing in my head. A world like no other. A strange world. I stopped and looked at my crappy writing. Worthless and long rants about how I hated my monotone daily routine. And I start covering it all with random, violent lines going in every direction, until I couldn’t see my words anymore. Then, I ripped it off. Ripped it to pieces and decided to start again.
I thought about the world and its inhabitants. I though about their laws, their landscapes, their lifestyles, their education, their entertainment, their everything. I had it all covered, all I needed was a name. I thought of the perfect one, scratching ideas from my brain if they weren’t quite what I wanted. Then one of them, a simple and yet aesthetic one, stood out among the dozens I had thought of.
I grabbed a new sheet of paper and wrote in big bold letters, on top in the center of the page: The City of Muoia Nell’Aria.
Kaleb: It is in fact a word, like any other. It might be my name, my identity, but it will forever remain a word, just like my surname: Sturm. Everything is a word. My age is a word: seventeen. Everything that surrounds us is just a bunch of consonants and vowels combined to form words.
I will never understand the true mystery of words. Never.
All I will ever know, or ever be certain of is this: words are my escape.
No, not drugs or alcohol. Those addictions are pointless and unhealthy. Words are all I need and I write them down in blank sheets of paper in the form of prose. Phrases carefully structured with correct grammar and no spelling mistakes: that’s how I like to write.
Now why would I want to escape all of this? Why would I want to escape being ignored by my oh so busy parents who are barely around? Why would I want to escape the nights I spent in bed with people I didn’t love, because I was confused and had problems that no one ever understood? Why would I want to escape the constant verbal insults and the arrogant and conceited stares from my fellow classmates? Why would I want to escape my constant meetings with my psychiatrist, because my parents can’t figure out what’s wrong with me? Why would I want to escape this shit hole people for some reason call life?
The answer is really simple: why wouldn’t I?
Why would people expect some complex answer, full of complicated, intricate words? Or better yet, why would they expect me to tell them my story, to narrate all the sad, sorry events that lead to this point? People should know better that I would just laugh in their face. Cross that. I would stare at them and then I’d laugh.
That’s the typical answer you’d get from a guy like me: nothing more, nothing less. I don’t like boring people with extensive egocentric monologues, as you will see from this point on.
I love you, don’t you love me?
And then people wonder why I’m so fucked up… Those words don’t ever stop echoing in my head. Memories hidden under layers of my fictional worlds created only with my imagination. Longing to be forgotten. Surfacing to be remembered.
I love you, don’t you love me?
I grab a sheet of paper and don’t talk. Just write.
Write just like my psychiatrist, Dr. Murphy, advised me: “If you don’t want to talk, just write…” I never actually told her anything. Maybe it was an act of rebellion against my parents, who forced me to go there, because they don’t have the patience to sit down and talk to me. Just talk.
I would sit in her office for an hour or more writing. Writing about anything that comes into my mind. Nothing would matter, except me and the piece of paper before me. Dr. Murphy would just sit and analyze with her blank, cold stare, that contrasted her usual warm smile. Analyze and take notes. Notes she would then show to my parents. I can almost imagine those notes…
He doesn’t want to talk.
He doesn’t want to cooperate.
He doesn’t feel comfortable in exposing his emotions.
He has trouble in confiding his problems with people.
He doesn’t like answering to questions about his life.
And in the end something like this:
All the signs show that he is bipolar.
That’s something I‘d imagine her writing, just by searching into the depths of her eyes. I could read people easily. But people couldn’t read me. I was the hardest book to read. The one people gave up upon having a glance at the first paragraph or maybe even first sentence. The one who would never reach the best-sellers list or get the slightest recognition. That is me: the repulsive, unreadable book.
And everyday I walk the same hallways at school. Sometimes, I get strange glares from other people trapped in the same institution of education as me. This is just another reminder of the failure I turned out to be. Another reminder of rejection. Another reminder on how I appreciate silence.
Silence: how I long for it, how I dread it.
I love you, don’t you love me?
Scratch that. I don’t fear silence, I just want it.
I was now in my classroom staring at the blank blackboard, ignoring the words spoken by the teacher. Ignoring the whispers coming from behind, beside and in front of me. I am the island surrounded by a sea of whispers.
I could almost imagine my letters, my words surfacing on the blackboard’s emptiness: white chalk over a black background. Then, I felt my hand reaching, involuntarily, for my pencil. Words were running through my veins, erupting in them, wanting to be written onto a clean sheet of paper. I started writing. Writing at a high speed, feeling the adrenaline of it all.
This was my roller coaster. My loops and high, accentuated, sudden drops.
Then, as I wrote and became absorbed into one of the things I was writing, a world started appearing in my head. A world like no other. A strange world. I stopped and looked at my crappy writing. Worthless and long rants about how I hated my monotone daily routine. And I start covering it all with random, violent lines going in every direction, until I couldn’t see my words anymore. Then, I ripped it off. Ripped it to pieces and decided to start again.
I thought about the world and its inhabitants. I though about their laws, their landscapes, their lifestyles, their education, their entertainment, their everything. I had it all covered, all I needed was a name. I thought of the perfect one, scratching ideas from my brain if they weren’t quite what I wanted. Then one of them, a simple and yet aesthetic one, stood out among the dozens I had thought of.
I grabbed a new sheet of paper and wrote in big bold letters, on top in the center of the page: The City of Muoia Nell’Aria.