rain and music
by Sean Smith
Oregon City, OR
Rain beating the cold metal roof amplifies through the hallways and rooms. The tapping creates music tapping at your head. Tapping there unnoticed by our ears as it is so common, an every day occurrence in the Oregon winter.
Like most days held up inside this was a dull one. Sit down, read a book, listen to music, rinse repeat. Clouds from the coast funnel over our house and hit the foothills and mountains deflecting all of the clear water onto the footstep of our humble abode. On this particular day my head was jumbled. A mixture of sleep deprivation and simple hectic day-to-day problems plagued my fried brain. The kind of day you just want complete silence. But this was not to be. Time to go shopping; simple tasks seem unbearable sometimes; the act of getting out of the chair posed a problem for my conscious mind. Nevertheless I lifted my body out of the comfy chair and into the white ranger parked outside of my small house.
On my way back from the store I decided to go to the guitar center. In my view its heaven. The usual characters circle the store. The little kids who can’t play guitar. Yet they always turn their guitars to full blast. As if to show people how they learned smoke on the water. There was the old pro. The one that can’t start a lasting band because of his hectic life and family. The metal heads sat there by the dean guitars. Blasting Metallica from there over driven flying v’s. And there’s me, the semi good guitar player playing what he loves. Listening to pros is humbling as well as listening to the bad players is up lifting. I am not the best but I can play what I want to.
Back at the house, the rain beating down overhead, I sit and listen to music. The rain beating along with the beat of the drums. Over dubbing the sound. Filing my ears with music.
