"music is an expression of self, but it's becoming an expression of wealth"

Chapter 4: Growing up Loud (1980-1982)

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Joe used to be sprinting through his life's tunnel, searching frantically for the light at the end of it. Instead he took a detour and ended up on a safe, boring little patch of grass. He’s thirty-eight years old now. His life now consists of him staring at a screen while his old dream mocks him from the back of his mind. He is a full-time employee at Rykes Securities, where he watches the monitor of an elevator security camera. Music is an old friend that has now moved on, and Joe is still living in the past with it, putting his arm comfortably around a friend that is no longer there. Something he so desperately wanted to change had changed radically without him in mind; music no longer consists of struggling artists looking to share their philosophies and talents, but is now simply another industry. He can’t remember the last time he heard a guitar on the radio, and his own guitar was starting to collect dust at his house. His home life was nothing out of the ordinary. He had a stunning, incredible wife Pam and two kids. He just simply couldn’t believe that his children would have to grow up in a world so devoid of music yet loud with noise at the same time. Someone had ripped out music’s soul and replaced it with a computer chip and a dollar bill, and Joe simply no longer felt like he could be the one to reverse that.

This is not a state of depression, but it is a very advanced stage of regret. Every night Joe and his wife have pillow talks of what they should have done that day, which is a far cry from the talks he used to have with Sean about what they would do someday. He loved his family because of the life they all showed, and now hated modern music for the very same reason.

On a cold winter night in December, Joe had gone down to his basement after dinner, where he had retreated so many times before to escape his thoughts and focus on music. He picked up his guitar and began to sing for the first time in ages.  Little did he know that Pam was sitting on the stairs listening in, holding two hot chocolates with two separate marshmallows gently tucked into the foam. Pam always paid attention to details, and she loved Joe because he understood the beauty in details. Joe had only sang while playing for her a few times, and most of the time she could only hear him sing if she spied. But this time she was absolutely mesmerized. Joe started singing along quietly to his favorite tunes, and Pam felt directly connected to his music while she sat. She slowly crept down the stairs and eventually tapped Joe on the back and gave him his hot chocolate and slowly whispered “I love you” in his ear. He loved her more than anything. She possessed everything he loved about music: love, soul, meaning, and the ability to block out the rest of the world, and she displayed it in a way so humble, gracious, and elegant, that Joe was simply amazed by her. 

While Joe dearly loved his family, he simply was not satisfied. He had one love of his life by his side at all times in Pam, but he was still dearly missing his long lost first love. The days went by slow, staring at a camera, watching people stand still in a small square room. Nobody ever got stuck in the elevator or even did anything interesting, so Joe’s thoughts always wandered at work. He taped a picture of Pam onto the monitor so he’d atleast have something beautiful to look at, and that is what allowed him to get by until it was time to go home.

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