Iwa
Legacy Name: Iwa

When the music stops...

There used to be a frenzied buzz that resonated through his chest. It used to last for days on end after the concerts ended. The sweat on his brow that trickled down the curvatures of his cheekbones and down his neck had long since dried. His hearing had long since become crystal clear, there was no longer the lingering muffled description of sounds caused by the bass. The callous on his fingers never did quite disappear, a lingering memory of a time past. Like a song in itself his life had moved on.

He forgot what the camaraderie felt like being in a band. Was it too cliche to say it felt like yesterday that they started playing together? Did it start as a fleeting idea between friends or was it a club, either way it lasted what seemed like forever in their short lives. Young boys barely in their teens gathering together to devour gallons of sugary beverages, pounds of salty snacks, and writing music until the sun went down.

It was easy to let his appetite for brotherhood and friendship to allow him to float from one group to another. Though at some point the two ended up in a conflicting battle for his time. Probably the inability to divide his time equally between the two was what killed it.

Guitar picks became wrenches. Wires turned into gears. The microphone was left behind for air intakes and fuel systems. Finding a similar love for that resonating vibration on the seat of a motorcycle, the anticipation and excitement it made his heart skip. If he could have he would have kept both. The oil under his nails and callous on his fingers, both sets of brothers.

One began to tug at the other. The gigs started to coincide with the night rides. The gang meets started to overlap with the vocal practice. When it all came crashing to an end he was to blame wasn’t he? That’s what they said.

“We could have made it! We could have been something! Famous! We could have been famous!”

Maybe it was just heated words from overly hormonal teenage boys or maybe it was the truth. He’d thrown away a talent for music for a purring machine and the men who pulled him in. With their metal chains, spiked jackets, patches, and black eyes. The thrill was more dangerous, it kept him on edge, though the music never faded from his head. It was always there, words became tunes, and tunes became songs.

Even that ended. It was all some kind of satire. He gave up education for music. He gave up music for the gang. He gave up the gang because he couldn’t handle the evolution.

In the end he was alone. With a black eye of his own, no more patches, he’d thrown away his metal chains. He could feel the callous as he rubbed the tips of his fingers together.

His room had notebooks tucked away in his bookcase with songs from the past, a guitar resting on it’s stand in the corner of the room collecting dust, a pencil and pad of paper set neatly on the nightstand. The only remnants left, even if untouched, they seemed to be habit now. He still looked like a biker, dressed like a biker, another quirk he’d picked up. The air about him was intimidating but perhaps he liked it that way, it kept people away. Picking up whatever kind of jobs he could.

Until the day he found himself alone in the garage of the shop he worked at, surrounded by cars and motorcycles. His coworkers always left the radio on when they worked, they rarely remembered to turn it off even when they left. It was an old song, at least ten years old, it brought a smile to his face he could remember covering it with his band. What started off as a simple hum grew to a soft whisper. Belting out the chorus as it approached, his voice echoing off the walls reminding him what it felt like to let it all go.

It was the faint sound of clapping that brought him out of his bliss, whipping his head around to find its source. It left a sour expression on his face to see a customer standing there, he hadn’t even heard the footsteps approach. Extending a card in the man’s hand, he was a recruiter, just his luck. He had a bad feeling the cheeky gentleman already had his mind set and heels dug deep, eyes set directly on him wanting to dust off whatever diamond in the rough he believed him to be.