There are two cheap keyboards set up. Two microphones. One on an amp,one clean off a keyboard, Mid winter. I feel sick. My lungs and head are filled with the same vile liquid. My point of view is in the first person, my perspective is a few feet ahead of me, outside. I fiddled with the pedals to make the crappy drums from the keyboard sound decent, or at least real. The only reason there is rhythm, is because the drum loops are preprogrammed. I struggle along trying to stay with it. I know if I slip up it will be fine, the music was representative of my being. The sickness fed my imagination with chaos, sounds and images flew by like traffic. The speedy distorted cheap drums fed my illness. The sound became indeterminable, I liked it. My sickness liked it, it could relate. I stayed at the same distorted jumble because of this. We, my sickness and I, did not want to change from this spot. It captured our essence, it captured our.. feelings gone. Move on. A new type of chaos involving images of sprint and crawl. The actual tones were crawling alone, the noise sped along. Running together. Each contrasting enough to form a being. The being stayed. The illness danced with and held it as its own. I was thrown along. Tossed about until they decided to stop and the illness wanted to move along. Silence came. A mild schizophrenic insect noise was heard in the background. It grew louder and louder. The keyboard came along with it, now working my illnesses’ weary side. The sort of weariness where your eyes can remain open infinitely and your focus is more than a focus. It becomes all that is present. The rest blackens and dims. The music coddled me and my illness. It pet us with harmonies, making us forget the horrible insect. The insect faded and we were swooped into a new area of harmony. This was more of an enjoyable beauty than a calming down. It all must have lasted ten minutes. So many new colors developed and altered. The music playedwith my illness, and my sickness played with me.

It had been a while since he touched a keyboard. His father supplied him with anantique phaser pedal the size of a lunch box. He sat in his new basement alone, experimenting and taking notes of effective techniques. There was a mess of chords all attached to other pedals. To his right was his sampler, programmed to play things varying from distorted breakbeats, and slow trip-hop kicks. He pressed one key and the loud sound coming out of the large amplifier descended down. Reaching a low muffled point it rose back into the high treble tone it began at. He experimented with what notes would sound well with the whooshing effect. Eventually a harmony developed. The harmony was sad. Effectively sad. It brought him to terms with that he was alone now. The only thing around him for one hundred and twenty miles was himself. The tones he generated understood when they started, they had just to explain to him. The smell of musk and the noise of the air conditioner that were once so prevalent were silenced in his head. He could feel his throat finding harmonics with the music. He let out a soft, quiet sound. His voice rose, then fell into the new chord of the keyboard. His voice sank into deep lows, and adjusted into curious highs. His body was now feeling what his mind new. The tremble came upon him, but it only lead to more singing. Goosebumps covered his body when he would hit the notes exactly. A strange language formed from the words he used. The sounds represent his mind, the syllables too. The language was the language of the soul. Everyone understands that its gibberish, but all can interpret it. If we understood the soul then maybe we could understand these words. It is the language of the awake dream. It is what we all speak, but do not understand. We have to come to terms with our inner language through the use of our own minds alone. External influences will give you external results. He realized all of this just from a few simple notes and a few simple effects. A low knocking was heard, his voice stopped and his body cowered. Someone is coming down the stairs. What had been achieved remained only a bit now. The rest is now scared back into the microchips inside the keyboard and the phaser pedal.

He places three fingers randomly on the keyboard. The sound that comes out flanges and echo’s throughout the basement if not house. The sound is clear, but distorted. He shifts one finger, as if the one key could change a mood, or a mind, or the world. It does for him. All the keys harmonize in such a downward fashion that he can feel himself sink. He turns to his friend who is staring at him waiting. He signals to him to begin. A slow drumbeat comes out of the speakers, and the keyboard moves back into its original position. Both musicians feel the sound going through them, before deciding to see if the audience is. The audience is a small group of friends. The main concern of the musician is to create an atmosphere, but a little part of them wants to impress them. Their faces are made semi-clear only when the strobe flashes out for an instant. There are blacklights generalizing the warm basement in a blue hum. The audience just stared at the two players. One was slowly turning a knob making the speed in which it fluctuated slower and faster. He stuck with what technique which felt the most powerful. He glanced over at his friend who was occupying himself with varying the drum beat and adding textures to their newly found world. He could see in his eyes that he was existing in this world also. They looked outside at the other world. The lights and music pulled at the other kids. A few where there simply because they knew the musicians. Theywere analyzing and having a hard time accepting this was their music. They did not enjoy this particular style of music, but where fairly impressed at the sound quality and talent they were showing during this. They would tell them they did a good job. Its not up to them to tell them they are bad because they do not know much about what is going on. They can see their world through their eyes, but is dismiss it as a trance. It is familiar to them because they have seen people stare off, day dream. The person dreaming then is in his world. The world is just as valid as this, if not more. In that world they know what is going on, the surroundings are able to be felt and understood. The ones who do notunderstand the music do not understand the validity. There are others. Others that enjoy the music. What they feel at the moment is what they would refer to as a “groove”. Ambient. Calm, New Age but without the whale noises. These sounds to them they could feel pounding in their chests and moving their feet and hands to the slow sounds. It affected their external and their id and ego enjoyed it. Their head would then lose its stable position and move to the sound. They did not stare off like the musicians. They stared at the musicians. Enjoying their live show, and watching what they are adjusting or signaling. They would see the movement accompanied by the sound. They were amazed that the sound they could produce just simply from a few effects pedals and keyboards bought from garage sales. They appreciate the techniques they use. They admired the talent being shown in a basementof a friend. They knew they was capable, but were impressed. The musicians looked up again from their world. The world by now was developing detailed textures on minor things, as the basis was already developed. When they looked up they saw someone else staring off. The person is perhaps in their world, or another one created by their music. Either way perhaps success has occurred. They stared at the person developing theories of what he was going through, and why she could connect. The person was sitting on the ground. She then laid back slowly, as if to take in the music into her soul and no longer let the body constrain her anymore. The musicians saw her eyes were still open. They figure that she is not tired, or bored, that she is feeling what they are feeling. At that instant she appeared in their world. The textures around her became her own, she walked slowly, hovering about the quiet atmosphere.The musicians recognized her and went back into the world. The opinions of those that would either refuse to feel the music, or those that understood it on lower levels didn’t seem to matter anymore. One person is reached. One person feels it as they feel it. They all ran around in the world together. The details of the world never ceased, small things were now becoming better quality, aging. They never stopped changing either, as each’s imput altered each others. The soul was reached, and found others like it.