Speckled Green

Well, last Friday we went to see a foreign film called “Welcome” in Leichardt. It was a French film, as was a fairly interesting one, if not an odd one (at least compared to the usual American stuff you get). After that, the grade was taken to an Italian restaurant in the Italian Forum near there. It was a brilliant meal, I loved the pizzas and the pasta, and the staff were lovely. Having booked a few weeks prior, they knew that we were a rather large group and had several more table and chairs out for us to sit at. I believe the regularly have groups come there, although not necessarily to that exact restaurant.

So, the idea of seeing the film was not only to fulfil a requirement of our English syllabus, but to also act as a stimulus for our creative writing assessment task, due tomorrow.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to be able to do too much major editing to the story as it is, so I’m going to post it up on my blog, in this particular post, and let you guys read it. If you notice any grammatical errors, hopefully by the time I print it off and hand it to my teacher I will have removed it =] I haven’t actually finished proof reading this version, so, you’ve been warned. At time of posting, it was 796 words long (officially, limit is 800).



Aspirations

“I expect you to become a doctor when you’re older.”

I didn’t really understand what my mum meant at the time. It was all foreign to me, a queer idea that didn’t interest me. Music interested me.

I was 6 at the time.

I often disrupted the quiet household I lived in. When I was just a toddler it was the pots and pans being pounded together like a pair of crash cymbals. When I was 8 I joined the school band, in the percussion section, not that my parents wholly approved of my choice. It must’ve been the amount of noise I made with the drums.

“Learn some music, it’ll do you good later in school. It’ll help you be smart and get a job as a doctor.”

Through my primary school years, she kept on reminding me what I was to become.

A doctor. A helper of people. A healer. Someone better off than my parents, she would say. My dad was a carpenter, his strong arms and weathered hands experts in shaping wood to suit the need. My mum, in contrast, was a nurse, who’s gentle and hardworking attitude was often complimented by many of her patients.

“Son, I want you to study hard, learn well and get a good job. Then you won’t have any of the hardships we face in this tiny flat of ours,” my father told me many times. He was determined that I would grow up to lead a more prosperous life than he. But I didn’t want to. I was compelled by a strong desire in me to play the drums.

I had a dream. A dream where I was playing drums for a living. For a lifestyle. For pure enjoyment. I didn’t care too much for my studies. They were nothing more than an amusement to keep the mind alive. I wanted to be a professional drummer. A dealer of the beats and sounds, a keeper of time and a base of sound.

My parents didn’t approve of my dream, however. They would discourage me from regular practise, urging me to study harder and harder, to be the model son they so wanted. But I didn’t want to be their model son. I had my own aspirations, my own goal I was so determined to reach. No one or nothing could dissuade me from it.

In high school with some friends I created a band. Obviously I was the drummer, and I had to put up with my parent’s continual bemoaning about my choice. It was a disappointment to them; they believed it to be a fruitless exercise, and tried to direct my time back to my studies.

I ran off with the band once to play in Battle of the Bands. But despite a surprising outcome of second place, my parents still grounded me, being furious with my attention to music rather than my studies. My drumsticks were confiscated, and they strictly checked up on me when they were home, to be sure that I maintained my studies.

Several nights I would sneak practice in, using my fingers as drumsticks and lightly tapping at the drum kit in front of me. I persevered through the hardships of school, my dream still in my head. I felt sure I could reach the peak I sought, not what my parents sought. In fact, the more they dissuaded me, the harder I tried.

Because of this, my relationship with my parents tended to be rather rocky. They didn’t approve of my musical aspirations, a drummer just wasn’t classy enough, “not something a real doctor would play,” they would say. A continuous battle between us, a tug-of-war of sorts. But as hard as I would pull on one side, they would pull just as hard on the other.

***

“I expected you to become a doctor when you were older.”

I calmly listened to my mum as she recollected the memories of the past long gone.

I was 26 at the time.

The cheering was loud, nearly deafening. It was a good thing I had ear plugs in. The roar of the cheering people was enough to make my heart rush, my spirits soar. This is what I lived for, what I was born for, what I had worked for all my schooling life. I looked to my left and nodded at the man standing there. This was it.

I struck the drums in front of me, beating out a rhythm that was comparatively basic, but served its job as a base, a solid foundation to the music the others were producing. The sounds rolled out over the crowd before us, engulfing them in the music we had created. This was my dream, and I had finally achieved it.

There it is. This will also be my basis for checking my blockquote styling for my Theme, which I’m going to get back to work on once I finish studying for the half yearlies (in other words, I’m going to seriously work on it after the HSC… =[      oh, and that, to many of you may seem like an extremely long time, but when you’re in Yr 11 and Yr 12, it ain’t that long at all…….)