Missing [ST]

Twenty Eight

Watching the sun emerge from underneath the horizon was a beautiful concept.

For most, it was experienced from a stunning image, or a perfect time lapse in a video. But for the few that were lucky enough to worship the concept in the flesh, it was quite simply breath taking.

The awakening of daylife from their slumber, the dawn of new inspiration, and a whole load of fresh hours to chip away. To think it happened everyday without fail, because of the earth's rotation on its axes, the appreciation was perhaps undermined by the normal, everyday society.

Steven himself could be classed under the few that had seen, and been immersed in its beauty on countless occasions in his lifetime.

As a young boy, he would wake up to the warm yellow hues lying on nature's floor with his slingshot and BB gun by his side having spent the entirety of the day before checking in with the endless fox dens and blue jays tweeting amongst the trees.

He'd wander through the woods and fields which had the promise of something new with every step he took. He'd make a swing in a tree with old rope and dangle upside down, staring endlessly at the mossy blankets and the bed of pine needles beneath him. He'd search under roots to try and find the elves that lived in secret worlds, convinced that they had invaded his own and were in a vast wonderland right underneath his feet.

For hours on end he'd listen to the wind, smell the sweet earth, let his imagination run wild and free, and if he did somehow manage to make it home, it was well after dinnertime.

The stories of Trow Rico, his family resort in Sunapee, New Hampshire were precious to him and rightfully completed every summer up until he was nineteen. Now at thirty one, soon to be thirty two years of age, watching the sun rise over the acres of fields ahead of him tapped right back into his country-set heart and sent him way back to the days before he had discovered the thrills of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. A time where his life was peaceful, and the time before he went down the wrong road.

Mesmerised he sat, blinking in each waver of the new day and a trickle of much needed tranquillity invaded the air he breathed.

There was a thin, black notebook resting in his hands with his initials SVT inscribed into the bottom right hand corner of the leather, and it was something that had unlocked the powers of his musical brain the very moment it was placed in his hands. It was also something he hadn't touched for months.

Steven had always known he was more than a drummer. That he wanted to sing, take centre stage with his band around him, experience the thrill of hundreds of thousands of people singing his songs back at him for hundreds of thousands of different reasons.

Growing up under his father's piano had ignited his dream and his passion, which had slowly grown and developed with every taste of the life of a performer he was given. There was no significant reason for the day his father gave him a personalised blank notebook, but it was exactly what he had needed to take the next step.

At first, Steven thought it was some way to get him to shut up and to stop telling everyone around him about his plans of being a rockstar who would proceed to forget what he said in the next thirty seconds, but really, it was the opposite.

Victor Alphonso Tallarico, his poppa, saw the sparkle in his son's eyes, the musical potential and the determination to learn and teach others. Steven didn't know it at the time, but he never had to prove anything to him, because his father knew what a talented boy he was. He was just waiting for him to figure it out on his own.

So, when Steven had stood up from behind his drums and took the microphone in his hands, that was it. That was the point where he would never sit down again. The stage was his, and he wanted to own it every single time.

Steven remembered his father pushing the notebook over their small kitchen table after dinner one evening, and how he was told to never be satisfied when every page was full. That the perfect lyrics for twenty songs is only good enough if there are the perfect lyrics for twenty more.

And that's because music is eternal. We breathe it, we feel it, we live it. We make it all the time without knowing about it. Translating it into the notes, to the riffs and sequences that can be played over and over again without losing the first spark, into lyrics that can be sung with strength and meaning like when it was first born, is the relentless hard work.

Performance was the easy part, because music should perform itself. If you can feel it, then everyone else can feel it. The space between the notes is the song which meant that Steven had to be himself. He had to be the frontman with the crazy flips and tricks and take all his energy and release it to every member of the audience so that they could feel him, and feel the songs that the band played.

Of course Steven had to find the band to play around him, but that turned out to be a match made in musical heaven, further down the line.

That notebook was the turning point for him and the start of everything, and the fact that it had his initials inscribed into the cover, made bringing it along with him a personal reminder of why it was given to him. A reminder that his dad had belief in him when he found himself in the darkest of times.

The last fourteen months had been the longest break from music and songwriting Steven had ever had, and the notebook had stayed buried at the bottom of his bag, untouched, almost but not quite forgotten. But now it was finally back in his hands and his fingers were flicking through the delicate pages with the dawn of a new day.

The early pages had melodies that were almost all unfinished in countless keys he wanted to explore and demonstrated the initial buzz from writing his own originals. He'd have an idea and then a week later he'd have another and so on and so forth and so finishing a song was a lot harder than he thought. Even harder when the wonderful world of women and drugs entered his life, but that was when it wasn't just music that gave him joy.

However, there were a few exceptions in his repertoire of song drafts.

In the whole notebook, which was about three quarters full, Steven always went back to one of his teenage creations, and the strong key of F minor with a C,C-sharp dischord laid the foundations. There were a few lyrics scattered down and across four pages, crosses, question marks, and chord changes littered in his scrawl of handwriting, and if he was being brutally honest with himself, he felt it was one of the only ones that he had written that had the potential to be a big hit.

Trouble was, he just couldn't finish it.

As Steven stared at that unnamed, unfinished, and unknown song, there was still no burst of inspiration to fill in the blanks. Whatever it was that he needed, hadn't appeared, or if it had, he still couldn't find it.

He gently closed the notebook, tucking away the pain of his past that was tied with it, and leaned back against the wide trunk of the tree behind him.

With the sunrise over, and a cloudy sky and light drizzle replacing it, Steven looked over the large pond to the backdrop of rolling fields through the thickets of ancient trees.

The peaceful scene slowly made his eyes drift close, and with a deep breath filling his lungs, he relaxed into nature's security.

<>

A/N

Soo a bit of a filler chapter, but some parts are actually true (Thank you Steven for your incredible autobiography 😘) and it was super fun to write.

Some extra news: I have a new "book" published for those that are interested. Obviously this story is my main priority, but it's just a bit of a fun side project for sudden rushes of inspiration.

I can't deny it will mostly be the toxic twins but I'll probably write about other rockstar pairings at some point too, though I might make a new book for each of them...IDK! Who knows!

Anyway it's there. Check it out if ya want 👌

Love you all Xxxxxx