something that inspired me one day after listening to too much glee music.
a song for my life.
chapter one: the beginning of a song
“As our very own Holding Theme went against the Timeless Tunes and the Opening Numbers at sectionals, Heading Theme managed to snatch the first place trophy and a spot at regionals. Remember there is still time to sign up for Holding Theme before they compete at regionals later in the year. This has been Melissa Clarke reporting for Charterton High School morning announcements,”
I beamed with pride to no particular person as I heard this announcement. A few of my classmates gave the congratulatory smile, but most of them could care less. With 12 members in Heading Theme, we definitely needed new members. More voices. More dance moves. More talent. Being a sophomore, I joined in my freshman year. Back when there were barely 11 members. The school choir wasn’t hated on, but they weren’t exactly the most popular. Members of Heading Theme, like me, was lucky to be above the Charterton Chemistry Team in social status.
“Did you see me in our first number for our sectionals? They say I killed it, “I bopped along her friend Maddie as they both headed to PreCalc.
“Uh-Huh,” Maddie responded like she could care less. “Is Asher Clarke in your Heading Themes?”
“It’s Holding Theme, and yes. He gets like all the male solos. I was so lucky once to be able to perform a duet with him at our performance for the Falling Festivities Event last year,” I brushed a brown lock of hair out of my face.
“Where do I go to sign up?” Maddie’s disturbed smile suddenly turned into a mischievous grin.
“What are you up to?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Nothing for you to worry yourself about. Since you always speak so highly of Herding Tame, I thought I’d join,” Maddie smiled.
“It’s Holding Theme,”
“I don’t care. Just answer my question,” Maddie turned her head, so it craned over her shoulder. “You know, I don’t really care. I’ll talk to you later,” With a superb turn, Maddie walked down the hall, in the direction they were just walking from. .
“But we have PreCalc!”
“Catch up to you later then,” she began to sprint.
The choir, a.k.a theme room was the place where magic came to life. There was a mini little stage on the back right hand side and about 15 or so chairs lined in neat rows in the left of the room. In the front was an assortment of instruments and a handy piano near the stage. A computer equipped with a printer (for lyrics and sheet music) sat on both sides a large shelf with a large white board built into it (slash easy to turn into projector). Binders of sheet music cluttered the shelves.
“If this was a movie”
That was the “inspirational” song quote scribbled onto the whiteboard. This was pretty much a student run school choir, with no teacher supervision. (Okay, so teachers had to pop in and out every 10 minutes or so to make sure nothing bad was happening). Melissa, a junior ran everything in Holding Theme. Her and her twin brother Asher. Her to-die-for brother, also a junior, Asher Clarke. Asher loved sports, school, and well, music.
But my little ramblings in my head were gone as Melissa entered the room, swiveling a chair to face all of us. A few of us, like me, took out a binder-notebook to write down our thoughts. And others just sat there, laptop in hand to begin typing notes. Then there were a special select few of us who just sat there, waiting for Melissa to begin.
“So, our theme for today is “if this was a movie!”” Melissa declared a bit too proudly. “You’ll have 30 minutes to arrange an impromptu performance, no choreography needed, with a “movie-like” song. A song from a movie, a song about a movie, anything. You just have to follow one guideline; you have to get the sheet music or at least an instrumental version of the song. Yes, you may have the lyrics printed out and with you while you sing. These songs will be great to add to our repertoire. And before I forget, we have a – “ I didn’t hear what Melissa said after I dropped my notebook after my gaze met Asher’s for half a second. There was a loud clatter and a few snickers, but then Melissa just gestured for all of us to begin working.
The next few minutes were just filled with the clicking and tapping of laptops and the scribbling of notebooks. I sighed, and walked to the computer that wasn’t occupied in the front of the room. Almost all of the members of Holding Theme had either their own laptop or were working from their phones. I, for one, was not as lucky, and was stuck with the old iMac in the front of the room. As my cursor blinked in the search bar of Google, I had absolutely no idea of what to do.
With a lame and uncreative thought, I typed in “if this was a movie song” into the search engine. And there popped up a song in the videos section, “If This Was a Movie by Taylor Swift Lyrics”. I clicked on the video and put on headphones, which provided me with an amazing song to sing. I did a bit more searching on the song, and managed to snag an instrumental version, edited by someone on Youtube, which was quickly bookmarked. With the lyrics printed out, I studies the song and lyrics constantly, up till the last minute of when Melissa called out “times up”.
Everyone hurried to their seat, most of us anxious to display or see what Holding Theme had conjured for this little assignment. With my lyric paper in hand, I sat in the back, hoping that I wouldn’t be picked on. Sure I found a great song and everything, but I was not one to volunteer for anything. Maybe it’s stage fright, or maybe because I have low self-esteem, I don’t know.
Melissa took her position on the stage and asked us to move our chairs in the direction of the stage. No doubt, the next minute was filled with chairs bumping into each other and loud floor scrapes.
“Okay, so who wants to go first? Carrie?” Melissa acknowledged me. Of course, being the idiot I completely am, I almost fell out of my chair.
Slowly, but I did, I got up to start the instrumental version of my song, and got myself up to the stage.
