Fleeting Moment • •

[oswald lysander irvine]

Oz always kept a day free from gigs and lessons to just go out into the city and play. His guitar was easy to lug around, and he moved from spot to spot, simply travelling where the mood took him to play. He liked getting out into the world to make some music. More often than not Central Park was the best place to end up on a nice day. He’d seen some wonderful things there when he was just singing a familiar song, from couples on their first awkward dates to proposals, to wedding parties passing through. Sometimes it was nice to see life going by. It was inspiring. Plus, he liked to get out every now and then. He taught in his home, so it was like waking up in the morning and stepping out of his bedroom and into his equivalent of his office. At least it wasn’t a desk he worked from, and he liked how his apartment was decorated; it came with a decent city view for what little he paid each month in rent. The rest of his work came in the form of resident gigs at bars in the city. He liked the places where there was an atmosphere, a little lived in touch where there were regulars and stories in the furniture. It suited his style.

Places like that were more open to his original work, letting him test the waters with some of his own material as he mixed it in with classics they were familiar with. He went out on the streets to find that inspiration, put the inspiration onto paper at home, make the music come to life while he watched the city from his window and then…well, it was simply like magic. At least that was how Oz told the story whenever anyone asked him. He wasn’t out seeking fame or fortune. It might be nice, but in truth he was happy and comfortable to do the club circuit, to teach in his home, and to live his life laidback and happy. He wasn’t rich and his cupboards did occasionally run down to soup and cheap coffee. He was happy though.

Feeling a little homesick today, Oz found himself singing Galway Girl as he stood by the water in Central Park. He would probably cycle through a few Irish numbers before he closed his guitar back into the battered case and headed home for the night, but he wouldn’t really think on it. He often sang what came to him in the moment. Home was in his heart today, simply because it was Jocelyn’s birthday. He’d spoken to her that morning, checked the present he’d sent had been received in one piece. Still, he missed them most when special occasions came around, even though they were all happy and well. The music helped him, so he sang and played, remembering the rooms he grew up in, the places they would go, and the people they used to be. Galway would always be his home, even if he spent the rest of his days in New York City.

• • •

TAGGED! Harmony Jada Sheehan
WORDS! 519!
OUTFIT! Music Man!
LYRICS! Fall From Grace - - - Times of Grace
NOTES!

[Harmony Jada Sheehan]

So much of Monty's job consisted of being in a sound booth, mixing and remixing music to suit the artist's mood. It wasn't a bad thing and Monty loved it all but she also loved those days when she could get out there in the city, see the buskers and find inspiration for the music she attempted to write. She had a few solid co-writer credits to her name but nothing big yet, nothing monument or life changing. And that was okay. She was still young and able to find her voice. She was only twenty-three, barely out of school and was extremely lucky that Tristan had seen something in her and given her the chance he had. She should be on some bottom wrung of a ladder, still working her way up. She should be some mailroom gossip instead of rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names of the music industry. Monty was certainly not taking a single second of it for granted and using everything she knew to turn out the best music she could.

But days where she could sit in Central Park in the sun were marvelous. That night she had a show to be at, one of the bands she was producing had a gig and she wouldn't miss it for anything short of death; or hospitalization. She already had her pass in her bag because she was just that excited to see them perform again and this time on a bigger stage than she'd last seen them perform live. Dive bars were great to the real and the gritty but there was just something about the big stage with the bright lights to make people believe they were really going places. Monty's dream for her life was to make other's dreams come true. She was lucky in the fact that she'd already made her dream come true with a few different bands and two solo artists. The brunette had an ear and a talent for picking winners for the company and then campaigning hard for them to sign with Valley.

Monty wanted the best out there in the world and she was willing to fight for it. She knew she was bound to make a mistake or two along the way but for the time being, she was doing pretty damn good and wanted to continue the streak she was rocking. With coffee in one hand and her phone, which was the nearest thing to being glued to her, in the other hand, Monty set off on a stroll through the park, stopping here and there to listen to the buskers play their tunes. She offered up a couple dollars here and there, asked for a request from a couple more and slipped her card into more than half a dozen cases. Talking had never hurt anyone and Monty would be the first to admit that not all the cards she handed out resulted in phone calls. The ones that did, didn't always end with contracts or even a second meeting and that was fine, too. People had their lives and their plans. She was just another option for their musical careers. Someone singing an incredible rendition of Galway Girl caught her attention and Monty was enthralled. She barely waited for him to finish his song before she approached. "That was beautiful." She blurted out, knowing the compliment would probably be taken better than anything else she could have said.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tag || oswald lysander irvine
Words || 577
Clothes || Punk Rock Producer
Music || Carrying Your Love With Me --George Strait
Notes || <3

[oswald lysander irvine]

Oz liked switching between performing and teaching. He didn’t think he could settle for just one of them for the rest of time. Performing to a crowd gave him a buzz that was simply indescribable, but teaching his students from his music centred apartment was just as enjoyable to him. He liked passing on his knowledge, helping others follow their heart into the music he loved just as much. He played three instruments, taught two of them plus singing. There was no way anyone could say that Oz wasn’t passionate about the music he sang or played. He had wanted nothing more ever since he was a little child. Teachers had tried to teach him algebra, but Oz had been scribbling notes and lyrics into his school books in pencil instead. Pencil, so he could copy them elsewhere later and then erase them before a lifetime of detention could be handed to him for breaking more rules.

Some people were academic and scholarly. They liked books and sitting in a classroom to learn. Oz hadn’t really been that type. He did well in English because he was a decent enough writer, but his other teachers wished he would try to apply himself more. Only his music teacher saw potential in him every time he walked into the classroom. He had known from a young age where his talents resided. Give him an instrument and he would master it, but ask him to solve long division and he’d just suggest you grab a calculator and save everyone involved any kind of hassle. If it didn’t make a noise, or couldn’t be turned into a song then he hadn’t been all that interested in it. He served a week’s detention once for saying he didn’t really want to know how to make fairy cakes. He wasn’t aspiring to be a baker, and cakes were easily bought in every shop he went into if he really fancied them. He hadn’t been an intentional problem child, he just simply didn’t enjoy wasting his time on things that he knew he would never, ever find himself in need of. Some of the classes could be interesting, but only to listen to. He didn’t want to have to be examined on world history only to never require those dates and names ever again. He had been a teacher’s worse nightmare in many a situation, and while he might have been apologetic for it now, Oz still didn’t believe much differently. He wouldn’t waste his time on something that didn’t matter to him.

Oz was like that. He did what he cared about most of all and basically forgot the rest. It wasn’t always selfish though. Sometimes his choices were made because he cared about the people in his life and he wanted to help or look out for them. His family meant the most to him in this big bad world. They were on par with his music. He wrapped up Galway Girl and then turned to where the compliment had come from. Oz managed an awkward smile and let his guitar rest from the strap around his neck for a moment. “It was nothing special. You can hear it in every Irish pub in the city.” He joked, knowing it was one of those songs that everyone seemed to know whenever he mentioned that he was actually from Galway itself.

• • •

TAGGED! Harmony Jada Sheehan
WORDS! 567!
LYRICS! Fall From Grace - - - Times of Grace
NOTES!

[Harmony Jada Sheehan]

Monty loved getting out of the office and just walking around New York. She did a lot in the studios as a music producer but sometimes the inspiration needed to be found outside the recording studio and she always found it best to walk around the park where the buskers called home. New York was a place where everyone seemed to be welcome but also no one seemed to give a shit about you. It was a strange and beautiful place to be. Monty felt like it was the perfect place to be in the whole world. It might have been weird but she really did love stepping away from the studio and taking in some of that seriously smoggy air to get her head back on straight. Her hometown wasn't nearly as bad, but Knoxville wasn't nearly as large a city either. Big enough that people heard of it but not so big that people flock to it in droves.

Monty smirked at the remark. "That may be true, but I'm not in any Irish pub in the city. I'm out here and so are you. A native of the area then?" She asked, catching his accent when he spoke. "What brought you to fair New York?" She asked, having no sense of when to stop. She had always been that child to constantly asked questions. She'd like to say her love of music came from the fact that whenever the music came on, she stopped asking questions and just started singing and dancing to it but that would be a lie. Her love of music stemmed from a terrible prank by her sister and her friends when she'd been just ten years old. It was a frightful experience and one that took Monty a long time to get over. But she could thank her sister, she wasn't going to but she could, for scaring her so badly she needed therapy. Because her parents sent to her a child psychologist for the trauma, she suggested music and the loved Monty felt for the beat was born. She might not have found she was good with a guitar, or piano or had perfect pitch if it hadn't been for her sister and instead might have gone into archaeology or survival training or something.

She did ask her parents a lot of questions about music once she did figure out how much she loved it. She wanted to know what they liked, why they liked it, which song was their go-to for every mood. She wanted all the answers. And the ones her parents couldn't give her, she asked Jeeves and Google. They didn't start getting annoyed with her after the twentieth question like her parents could often do. At least she managed to find a calling that didn't include rolling around in the mud and muck so her mother was pleased as punch about that. It made Monty smirk whenever she thought about the Garter snake experience. Too often, when she called home, she told her parents she was giving up music to join the army or a survivalist group. It was never the same twice but it also never failed to get her mother going. Her father always told her to give it up but Monty thought he secretly enjoyed riling her mother up. She was always so prim and proper, even though she could get down and play in the dirt with her youngest when she'd been small and she still loved camping out in the woods.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tag || oswald lysander irvine
Words || 589
Music || Carrying Your Love With Me --George Strait
Notes || <3