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“So,” she says, dusting her hands off and licking the last crumbs from her plump lips, “I worked on those lyrics last night, but I don’t have any music to go with it.”
“Well, let’s see what you’ve got,” I say, hiding my disappointment that we’re jumping straight into work after all the fun we had yesterday.
She hands me the notebook and I smile at her big, loopy girl writing. My notebooks are full of unintelligible scrawls and she’s got perfectly formed letters, in neatly-measured cursive. I mean, of course she does.
I read through it once for the rhythm and then a second time, tapping it out on the table in front of us. There’s a melody playing far-off in the back of my mind, but I can’t bring it forward, so I hand her the notebook back. My brain will work on it while I work on other things and then suddenly the solution will appear. That’s how this has always worked for me. Agonizing over a song is only going to ensure it doesn’t get done. If I just let my subconscious do its thing, magic happens on its own.
“Well?”
“I like it,” I say, nodding. “I’m sad you didn’t keep my swordplay line.”
She smacks me with the notebook and I hold up my hands laughing, trying to protect myself from her attack.
“I said I like it!” I laugh.
She drops the notebook and purses her lips at me.
“I mean it,” I add, allowing a note of sincerity into my voice. “It’s good. I might have some music for it, but I don’t have it yet.”
Her face tells me that statement just made me sound crazy.
“What? You don’t do that?”
“Do… what?”
“Let your brain work on things for you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. When you’re agonizing over a chord progression or a lyric choice for weeks and you finally give up on it only to wake up at four a.m. with the eureka moment? You’ve had that happen, haven’t you?”
“Um… yeah,” she says, uncertain.
“Right,” I nod. “Your brain was problem-solving for you in the background. Just gotta give those ideas time to percolate.”
She rolls her eyes at me, but she’s smiling. “Okay, percolator, what do you do in the meantime?”
“We work on the other songs, obviously. You ready to warm up?”
It’s almost like she’s surprised that I’m suggesting we go straight to work rather than sit here chatting for a while longer. I hate to tell her this, but I’m planning on surprising Chelsea a lot.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
We head into the recording room where the instruments and the better acoustics are and she grabs a guitar and starts warming up her voice.
I don’t do any of the things she’s doing. I just make the most insane, outlandish faces I can, trying to trip her up.
She’s trying to ignore me—and putting up a valiant effort at it—but I catch her smirking and pull out the crazy face I’ve been saving as a trump card. Just as I hoped, she bursts out laughing and then glares at me.
“Are you ever serious?”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
Her deadpan look almost makes me feel guilty.
“Look, I know you haven’t worked with many rockers, but we’re an expressive bunch. If I don’t warm up my face muscles, I could pull something and then this handsome face you’ve come to know and love would be unrecognizable.”
Chelsea scoffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder and turning her attention back to her guitar.
