The Prelude

Tell me about this piece I wrote it when I was nineteen I — I have no idea how I did it I was in a practice room At school And I was just playing around in c sharp minor C sharp minor is kind of the coolest key It just feels really dark and silken under the fingers Like midnight But a really sophisticated midnight Sleek And super ancient Like, si-fi ancient And sneaky And sensual And rich Anyway The chords just came I mean, they're pretty obvious Just C sharp up to E and then back down And then A to G sharp and then back down And, I just wanted it to be loud Just fucking loud And epic I wanted to write something that would Shake the walls Upset my teachers There's so much restraint, y'know? So much that is precious I just wanted to really play the piano, you know? And then it got published And it was a hit And people loved it And they loved me And for a while, it was amazing I was nineteen and people were stopping me in the street And asking me to sign things And fawning over me And — and I mean people would be inarticulate around me When they found out that I wrote The Prelude The Prelude, oh wow! And I would play it everywhere I went At concerts, at bars, at people's houses And they would gush And they would freak out And they would ask me to play it again And again And again And it got to be that now whenever I go to a party and I see a piano in the room I tense up just waiting for it And then, and then Sometimes instead they'll ask me to listen, to listen to them play it And I'll walk down the street In a town that I have never been to And hear it coming from apartment windows And it's — it's four sharps Which is a lot for some people, and so there'd be so many wrong notes And — and I know that they're trying, but oh the wrong notes are just And once I was on tour And they put me in this fucking great apartment And this guy next door to me was practicing it all day long And I would pound on the wall and yell Stop Stop Stop And I'm sure he thought I was just some asshole who doesn't like music Oh and then it got published in the states Which I still don't see any money from because the international copyright laws are so fucked up So even now when I go there they'll be playing it And they'll ask me to play it And I just I just I wrote it when I was nineteen and I've written a lot of other things since And it's just What if What if that was the one What if that was the one best thing that I'll ever do And I Spend the rest of my life Just getting worse And worse And drying up Uninspired And I never become great I never fulfill All because one afternoon in a freezing little practice room that I don't even I don't even know How that happened