Pretty glad to see I’m not the only one who prominently featured one artist for the final round.
Here’s my story. Break Me, If You Can. Told you it was a cheesy ass title.
This is such a weird story, but think The Giver. The background is kinda exactly like that.
The story starts in a cult like setting, that I will refer to as The Community. The world wasn’t always like this, but generation upon generation have passed. Minds slowly broke over time, now their truth is the truth. Almost all emotion has been re-coded to practically not exist. The history of Earth that was? Removed. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, right? (MK Ultra)
Children are still allowed to make their own choices though. They’re just led to believe that nothing else is safe. This life, under someone else’s control, is their only real safe haven. But they’re not really given answers as to why the world beyond is unsafe, they’re simply told “don’t wander, stay here”. But our protagonist is starting to wake to his emotions. He feels like staying here is going down with a sinking ship and is starting to realise the insanity of his situation. (Simple Boy)
Starting to see through the cracks in the façade, our protagonist starts to try and bring himself to escape. Life has been lived with a metaphorical hand in front of his eyes, but realising that, beyond there is still a lot of sunlight for us all. (Broken)
But when you’ve spent your life with everyone believing the same thing, it’s easy to feel divided and ostracised. He believes that maybe whatever is out there isn’t worth knowing, maybe it’s best to not wander and stay in The Community where he’s been raised for so long. (Knievel Has Landed)
So he asks the elders the simple question, what horrors are truly out there that they’re being kept safe from within the community. The answers, if there were any to be found, were silent. But instead of the usual rhetoric he’s been fed, he’s persecuted for having deviant thoughts and ordered to go back to his quarters. (The Caudal Lure)
But no. He’s not having it. This is enough and he’s making a stand. Who they have been raised to be is no one he can stand to be. The decision is made. He’s getting out, finding a real life and being his own person. (We Are)
In the darkness of the night, he makes the ultimate decision. He decides the best way out of this is to leave unnoticed. He makes his way to the back of the forest to the lake area, takes a deep breath and makes his way beyond the bounds of the community to start again. (Traipse)
(Laguna Sunrise) is just a real nice guitar piece, but can be used to symbolise the successful escape of our protagonist and will also stand for the passage of time. Our protagonist was merely a young adult when he left, but he finds his own life and lives for a good few years (I’m thinking around 5 to 10 years, it doesn’t really matter how long, just it’s been a while.)
When someone is raised to not feel anything, it’s fairly natural that if they unlocked that ability it could be misused. Having been just another simple boy, his life on the outside is fairly dangerous. He becomes an extremist chasing any thrill that he can, all in the name of simply “feeling alive”. He can’t just be an ordinary citizen of life beyond The Community. (Anything But Ordinary)
But it all gets out of hand. He can’t sleep because his mind just can’t seem to slow down enough to allow him to sleep. He ends up cursing the life he had grown up in, feeling they had failed to teach him how to live outside of their watchful eyes of rules and regulations (Show Me How to Live)
But nothing works. He realises he’s very alone and all he wants to do is belong. He submits to himself that maybe, as crazy as it seems, he was better off in The Community. (No One Nothing)
So he goes back. He lays it all out on the line and says “fine, you didn’t do a good enough job the first time, so it’s going to be much harder now, but I submit. Save me from this dreadful loneliness, turn me into someone like you again”. (Save Me)
But it’s only in doing so and reentering The Community that he remembers everything that was wrong. Everything is false. Slaves to the leader’s every notion. Emotionless and fake, they seem to love without affection. (Rewind Your Mind)
Nope. He’s not in for this. He thought he wanted to belong, but this is no way to be. This is robbing children of their future and all the work that’s being done here may as well be slave labour. Enough is enough (Taking Back Control)
He snaps out of it, he knows his true calling in life now. He’s going to destroy this place for good. (Divide)
And that’s exactly what he does. Over time, he shows people how to be individuals instead of living as part of a collective under the strict eyes of The Community. Their lives aren’t just a show, they will be who they are (Break the System)
And it’s through all of this that he became the person he wanted to be. His existence meant something, even if it had kinda sucked. What he thought he had lost, he had found within. He had become the fire needed to change everything. (Change)
I felt the ending of Change was the right note to leave off on. “Light your way, find your place in here”. Some of the song may be a little disjointed, but there were a few themes that it tackles that I thought really suited this conclusion, so, I’ll take the risk.
Pretty much putting it all on the line here, I don’t think this is better than Searching For a Purpose. Puppies might, but I’m just happy to say I’ve given this one a go. This is better than nothing, and I feel like I’ve used some different stuff here as well as the artists that have turned out decent results for me in the past. Is it enough? God no, I’m not getting off the bottom rung, but I ain’t ready to quit.