My favorite song of all time. I listen to it at least once a day since the first time I heard it. In fact, it probably set me on the path I've followed to this day.
You see, when I was little (around 10-11 I think, to be honest I've never really bothered to remember) I was in a bad accident. Around 7:45 on the Monday after Thanksgiving, whilst walking to school via my usual route, I found myself in the path of a full size pick-up truck doing around 55MPH in a 30MPH. He had swerved to miss another student. Little did he know, fate had conspired against him by placing me in his hastily selected direction of elusion. Thus thwarting his plans and probably giving him nightmares for the rest of his life (he was pretty old). And so I found myself bound to a hospital bed for the next eight months.
I wasn't much of a gamer at the time. I played Pokemon Red and Gold, but not a whole lot. So video games were fairly foreign to me. In fact, I had some pretty strong biases at the time. For example, I refused to play anything labeled "Role-Playing Game" because, well, RPGs were "for nerds." I don't really know how Pokemon managed to escape this persecution, but oh well. My best guess would be I didn't really know what an RPG was at the time. That aside, it was difficult to adapt to this new gamer life. Being confined to a bed with a small TV and a PS1 was torturous, at least at first. No matter how long the days seemed when unable to leave your bed, the time between physical therapy sessions was never long enough. Ten pins in a leg that was broken in two places and four pins in my pelvis riddle with fractions made my mandatory walking exercises a daily nightmare. In addition, the bones in one arm had been shattered, and for that they made me play the guitar. Not "learn" to play the guitar, just make sounds with it to help me recover from the extensive nerve damage in my left arm. Oh, how I loathed that guitar.
Months of this went by, until the day one of my prejudgements waned to my waxing curiosity. Having grown bored of playing the same few games over and over, I put in a demo disk. It had a playable demo for Tiny Tank, and this amazing Macross game, which I was so disappointed to learn never made it to the U.S., and in addition to a few others it held a trailer that I had elected never to watch. It was one of those "silly RPGs," and I was "too cool" for those. Well, that was before the weeks spent bedridden left me with a ravenous desire for some new stimulation. And so, I watched the trailer. I then spent the next two years playing the game, often struggling to beat it as this was my first RPG, so I wasn't aware of the common strategies and tropes of the genre. It didn't help that I regularly started over to see what would happen based on the choices I made in the game. But eventually I made it to the Dream Devourer, and shortly after the Time Devourer.
Then the credits rolled. A song started playing. I sat and listened. In the same room where the journey started, where I served my sentence of months of physical therapy and experienced my first adventure, the journey had ended. Its parting gift, a song. I didn't know the words or what they meant. I didn't know the name. But I had a feeling, a need when the song ended. Its hard to describe. It was like I lost a part of myself when the music was over. So I reloaded my save, and beat it over and over listening to the song. Again and again, for the rest of the evening. But that fell short, the need was only satiated while the song was playing. Every time it ended I felt that same nagging emptiness and I couldn't understand why. How could I make this song a part of me?
It was then I recalled the existence of that loathsome instrument that gathered dust in the corner of my room. I hadn't touched it since I was relieved of the mandatory "jam sessions" during physical therapy. I still didn't know how to play it. I didn't know what notes were. I didn't even know what the parts of the guitar were called. None of that mattered. I had decided then that I would learn to play this song and through mastering it, it would finally become a part of me. Ever day following, I spent hours listening to a cassette recording I made, playing it over and over again, slowly finding matching notes on the guitar. I stored that information in a crudely developed sort of tablature that I had created, not knowing the established methods of doing so. Eventually, after a little more than a year, I could finally play it. I still needed practice mind you, but I could get from the start to the finish with few interruptions. About a month later, I had it perfected. All that remained were the vocals. And after another half a year I could play and sing simultaneously.
When I looked back on the entire experience, I saw my own life up until then, unfolded behind me. I saw how biases can impede the human experience. I saw my own growth as a person, growth that I struggled to achieve and at times seemed nigh impossible. And for the first time, I looked to the future, not as the abstract concept of vague tomorrows, but as the next adventure. I also found something curious, looking back. I discovered a series of seeming unconnected events, leading as far back as I could recall. I then remembered the beginning of that adventure, the words that started it all:
What was the start of all this?
When did the cogs of fate begin to turn?
Perhaps it is impossible to grasp that answer now,
From deep within the flow of time.
But for a certainty, back then
We loved so many yet hated so much
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves.
Yet even then we ran like the wind
Whilst our laughter echoed
Under cerulean skies....
-Chrono Cross ~ the opening poem
I wasn't much of a gamer at the time. I played Pokemon Red and Gold, but not a whole lot. So video games were fairly foreign to me. In fact, I had some pretty strong biases at the time. For example, I refused to play anything labeled "Role-Playing Game" because, well, RPGs were "for nerds." I don't really know how Pokemon managed to escape this persecution, but oh well. My best guess would be I didn't really know what an RPG was at the time. That aside, it was difficult to adapt to this new gamer life. Being confined to a bed with a small TV and a PS1 was torturous, at least at first. No matter how long the days seemed when unable to leave your bed, the time between physical therapy sessions was never long enough. Ten pins in a leg that was broken in two places and four pins in my pelvis riddle with fractions made my mandatory walking exercises a daily nightmare. In addition, the bones in one arm had been shattered, and for that they made me play the guitar. Not "learn" to play the guitar, just make sounds with it to help me recover from the extensive nerve damage in my left arm. Oh, how I loathed that guitar.
Months of this went by, until the day one of my prejudgements waned to my waxing curiosity. Having grown bored of playing the same few games over and over, I put in a demo disk. It had a playable demo for Tiny Tank, and this amazing Macross game, which I was so disappointed to learn never made it to the U.S., and in addition to a few others it held a trailer that I had elected never to watch. It was one of those "silly RPGs," and I was "too cool" for those. Well, that was before the weeks spent bedridden left me with a ravenous desire for some new stimulation. And so, I watched the trailer. I then spent the next two years playing the game, often struggling to beat it as this was my first RPG, so I wasn't aware of the common strategies and tropes of the genre. It didn't help that I regularly started over to see what would happen based on the choices I made in the game. But eventually I made it to the Dream Devourer, and shortly after the Time Devourer.
Then the credits rolled. A song started playing. I sat and listened. In the same room where the journey started, where I served my sentence of months of physical therapy and experienced my first adventure, the journey had ended. Its parting gift, a song. I didn't know the words or what they meant. I didn't know the name. But I had a feeling, a need when the song ended. Its hard to describe. It was like I lost a part of myself when the music was over. So I reloaded my save, and beat it over and over listening to the song. Again and again, for the rest of the evening. But that fell short, the need was only satiated while the song was playing. Every time it ended I felt that same nagging emptiness and I couldn't understand why. How could I make this song a part of me?
It was then I recalled the existence of that loathsome instrument that gathered dust in the corner of my room. I hadn't touched it since I was relieved of the mandatory "jam sessions" during physical therapy. I still didn't know how to play it. I didn't know what notes were. I didn't even know what the parts of the guitar were called. None of that mattered. I had decided then that I would learn to play this song and through mastering it, it would finally become a part of me. Ever day following, I spent hours listening to a cassette recording I made, playing it over and over again, slowly finding matching notes on the guitar. I stored that information in a crudely developed sort of tablature that I had created, not knowing the established methods of doing so. Eventually, after a little more than a year, I could finally play it. I still needed practice mind you, but I could get from the start to the finish with few interruptions. About a month later, I had it perfected. All that remained were the vocals. And after another half a year I could play and sing simultaneously.
When I looked back on the entire experience, I saw my own life up until then, unfolded behind me. I saw how biases can impede the human experience. I saw my own growth as a person, growth that I struggled to achieve and at times seemed nigh impossible. And for the first time, I looked to the future, not as the abstract concept of vague tomorrows, but as the next adventure. I also found something curious, looking back. I discovered a series of seeming unconnected events, leading as far back as I could recall. I then remembered the beginning of that adventure, the words that started it all:
What was the start of all this?
When did the cogs of fate begin to turn?
Perhaps it is impossible to grasp that answer now,
From deep within the flow of time.
But for a certainty, back then
We loved so many yet hated so much
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves.
Yet even then we ran like the wind
Whilst our laughter echoed
Under cerulean skies....
-Chrono Cross ~ the opening poem
