Abbey Road and my entire life until this point.

I walked across Abbey Road.

I remember November 2001. I remember being early into my thirteenth year, the mid stages of puberty in full swing, feeling accomplished because I was going to play "Tevye" in Fiddler on the Roof, and I had made honor roll that marking period. I can actually remember this, I have a really good memory for remembering myself at certain times in my life, and I remember November 2001. I remember doing Arts Middle School, theater training, being good at improv. I remember wanting to be just like Jim Carrey. I remember all this.
I remember this one day in November. I know this is a bit cinematic, and obviously cheesy, but I swear, I remember.
It was November. It was one of those days where you go through your parents stuff because you're a kid and your parents stuff seems awesome. Growing up I never had or knew what CDs were...just records. My parents didn't buy a CD player until Christmas 2002 if i recall correctly, so they always had lots of records laying around and my mom would always play all of her favorites really loud... which were typically like Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson but I remember her playing The Beatles and Creedence Clearwater Revival when I was real young and my mom was still young too, but I was too young to recall this sort of thing probably. Anyway, I rememeber bouncing on a ball next to the sofa on a Sunday after church while my mom made Speghetti and I listened the music she blasted out of the records.

Ok, that was a bit off topic, I just want to say that there were records in my house.

Underneath the cabinet in my living room. That's where they are/were? I remember that day in November going through them and looking at all of them, my parents were out doing whatever parents do and I went through my moms records and I felt how big and old and cool they looked and I sifted through all the bullshit and I picked out the bands I remembered until I found Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The colorful, trance inducing cover just looked cool to me and I wanted to hang it on my wall. I always hung stuff on my wall. So I did.
Well, if you know my mom, she got real pissed after I hung HER record on MY wall for no reason, so she took it down. A few days later we were shopping in the East Brunswick mall and we were shopping at Sam Goody and I asked her to buy it for me.
I remember I listened to it, it was the very first time I ever really listened to music. It wasn't on the radio, it was just music I was listening to myself. I took the plastic off and got the CD open, and I listened to it, I mean really listened, and I learned a secret that changed my entire life that day, being 13, I discovered on that day that when you listen to music, you can tune out your entire life, you can turn off the noise. I no longer cared about anything, except the forty five minutes I would be listening to The Beatles when I got home at night. Literally, life became worthless to me unless I was listening to the Beatles. I was a 13 year old having a philosophical breakdown.
So I checked out
I stopped worrying about school, I stopped cutting my hair, I stopped acting,I smoked marijuana cause the Beatles did, I bought a guitar, I learned how to play, I got into Nirvana, I got into the 60s, I got into the 70s, by the end of my 8th grade year I had become one of those band shirt wearing, long haired kids who don't understand anything. Everything I said and did drove my parents nuts. I hung out with Keith and he smoked cigarettes, I hung out with Justin and we started Section1211, by my freshman year of High School I did whatever I wanted and I lived for two things. A. Band Practice. B. Listening to music at night.
The Beatles led me to my guitar my guitar led me to my band and all the people that would later become my best friends..my band led me to Caliendo's basement...a place where I feel more safe and at home than in my own bedroom in the middle of the night. The Beatles led me to Catcher in the Rye, Catcher in the Rye lead me to books like Cather in the Rye, it lead me into my literary studies. I read tons of books from the 60s, I read from the 70s, than I started reading old stuff, than Shakespeare, eventually everything I could get my hands on.

When I listened to music at night I felt dead, like I didn't really have to exist as long as I had my headphones in, and so in that sense none of the things I did during the day in high school really affected me. That is what I miss the most about high school, checking out and listening in that way, things change as you get older. Music doesn't do the same thing anymore. It was youthful idealism, but picture perfect. I just knew back than that I had my albums, which had drastically increased in number. Every week I mowed the grass for my dad and every week he gave me 20 bucks and every week I bought a new CD with that money. Christmas money, birthday money, graduation money, all money I spent on CD's. By my sophomore year of high school I had the BEST CD collection in my eyes, nobody could touch it. I wouldn't lend out CD's. The Beatles were in my opinion the perfect band, at fifteen, I believed in John Lennon, I believed in peace, I believed in Love, the Beatles had in my eyes, made me a really good person.

Of course what sixteen year old doesn't feel this way? I'm not saying that this is terribly original. I mean my friends and I were all the same, we all liked to get stoned and listen to music and jam and make fun of jocks and girls who cried and cut class, but I felt above all that, because I knew at the end of the day music was doing something for me that I wasn't sure it was doing for everyone else. I didn't desire anything but music, I didn't care about money or cars or anything worldly, I really didn't, and I still don't.

Abbey Road was my favorite album. It was the soundtrack to my life. I feel like my whole six year relationship with Melissa can be summed up by listening to Abbey Road cover to cover, or my six year relationship with Section1211. I feel like I've talked about more times, listened to it more times, thought about it more times than anything else in my life. I lived by the lyrics, in a lot of ways, it was my bible, it was my religion.
I used to write , "In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make" on stuff that was important to me. Notes to friends, yearbook signings, that sort of thing. I always wrote that quote. I believed in Love, I really did. I still believe in Love I suppose, I'll never be able to shake that, no matter how hard I try these days to be a realist, no matter how many conversations I've had with Justin about the temporal illusion of Love, or when I think about the nights I spent during winter in Franklin St.... I still believe in Love even if it's just an idea.
Mr. O'Neill asked me when I was sixteen what I wanted to do when I graduated. I said, "Walk across Abbey Road". I meant it. I wanted to walk across the cover of that album. I said the same thing to my parents on graduation day. I remember even talking about it on graduation night with my friends, I'm gonna walk across Abbey Road.
I graduated but I never let life get in the way of anything. Its true I lost this, what I'm writing about. I don't listen to music the same way anymore, I know I'm more cynical, I haven't listened to the Beatles in like two years, I mean really listened. Now I like observing my aging and indie bands and strong beer and dark chocolate and writing/reading at night. I like depressing art and sad songs and rainy days. I'd rather be drunk then stoned. I like philosophy and books more than anything else. I like weird experience, and living and having stories to tell. I don't pick up the guitar as much as I used to, I don't believe in peace and love although I'd wish for it for anyone. I'm not a hippe but I might be a hipster I suppose afterall. But being this person I am now, walking across Abbey road after all these years is a tribute to who I used to be and a tribute to who I am now. I guess it is a metaphor for the person I was and the person I am and I'm happy with both...crossing the road my entire life.
Life bothers me now I guess. There's no escape in music, just release. I think about how little I care about having a job and how I wish I was motivated to not be content in a tiny room the size of my current dorm. I wish there was something I wanted to do. I just don't need anything, I don't want anything. I just want to meet people, I want to know the human race. You don't need a BA for that, although I will sadly have one in a few months.
Life isn't about anything but this. Good relationships, knowing good people, having good stories to tell, living on the other side of life. That's love. Love for your life, love for your friends, love for a cloud or a rainy day. Never fall into the structure. If they tell you be a teacher cuz you can't write, tell them fuck you and write anyway. Reject the 9-5, keep your hands soft, make enough money to see what you need to and bargain for the rest. Life is temporary, so, fucking temporary. We don't have enough time to look out the window, we've got to go outside.

I walked across Abbey Road in London, England because I wanted too show myself that it could be done, that there is a real place behind every idea. That there are real hands behind every chord I listen to. I walked across Abbey Road with my best friend because it is there, just like everything else in life, do it because it is there. I'm sorry if you expected this blog to be about what it's like at Abbey Road, but I have nothing to say, it's just a road. I crossed it.
Find your road, and cross it.

In the End the love you take is Equal to the Love you make

-Andrew.