Chapter 43 - 100 Million View Points: Artist Record

September 26, 2011 3pm Monday, Ironstone Ouigab

Tayaw was just done talking with the head of PinkApron, an American meal delivery service company. In his previous life, the company started business in the latter half of 2012 but with Tayaw interested in investing, he is sure that the company's services will launch earlier.

They have accepted Tayaw's proposal to buy 51% share of their company for $12M. He will not manage the company but proposed to hire the lead developer as a CEO for $300K annual salary. The PinkApron people will do the paperwork of the investment proposal, a requirement for Tayaw's application for an E2 – Investor Visa. It will take a day or two, but he has another thing concerning him at the time being so he went down to his studio and picked up his electric guitar.

He is practicing shredding on the guitar, which he rarely did in his previous life. He never liked shredding in performances as he found them unnecessarily flashy, but he loved to do them as exercises to practice his finger placement. He is currently playing something that reflects his recent inspiration.

Tayaw felt proud playing with the band. Over the past week, Tayaw performed twice at the ROH factory. Once by himself, and once with the whole band. The band actually reached the skill levels to become studio musicians, skilled enough to be approached by recording studios to play for them.

Ike has become much more refined in his drums, Ramil has stabilized his breath on the sax, Inson can perform complex bass lines smoother, Hoon has started with the rudiments of improvisation on his guitar, Bay-an has become comfortable playing all the keys in the piano, and Jenna plays the violin without going out of tune and started playing with scales too.

They actually have not been approached by any recording studios; it's just that they are that good in Tayaw's assessment. The reason why he compared their skills to studio musicians is because Richard Caluz, the man who approached Tayaw before to be a session musician for his newly built recording studio last January, came to recruit Tayaw again after Tayaw never got back to him.

Richard, seeing Tayaw has refined his guitar once again, got hungrier to recruit him for his studio. Unfortunately for him, Tayaw refused and promised to send his band members for consolation.

The actual reason why Tayaw is spending the whole day in the studio, however is to prepare himself for being pulled in to the white void. When he woke up earlier in the morning, his View Points are only a few tens of thousands away from reaching 100 million. His estimation proved right when he was suddenly pulled away.

He found himself again in the white void with the huge words of "Arts Records" in front of him. Tayaw actually wanted to practice his music within the white void; unfortunately he can't bring anything else inside but himself. He also tried to practice singing in the white void but after only five minutes, he was returned to the real world.

Tayaw then looked at the View Points under the Arts Record. 100,000,000 View Points. He was right when he guessed it would be an important number. He touched the words and the giant roulette appeared again. It still looked the same but in addition to the silver and gold platforms, a green crystalline platform appeared beside them.

Tayaw then excitedly picked up the roulette ball, stepped on the green crystal platform and threw the ball inside the wheel. As the ball danced in the wheel, his 100 million View Points also quickly drained until it reached zero.

A few tiles from different parts of the board floated up at the same time and converged into one big tile standing upright in the middle of the table. The huge tile flashed and the words "Artist Record – Peter McKinsey" appeared. The tile flashed once again and out from it appeared a silhouette of a young Caucasian man in a well fitted suit and bowl haircut, carrying his acoustic guitar in the playing position. Tayaw watched as the young man slowly grow old into a man into his 90s until he dispersed into golden dust. The gold dust then rushed towards Tayaw just like how tiles did in his previous draws and Tayaw felt a huge headache.

The headache this time felt much different, it made him fall on his knees, his heart also started hurting and his skin felt like they're burning. Tayaw didn't know how long the pain lasted but after it disappeared, memories flooded his brain of Peter McKinsey's first hand experiences on all things artistic. Music writing, music inspirations, performances, and watching live performances of other musicians.

The emotions hitting Tayaw all at once made tears freely flow from his eyes as he felt how Peter felt when writing songs dedicated to the passing of his mother, passing of his good friend and band mate Jon Kennon, and the passing of Linda, Peter's first wife. He also felt Peter's sentiments about his son, James, and his dog, Martha as he wrote songs about them.

Tayaw, after a few minutes of digesting Peter's memories, was finally transported back to his studio. Tayaw lay down on the studio couch and mused over Peter. Tayaw only truly admired a few artists in his own world. Tayaw's newfound admiration to Peter however, is bordering worship. Peter's inspirations and feelings translated perfectly in his songs, his lyrics, and his performance. Tayaw has better technical guitar skills and vocal techniques than Peter, but he is not confident of performing Peter's songs as well as Peter did. "Is this the essence of a real artist?"

Tayaw quickly watched all of Peter's songs in his brain. He then realized that even Peter's worst hit song is only a little inferior to his own's best written songs. Of course, Peter has many bad songs as well, but Tayaw knew that Peter was simply unmotivated or was only stroking Linda's artistic ambitions when he was writing those appalling songs. Still, Tayaw respects Peter more than any artist he knows in his own world.

"Are our world's artists simply incompetent? That's not it. We can play instruments and sing just as well. Are we uninspired? What's the problem?" Tayaw started analyzing why a single artist from that world can write so many great songs by himself.

Tayaw himself, despite using his enhanced body and mind to write hundreds of songs since he got his perfect pitch, does not think he has as many songs that Peter wrote that are just as good. His album, 21, already contains 14 out of the 32 of his best songs.

And, out of his 32 best songs out of the hundreds of songs he mass produced, he can only choose three songs that can compete with Peter's songs.

Except for jazz and blues musicians who record spontaneous stuff most of the time, the best of musical artists in his world after the WW2 would only have two albums or three in their careers. If they don't release a single from time to time, their fame would slowly die down.

Tayaw then heard the studio's door open from the outside and Bay-an walked in followed by Jenna. "Hey Tayaw. I didn't expect to see you here still. You look like crap, you alright?" Bay-an asked, when he saw the groggy and sweaty Tayaw lying on the studio couch. Tayaw sat up from the couch and rubbed his face. "I'm alright. Hey. Wanna listen to something? I have another song." Tayaw said as he picked up his guitar.

"Jeez. You sure you're okay? You look like you spent the whole day here." Jenna said worriedly. "I'm fine. Take a seat." Tayaw said and he went to the live room of the studio and sat on a stool. Jenna wanted to stop Tayaw but was attracted instead by the beautiful plucking Tayaw made with the guitar.

"Small bird singing in a quiet night

Take your tired wings and keep on flyin'

All your life,

you have always waited for this moment to arrive

…"

Bay-an and Jenna could not help but be mesmerized by the song. They have always liked Tayaw's original songs, but this one to them, feels different. It's simple, but it is enough.

"Small bird fly…"

Tayaw ended the song and the studio was engulfed in silence. The silence though was cut short by Jenna's sniffing. "You okay, baby girl?" Tayaw raised his brows at this. "Yes. I'm okay. The song is beautiful." Jenna said wiping the remaining tears that pooled in her eyes. "Dude… wow." Bay-an simply said as he started clapping. Tayaw shook his head at this. He wished he was the one who wrote the masterpiece.

This got him thinking. He does not want to keep Peter's song only to himself but at the same time, he also does not want to release Peter's songs under his name. He's fine releasing other stuff that he got from the roulette as he does not have much attachment and pride in books and movies, but songs, it's a different matter to him.

He's a musician with a musical artist's pride and respect. He has pride in his own ability on writing his own songs and stealing other people's songs will eat away at his soul. Even though the roulette gave him Peter's songs, and that Peter is not of this world, Tayaw has too much respect for Peter to even publish Peter's songs under his name.

It's not that it's impossible for Tayaw to publish Peter's songs under Tayaw's name, but Tayaw figured he has to become a much greater artist than Peter who can write songs like "Smallbird" very easily before he can publish Peter's songs in his name without guilt.

Tayaw found that very difficult so he has another idea. He would release Peter's songs to the world under the name "Peter McKinsey". That way, his world would recognize Peter's songs as Peter McKinsey's even though Peter does not really exist in his world. Tayaw is also sure that Peter's songs will become a hit so he will use what those songs will earn for some charity or something.

"Are the rest of the guys home?" Tayaw asked Bay-an and Jenna. "Yep. Ramil brought us all home." Jenna replied. "Do you all have home works or projects?" Tayaw asked again. "Just one homework. It's gonna be easy though." Jenna answered. "Alright. Were you two going to practice?" Tayaw asked, curious at why only Jenna and Bay-an were here. "Yes. The rest are to come down as well after showering. They sweated too much in PhysEd class. I'm going to shower later and Bay-an was done showering at school." Jenna explained.

A few minutes later, the rest of the band joined them in the studio. "Good afternoon guys. I actually want to record our first video on our YouTube channel. Do have any suggestions on which songs to cover first?" Tayaw asked the band.

"Today? Wait! I haven't decided what to wear yet!" Jenna exclaimed at Tayaw's announcement. "Me too! I haven't chosen a good disguise yet." Ramil also said. "Can I borrow your clothes and sunglasses?" Hoon, who didn't seem to have a problem appearing in front of a camera suddenly, expressed his desire to disguise himself.

"No. Not today. We will just discuss which songs to cover first so we can practice for them. Use that time too to decide how you will appear on the video." Tayaw said.