#13yo

jazz plays over the intercom speakers on a sunday morning (at 11:24am) because pretentious is his family motto. any revelations about this fact are kept to himself. he’s around 13 years old and he doesn’t stick around long enough to complain about the music. he slaps the toaster oven closed and watches the heat wave red work it’s way to his toast. he hasn’t looked but his father is probably locked in the study. his step mother is no doubt painting in the foyer, wherever the sun best reaches her. (he looks forward to seeing her ugly painting just as much as he seems to, even though she thinks he’s playing it up for effect.) the jazz only goes on when everyone in their separate boxes, have similar things to do. absorb. 

seyun absorbs as well. absorbs his toast even though it’s hot and unappetizingly dry. peaceful, the jazz and careful notions of his father’s study and his mother’s painting, one of those sunday’s that urge on a nap — he slides in front of his drum set with the echo of a grin that there’s no one around to see. twirls the sticks in his hand after devouring the toast (drops the sticks because he hasn’t youtubed how to do tricks properly yet), picks them up and puts his slippered foot on the bass peddle. the first beat doesn’t bright the cavalry, but the snares that scream out beneath his untrained hand no doubt alert them. when he mocks an uneven melody over the toms that doesn’t sound like what he thought it would (because he can’t read music and is just playing by ear), he has no choice but to ignore it. 

it takes no time before his horrible rendition of 7 nation army is being halted with great prejudice by his step mother’s barging into his room. apparently it’s hard to focus with his music (she called it noise, but he takes extreme offense to that. he doesn’t call her excuse for art what it really looks like. he doesn’t get the same courtesy though). he yells at her that she doesn’t understand the process.

she says he can play drums in the back yard if he moves the set. he refuses.

once she looks like she might faint from irritation and leaves the room, he waits until the soft piano and percussions return from the built in speakers overhead before he lifts his sticks and slams them again.