We have all been through the struggle of having a broken heart; sometimes it even seems that your days are long and your nights are even longer. About a year and a half ago, I was unexpectedly swept off of my feet. Unfortunately, after four months of a seamless relationship, I was tossed back into the sea with the millions of other fish. I immediately tried to figure out what was wrong with myself. I spent a solid two months doing nothing but moping, crying and being horribly nostalgic. I tried playing music, dancing, acting and even watching my favorite shows to get some of my extra emotions out. But it was during those two months that I realized that this story, and several other personal notes, needed to be told through my knowledge of composition and theatre.
I decided to write a musical. Yes, I know. "How could a seventeen year-old boy write a musical by himself?" At that point I honestly didn't care if I would fail or not; it was something inside of me saying that this is what I needed to do, so I did it.
I started out in June of 2015, writing the music for the songs and then the lyrics. I was writing this monster completely backwards; bouncing off of a plot that was floating in the air around me. I kept the charade up for a few months until December came. I was still upset about the breakup, but the focus I had on this show changed when I found out the cause of the termination. Cheating.
It took me a whole night to write the plot. I was cranking out songs, lyrics, plot twists and everything else that follows. The first time I read through my writing, I was disgusted. It wasn't a show at all. It was more of a combination of hateful tweets and slam poetry. I had to leave the work for two weeks because it needed time to settle, and once I jumped back in to write again, I recreated the whole plot.
The original title "Young Loves" was changed into what is now a rock musical called "Writings of the Past". The story follows a man in his Mid-20's and what happens when he stumbles across an old journal that he once wrote as a high school student. We see how the protagonist of the story reconnects with his old life, friends, lovers and himself.
As I was getting deeper into character and plot development, I had moments of self discovery. I was slowly reconnecting with everything that I tried to forget during the past few months; I was learning what all of the heartbreak taught me.
The show is still in it's developmental stages, and I've acquired a co-writer with the same name as me; we are currently working very hard to get the show up and running. It seems to me that, over the different stages of this show, I've learned who I am, who I was and what love really means to me.
