"I remember. It was the sound of pavement swallowing pavement, turning up all those cigarette buds, taking our names away from us. And then we woke up. It was all a dream. Sure, you might be dead by some inconsequential hospital standard but as far as you're concerned, this is the first time you have ever been alive. The waves are brushing shoulders with the boat, the air is lighter than laughs, and the birds sing nicely. So it was when Teddy played for us."

Teddy was born into a halved egg shell. It was called a yacht. He hated everyone who thought his yacht wasn't a halved egg shell and in this way he made a lot of enemies amongst the realists and a lot of friends amongst the poets. "There aren't eggs that big." someone would tell him, hitting young Teddy over the head. Teddy replied "not yet", put on a speedo, and began inventing genres the way crayola invents colours. "Try and tell me who makes eggs how big!" he mumbled, incredulously. It was just that fury that some argue sparked the precocious genius of the then six year old "Ted Man". Teddy gathered scrap around the docks while his parents sold phone cards and basa fillets to tourists. Teddy inexplicably picked up languages with the same childish ease he collected the scraps.
His parents were stunned by his intelligence but didn't want to ruin a good thing with too much celebration and excitement. "We must let him grow up like a normal kid or who knows what kind of a time he'll have trying to socialize." They reasoned.
Teddy used the rusting debris wisely and managed to piece together an OK-enough-to-record computer. "Ted Man!" he thought to himself, "Ted Man!!" Then he started designing software programs. He would spend all day in the cabin, taking his meals and cigarettes down there. His parents would call down "supper time" and he would ignore them. "It's a phase," they cooed to each other, "He'll come to his senses when he sees the kind of life that Basa fish and calling cards can buy you. We have the ocean!"
Teddy kept his head down and his sails up. He called his first program Fruity Loops because he adored the Toucan. He coined words like samples and drum packs and beats per minute. He created instrumentals that numbered among the clown fish, eventually detesting the good majority of them. He loved music and music loved Teddy. He didn't sleep for three years. He was met with his own critical acclaim and he struggled with his own fame. No matter where he went on the halved egg shell, he just couldn't escape the dripping eyes of his biggest fan and critic, himself, the only fan he really trusted. In this way all of these genres he had created began losing their edge for Teddy. It wasn't that he didn't love his Children, and how much more his fans, he just wanted something he could be more connected with.
In a restless dream, on a night when the clouds were glowing gold, he discovered the principle of acoustics and a week later, implementing a hollow coconut, important metal cords he had found twining one of his parents friends boats to a dock, and a long maraca tree stalk, he fashioned his first guitar.
That same night Teddy's parents had a dream as well. A twinned dream wherein a giant Tortoise came and brought them a parenting book and large glasses with which to read the book. The book said that children need encouragement. A child should be taught to follow his dreams so that they don't grow up to be miserable and blame it on you for never sharing with them this simple truth in their formative years. When they awoke to each other weeping, they knew they ought to keep their eyes open for a good opportunity to tell Teddy just how brilliant and inspired he has always been.
Teddy took to the guitar with a fervor of bliss. He wrote his newest songs with such ease and joy, feeling as if an old skin were coming off, letting him grow beyond his yesterdays. He felt for the first time as if his efforts were achieving an end of sorts. With a starry grin he took his new songs to his parents. They knew this was their chance to be the parents the tortoise told them to be. They listened with baited breath and as soon as Teddy finished they showered him in praise, gesticulating shamelessly; more praise than even he knew was warranted. They told him he had the voice of Poseidon. They told him to make a life out of music. They told him he could do whatever he wanted, the world was an oyster and he had a good eye for pearls. Teddy grimaced. He hated them for this. He couldn't tell if they were lying to him or to themselves.
He couldn't sleep that night. He knew that it was done. He wondered about what life could be without his own attention. If he could only escape his own watchful eye.
He jumped ship and swam to the shore of St. Kitts.
In the years that followed, Teddy learned nothing worth knowing. He is stoic and smiles when the tide goes out. He has not regrets. But he has songs.



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