Soundtrack Composer
Hi kid--I'll be with you in just a sec, just need to finish this email.
Say, you mind? That humming is kind of irritating. Okay, I'm ready--so what's your life plan? Soundtrack composer? Figure you'll be the next John Williams, huh? Let me think...
So, you must be taking music classes and stuff, right? Good, that's all part of what will get you that first gig, maybe creating a theme for some cheesy college video assignment, or a jingle for one of those bad pawn shop commercials on the late late movie. Of course, you'll have to have another job, because you won't really get paid much for your ditties.
I mean, maybe it was tough for guys like Mancini or Williams, but I bet they stuck it out too. Or maybe it wasn't. You'll still have your work cut out for you. You'll send compositions to dozens of production companies, and you'll post your stuff on web sites as well. You'll be pretty frustrated when nobody from Paramount or anywhere else gives you a call.
Soon you're having fits of rage watching TV. You know you could write better stuff than that lame 80s synth line that defines not one but all three Law and Order shows. And then there are those CSI themes; they wouldn't even hire somebody to write them something, they just went to somebody's old classic rock collection and then paid to get the rights to songs written decades ago.
You begin recording shows and then composing your own themes to replace the crappy stuff they used, and then send in samples to the producers. Soon you find yourself looking not just on TV, but for soundtrack opportunities in your everyday life, and you start carrying around a small synth with headphones to play the soundtrack to your trips downtown.
"Junkies Urinating Back in the Alley" is one of your favorites, though it lacks the poignancy of "Mortgage Loan Turned Down Again". You'd try playing these for your friends, but by this time, most aren't returning your calls, having been embarrassed too many times by your outbursts at movie theaters and restaurants, mocking their predictable and derivative music.
It's this practice of wandering around composing themes as you observe life that gives you what you believe is your greatest stroke of genius: a way to make a living from your talent. You create "Songs of your Life", a business which offers to provide soundtracks to the events of people's lives. You can't understand why your phone isn't immediately ringing off the hook once you begin leaf-letting the neighborhood with news of your brainstorm, and you are rude to those people who call you, asking if you can write a nice song for Auntie Mabel's funeral, or a little something for Jacob's bar mitzvah.
"You don't get it--I'm not writing songs to entertain your guests at some event; I'm making music to paint the colors of your moments!" Most people don't stay on the line long enough to hear the rest.
Fine, you decide. You'll show them; then they'll understand. You park up at lovers' lane with speakers on the roof of your Firefly and play your original romantic theme for teenage lovers. This gets you a few hours down at the precinct explaining that you're not some sort of creepy voyeur.
Then you're nearly mobbed by angry parents when your circus-like theme for their kids' little league team adds to the embarrassment of an 11-2 drubbing.
You're getting desperate, and you decide on a plan after drinking for several hours--one that will make your music famous as the defining memory of an unforgettable moment.
You buy some explosives from a crack-addicted demolitions worker and sneak into a local office building. You pick three spots on the third floor and plant bombs in strategic locations. Then you hijack the muzak-playing sound system and begin the subtle, ominous overtones you hope will become as iconic as the two-note terror so many recognize as the Jaws theme.
The employees don't notice it at first--collection agency employees are not the most aesthetically-aware bunch--but then a few begin asking what the hell is up with the weird stuff on the speakers. At that moment you detonate the first bomb. They are terrified, and after the dust settles begin making their disorderly way toward the stairs that haven't been blocked by debris.
Your music crescendos with greater foreboding, and you set off the second device. This one injures a few of them, though not mortally, and the sprinkler system adds a new cadence to your masterpiece. You now crank your synth full volume, and feel the music terrorize the office workers the way "Ride of the Valkyries" frightened those poor Vietnamese villagers in the only movie whose soundtrack you respect.
You wait until enough staff have made it to the stairwell with intact memories of your work before timing the third explosion to match the climax of your composition. Unfortunately, in your eagerness to see the effect of your music on your victims you stationed yourself too close to the final bomb site, and this, coupled with your lack of expertise in explosives, results in your greatest theme becoming also your own requiem.
Two months after your death the producers of "Three and a Half Men" will send you an offer of 50 thousand dollars to purchase your replacement for their horrible theme. Your parents will end up using the money to help underwrite the realization of your cousin's dream of starting a polka band. Sadly, they'll tell everyone you would have wanted it that way.
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