When I was too loud and too wild as a child, my mother put me in classes just to give herself some time to prepare for her next client or just some time to wind down after they finished up.

The class I’ll always remember was my very first, the class that tried to turn my love of noise into a passion built by sound. The class in question was a simple intro to guitar.

Why do I always remember it? Simply because this man didn’t just teach us music but life lessons as well.

Want to hear the lesson that makes me remember the class after all these years?

One day he brought in a worn guitar, older than any of us in the room. Every facet of this old instrument screamed its best days were long gone.

He asked all of us if we wanted to hear him play and since none of us heard our teacher play to this point, we nodded nervously like a dog who’s asked if he wants to go on a walk.

He sits down and puts the guitar in his lap, he holds down the strings as if he’s about to hit the power chord. He grabs his pick, locks in, and looks ready to show off. He strikes the strings and without even getting to play a single note, multiple strings snap.

All of us were shocked except for the teacher himself. He just laughed and said “What did you expect? That thing is older than me. However, that doesn’t mean every part of it needs to be.” He replaced the strings almost as quick as he broke the old ones.

He went on to say “You see, our life is the old guitar, it is the vessel that will show its age despite doing our best to hide that, the strings are our minds, when stagnant, they age and you can’t do anything about it. However, if you take care of them and add new information, it will work for you.”

He sat down again and played that old guitar again and the melody that came out of it still gives me chills to this day.

The proof was in the pudding, the oldest things in this world can create the most beautiful moments, yet they need to be taken care of and parts of them need to radically transform to be part of the vessel to be used again.

OSW is the guitar and Muerte my old friend, you are the strings that desperately need replaced. You were an institution when Olympus started, now you’re an afterthought in a group that stole their name from me. Any moment, you’ll break and realize I’m telling the truth. When you snap, you’ll finally be replaced by someone that can maybe change this place. Any sound they make will be better than the absence of noise you’ll soon only be able to provide.