Ryan O'Keefe

(Vocals, Guitar)

Tucked quietly on the wooded coast of Maine, where a long dirt road breaks upon a meadow, perched on the side of a grass-covered hill, my parents built the small cedar cabin where I grew up. Lupine, blueberries, and fat maple leaves garnished the granite shores and hills during the short, cool summers. Winter produced a feathery mantle of piercing white snow, which drove us into wool coats, hats, and mittens, while filling our bellies with meat stews, and creamy cups of coco. My father was a lobsterman and my mother a gardener. We had solar power, an outhouse and only when the porcupines didn't chew through the rubber bound wire that lay on the ground did we have the convenience of a telephone. In addition to, and perhaps because of our frugal lifestyle, I had the opportunity to be a part of a family. My brother Brendan was the writer, the creator. It was as though he had lived 10 lives, in 10 different centuries in 10 unique worlds. Where romance and heroics lifted the eyes of the farmer's daughter and magic still quietly whistled through the brown bodies of the evergreen groves. On that endless dirt driveway, we carved alternate lives. We had a few thousand acres at our disposal, and though it was not all ours, the tall men who owned the surrounding country never ventured too deep into the shadows of the forest. Brendan and I would run to the top of great Mount Cromer, the highest peak in the village. The pink granite slabs burst through the low cranberry bushes, flickering silver in the morning sun. Standing 144 feet above the spitting sea, which stretched out to the Canadian boarder like a great folding quilt, we watched over our land like lords. He was the architect. He was my brother, and I would have followed him forever.

After he left for college it took me three years to discover that I would never be him. It took another two to dispose of the desire. Following as I always did, jumping from footstep to footstep, hoping to achieve something respectably close to his life. An Ivy League education, the fastest runner in New England, a biologist, a creator, an artist. I could do it all, but the stones I threw always fell short of his mark. Finally I ran. Kicked off the track team and withdrawing my college applications, I hid. I hid from him and my mother.

Half a year later, deep from within the walls of my cocoon, I walked past my mother's guitar. For twenty years the rosewood back faced the long picture window that ran the length of the opposing wall. The guitar's strings, dull with rust, lay muted against the dry cedar logs. It depended on the wall, but it didn't need to face away from the glass. Before leaving the room I pulled the guitar from the hand-carved pegs and turned it around.