mikeliebo:

This is my song “The Hardest Place To Find”. This song has been 6 years in the making. It may be simple and quaint but this is a piece of music I wrote about 6 years ago when I was addicted to heroin and in a dark place. By my side was my best friend Stamper who, too, was struggling with his own issues. I wrote this song to get us through one really bad night. Unfortunately a lot of bad nights were to come because I remember he would often ask me to play this song and it became our anthem to get by on when things were tough. He told me my music was special and people like me should be heard and I thought that was sweet yet unrealistic considering society looked at people like me like dirt. Like garbage. Like something you can throw away or ignore. Thank you Stamper for believing in me when no one else would or could or even just for knowing me for me and loving me for me. We would often bring up trying to quit heroin in conversation and it would always lead to this ongoing and ever-evolving fantasy of what we would do with all the money we would have saved up…. maybe we’ll get to record a song in a studio one day..or a whole album!…the instruments we’d buy…the road trips we’d take….all the things we’d do, but it was never serious…because we never actually thought we could get off heroin. It was just this fantasy to get us through the night…a lot of nights…It never seemed like it would ever be in reach for people like us. In this great ocean of life we are constantly at the whim of waves and wind with one hand on the helm and one hand on our heart. The right wave caught me by surprise one day and I was able to ride it to safer seas. Metaphors, aside, I was able to get off heroin and within 2 weeks of being off the stuff I had found myself in a very big and very beautiful music studio with people telling me I had something special. They didn’t say it like Stamper, though. They had money on their mind…Stamper just had this sincere way of saying it. He was pure like that…even amidst parts of the world that are regarded as the most tainted. Sometimes it is those..us…who are so lost and debased that we need angels in our life to get us through. Stamper was that angel to me. Stamper always said in these…fantasies we had about getting off dope… that if I ever were to find myself in one of those “big fancy music studios” I should record this song. Well, I’ve had access to studios like that for a while now but it took me 5 years until I had finally gained the resources to bring this song into the right studio with the right producer for the job. After hearing the final recording the only thing missing from this really being a fantasy come true is not having Stamper by my side to hear the song and be part of it with me. This song is a miracle….to me at least, it’s a literal miracle. I should be dead or in prison. But somehow something happened and I reacted and then kept reacting and a life happened where there was just the void of a life of before. This song is to anyone out there struggling who needs a miracle in a world that tells you they aren’t real. They are real and if you’re looking with the right vision, even on the blurriest day, you have it inside you to find the hardest place to find. Keep digging. Stamper unfortunately got caught in the wrong part of the ocean with his hand still on his heart, just lost control of the helm, as we all could at any moment. This song is dedicated in loving memory to Matthew Stamper. You will never be forgotten. If this song affects the way you look at your life in anyway you have Stamper to thank for that because without him this would of never happened. Much love everyone. Be safe on those oceans of life. Nothing is guaranteed so keep your hands on the helm and heart as much as you can.