One Question

Written by Heavily Armored Hamster

The runaway brothers and I were just hanging' out in a Mach Pizza establishment, just getting a good meal in after a long day of travelin'. We were laughing and havin' a grand ol' time when a man in a fancy lookin' coat walked up to me with a notebook in hand.

He said to me, "Hey, Lucky, I know you're eating, but I'm a reporter from the Eightun Post. We have a section in our newspaper called the 'one question' column, where celebrities and people of the moment are asked one question, and respond."

It was rather obvious where this was gonna go, unless out of the blue the fellow's 'one question' was if he could have a bite or two. I wouldn't really consider myself a celebrity-I mean , our music, yeah, it gets a round, but the five of us, we don't exactly have an image of being the face of rock, you know? We're just five guys that are kinda constantly at odds with luck. 'Sides that, we're musicians, and we play and write musc. Although this is a thing we love more than the smell of sizzlin' bacon in the mornin', it is still, in the end, our jobs. Callin' us celebrities would be like callin' your local police captain or an extremely talented carpenter a celebrity. They're just fellows-ah, that isn't with the times, is it? They're just people who love their jobs and put their souls into it.

But I'm a good sport, ya'know? If people wanna look at me as a celebrity, why not? They're havin' fun with the illusion, and as long as they're havin' fun, I don't see a problem with it. So I told the fellow that I'd love to answer his one question. The fellow, he looked really happy when I said this, you could see the grin a growin' on his face, spreadin' like a good disease. He glanced down at his notebook an' flipped through some pages, 'til he came to a question that suited him.

"Lucky, if you could give somebody one piece of advice, what would it be?"

Oooo, the question hit me like a speedin' truck slippin' down a ski jump. I mean, 'certainly, there are a lot of things I could say to the fellow, and certainly, many of them would be true, and many of them could even be considered 'inspirin', but what do you say to that kinda question? Well, I thought about it, for what felt like an awful lot of time, but as I look back, musta just been a few moments. Ya know that kinda moment? The one that sorta steps out of it's boundary, out of it's definition as a moment and shines as an hour? Well, I kept thinkin', and I kept searchin' my soul for an answer or two, but couldn't quite come up with anythin'.

I was a little nervous now, ya have to understand. The Eightun Post is probably used to gettin' all sorts of beautiful and profound messages from jest' one question, and here I was, grapplin' for an answer. I had to say somethin'. I couldn't just stare at the fellow all night. So I got to thinkin', a lot of people have this image of me bein' quick witted, lighthearted. If I were to say somethin' witty, then maybe that illusion they all love so much would stay in tact.

"Try the Breadsticks," I grinned.

The fellow, he wrote down the statement with an awful big frown on his expression. It was rather obvious that the fellow wasn't 'zactly pleased with my response, but he thanked me, and tried to be awful kind. He walked out of the pizza joint as if he had some kinda back problem, slumpin' and a slouchin'. It was obvious to the boys that I was havin' some emotional problems, but they had known me long enough to know I liked to mull it over a bit before I went to any o' them.

Truth is, I felt horrid about my whole one answer incident. I obviously failed the fellow, and normally I wouldn' letta thing like that get me down, but I knew it stretched a bit farther than that. I am the magician, and all o' those fans, they're the ones enraptured in an illusion. They'd read their edition of the Eightun Post at the dinner table, 'get a lil' chuckle at my response, but then feel a little empty, 'cause for once the words of the Run Away were a little hollow, a little devoid o' meanin'. An' that...It just didn' sit well with me, ya know? I like to hold myself to a certain level of quality, an' when I don't reach it, I'm a little disappointed.

So I figured that I'd mull it over for awhile an' then I'd write back the Eightun Post with a real response, a good one, one they'd remember for quite some time. That seemed like the only reasonable thing for me to do, ya know? Me makin' up for my mistake, and what not. 'Course, the problem still remained that I really had no idea what I could say to anybody that would mean much o' anythin'. I'm a singer and a dancer, and an' entertainer, but I'm certainly not a speaker, much less an inspirational speaker. My speech, it's just fine, and you can understand it just fine, but it's not 'zactly powerful. My speech is a little free spirited. Sometimes I finish a word, but then again sometimes my mind has already raced ahead to the next word, so you wind up with stuff like "an' then the fellow, he was a runnin' up th' hill..." Stuff I imagine a good speaker wouldn't say. Some people, they might call it bad grammar or somethin', but I don't think of it that way at all. Nah, it's just sorta how I speak. I could put a "ing" onto the end of a word if I really wanted to, but why? Seems kinda pointless.

Yeah, so anyways, I was tellin' ya that I was havin' a hard time thinkin' of something to say. I figured it was probably 'cause I'm so used to thinkin' the way I do that I'm not really ceratin o' what's profound, and what's not, 'cause to me, it's all natural. My brothers on the run and I, we're sorta way out people, we've been told. Not way out people like we've been packin' in the drugs and the hallucinogens, but way out there people. The kinda people that think a little bit farther, try to see a little bit further. Lots of people, they'd look at the sky. It's natural for somebody to look at the sky and start to wonder. Some regualr person, they might comment that they’ve always wondered what it'd be like to fly up in the clouds and then the person next to 'em would probably say, 'I've always wondered that myself.' But if the Runaway and I were here, we might comment "I wonder, if we were standin' on the sky, if we'd all be wonderin' what it must be like to walk?'. If we'd say somethin' like that, and we do', the people, they'd give us some real weird looks. But to us, that's just as normal as it is to wonder what it's like to fly.

Answerin' the one question got pushed back a little in priority, I'm 'fraid. We moved out of Eightun and were on the road for about three weeks, switching driver's at night, giving other a chance to sleep, and orderin' some fast food for lunch. Yeah, we lived on the road, we really did. I had some time for thinkin' during those days but as much as I tried, I couldn't quite squeeze a word outta myself. The real inspiration, however, came when we pulled into St. Nine. We managed to get hooked up with a gig at the Arch Theather, and well, ya know the story. We found ourselves deep in a pool of red ink gaspin' for air. Yeah, debt. Whereever we go it seems like debt is ridin' piggy back with us.

Well, turned out that we’re going to be in St. Nine for a year, at the very least. Sort of disheartenin' after we just got out of debt at the Eightun Club. But well, we'd gotten pretty used to being in debt by now. We managed to continue writin' up new songs and crankin' out new dance numbers. It was about a month later that I finally realized what I could say to the people of Eightun, and mebbe even the people of the world.

We, the Run Five, are free spirits. We're the kinda people that wonder what it must be like to walk on the ground as we gaze at the sky. Even in the midst of events that could very well bring any normal joe into the hands of depression, we still manage to have a good time and pump out more up beat tunes. I realized then, that a lot of people don't really know that much 'bout freedom, and the secrets of freedom and the real truths of freedom.

From the very day you come a steppin' into this world to the very day you go bowin' out of it, you're caged. Caged and imprisoned. Not a day in your life are you really free. Every second o' every day people are expectin' you to do this and expectin' you to be thinkin' this and just expectin' things out of you. You gotta pay bills, you gotta have a job, you gotta work, you gotta do all this stuff. The Runaway Brothers and I strive on freedom, and live on freedom, for it's freedom that makes us keep on dancin'. Now, you might be thinkin', 'wait a minute here, Mister Lucky! You just said from birth to death, a person is living in a cage.’

It is vitally important that you gotta be free and that you gotta be yourself and follow your heart, regardless. Now here comes the secret of freedom. You have to learn how to be free while imprisoned. Yes, that's right. We Runaway Brothers, we're always stuck in some theater when we'd rather be travelin' the globe yet we live each day as if we weren't imprisoned, just as happy as we're free.

Now right now, I bet you're thinkin' that what I'm telling you to do is compromise. That is farther from the truth than I could ever stand to be. Never compromise, 'cause that distracts from the prime directive of being free and bein' true to yourself. But how do you be true to yourself while caged and without compromisin'? My friends and I, we've found how to be free, and we're happy, livin' up life like it's always worth livin', cause it always is. We found our freedom in our music. The truth of freedom, though, is that it differs from person to person. I can't tell you how to be free, that's an answer you gotta find for yourself, and that's an answer you gotta find if you ever want t live a day on this earth knowin' true happiness.

.That's what I can say to somebody. That's what I'm meant to teach the world. Bein' free if the hardest thing to do, but wow, is it worth it. I'm gonna write a letter to the Eightun Post explain' all about what I just explained to you, and I hope the people that read that paper, I hope they listen.

I hope they understand, too. I hope they don't go lookin' at that paper and see an illusion breakin', and suddenly ol' Lucky getting all emotional and corny about life. I hope that they see what I have to say, an' I hope that they mull it over. I hope that they keep thinkin' about it and do some soul searchin'. I hope each and everyone of them learns to be free. I really, really hope they do. I mean, after I tell'm that, they have no real reason not to learn how to be free, do they? I mean...Having the truths and secrets of freedom right there in front of ya and then ignorin' it...That's a real shame.