Off-Key, On Track
[Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual beings, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.]
A young fella's soaring career hits a low note after a brief struggle with addiction. With his third album hanging in the balance and his voice faltering, Bentaro must face the truth he's long avoided: "talent alone isn’t enough". Told with honesty and hope, this first-person story is a portrait of what it means to fall apart—and find your way back in tune.
Today is Monday. Five days clean. My skin still itches like I’d rolled in lalang, and my stomach growls. Five days clean, and all I want is kopi tarik— sweet enough to drown the itch.
I always bathe twice a day. Religiously. The local humid climate demands it. But now I’m cleaner in a different way. Five days without ganja. It might sound small, but to me, it’s Everest. And yeah, maybe it’s not my skin prickling — it’s my heart tugging at me, whispering about possible relapses.
I suppose at 24, one can afford to be unsure about a lot of things
Five weeks ago, I couldn’t tell if my voice was failing from heartbreak, weed, or talent running dry.
“Bentaro, what is wrong with you? You’re wasting everyone’s time!”
The music cut. Forrester’s voice blasted through the studio speakers, raw as a stripped wire. He never shouted — until that day. I froze mid-take, yanking off the headphones. If you don't know, it felt like a movie director screaming NG through a hailer.
He used my full name — Bentaro — sharp as a rubber seed hitting concrete. Not the casual Ben. That meant business. But today, it wasn’t just business. Anger coiled under his words. Even the studio technician in the dimly lit anteroom with him looked alarmed.
“Let’s call it a day, everyone.” Forrester’s voice was ice. “As for you, Bentaro, stay where you are.” Still not Ben.
Nervousness crawled up my neck. Moments later, he pushed open the studio door and beckoned me to follow him to his office, saying nothing more. The quietude was killing me.
When he sat down, his temper had cooled, but his stare didn’t. “Yesterday was bad, today it is even worse. Okay, tell me what is going on,” He addressed his PC screen, not me.
Forrester doesn't smoke, and the air in the room always smelled like lemongrass — clean, like a clinic for broken dreams. But all that was not enough to calm my nerves. Where the hell shall I start?
“Yesterday, your notes were off. Today, your high notes are garbage. And your phrasing gasped like that of a retiree in a karaoke bar.” He finally looked at me. “Are you sick? On medication?”
Medication. Polite for drugs. “No, I’m all right.” And I knew I wasn't.
“Then are you on drugs?”
I kept quiet when I heard the word. It had only been small doses, and only when I absolutely needed it. Always. My agent Wong’s warning echoed in my head: No one needs to know unless you crack. But my voice had betrayed me, hissing the truth in every flat note. And Wong wasn’t here — he’d left for a holiday on some remote island. He had always chaperoned me during the recordings of my two previous albums. Not this time. I was left to drown alone.
Forrester leaned forward. “I’ve been in this business long enough to smell a rat. When someone with perfect pitch loses it, something’s wrong. Terribly wrong.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes. The walls were safer.
“Does Wong know?”
They’d known each other longer than they’d known me. But Wong had stuck by me these three years.
The silence was deafening.
“I don’t care what you do off the clock,” Forrester said, standing up. “But when it screws with your work, that’s my business. I will give you some time to think over how much you want to tell me. I’ll be back.”
The door clicked shut. And just like that, the past rushed in.
I was twenty-one. Azura, my college senior and girlfriend, had just graduated. We were celebrating at a karaoke dive — the kind packed with broke students, sticky floors, and dreams sung off-key. Amran, my best friend, slung an arm around my shoulders as I butchered some boy-band ballad.
That’s when Wong showed up. Middle-aged, silk shirt, and a business card that read Talent Liaison. He handed it to me with a grin. “You’ve got something. Ever thought about music professionally?”
We laughed it off. Azura rolled her eyes. “Talent scouts don’t hang out in karaoke hellholes. He’s a scammer.” Amran agreed — until a few days later. “What if he’s legit?” he said. “I’d try it if I could hold a tune.”
So we met up with Wong again. Café, corner table, three tall cups of cappuccino. He claimed fifteen years in the industry. Said he was new to scouting. “Only one other artist under me now. Elsie. She nearly made the finals in Star Vocal Asia, remember her?”
We did. We remember Elsie.
Wong set up a meeting with Forrester, a producer in a weathered shophouse in Sentul called Baseline Studio. Forrester was sitting behind a desk cluttered with papers and coffee cups when Wong gently pushed open the door and led me into the studio.
Forrester looked up, his gaze sharp and calculating. He didn’t rise, didn’t acknowledge me directly. Just a nod in Wong’s direction.
“This is the guy I’ve been telling you about,” Wong said, voice booming with a confidence I wasn’t sure I shared. “Bentaro. He’s got it.”
Forrester barely glanced in my direction, his fingers drumming a restless rhythm against the desk. “Mm-hmm,” he muttered, not sounding convinced. “What do you want from me, Wong?”
Wong stepped closer, hands gesturing like he was painting a picture. “You’ve got the ear for it, Forrester. You know talent when you hear it. Just give him a shot. See if he can make it work. Like Elsie.”
Forrester finally turned to me, his gaze as cold as a steel trap. “Sing.”
What kind of music producer! No introduction. No pleasantries. The kind of bluntness that made my throat go dry.
“Uh, okay,” I said, trying to sound confident as I fumbled with the hem of my shirt. “What would you like to —”
“Something you know,” Forrester interjected, his tone flat. “Impress me.”
Wong gave me a quick, encouraging look, as if the whole world was suddenly resting on my shoulders. The air in the room thickened, and I felt the weight of their eyes — one pair scrutinizing, the other hopeful but pushing.
I walked to the microphone, my palms starting to sweat. I had no idea what kind of song would get me through this. My windpipe constricted. My ribs locked. I forced myself to remember that this was a chance, however small.
Without thinking, I started with Sheila Majid’s version “Getaran Jiwa.” The song had always been a favourite, a personal connection. The notes felt wrong the moment they left my mouth, thin and hollow.
Forrester didn’t move, didn’t say anything. He watched, arms folded, his eyes piercing through me.
By the second line, he raised one hand, signalling for me to stop.
“The proximity effect’s too obvious,” he said, finally speaking after what felt like an eternity. “Don’t blow into the mic like you’re giving it mouth-to-mouth. It’s a diaphragm, not a balloon. Take control.”
I swallowed, trying not to let the awkwardness settle in my chest. “Right, sorry.” I took a deep breath.
“Start over,” Forrester said. No encouragement. Plain flat instruction.
I began again, focusing on grounding my voice. I felt a little steadier, a little more in control, but the voice was still too thin, too unformed.
When I hit the last verse, Forrester’s face remained unreadable. His pen clicked against the desk, a metronome counting down my lacklustre delivery.
“Better,” he intervened. “But you're missing something. The pitch is all over the place.”
I stopped mid-line, the tension now gnawing at my insides. Wong’s presence loomed, and his smile seemed to fade, fraction by fraction. This wasn’t the “golden boy” moment he’d envisioned.
Forrester stood up and walked toward the piano in the corner, his movements deliberate. He cracked his knuckles and sat down, then turned back to look at me.
“Sing something else. But this time, let’s see what else you’ve got. I’m not interested in hearing another karaoke version of a popular tune. I want to hear you. All of you. Give me the first line.”
I nodded, nerves eating at me like acid. I had no idea what to do next. My voice felt like it was splintering — it was weak and untrained. Forrester wasn’t offering any comfort or direction. He wanted rawness, and all I had was confusion.
I closed my eyes, wiped my palms on my jeans, and then, almost instinctively, launched into the first line of Lestari’s “Mahligai Dari Air Mata.” I’d sung it a few times before at parties, in the shower, to pass the time. But this time, accompanied by a maestro, the words felt different. They were mine now.
When I finished the final line, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The lull stretched out like a pull in a tug-of-war rope between us.
After a long pause, Forrester walked back towards his desk. His gaze was harder now, his expression unreadable.
“You’ve got range,” he said, his voice low. “But you’re not in control of it.”
Wong, who had been quietly observing, nodded eagerly, as though he was waiting for this moment to validate his sales rap.
“See? I told you, Forrester. He’s got the pipes.” Wong looked at me with that same gleam in his eye like when we first met. “Just needs guidance. You can do this, right, Ben?”
Forrester glanced back at Wong, then back at me. “I’ll work with you. But you need to get serious about this. You want to make it in this industry? It’s not all glamorous stages and lights. You’ll get there — if you can stop thinking this is a hobby.”
The words hung heavy in the room. I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat.
Wong grinned again, but there was a coolness in Forrester’s voice that I hadn’t missed.
“Next step’s on you,” Forrester said. “But no promises. You’re a nobody. You’ve got work to do.”
I glanced at Wong, and for a moment, I saw him not as a mentor, but simply as another player in the game. And he may not be the one holding the cards after all.
A tap on the door brought me back to the present. Forrester walked in.
“What's your decision? Is it talk or walk?”
That’s when I broke. Tears came — hard, ugly, the kind I hadn’t cried since my mother’s funeral when I was eight.
Forrester waited as I swiped at my face with my sleeve. In a moment like that, men don’t hand out tissue like women do. The words came out in chunks, like stones I'd been swallowing for a year.
“It started after Azura left,” I said. The line clawed its way out.
“Young people should not fall in love if they can’t handle rejection,” he made a statement.
“She... didn't want me in the music scene. Said engineering was safer. Steadier hours. Less...” I gestured vaguely, “...less female fans throwing flying kisses on stage.” A weak joke. Forrester didn't smile.
“You chose music.”
“I did. Then I stopped sleeping. Stopped knowing if I'd chosen right.” The admission curdled in my stomach. “Last album... you heard it. I was straining.”
Forrester exhaled through his nose. “I heard. I had to fix most of it with tech. But yeah — second album dipped.” He tapped his pen against a crumpled lyric sheet on the desk, and I could see numerous fresh bloodstain-looking markings on it. I imagined he must have slashed through my sloppy phrasing like a machete during the recording.
“That's when Wong fed you his Chinese opera singer and opium bullshit?”
My head snapped up. “You know about that?”
“Guessed. Old trick — tell artists poison is medicine.” His lip curled. “Opium for opera singers? Sure. And heroin makes jazz saxophonists hit higher notes. Absolute bodoh logic.”
I flinched at the Malay word. Stupid.
“Now you know why Elsie’s with another label. I cut her loose when she wouldn’t quit.”
“Wong said — ”
“I don't know what his intentions are. Maybe he wanted you compliant.” The chair groaned as Forrester shifted his weight, bringing himself closer to me. “Ganja doesn't fix vocals. Might make you feel Lenny Kravitz for two hours, but your diaphragm? Your pitch? Rubbish.”
The truth landed like a boot to the ribs. “I... didn't know.”
“When did you last dose?”
“This morning.”
Forrester shook his head. His face did something complicated — disbelief, disgust, maybe pity. “Can you stop? How quickly?”
I stared at the mutilated lyric sheet, the red markings glaring. Three years ago, I couldn’t even read music. Now I could — but today, I’d sung like I’d forgotten how.
“I don't know,” I whispered.
“Do you want to?”
The question tore through me like I had swallowed a fishbone. I looked away.
Forrester stood up abruptly. “Here's the deal. Cold turkey, or dialling down — I don’t care how. But you quit. Or we quit.” He jabbed a finger at me. “I don't work with druggies.”
The ultimatum should've gutted me. Instead, something unclenched in my chest.
He scribbled on a Post-it note. The paper scraped across the desk. “Your choice, Ben.”
Ben. Not Bentaro.
I stared at the note. Bhavani. Counselor. Specializes in addiction. The numbers blurred.
My fingers hovered over my phone. No one could drag me there — not Wong, not Forrester, not even the ghost of my mother, who’d have cried seeing me like this.
Choice.
Forrester’s word hung in the air. I dialed the number on the note before I could rethink it.
The counselling room didn’t look like a place for confessions. That was the first relief. No overstuffed furniture or sterile, medical lighting — just a simple setup: two chairs, a writing desk, and muted tones on the walls. There was a laminated poster of a mountain with the caption: “Climb or quit. Your legs. Your choice.” Nothing flashy. The air carried a faint, calming scent I couldn’t place. Something herbal, maybe lavender. Something that made your shoulders drop before you realize it.
Bhavani didn’t ask me why I came. Simply: “What’s one thing you’d rather be doing than sitting across from me today?”
“Singing,” I said.
She nodded. “Good. Write down what’s getting in the way.”
That’s how we started. No lecture. No therapy jargon. Just a pen, a notebook. The page stayed blank for a while. I wasn’t sure whether to write “weed” or “life.”
But eventually, the words came, then a list — a long list of things I hadn’t admitted out loud — not to Wong, not to Amran, not to my father miles away in Tenom, Sabah. Not even to myself.
Bhavani didn’t tell me to quit the ganja outright. She asked about how it started, how it made me feel, and what I was trying to avoid. She never gave me answers, but there was a lot of brainstorming that offered me options. We set goals, did self-assessment that can support progress, explored solutions, developed manageable action plans, conduct reviews.
I began tapering off. It wasn’t smooth, yet I wish it was quicker. There were nights I’d lie awake, nerves jangling, choking on nothing but my own choices. But there were also moments — tiny ones — when I felt the fog lifting.
By the third session, I had cut down significantly. My lungs felt lighter, though my anxieties grew louder too. The numbness was gone, but so was the dullness. And somewhere in that exchange, I found a fragile thread of control again.
And then, quietly, Bhavani started additional and alternative ways for me to cope. Breathing exercises. Visualisation. Mindfulness. Things that made me feel a bit foolish at first — until they didn’t.
“How’s the music going?” Bhavani asked at the latest session.
“Better,” I said. “My producer says he hears the difference, but there is still room for or remediation. Rehearsals only. Recordings have to wait. Soon, I hope.”
“And the ganja?”
“Three days clean,” I replied.
It didn’t sound like much when I said it out loud. Just firmer. But it felt like climbing halfway up that damn mountain on the poster. And for the first time, the view looked okay.
Bhavani smiled. Not indulgently, but enough to let me feel like something important had shifted.
That same afternoon, I got a message from Amran. A news link, two weeks old. I missed it then, and now it has become history.
Local Music Manager Arrested in Singapore for Drug Trafficking.
Transit stop at Changi. The trained dogs sniffing away. He didn’t make it back to KL. The candid shot outside the courtroom was unmistakable — Wong, grim and had aged overnight. I stared at my phone for a long time. I didn’t feel angry. Simply tired. A little sad. Like the final note of a song you used to love but can no longer sing.
And today, I’m five days clean.
Yesterday, I was back in Baseline. Recording, nor rehearsal. The vocal take was the first where Forrester didn’t interrupt me after the first chorus. He sat there, listening. He didn’t say much when I finished — just gave a small nod and scribbled something on his clipboard.
Later, outside the studio, he handed me a fresh lyric sheet.
“Next two tracks,” he said. “Let’s get them right.”
I studied the paper, still warm from the printer. I could already hear the arrangement in my head — piano first, then strings.
“This one’s yours?” I asked. He gave a dry smile. “You’ll have to make it yours, or it won’t work.”
It wasn’t approval, exactly. But it was trust. And that meant more.
I don’t know if this third album will fly. It’s different. Cleaner. It may be raw in places I used to mask. Forrester says it’s the first time in a while that I’ve sounded like myself again. But what if the public doesn’t like it? What if it tanks?
I will go back to automotive engineering. It’s still there. I kept my certificates. I still talk to Amran regularly about his work at Perodua. The maths is still in my head, the torque curves, the metal fatigue equations. There’s dignity in honest work.
But I’m not done with music yet.
Whatever happens, I’ll remember this chapter. I’ll remember Bhavani’s calm voice, the quiet of her office, the poster on the wall. And I’ll remember Forrester — the man who stood his ground when I couldn’t stand on mine. The one who didn’t sugar-coat failure, but also didn’t abandon me to it.
Some benefactors give money. Some give fame. One gave me back my voice.
* * * * *
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