Me as Leaf Coneybear in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (March 2019)

Whoever it may be that has stumbled their way unto this website, I am happy to inform you that you are the lucky winner of learning that I exist. For you have just found your way to a treasure trove of thoughts and ideas which will possibly change the world one day, but will more likely change your life— maybe not for the better necessarily, but that’s beside the point. But I’m getting off-topic here.

My name is Spencer Cook. I was a senior at Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy, and at the time of writing most of this I was steadily rolling my way towards the end of high school and dusting myself off to prepare for being launched into the great unknown. That crazy guy on the right with the -7 hanging from his neck would be me, playing the role of Leaf Coneybear in Mountain View High’s production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in March 2019. And while I didn’t actually wear patched cargo pants or a tie dye shirt paired with a cape in real life, those mismatched Converse were a part of my actual persona in real life throughout high school.

As you can probably guess from that photo, I had performed in a great number of theatrical productions throughout high school. I’d been acting since 6th grade and even dabbled in work on the technical side of theatre starting in 9th grade. Among some of my other favorite shows I’d been in were Mountain View High’s production of The Servant of Two Masters (Truffaldino; November 2019), The Drowsy Chaperone (Aldolpho; March 2018), Peninsula Youth Theatre’s “Stories on Stage” program’s Officer Buckle and Gloria (Officer Buckle; May 2017), and their “Stories on Stage” program’s A Christmas Carol (Ebeneezer Scrooge; December 2016). For starters, that is. There were a lot more.

I didn’t anticipate pursuing acting or technical theatre as a future career, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath on that. There’s very little I truly enjoyed in the same way as acting on a stage. I saw it as more of a hobby at the time, but hey, nothing’s really certain, is it?

Acting aside, I was also been a train and roller coaster enthusiast for a long time up until this point— both of which hobbies had been superseded (but who know for how long?) by a more recent obsession with music. I was a little bit proud and a little bit shameful to confess, or boast, that I had a collection of 207 CD’s, give or take a few (data from an October 2019 census). It was all thanks to Richard, who had gotten me into this obsession around February of 2018.

Me as Aldolpho in The Drowsy Chaperone (March 2018)
Me at Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia (July 2019)

I loved music. A lot. I listened to the Smashing Pumpkins so much that it was probably coursing through my veins and bursting out of my brains. Other bands that had helped me through many rough times alongside them would include The Killers, PUP, System of a Down, The Dismemberment Plan, good ol’ Weezer, Green Day (well, y’know, before they sucked), and blink-182 (well, y’know, before they sucked). But mostly it was the Pumpkins blasting out my car speakers, giving me the energy and support I needed to make it through each and every day.

And hey, I also wrote many songs of my own! Well, unfortunately, I was far too preoccupied (in other words, lazy) to pick up the guitar and learn to play it. But I did write a great number of songs on my own. Well, poems, technically, given that none of them had any music to back them up. But they were meant to be songs, and I told myself I’d do it “one of these days”… at least before I grew old enough to hate my angsty lyrics too much to drag myself to sing them. By June 2020, I had successfully vomited out a grand total of 41 albums written over the course of 2 and a half years, all of which contained between 10 to 25 songs. I thought about sharing some of them on here some day, but I concluded there were some things that I felt I wasn’t willing to let the world see.

However, I had actually written lyrics for songs that were performed. My friend Richard Fukuda and I created a band in October of 2018 named Alien Rock. We shockingly sped through a single eponymous album in 3 writing/recording sessions and finished it in no time flat. We ended up on an indefinite hiatus after that, but it was our goal to create at least one more before graduation (a goal we unfortunately never met). We did create one hit new single in May 2019, “Hoomanzuck“, with an accompanying music video by Richard for film class. If you like it, I played the alien and sang the lyrics. If you didn’t like it, I had nothing to do with the song at all.

Me on the Gatlinburg Mountain Coaster in Gatlinburg, Tennessee (June 2018)

I hoped by the nex be able to take credit for some musical influence of greater consequence than “add a dum dum dum here” or “put in taps here because it’d be funny”. Though I still felt my greatest achievement in life may had been the decision to make the second verse of the song “Alien Rock!” (from Alien Rock! by Alien Rock… of course) be the first verse played in reverse. That was all, though.

I really loved to create. I just wished I could create more. The ride through high school was rougher than I knew I’d ever even be able to remember. But when I had the ability to create and leave a lasting footprint on the world, I would gladly take it. Music, film, writing… or leaving a positive impact on anyone’s life. I always felt that I wasn’t good at articulating as  just how much I cared about others. I would have gladly left everything I could have created behind in a pile of dust if it means I got to make someone I cared about happy.

Hey, congratulations if you’ve made it this for. Or, thank you, really, for reading what I have to say. Only a small fragment of the cube of ice off the tip of the iceberg that is my restless brain. Now you know who I am… feel free to explore what creations I had buried deep within this site. Or turn around if you lack the bravery to face my website. I don’t blame you. But I do pity you.

Enjoy.