Bright lights.
I'll choke,
you'll bite. "
Imagine being on stage, bright lights shining from every direction, blinding. Imagine knowing there's a script, somewhere, but your mind is blank.
Now picture the audience--this dark mass below you. You know there's people out there. Probably people you know, regardless of their shadow form. You know they're expecting you to speak, to sing, maybe. To dance.
They're expecting something of you. Something good, too.
Now imagine the heat, sweating down your skin. Feel it, swarming around you in hazy clouds. Everything starts burning, your mind gets foggy. Imagine trying to think, to say something, all the while, you're blind, hot, and blank.
Awesome.
Great. Now, think about the pressure.
Your head starts pounding a bit, throbbing with the loud beat of your heart. It's almost as if you can hear the blood pulsing through your veins. Almost, but you can't quite tell what that feeling is.
Your head pounds,
thumps,
feels like it's going to implode into itself.
And you try to think.
"What am I supposed to be doing?" you wonder.
"What on earth am I supposed to do?"
Silence, everywhere.
Someone coughs from the dark mass of shadows below. A few people stir, then it's deathening silence again.
"Crap," you think.
"I'm screwed."
You lift you hand up, wipe the sweat away from your eyes and try to focus. If you could just remember what you were supposed to do, just reach out and grab it.
Suddenly, guitar notes fall out of nowhere, down to your skin, and settle in your ears.
You recognize the music from somewhere, maybe a song you heard months ago...but there's no such thing as words anymore.
The guitar notes turn to heavy strumming, pulling circles behind itself. Your heart jumps a little, happy, confused, and slightly experienced.
A closing feeling takes over, and your air turns to fog,
turns to gas.
It's too thick to breathe in, and it doesn't fit in your lungs.
You can almost feel words stuck in the back of your throat. Words, like somehow they found you again. Even when you thought you were lost.
But you can't breathe, you're sweating, too hot, and blind.
Nothing makes sense, until the strumming picks up.
Heavy turns to hardcore.
You can feel a beat from somewhere. A beat, thumping through the floorboards and shaking the walls.
Your skeleton rattles along, shocked.
With one
hard
hit
on the drum-set, you feel air knocked into you.
The words tumble out,
bare,
naked,
and raw.
Like someone rubbed off their skin slowly, chafing them and
tearing them to small strips
so they could use them
as
wallpaper.
But it feels freeing.
Air seeps in, seeps out.
And words fall from your mouth consistently, as if somehow, they make sense.
Long whiles, the guitar slows down. The drums calm themselves, get quieter. As if you walked into a jar, the noise level feels like.
And you tap your foot, waiting.
And then suddenly,
clearly,
you whisper
your words
to everyone.
One beat
two beat
three beats,
four.
The guitar JUMPS in, followed by a hard STRIKE on a simble, and the music starts getting louder and louder. You whimper into the microphone, almost audible enough to be crying.
The walls are POUNDING,
the floorboards BREAKING,
and everything else is
irrelevant.
And then suddenly, the music stops.
You wait,
wait,
wait...
then hiss the last word
as quiet
as possible.
The lights go out,
and it's darkness everywhere.
This is the song of your heart.
