Month: September 2015

On a dark night outside a Castle in Denmark, a soldier called Bernardo comes to replace the other watchman Francisco. The men can’t see each other because of the dark. Bernardo hears something and asks, “Who’s there?” After both soldiers make sure that they are both watchmen, they relax. Tired, and cold from many hours of guarding, Francisco prepares to go home and sleep.
Not long after, Marcellus joins Bernardo who is another watchman, and Horatio, Prince Hamlet’s friend. Bernardo and Marcellus persuade Horatio to stand watch with them, because they think they’ve seen something. Quietly, they talk about what they have heard the past two nights, and that they want to show Horatio: the ghost of the recently killed King Hamlet, which they think has come to them during the night.
Horatio is unsure, but then the ghost quickly appears and vanishes. Horatio is scared and acknowledges that the ghost looks like the dead King of Denmark, and it even wears the armour King Hamlet wore when he fought against Norway, and that he had the same face he had when he fought against the Polish. Horatio says that the ghost is a warning of bad for Denmark, and that perhaps it is a military attack. He tells the story of King Hamlet’s conquer of lands that belonged to Norway, saying that Fortinbras, the young Prince of Norway, now wants to get back the lands they lost.

Then the ghost appears for a second time, and Horatio tries to speak to it. The ghost says nothing, but disappears again as the cock crows at the first hint of dawn. Horatio then suggests that they tell Prince Hamlet, the dead king’s son, about the ghost. He believes that even though the ghost did not speak to Horatio, it will not refuse to speak to its beloved son.

THEN

You look at the man at the sound desk but can only see an outline of his body. He waves his hands in the air simulating the actions of someone playing the guitar. You laugh at the awkward air guitar but realise that he’s telling you to play something. You take a deep breath and play the easiest riff you know, the thing you know off by heart. The man suddenly cuts your volume down and you look up towards the figure trying to make out what you did wrong, he speaks into your earpiece and tells you to play something else. Your palms begin to feel sticky and wet, you wipe them slowly down on your trousers. You grab the neck of your guitar, dig in your memory for something more complicated, take another deep breath and play. The sound of your guitar and the odd gallop-like delay fills the empty hall and bounces back to you. A feeling of satisfaction fills you. There were no mistakes, let’s just hope it goes that way on the night of the event. The man at the sound desk gives you a thumbs up and moves on the next instrument, the drums, all you can hear now is the awkward sound of a raw drum kit just randomly being hit off beat as if it were in another room. You begin to daydream and think of all the practices you had with the band. Your mind wonders like it was trying to distract you and you fight it off. you won that little battle, let’s hope that DOESN’T happen on the night. Finally it’s the bass guitar’s sound check, he plays a short bass riff and plays around with his pedals a bit then his sound check is over. The fastest, easiest of them all. You then remember when you used to play the bass and music life was so much easier. Again you fight off the distraction. The man then gestures the whole band to play as if he were a conductor. You look at your brother on the drums and your other brother on the bass and nod at them, the drummer then screams “1!, 2!, 3!, 4!” then you play the first song on the list, without any mistakes. You finish and then everyone looks at you, for a moment you think you’ve played something wrong but remember that you play the intro to the next song and all of a sudden, get a small lump in your throat and your eyes tear up. Everything around you seems to be getting hotter and hotter but you know it’s just you being nervous. The singer speaks into the microphone and says “come on man! you should’ve started by now!”. You get even hotter with all the pressure and attention on you. Gravity begins to feel like its stronger on you alone, you look up, breath out and start the next song.

NOW

Here you are again, on that same stage you once dreamed of being on but now were dreading. The same stage you pictured yourself on in front of thousands of people but now were too afraid to be on. The hall is dark and dimly lit. The video is playing on the big screen behind you. The music in the video is building up and you know that you are up soon, the video finishes and the crowd applaud. That’s your queue. The light focuses on the stage, the people continue to clap. The spotlight blinds your eyes. You can’t see anyone so you just look down at your pedal set-up to check if everything is in its correct position. The drummer begins and everyone else joins, clapping along to the bass drum. The first song begins a bit stiff but you get looser and looser by the end. You finish and now it’s your turn to start the next song. You close your eyes and play the guitar lead line just as you had remembered it and open your eyes to see the crowd all looking at you. That same small sudden heat from the sound check creeps back and urges through your brain, trying to take control over your body. You resist it but know it will come back again. Your fingers begin to shake. You cannot gain control of them. A trickle of sweat slides down the side of your face and you feel it go into your mouth. It tastes salty and you try to spit it out but remember that the attention of a thousand people are on you. A sudden pulse of heat races through your body at the thought of making a mistake in front of that number of people. The extreme heat resonates through your bones as if you were an instrument that something was playing. The only thing you can hear now is the music as if it were in another room, muted and muffled. There’s an annoying ring in your ear as if something had exploded right next to you. Everything seems to be fading away from you. You step out of your skin and take everything in as it is. You realise that you haven’t made any mistakes so far and you join your flesh back on stage. You fall back to earth and continue to play. You let your mind think of something else to distract the worry of making a mistake and it works. You’re playing everything smoothly. “You know that feeling that you get when you know you’re doing something right and then it all suddenly goes wrong?”. Well that happened. You make a mistake and the musicians all look at you with a face of discontent. Everything you felt in those last moments hit you like a wall. You just want to get this over with now but the songs just seem to get slower and slower as you move further down the list. The last song seems so far away.

This was once your biggest dream but now your worst nightmare.