Letter: L

CD Number: 6

Track Number: 5

Song: “Superstar” by Lupe Fiasco from the album Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool

Listen to it here

You walk up the stairs, heart racing, head light. Your palms alternate between sweaty and hot and sweaty and cold. This is everything and nothing like you expected it would be. This is the moment you have been preparing for.

You see others running this way and that. They create pockets of chaos that seem burst just where you plan to move next. You ignore them, focus on your breathing, push past. Panic is for people who are not you. Bedlam is for the unprepared.

The air smells of heat, dry ice, and the destiny. The scent of wood soap and saw dust emanates from the floor and mingles with the rest of it in the atmosphere. You take it in but let it pass through you. Sound, odor, sight, all of it. You notice it but do not focus on any of it. There is only the task at hand. Only you, the mic, the crowd, the music. Now, there is nothing else. Perhaps there never was.

Your thoughts stray, briefly, to the future and it gleams. You allow yourself a moment’s indulgence. Then it is back to the here and now. The mic feels heavy. Heavier than you expected. But comforting to. Like a knight must feel with sword in hand about to enter battle. You are ready. You know this.

In front of you, velvet curtains pull closed with a snap. Faintly, like ringing from distant island, you hear applause. You see someone rush past, face dewy and twisted with disappointment. No matter. He is not you. You are prepared.

There is silence. It is but a moment but it seems to stretch out before you, enveloping you, erasing the world around you. Then a crackle. A nasal voice.

“And now, to close the Greewick Seventh Grade Talent Show, Isabelle Smith with her rendition of Kay Perry’s ‘Firework’.”

Showtime.

So, what do you think? Enjoy it? If so, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@UnGajje) for various bon mots and links directing you to the newest updates on this site as well as my other various writing gigs (Marvel, Complaint of the Week at the Living Room Times, and New Paris Press, set to debut shortly although information may be available before then here). If not it was not so enjoyable for you, feel free to tell me that too. And still check me out at all those things above. One of them you are bound to like more.

Feedback or questions? Offer them up here or drop me a note at the aforementioned Twitter account, tim[dot]g[dot]stevens[at]gmail[dot]com or Facebook.