Status: complete
Somewhere in NYC
Touching The Clouds
“We love you all, thank you, goodnight!” you hear Alex shout at the crowd as you give a few last strums before running off stage and giving your guitar to your guitar tech as you make headway to the dressing room, your jaw aching from smiling so wide for so long. It was your second show back on tour in Britain, and right now you are on top of the world.
Constantly travelling from country to country meant that your body clock was constantly fucked. Spending two weeks in a time zone at a time isn’t really the best way to spend time if you want to be able to have regular sleep at the country’s acknowledged proper time for sleep, and so you find yourself with nothing to do, sat in the front lounge at four in the morning watching the pylons go past and feeling like it’s nine in the evening, the rest of the guys being too tired to stay up and do anything tonight.
You know that you’re probably expected to be ready to go to interviews and sound check in six hours, and you end up wishing that you just had a normal job, nine till five in an office, what could go wrong with that? You feel yourself starting to slowly drift to sleep, but as your eyes close, you are roughly shaken awake.
“Jack! Jack!” you hear shouted at you as you blink blearily awake. The first thing you notice is this isn’t a tour bus. The second thing you notice is this isn’t a hotel. The third thing you notice is that’s Alex shouting your name from across the room as you sit up and take a look around.
“Finally!” Alex says exasperatedly, “look I don’t know if you’re going in to work today or not but at some point I’d like you to go and get that beer you’ve been promising to go and get from the store for the past week because Rian’s coming over tonight in case you forgot and Jack Daniels isn’t the way I want that to go down. Jack come on, shake yourself you look dazed,” Alex says walking over to where you’re lying down on the bed, “good dream?” Luckily Alex doesn’t give you time to reply. “Well I’ll see you later,” he says leaning down to kiss you on the lips before he goes to grab his briefcase, a hurried “have a nice day!” his parting message.
You stay paralyzed for a moment laying down in bed about ten million questions buzzing around your head so you can’t concentrate on one and it all just becomes a jumbled net of crossed thoughts trapping you on your back and inflicting a ringing in your ears.
You swing your legs out from under the covers and the first thing that catches your eye is the alarm clock; 7:50am 10/12/13 apparently. Well at least that hasn’t changed too much… but as you look around the room you realise everything else has.
‘Maybe this is just one of those dreams that feel like you’re awake while you’re in them...’ you think to yourself, and yeah, that is the most logical explanation you’ve come up with to the problem that you’re in an entirely new place you’ve never seen before and apparently you should be up for work by eight and Alex thinks it’s normal to kiss you on the lips when he leaves for wherever the hell he was going with that briefcase.
Looking around the room you see stacks of movies and books on the shelves, ones that you know either yourself or Alex likes. There’s a cd player with one hell of a sound system and a nice décor that you think is probably something your subconscious would pick out for you, just cream and boring but with one deep red feature wall to break it up, and at first opinion you think it’s a pretty attractive room.
You walk down the corridor and find yourself in what you presume is the living room with a widescreen tv and two incredibly comfy looking sofas. The breakfast bar separates the living room from the kitchen and there are three stools with empty cider bottles and a fruit bowl on the side. The expensive coffee maker looks like the same one you actually do have at home and that is pretty much enough confirmation for you that you’re dreaming. Dreams are just random parts of your actual life shaken up by your subconscious in to something completely different and almost unfathomable; and that’s what this feels like.
Padding your way back to the bedroom, you realise that all the curtains have been closed thus far, and walk over to the silky fabric to peel one open. The scene that meets you makes your jaw drop. You’ve seen some nice views while you’ve been touring the world, but this takes the gold. It’s New York City from the one hundred and tenth floor. The sun rising from behind you at this perspective gives the city a warm orange glow and the streets below have already begun to buzz with traffic and people, but you can’t hear it from this high up almost touching the clouds.
The phone is the only thing that manages to shake you from your daze when you hear it vibrating on the bedside table, and as you walk over you realise it’s a picture of Alex flashing up as he’s calling, so it’s your phone, unless Alex is even more vain than you thought and has his background set to himself, which you wouldn’t put past him.
“Hello?”
“Hey!” you hear called back over the background noise of traffic and people, “so apparently I got it wrong and work don’t need me till twelve today, so do you want to meet me for breakfast?”
“Um,” you reply. Honestly you’d love to but it’s New York City and you don’t think you’d find him here, but then again, this is a dream, you could probably jump out this window and survive to meet him in ten minutes. “Yeah sure,” you decide, “where?”
“What do you mean where? Where we always meet, the coffee shop around the corner, dumb ass.”
“Right yeah,” you say, trying to put a smile in to your voice.
“See you in five, Jacko.”
Constantly travelling from country to country meant that your body clock was constantly fucked. Spending two weeks in a time zone at a time isn’t really the best way to spend time if you want to be able to have regular sleep at the country’s acknowledged proper time for sleep, and so you find yourself with nothing to do, sat in the front lounge at four in the morning watching the pylons go past and feeling like it’s nine in the evening, the rest of the guys being too tired to stay up and do anything tonight.
You know that you’re probably expected to be ready to go to interviews and sound check in six hours, and you end up wishing that you just had a normal job, nine till five in an office, what could go wrong with that? You feel yourself starting to slowly drift to sleep, but as your eyes close, you are roughly shaken awake.
“Jack! Jack!” you hear shouted at you as you blink blearily awake. The first thing you notice is this isn’t a tour bus. The second thing you notice is this isn’t a hotel. The third thing you notice is that’s Alex shouting your name from across the room as you sit up and take a look around.
“Finally!” Alex says exasperatedly, “look I don’t know if you’re going in to work today or not but at some point I’d like you to go and get that beer you’ve been promising to go and get from the store for the past week because Rian’s coming over tonight in case you forgot and Jack Daniels isn’t the way I want that to go down. Jack come on, shake yourself you look dazed,” Alex says walking over to where you’re lying down on the bed, “good dream?” Luckily Alex doesn’t give you time to reply. “Well I’ll see you later,” he says leaning down to kiss you on the lips before he goes to grab his briefcase, a hurried “have a nice day!” his parting message.
You stay paralyzed for a moment laying down in bed about ten million questions buzzing around your head so you can’t concentrate on one and it all just becomes a jumbled net of crossed thoughts trapping you on your back and inflicting a ringing in your ears.
You swing your legs out from under the covers and the first thing that catches your eye is the alarm clock; 7:50am 10/12/13 apparently. Well at least that hasn’t changed too much… but as you look around the room you realise everything else has.
‘Maybe this is just one of those dreams that feel like you’re awake while you’re in them...’ you think to yourself, and yeah, that is the most logical explanation you’ve come up with to the problem that you’re in an entirely new place you’ve never seen before and apparently you should be up for work by eight and Alex thinks it’s normal to kiss you on the lips when he leaves for wherever the hell he was going with that briefcase.
Looking around the room you see stacks of movies and books on the shelves, ones that you know either yourself or Alex likes. There’s a cd player with one hell of a sound system and a nice décor that you think is probably something your subconscious would pick out for you, just cream and boring but with one deep red feature wall to break it up, and at first opinion you think it’s a pretty attractive room.
You walk down the corridor and find yourself in what you presume is the living room with a widescreen tv and two incredibly comfy looking sofas. The breakfast bar separates the living room from the kitchen and there are three stools with empty cider bottles and a fruit bowl on the side. The expensive coffee maker looks like the same one you actually do have at home and that is pretty much enough confirmation for you that you’re dreaming. Dreams are just random parts of your actual life shaken up by your subconscious in to something completely different and almost unfathomable; and that’s what this feels like.
Padding your way back to the bedroom, you realise that all the curtains have been closed thus far, and walk over to the silky fabric to peel one open. The scene that meets you makes your jaw drop. You’ve seen some nice views while you’ve been touring the world, but this takes the gold. It’s New York City from the one hundred and tenth floor. The sun rising from behind you at this perspective gives the city a warm orange glow and the streets below have already begun to buzz with traffic and people, but you can’t hear it from this high up almost touching the clouds.
The phone is the only thing that manages to shake you from your daze when you hear it vibrating on the bedside table, and as you walk over you realise it’s a picture of Alex flashing up as he’s calling, so it’s your phone, unless Alex is even more vain than you thought and has his background set to himself, which you wouldn’t put past him.
“Hello?”
“Hey!” you hear called back over the background noise of traffic and people, “so apparently I got it wrong and work don’t need me till twelve today, so do you want to meet me for breakfast?”
“Um,” you reply. Honestly you’d love to but it’s New York City and you don’t think you’d find him here, but then again, this is a dream, you could probably jump out this window and survive to meet him in ten minutes. “Yeah sure,” you decide, “where?”
“What do you mean where? Where we always meet, the coffee shop around the corner, dumb ass.”
“Right yeah,” you say, trying to put a smile in to your voice.
“See you in five, Jacko.”