Art and Soul

All art is perfectly useless. That’s what he told me. I waited b ackstage for my entrance onto a stage where you could set something on fire if you went too close. Applause… minimal. My performance should be for ghosts who had died too young to perform. Or Shakespeare. Or Michael Jackson. Or Mother. I was never going to live up to the expectations of the dead. Or his. This was one night in twenty-thousand. Importance – minimal. I knew it rationally. He wished me good luck because he knew I expected something, some words that would speak to my soul as the one-hundred twehnty hours of rehearsal had. I stepped on stage. Lights. No lasting memory at all but this moment. No words came from my watering mouth and the only thing that was set on fire was me. Silence. A nervous cough from the audience, and then a cough that lasted forever. Goddamnit, someone get the man a honey drop. I don’t remember the performance at all. I turned into some two dimensional riot. I did get applause. That I remember breathlessly. And after, from him, I got a rose, and a late fast food dinner, and updates on the evening’s football game.