sent from: London, UK. destination: El Monte, California, USA

The stage manager came to tell him he was due on stage in an hour. He was scratching out a tune on the violin, a violin he’d not played in 25 years. This is the opportunity, everyone says, your chance to shine, here in the biggest music venue in the city. Me and my violin, and this piece of music, alone? He played the first couple of bars, haltingly. I don’t know the piece, he protested. The stage manager shrugged and walked away. You’re the music genius, that’s what everyone says.
If he went on stage it would be a disaster. If he didn’t he’d let everyone down; the audience, his peers, his friends, his family. He’d be exposed for the fraud he always feared. He stared at the music. A jumble of notes. There was nothing to be done. He knew it was ridiculous. If you’re going to do it, do it big, do it right. He took his bow, and broke it across his knee. Somewhere in his mind this made it alright – somehow this broken bow could still play and with his utter invention on stage he would make art.
He looked at the small broken bow. This was a bad idea. He asked his mentor how he could play this piece with a broken bow. Impossible! His mentor said. But in 30 minutes you will go on and you will play. But I don’t know the piece, he countered again. His mentor shrugged – you have no choice, it is what it is.
He stared again at the notes. 29 minutes till performance.

Everyone’s dreams are like their children or pets; fascinating to you and no-one else, probably because it seems like your brain is running a self-diagnostic and trying to pass on some cryptic (or not-so-cryptic) message. In this case I couldn’t let it pass, I wanted to craft this dream into something readable and that wouldn’t turn someone off the minute I started with – so, I had this amazing dream the other night – boring the reader while they scanned for the bit where I show up naked in public.