Larger then Life
Dustin Feyder
Instructor: Kaelie Farrah
Intro. To Creative Writing
Entry 6: Writing exercise 1.4 writing to music 01/18/19
Exercise done wall listening to a sample of music, Music choice today was "Ciaran's Well" By Tarja Turner's LP My Winter Storm
draft # 1st
Lost Track: Larger Than Life
"My life has become a play and I do not know the role I have." -Sanata Arctica-
There is a long moment of silence, the room is dark, every rock star needs a game to play. Daisy Delarose is the lead singer for the band "Wings of Change" Daisy has her game. Daisy uses costumes and set pieces in her stage shows that juxtapose images of sex and pain, lust with tragedy, the soft and harmless with the sharp and deadly. Images like a clean and neat bedroom with an elegant bed carefully made with bloodstained sheets as one of her albums covers. Or a stuffed toy sitting in the melancholy gray light of graveyard, the eyes of the toy covered by barbed wire.
The audience is restless as they await the stage lights turning on. Mist floats down softly from the fans twenty-five feet overhead. A subsuming blue-light shines downcast the stage in unsettling darkness. The chirping of birds comes over the speakers. Daisy is ready to take the stage. Dressed in tight-fitting polyester pants and an elegant leather corset carefully cradling her soft body, today she wears for the last time her tengu mask. After tonight show she will never again need it. Daisy is a monster, she has white wings and rainbow plumage, long tropical tail feathers and talioned feet and a spearing beak. For years she has performed in make-up with hearty cotton gowns hiding her, the mask is the only thing most people could see. Today she takes off the mask. For once in her life Daisy wants to be a woman, she wants to be desired, she needs to be needed.
Daisy demonstrates as she walks onto the stage the outlandish vocals skills she has learned over the decades. She hums a few notes then bellows a phantasmal moan. A banshee-like cry fills the air before she has even turned on her microphone Daisy has a voice any opera singer would kill for, and modern sound equipment has only made her better.
The first spotlight fires, but it is not the over Daisy, it is her violinist, Daisy loves string interments, the violin, the cello, the guitar, all symbols of famine power. If men can claim trumpets as their interment Daisy wants the cello to be hers. Daisy takes a long breath. The lights in the room become the flashes of lighting. Daisy opens her mouth and lets loose the gist of her power. A falcon like scream shatters the air, flashing white and yellow lights follow echoing the thundering of drums.
At last, the light over Daisy's head ignites, and a laser show ensues. Daisy holds a wing overhead, her feet part taking a power stance as her head drops back holding on to the scream. The stage is freeing, never has the bird been more beautiful thin at this moment, her tail fans around her body, she turns her back letting the audience admire her. She dances across the stage. She drops the tangu masks. For the first time ever allowing herself to be seen for how and what she is. No one seems to notice
Daisy flails her wings, as she sings, she pulls a lag overhead demonstrating her athletic nature, she crawls around leaning over the edge of the stage to whisper with the crowd when she can, Daisy in her playful ambition exudes sexuality. The group loves her. Screams and cheers fill the air, an age of fear has come to an end. The art is greater than the artist. The face under the mask means nothing so long as the music keeps playing and Daisy keeps dancing no one cares about the secrets that she had hidden.
Rainbow lights streak around the room. The enchanted voice of the young performer transcends time and space. The sounds of the band, the views the smoke, all who look upon the stage for a short time are liberated of whatever strife they had as they entered the underground orchestra hall. This moment is magic, Daisy holds her wings out lifting her head to take a breath between songs, she basks in a love she never knew she could have. The lights grow weak the tone changes from battle and fear to melodic loss. The voice of the bird control the emotions of the room.
It was once told that the pen of an artist could humble armies and bring kings to tears, dance is no different. For Daisy this is the height of life, this is the moment, the greatest of all moments. The stage light turns off, cries of the crowd chanting for "Wings of Change" last for several long moments. Daisy stands and watches the group from the shadows until she is grabbed by a bandmate and lead off stage.
As the house lights turn on and the crowd thins Daisy's mask is left sitting on the stage. Daisy thinks about that mask. For half her life that mask was her face, without it who does she become. Without the mask can she still keep her working life, the mystical character she had created for herself, divided from the her that hides in a highrise apartment watching black and white moves and drawing in a notebook. Can the her that is a lonely girl still exist at the same time as the lusty goddess she tries to be on stage?
There is a fear associated with telling people who you are, we will all be asked at some point to take off the mask that we were, but if we do, we enter into the unknown. And once you have left the mask on stage, it is difficult if not impossible to reclaim. The best thing we can hope for sometimes is, if we take off our mask, maybe someone besides us will be the same animal beneath that we are.