another twenty minutes before I was even back in the building.
I knew I should head immediately back to the booths but I couldn’t face that weirdness again just yet. Instead, I wandered around backstage, trying doors and finding most of them locked. When I finally found one that wasn’t, I quickly slipped through it without anyone noticing.
One white bustling hallway led to another somewhat less bustling white hallway until I came to a completely silent, completely deserted white hallway. I tried various doors in this hallway until I finally found one unlocked. I opened it and stepped into a plain white room with furniture of shockingly bright colors in striped and polka dot designs. There was nothing in this room besides the furniture, consisting of a single loveseat and several funky armless chairs, except for a mirror on one wall with a magazine rack hanging beside it.
I did what anyone would have done: I chose a magazine and sat down on the loveseat to read it.
When I opened the magazine in the middle, there was a bright psychedelic painting of the late John Lennon of the Beatles, a musical band that was popular over a century ago.
The accompanying article was a description of the process of creating the painting. The writing was so vivid, I could actually hear the squishing sounds of the brush moving through the paint and then scratching against the canvas and all I kept thinking was, This would make a great script. I have to remember this. It would make a great script. Then a woman entered through another door I hadn’t noticed when I’d first come in. with a paper towel, she said, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”
“Well, you’d better hurry up then,” she said tossing the used towel into a basket on the floor beneath the magazine rack.
That’s weird, I thought. I’d swear that basket wasn’t there before. “Hurry up for what?”
“To practice your presentation, of course. Did you forget why you’re here?”
I looked down at the magazine in my lap, my thumb tongues caressing the glossy pages, the colorful image of John Lennon’s face, his famous round eyeglasses. “I guess I did.”
When I looked up, the woman was giving me a disapproving stare, then she shook her head and went back through the door she’d emerged from.
She was right though. I needed to get back. How long had I been in here anyway? It seemed like forever but when I looked again at the magazine, at the words written there, I saw that I had only read the first line of the article. Maybe repeatedly, but I couldn’t be sure. How had I thought a single line would make such a good script? The whole thing was rather mystifying and I wanted to take the magazine back with me, show it to the others and ask them what they saw in it. But, I was afraid that if I took the magazine from the room, something horrible would happen, something I couldn’t predict. I knew without a doubt that I would find myself in huge trouble. Perhaps arrested.
I stood up and hurriedly put the magazine back in the rack and exited the room, wondering which door I had entered to come to this abandoned hallway in the first place. Where the hell was I?
Running up the hall, trying every door along the way, I was distressed to find them all locked. I was on the verge of panicking, of shouting for help, when I tried the last door and it opened into another hall with a few people entering and exiting various doors along it.
I peeked into all the doors I could and at least tried the ones I couldn’t until I found the one which opened on a vaguely familiar scene.
Soon, I was in the busy backstage area again, moving past people and heading for that ridiculous row of booths we were assigned to.
Entering my own booth, I was happy to see David in his and I sat down, breathing a tremendous sigh of relief. After all
I knew I should head immediately back to the booths but I couldn’t face that weirdness again just yet. Instead, I wandered around backstage, trying doors and finding most of them locked. When I finally found one that wasn’t, I quickly slipped through it without anyone noticing.
One white bustling hallway led to another somewhat less bustling white hallway until I came to a completely silent, completely deserted white hallway. I tried various doors in this hallway until I finally found one unlocked. I opened it and stepped into a plain white room with furniture of shockingly bright colors in striped and polka dot designs. There was nothing in this room besides the furniture, consisting of a single loveseat and several funky armless chairs, except for a mirror on one wall with a magazine rack hanging beside it.
I did what anyone would have done: I chose a magazine and sat down on the loveseat to read it.
When I opened the magazine in the middle, there was a bright psychedelic painting of the late John Lennon of the Beatles, a musical band that was popular over a century ago.
The accompanying article was a description of the process of creating the painting. The writing was so vivid, I could actually hear the squishing sounds of the brush moving through the paint and then scratching against the canvas and all I kept thinking was, This would make a great script. I have to remember this. It would make a great script. Then a woman entered through another door I hadn’t noticed when I’d first come in. with a paper towel, she said, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”
“Well, you’d better hurry up then,” she said tossing the used towel into a basket on the floor beneath the magazine rack.
That’s weird, I thought. I’d swear that basket wasn’t there before. “Hurry up for what?”
“To practice your presentation, of course. Did you forget why you’re here?”
I looked down at the magazine in my lap, my thumb tongues caressing the glossy pages, the colorful image of John Lennon’s face, his famous round eyeglasses. “I guess I did.”
When I looked up, the woman was giving me a disapproving stare, then she shook her head and went back through the door she’d emerged from.
She was right though. I needed to get back. How long had I been in here anyway? It seemed like forever but when I looked again at the magazine, at the words written there, I saw that I had only read the first line of the article. Maybe repeatedly, but I couldn’t be sure. How had I thought a single line would make such a good script? The whole thing was rather mystifying and I wanted to take the magazine back with me, show it to the others and ask them what they saw in it. But, I was afraid that if I took the magazine from the room, something horrible would happen, something I couldn’t predict. I knew without a doubt that I would find myself in huge trouble. Perhaps arrested.
I stood up and hurriedly put the magazine back in the rack and exited the room, wondering which door I had entered to come to this abandoned hallway in the first place. Where the hell was I?
Running up the hall, trying every door along the way, I was distressed to find them all locked. I was on the verge of panicking, of shouting for help, when I tried the last door and it opened into another hall with a few people entering and exiting various doors along it.
I peeked into all the doors I could and at least tried the ones I couldn’t until I found the one which opened on a vaguely familiar scene.
Soon, I was in the busy backstage area again, moving past people and heading for that ridiculous row of booths we were assigned to.
Entering my own booth, I was happy to see David in his and I sat down, breathing a tremendous sigh of relief. After all
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