Master The Day

Blue Eyes and Red Lips

The drums crashed behind me.

The strings of the guitar rang on my left, loudly in a kind of chorus that didn't line up with the drums. 

I start doing random vocal warm-ups into the microphone in front of me, swaying back and forth slightly. We don't know what we're doing here. We're about to play on a real stage in front of real people, pack it all up, and do it tomorrow and the day after and again for almost five months. We'd done shows before, but nothing, nothing like this. We barely even know how to sound check, honestly. We just play a few songs and do some random stuff and then get off the stage and wait for the show to start.

So, once everyone stops messing with their respective instruments, we start playing the first song. And the first rolls into the second, and the second into the third and the last. Those aren't all the songs we have, but that's all we need to check. So, now we're done. We have about an hour before the show starts, and I start to fathom the possibility that this won't be our only big thing. Maybe one day we'll be big, but hopefully we play forever. I love these guys, and I love what we've created.

I walk off stage, the other members following me. We all head back to the area backstage where we just hang out. It's like normal, we all just sit there on our phones or eating or watching a movie. Usually, we start listening to music about half an hour before the show, to start to get us warmed up and ready for the performance. But, for now, we're all just chilling. We'll do what we're told and if there's something that needs to get done, we'll do it. We're not really in that place where we're entitled to anything. We just play a show, talk to the fans, take pictures with real smiles and then sleep. Nothing really important about us. 

I sit on the couch with a plop, Elliot sitting beside me. He's the guitarist, one of my closest friends. He puts his arm around my shoulders and then around Angel's, the drummer, when he sits down. Elliot pulls us both close, leaning against him now, with a small laugh. I smile and lean on him. Angel tries to pull away, to no prevail, and gives up. He leans against Elliot, eventually readjusting so that he's laying on Elliot's lap, facing up, with his heads hanging off the side of the couch. We have about a million other places to sit, but we're practically family, so we share a couch. 

The bands that are opening for us- oh I forgot to mention that. We have openers too, I know! This is gonna be a great tour. Anyway- the bands that are opening for us are checking a little right now, so we basically just stay, laying on top of each other, messing on our phones with no intent to move. 

"Silas?" A soft voice calls from the small bathroom that's connected to the room we're in. "Can you come here really quick?"

The voice comes from Lucy, my girlfriend. She's the sweetest girl I've ever met. I untangle myself from Elliot and Angel and head over to the bathroom. Lucy is standing in front of the mirror, her long blonde hair in pigtail-buns. She's got some makeup laid out on the counter, and she looks like she's trying to decide between colors, which she definitely is.

"So, the album colors are red and blue, right? So, do you think blue eyes and red lips? Or should I try blue lips? Purple?" She asks, turning to face me instead of looking at me from the mirror.

I smile at her, and she laughs a little bit. 

"I think that you should do blue eyes and red lips. That'd look great on you." I say, looking into her eyes. Her eyes are a dark brown, which is a terrible color, but somehow she makes it beautiful. She's beautiful. She's about an inch or two shorter than me, has a decently slim build, and is just sweet all around. 

"Okay. Thank you." She said, her eyes wrinkling up as she smiled. I place a quick kiss on her cheek and head back to the couch. When I sit back down,  Elliot messes with my hair a little bit and leans himself on me, and I'm sure it's just to mess with me. I lean back on him, and pull out my phone. We have about 45 minutes before the show starts, so I just scroll through Instagram for a little. I'm on my own account, but I also usually run the band's account for the most part. 

The first thing I notice is that I have 9 new messages from the last time I looked at my phone, which literally was before I went into the bathroom with Lucy. I look at them, and they're all people tagging me in stories of either them getting ready to see the show, standing in line for the show, or hearing the soundcheck for the show. How is this possible? There are lines? This is awesome!

"Elliot, Angel, they made a line, like people camped for this. That's insane!" I say almost as soon as I realized that it meant that people actually wanted to see us. Elliot looks at my phone, and a smile grows on his face. Angel tries to look over, but can't really from his angle. "Guys, stay where you are, let's just put a video on the band Instagram." I say.

I switch the accounts on my phone and get ready to record, leaning more against Elliot.

"Hey guys this is so cool I just wanna say thank you for everything, we were just made aware that people are like, lining up for this?" I said with a small laugh.

Elliot took the phone out of my hand and looked into the camera, "What're y'all doing? Go watch some actually good band!"

Angel laughed, "No! Fuel our egos!" As the time ran up. I laughed as I took the phone back and posted the video. I readjusted myself so that my head was next to Angel's, on Elliot's lap too. Elliot just laughed and we all continued on our phones.

After about 10 minutes, Lucy came out of the bathroom and laughed at the sight of us all completely in the others' personal space. She pulled out her phone and took a picture of us, and sat down in another chair. We made light conversation for a little bit until Angel randomly started some music. That's what we used to do, one of us would just put on music and that was our cue, it was time to get ready.

I guess it's time to do this.