The Last of the Shadow Puppets Live in Bournemouth

As I sat on that chair, in that venue, I felt that I was being drowned in an ocean of impeccable sound. I sat suspended somewhere outside time, being pulled without even noticing into a vague and distant past. Fast forward images and crystal clear recordings of what I have said and what I have seen, now came and went by me like the trees you barely notice from a moving car. I saw a lost glove on heap of snow. A cigarette on the curve of a Lidl parking lot. A bottle of Guinness on a chaise-longue and a book beneath it.
I was on a sofa somewhere, in limbo, watching my own biopic.
Around me, silhouettes danced like vapour above the asphalt on a torrid summer day. Their souls seemed liquified, melting and then floating in the heat.
After a while, this reverie, like all others, ended in silence. The band stopped playing and reality slowly returned to my senses.

I spilled out into the streets carried by waves of people. Outside, in that cold July night, pumped up on confusion and cough medicine I roamed the streets for while. I bought myself an Asti and watched how all around me, drunken shadows were floating disoriented above the concrete. Looking for a fix. A sense of purpose. A quick display of affection. I wandered some more and the wind seemed to scratch my freshly shaved head. A subtle reminder of a temporary insanity.
The Bournemouth Pier stood inert, a spear towards the heart of the sea. I felt a ghost pain jab at my heart as I walked its wooden planks. For a second, I was home and the immeasurable loneliness stretched outwardly towards the unknown, instead of inward, as it always had. It was a good pain, like removing a bandage from a wound that is no longer there.
Eventually, I found my hotel and I sat on the terrace for a while. The books, the music, the places, the people. Everything I have ever held dear and stopped to remember, seemed to echo out there beyond the palm trees, beyond the boats, beyond the sea.
The ghosts of writers that once criss-crossed this world, invited me to sleep promising beautiful dreams. So I went into my room, closed my eyes, but slipped into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke up, seagulls flew nosily above the building and an anaemic sun shone timidly above the entire city. Somewhere in the distance,a plane slowly made its way towards warmer days. Maybe to Portugal, or Spain. I took by bags and decided to follow it...