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 "Ready? It's your turn." The band was being ushered onto the stage after what seemed an endless wait.
They were waiting backstage. The cheers of the audience could be heard, their voices as one with the singer during the refrain. A last shout of delirium before the last notes of the song lost in the air.
Now, their first performance in front of a foreign public had arrived.
"Fingers crossed", Leonard, the drummer of the group, whispered to himself.
Jack turned towards him smiling nervously, a light of emotion in his eyes.
The band was introduced. The stage opened in front of them, immense and ready to swallow them.
"Hello everybody", greeted Jack with a slight trembling voice. The audience exploded: shouts, arms lifted in the air, hands that agitated trying to be noticed. Jack had dreamed of this moment for so long, but now it seemed the most absurd thing that could happen to him.
His dream was there, before him and longed for him to open his mouth and sing.
God, if it's a dream, don't wake me, it's too wonderful.
The public calmed down a little. Lights were turned down low.
Leonard hit the drumsticks three times. Simon and Nathan cast a glance of mutual understanding at each other and brushed their plectra across their guitars. The first notes of the song which in a few months had taken them to the top of the charts made the audience explode again.
Now it was Jack's turn. While he was singing his faraway look skimmed the audience: he did it, at last he had got out of the cage of anonymity and of a life he never accepted.
All those people... they were there for them, to hear their music.
"Have you ever had an impossible dream to achieve? (...) We all have one... Wouldn't you tell me"...
It was his song, their music, his words...
Jack urged on the public to sing his refrain with him, but it wasn't necessary: a multitude of voices had already raised from the stadium and had united with his.
These were his fifteen minutes. He had arrived. Jack smiled enthusiastically: yes, he could be said to be a winner.
* * *
Have you ever had an impossible dream to achieve..., Eleonora was singing, still ravished by a song which was already 6 years old.
She smiled while threading a needle through the piece of cloth, trying to give a regular edge to something shapeless. It was unusual for her to do such things: sewing, engaging herself in a work considered "feminine". Usually she did it because she was obliged to, not because she enjoyed it!
But you could also change your ideas sometimes.
"Here it is!", she claimed satisfied, cutting the thread with the scissors and finishing off with a small knot. She only had to sew it all on the shoulder bag and her "work of art" could be said to be finished.
She looked at that piece of painted cloth, thoughtfully. It seemed a paradox the fact that one song could have affected her life so much.
Sometimes the most beautiful things happened in the most unusual and unpredictable ways.
It was strange to think that later on that band had split up and in a way which couldn't leave you a little bit perplexed and embittered.
Probably she was wrong in taking it so heartily, but what Eleonora hadn't understood at the age of 18 she understood it now that she was 20: you couldn't pretend that your actions had not any influence on others.
And today, 6 years later, Eleonora had felt ready to walk with her own feet and to create something that could represent her real self.
The last notes of the song echoed in the room. Eleonora stood up and switched off the stereo. She didn't feel like listening to the other tracks too.
She finished her work in silence, aware only of the needle and of the thread which passed from the piece of cloth to the pocket of her shoulder bag.
Hum, yes I like it. Eleonora gazed at her little creation. Then she put it on the bed. "What is your impossible dream?" she read once again before leaving the room.
In the living room she picked up the phone and dialled her best friend's number, Federica's.
* * *
The cigarette between his fingers gave him a sort of confidence: it was like doing something while doing nothing. Or while waiting for something to happen.
Sometimes Giulio thought about it: if he hadn't had such parents like his, if society had been a little bit different, if things hadn't gone that way...
He raised the cigarette to his lips and inhaled the smoke. There was no hope, no way out.
He could spent his whole life on those steps in front of the university, waiting for the day to pass. While all those "daddy's boys" went in to get an education. Giulio looked at the majority of them with contempt: they seemed to be so satisfied and happy...
If only he had known how to live his life differently, maybe now he wouldn't be waiting for that cigarette to come to its end to lit another.
One afternoon he had seen an insignificant-looking girl, who caused that question to spin in his head: what is your impossible dream...
That really was the point: if his dream had been possible, he would have exerted himself to realize it, but unfortunately it wasn't. And he couldn't help it.
There had been a moment in which Giulio had felt the urgency of looking for that girl and asking what she had wanted to say by painting that question on her bag. As if she could have answered to all his questions.
What a fool, he thought breathing out slowly, the look lost in the void.
* * *
- Have you ever had an impossible dream to achieve? - had sung Jack 6 years before on that stage.
- What kind of life do you want to live? - he had gone on already intoxicated by the first illusions of success.
- We all have one... Wouldn't you tell me yours? - Eleonora had given these words a new life.
- It's a bet, a bet on you - it was the bet she had wanted to ran the risk of losing.
- Your greatest bliss or your deepest curse - it's the end only you can choose for yourself.
Story Info
- Story written by Lara and translated from the Italian by Marta, 2003
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