D-Day

D-Day.

I.

     The first thing I clearly remember about ‘D-Day’ is Adam Deeble’s look of woe as I approached him in the almost empty assembly hall at Philip Morant School during the morning of April 4^th 2004. The look came complete with a shy, shuffling motion and eyes which were not quite able to meet my own. This body language was actually the norm for Adam but over the last year we had become good friends, bonding at first over Dire Straights in the PE changing rooms, and therefore such awkward body language was not presented before me anymore by him.

     My heart sank. I knew what was going to come out of his mouth: ‘Lundi, I forgot my wireless guitar system, i'm sorry.’ It did come out, word for word and I stared at him blankly unable to speak. This was the day of days. This was the day my life changed. I had planned it meticulously like a father plans for a daughter’s wedding, and every detail was complete.

     Except that damn wireless system which Adam had forgotten.

     I had only known Adam for a year but a year is enough time to get to know a person’s edges at least. He had no malice in him, and perhaps if he had, he would have let me suffer for longer. But Adam’s kindness always outshone his other character traits; after watching my heart sink for about ten seconds he smiled and my heart leaped.

     ‘Only kidding’, he said mildly. He was wearing a crafty smile which I grew to know very well during the next ten years.

     ‘You b*****d!’ I said, half laughing, half scowling. We laughed together as he plopped the black piece of hardware into my hands and I realized then that this was really going to happen. Every piece had jigsawed into place; all that was left was the final showdown. A roulette table formed in my subconscious. Hit red and your life is just beginning. Hit black...and it just carries on.

     The difference between the situation I am about to explain to you, and a roulette table, is that playing roulette does not require mental strength, passion and steadfast determination, just luck and maybe a side-helping of greed. Did I hit red?

     I smashed it.

  

II.

 

     One year previous I had been crying on the landing of my parent’s house; Prudence the Burmese beast purring and comforting and nudging me gently with her wet nose. I vividly remember thinking some thoughts then which turned out to affect my life in a major way. I pulled off my outer-casing of denial and as I sat up and wiped tears from my cheeks, I spoke to myself truthfully, as one might do during a prayer.

     ‘Luke. The ways things are now my friend, you cannot even answer the register in class for fear of saying a word in front of thirty people. You are a good boy, never spiteful, never malicious, but you have let something shrivel your mind into a timid and cowering deer-in-the-headlights. You confidence does not exist. You cannot even look at a girl without blushing. Next year you are sixteen. Do you think that the peers you share you science and maths classes with are not already experimenting with sex? Next year, your whole year group will be. Their confidence grows with their testosterone while your’s continues to diminish down a black hole.

     If you stay this way, you will never be married. You will never have a job. You will never have children, a normal life, or happiness.

     Do not sit on this landing carpet blubbing. Do something about it. Now.’

     Obviously these thoughts occurred about eleven years ago and so their accuracy is probably that of a drunken crossbowman, but the part written in italics is definately very close. I decided I had to change, and I came up with a plan.

 

III.

 

     Back in the days of year ten, I was obsessed with britpop bands like Oasis and Blur, but particularly Pink Floyd. I had always had a driving passion for music. I took to the clarinet at the age of ten much faster than the average pupil, and during my free time at home during years nine and ten, I would spend hours and hours writing up classical compositions using a piece of music software: ‘Sibelius’. I would copy Tchaikovsky’s symphonies from miniature score books, and often dreamt of playing guitar in a band, rocking the stage and screaming backing vocals while a thousand gorgeous women fluttered their eyelashes and fainted at the sight of me dominating the set.

     My plan was simple, but tremendously difficult considering I had the confidence of a woman attempting to swim the Atlantic blindfolded. I would get a guitar. I would learn this guitar. I would become the best at this guitar. The kids at my school would never have heard such an amazing sound and never would again. I would keep my skills hidden as best I could, and then when the time came, I would unleash them in front of the whole school in a frenzy of mind-bending electric guitar solos with a metaphorical middle-finger pointed to every bully who had ever tormented me, and every girl who had uttered a disgusted ‘Urrgh’ whenever I walked past.

     My secret plan, known only to myself began when I received a Yamaha Pacifica electric guitar for my fifteenth birthday complete with a small 50-watt amp. Every day after school I practiced until I thought my hands would fall off. I averaged upwards of five hours a day practice during school days, and about eight hours during weekends.

     After two weeks I could play Noel Gallagher’s most difficult licks. After a month I was reciting ‘Dark side of the moon’ from memory, and after three months of solid practice, unbeknownst to almost anyone else except for my family, I was easily the best guitarist in school.

     I joined ‘Rock School’ around the time I received my guitar, and was thrown in with a band who needed a rhythm guitarist. Most of the members were older than me and at the time I almost saw them as rock gods. After two weeks it was the other way round. Every Thursday we would practice together as a band and I occasionally caught some jaw-dropping from the other members as my skills improved day-by-day.

     The overall plan though, was not just to become a dazzling guitarist, but to prove something to myself and the whole school.

     Every April as the school began to wind down for the summer and the year elevens left for college, there was a final assembly hosted by the headteacher Mr. Moon (Bush), and the Deputy headteacher Mr. Keenan (Cheney).  Philip Morant was a big school which also incorporated a sixth form college and we were once told by the headteacher that the final assembly would host almost two thousand students and teachers. My plan was to surprise everybody; to force their eyes from their sockets actually, by getting up onto the podium where Mr. Moon gave his tedious nonsensical and patronizing speech, and play the most blinding guitar solo any in the room had ever heard.

      This kind of plan took confidence of the highest magnitude however, and as stated before, I had zilch, and so I came up with a way to psyche myself up for the big day and make my dream into a reality.

 

IV.

 

     A year before the fabled D-Day, I began going to bed at night with my CD player next to me on my bedside table and my headphones in my ears. Every single night of that year without fail, I played either ‘The best of Van Halen’, ‘Passion and Warfare’ by Steve Vai, or any of my other crazy virtuoso guitar-based albums. As I turned out the light I would close my eyes and imagine myself on stage in front of thousands of people. In these fantasies I owned the world. I did not know fear. I was the king of rock guitar and everyone in the audience loved me. Sometimes during the fantasies, I would dive into the crowd who would catch me, women swooning and men wishing beyond anything that they were me.

     I did not realize at the time that what I was doing was actually a form of deep meditation. Whilst in this zone and just after it, I felt truly exhilarated and happy. I shivered all over. My heart pounded with excitement. I almost was on that stage. It really did almost feel like it.

     The idea behind this constant fantasizing was to get used to the idea of being on that stage, even though it was all in my imagination. I spent that year trying with extraordinary passion to turn my fantasies into possibilities. As I learnt many years later, fantasy and reality can merge.