Stage Fright Next up is a solo performance by Bradley Cooper!

Upon the grand stage, he would bare his tried soul, and he felt a shaking thread of confidence that bordered on bravado. He walked forward, with his guitars neck gripped in one hand. Bradley seemed an effigy of calm, yet with a network of unstable fault lines running through his nerves. He shook the speakers hand and approached his personal chair and wires, with the amps behind him that ran into the theaters sound system. When he reached the stage-front, he stopped at the edge of the bluff, in the mercy of his vertigo and the breathing darkness below. Bradley sat down and looked out with Neitzsches void gazing back at him. He took a deep breath. His initial practiced note must be first to brave the sea of silhouettes. This first note was a mistake, an abrupt spurt aborted before its complete creation. The fault lines in Bradleys wrists started their own rumbling prelude. He cleared his throat and whispered under his breathLets try this again. His fearful heart was taut. He had a less than perfect restart that iced his nerves, and in fighting the paralysis of stagebite, he played without fluidity in his joints, without the beauty of the pieces innate rhythm. It seemed a mechanical rendition. Bradley was sweating, and his thoughts were gushing through his fingers. At

the height of this moment, he wanted to escape but could not leave it as a total loss. He took a deep breath, stopped playing, and looked into the void. He closed his eyes and retreated to his mind. In the mental refuge, he was forgetting about the situation, about the people. He focused on the way the strings massaged his fingers, with slight pressure. Lets go Bradley, you can do it! the dark cried out, faint as a memory. But Bradley was tuned out. He would play for himself alone. He opened his eyes and looked all around the domed ceiling, rediscovering the awe-inspiring acoustic splendor of the architecture. The sound would be grand, he thought. He was just there to jam, and the people there were only part of the interior design, an expression of the theaters liveliness. Bradley was in space. He started with some perfect fifths and played some heart-spun notes to his own individual rhythm. He added complexity as his souls meanderings flowed and circled out of the guitar like vapors. He rested his head on the guitars waist, and became one with the sound. He stared at the neck and the frets with playful eyes as he strummed and plucked to his hearts content. Bradley took it up a notch, building up to those crescendos he loved from guitar players, classical composers, jazz pianists, and getting in touch with his love for music again. The hollow air burst with emotion, as elicited

from the cores of each audience member. Bradley was building momentum, and after all, he was indeed skilled enough to ride it all the way through. The crescendos, the falls, and the resurgences captured the crowd. Not one part was prescribed from the program menu, and not one collection of notes was written in any books or scripts. When he finally wound down with single notes and half-chords, and the end came about naturally, Bradley was content. The catharsis was a particularly good one this time, as Bradley needed the music to settle down from the thought that he ever had an audience. So he was naturally surprised when in the dark expanse beyond the stage erupted row upon row of standing ovations.

This week's two-page story assignment: Write a story in which fear is followed by transcendence. (Please scan the various class discussion notes, and make sure you include at least a few of the techniques we discussed.)