Simona and I did another Collective Cadence show, and this time we even travelled with a kind of tour manager. Somehow we managed to miss our flights back, so we had to book another night at the hotel and fly the next day.

There was one bright side though: the hotel had a swimming pool, which I was really looking forward to make use of. So we get to the hotel, I’m already at the elevator ready to drop my stuff in the room and quickly change. It’s almost 9 PM, the pool closes at 10, there’s still time for a nice swim. But wait, we don’t have our old rooms, we need to check in again. Simona’s gone somewhere (probably working) so I send the tour manager to the reception while I make sure we don’t miss the elevator. Efficient!

Tour manager guy keeps eye contact with me while slowly approaching the receptionist. He’s taking his time, hurry up man!

“Hey there Joe” he says. I notice the receptionist’s tag does indeed say Joe. Our guy has people skills, hooray. “Joe, I really need your help, we need to check in. Me and my friend missed our flight, we booked another night here, and he’s murdered someone…”

“I did not!” I yell from next to the elevator. How could he say this?

“No,” he says, “of course, he’s absolutely innocent, he is. Please Joe, can you find us a good place to stay?”

“I understand perfectly, sir” Joe says, and he presses a button. Out comes a wooden contraption with places for hands and head, the design could be Medieval but this is very polished and modern, actually looks inviting in that impersonal hotel kind of way “if you’ll please sit there”. What else can I do?

The wooden thing closes around me, I can’t move anymore, the smell of wood engulfs me, I can barely hear and when I talk it comes out muffled. I’m looking at our tour guy, he can’t really see my face anymore but I’m definitely frowning.

“You’re the worst person I know.” I tell him. He’s looking at me with some fabricated empathy, but I can see he’s proud of how he’s handled the situation. I’m just so angry!

“I should have murdered you” I say, as a joke of course. Is this a time to be funny? No one’s laughing. “Wait, that’s not right. I meant to say - I should have murdered you.”

Now, was this a dream I just woke up from? Yes.1

Are we doing Collective Cadence again? Yes, 29 March, here in Bucharest. No tour manager needed, lucky for me.

  1. but nobody wants to hear fake dream stories, right? ↩