Died enough for You [Joel Hokka FF] (English)

From a Kiss

My heart races, my hands are shaking and my breathing gets faster with every breath I take.

My gaze slides to my hand in which I'm holding my microphone and to the guitar hanging around me.

I can barely hear the noise coming from in front of the stage. It is, as if I were in a tunnel, all on my own and the noises coming from the festival premises only sound like a rustle. As if the radio in the car doesn't have any reception.

My gaze goes up again when a hand touches my shoulder. I try to avoid looking at the steps and look at the person standing next to me immediately. „Your first song is playing, you can go onto the stage now.", he explains with a broken English. I nod and wait another little moment until I run onto the stage.

I take a deep breath and dare look at the steps that lead me onto the stage. I have waited so long for this moment. The moment in which I would love to go to the toilet because of my excitement and anticipation, but there's only a few more seconds until I have to be on the stage.

Another breath and the dull suppression of sounds around me fades out. Now I can hear the happy and excited shouts from the audience very clearly. And it's for me. A small German musician who hasn't stepped foot onto a stage in ages and is performing here in Finland where nobody knows her. I was pretty sure of that.

Only a few beats before I start, I run up the steps and onto the stage. The view onto the premises makes me forget to breath for a second. The area is huge and completely full, There literally isn't any space between the crowd of people and everyone is jumping to the melody while I'm telling them to do so.

The lyrics from the first song start and the fear, that my voice just says - Nope, not today. - disappears aswell. How you can describe the feeling on the stage? That's not possible. These feelings that I have in every moment I'm on stage are just a different world, a kind of dream where it feels like everything is perfect and in the right place.

Maybe you can see it like the first kiss when you're really in love. The feeling of a tingle in the entire body but at the same time indescribable.

But a kiss is only a moment, a tiny part of a second. It only lasts for a short time whereas a concert lasts a good bit longer. And this feeling stays the entire time. You can feel this tingle the entire time you're on stage. It just stays indescribable.

After a short greeting after the first song the next one starts already. My gaze looks over the crowd during my guitar solo in the bridge. No matter how unknown you were, they celebrated and tried to sing along as good as possible. The smile on my lips got much bigger when I saw a teenage girl in the first row holing up a sign on which there is a verse of my song and „Shadow Hearts" is written underneath,

I guess somebody does know me here.

For a little while I knee down on the stage and hold eye-contact with the girl which makes her scream. Happy I stand up again and look over the crowd again.

All of a sudden, my breath stops. It's just one look which lets me loose my breath for a tiny bit of a second. I should have known but I still wasn't prepared for it.

Behind the entire crowd of people six young men walked towards the backstage area. As far as I could see they were talking to eachother but as if they heard my thoughts two of them turn their head towards the stage, looking straight at me.

I tried not to let people see the shock I was in and continue singing like before. Again an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach appears as I see how one of the men stay standing and it looks like he is taking a better look at the stage.

It doesn't even take two seconds before he starts walking again and catches up with his friends. They disappear out of my sight which lets me calm down a little again. Nevertheless, my thoughts continue spinning around that person.