“Is this what they nowadays regard as talent?”

Infinitesimal drone with glazed eye  ensemble  whose soul resembles a low spooky movie.”

World weary lady executives with glossy but somehow jaded  eyebrows raised as this stiff joint Jazz rock singer with an equally log wood stumble  band who played to deaf ears.

On a leisure, pleasure cruise that mock rehearsal for dream float or flotilla exuberant luscious fantasy, wouldn’t some holiday makers have tonne laden burdens enough to escape from?

“This next number ….

DULL DAZES AHEAD.”

Embarrassed giggles … some smothered … others guffawing with irony.

The support unit eerie peeper musicians  were even as leaden as the lifeless songster if not more so.

Chronic in their statuesque pose.

Limp gesture and gesticulation permeating.

Puppet parody in their emotionless almost motionless nervy wobble jive.

The clothes worn by the musicians crinkled with grey stain second hand use.

Two guitars, drums that go without saying.

The essential ensemble group whose lethargy bordered on boundless farce yet one had this sinister inkling of shady antics afoot. 

A bemused crowd though docile were quite eventually starting to wonder why they coughed up their coin  to see  this nondescript troupe on stage.

“How were we so gullible as to accept unverified recommendation  that a visionary group was going to surprise us.” 

What seemed like this toneless drone which meandered and waylaid for Infinity and indeed was made even more  considerably taxing and heaven knows it was an imposition enough even by any reasonable person’ s standards if one takes into consideration to an immense degree that record executives and their associated talent scouts have to endure an astounding range of people who aspire to planet Mar’s eminence  whose assumed aptitude  and  potential for future attainment can appear fixedly lodged in the upper hemispheres of improbable fantasy.

Though one must factor into  the above observation to include people of extraordinary prowess who failed to surmount  the peaks of regal blue piercing skyline obstacles despite their flair and gosh a subatomic cluster though miniature posses this. 

“It’s getting more excruciating by the second now.

It’s a quite grotesque.  Aurelia … and her associates.

These ancillary members,

they have fool’s gold tag  nicknames. 

I think copy cat and dead dog.”

Knowing glances were exchanged but that doesn’t leave much to the imagination and one must also observe that some though not all have rather blinkered euphemisms  in the drought ridden province of visual  mental powers of discernment.

But dead dog and copy cat … hmm. 

And then of course the  haute monde  titled as  the talent scouts that were sly side shadow sneaking towards the exit doors.

Well a minuscule sum  at this point though not insignificant though. 

Well, some were surreptitious in their innovative sly boots cunning  wriggle out of stupor. 

“Some  managed a vanishing act …. as if they were trick photography stunt folk who would have audiences gasping whilst they perform or at least attempt some trick of the light … the life and this may happen in what is a coyly coined code worded pointer to the environs we dwell in.

“This next cut from our catalogues  is called YAWN…..”

Dead dog whose countenance lived up to his anymore ? …. any less any anything sphere  at that parallel  level of levels you are entitled to envisage.

“Guffaws of laughter … what’s the big joke… you said something funny.”

As the monotone chord of “ Yawn” begin the ennui splotched haze  to this puzzling protracted audition was  equally drab for a pleasure cruise  a numbing routine number of lamentable  whacks and stabs to make this oceanic space in this  navel medium of travel  a little bit more intriguing.

The curtains, which many begged fervently to drop but didn't, were festooned  with some images of story book heroines and hero’s.

The screen morphed  behind the band had this spooky Halloween diversion with freak nocturne ripple splashes on beams.

The music combination had  

 piled on the yawners  until the audiences were on  a drowse,  half-asleep especially during numbers like “sequential hypnotiser”, “blank expression”, 

“zero personality,” 

“dim to the core.”

“Blase Etc” even integrated into the set list.

Those who remained fixed in their seats seem to be handicapped by a lack of mobile egress.

Bizarre or hardly surprising and now those who sashayed and  slipped out might be casting a crusher of a vote  with their feet.

Perhaps a surfeit a clinical surface a surplus of the most lacklustre assembly of this  uncool amateurish lot  had the most drastic impact of the other kind which no  entertainer worth their salt  might anticipate yet but most definitely not at the incipient phase of their career.

“What’s this, one talent scout, now it wouldn’t be someone or is going to …”

Lights flicker, start  to dim and Aurelia  threw a very twinkling  garment that had faux jewellery at them.

The other musicians skulked in the fatigue edging blurred tarpaulin 

backcloth.

The wails of odious hokum that  emanate from the stage and indecipherable doggerel compounded by the torpor  dissipating through an overdulled crowd doused whilst on a shift round those probing trance trash form loop of yuck.

This is where the sleepy audience felt they were enshrouded in a coma but they felt a consciousness  of another kind even as they appeared to be in a daze.  

Suddenly, Aurelia leapt off the stage in almost   semi circular sky dive. 

Her garb had a deathly 

“Ah, you  

probably  think this is quite a dreary mock up …. Not quite.”

Are we going to see some action at last a silent mordant phrase on a stymied co-opted expressionist attenders.

In a deep droning voice she began to MIND READ with spoof horror movie element accuracy. 

“You dreamt of stealing apples, when so very young, snatching, hiding, you, yes, you pointing finger.” 

At various members of  dwindling concertgoers on the fringes of self- implosion.

“We have been transformed in seconds flat from being a clique quite brazen in a numbed state of dullness caused by this blase group on podium yet now…

“What’s this … Aurelia you cast an ominous stare  at us, exposing ruthlessly  our life story by going from table to table.”

Oops this is electrifying,

pysche-bending, and a frozen icicle chill  apparent.

“Aurelia you focus that stern eye at me …. you.

I practiced witchcraft.

But no, there are absent swindles.”

Another guest had a Halloween scare .. scar 

on his scarlet red face.

“Guilty conscience… guilt edged guilt very much over the edge.

You sold a Christmas perk  you, Scrooge for a vast sum…”

Aurelia now flitting from client area to client  area that creep schemer Aurelia.

Two of Aurelia’s sister dressed in witche’s garb and the other in outlandish fortune teller costume  who had been employed surreptitiously as sinister sister in  reserve shock member … admittedly an invisible rock choral sound surround  now mushrooms like  an enchantress, conjuror, enchanter, magus.

“There’s four  of us now.

So you called me ice maiden and stuff like that.”

Inanimate, stiff.”

The two other instrumentalists now started to shift their rhythmic volume and drone auditory environment.

They sang songs about their sobriquets.

Aurelia’s three  sisters, now chanting  fey back drops to the “MISFORTUNATES” who hadn’t left when there was a fugitive  corridor.

The lifeless singer was levelling the score on those  who like others might now have second thoughts… the only things they might  left before this evening might grind to a halt.

Purple  faced  after purple  faced clients at this “SHOW” may rue.

Now devouring  their initial assumptions as belly filling fare.

“Don’t know which is worse here,

that is until  just now. When things have started to liven up on  the skewed  or maybe bizarre haphazard grounds.

“So I’m boring am I?

Well, I’ll turn to my sisters.”

Within minutes the foursome formed a high harmony band drifting from patron to patron again chronicling the foibles and intense scarlet visages howlers of as many as they could.

Stunned dazed completely confused these ladies did their job and returned to the stage.

In high dudgeon the band with sisters who as actresses wooden of course half finished their epic gig with 

“I WOODEN TELL A soul.”

Secret exposed crowd gasped but there didn’t seem to many exits.

The musicians pointed here there and yonder

Then vanished from the platform.

“Ladies, that was one one incendiary hell, in every imaginable sense hell of a stunt.”

Said the three earlier executives in this story.

“There’s a market for boredom afterall and a few surprises!”

Later those who left earlier met the clueless group who managed eventually to escape with the clandestine  assistance  of one of the band members.

“We’ll see you again one of the sisters grinned.”

A thunderstruck audience member  who departed the suffocater brazen con at an earlier point said to those now compelled to flee. 

“Did we miss anything?”

Performance wise!”

Feeble hubbub of a dog’s bark and feline meow squeezed through the ether.

A “taped” hypnotic recording of the concert with the dreary tedious theme followed the directionless show goers in their counterflow.

The tunes glued to their ears.

“If  we manage to flee this oddball nonevent I’ll never whinge about office monotony ever.”

One person with a sly dog catty grin!

Dedicated to my wonderful, bright, brilliant, and beautiful Sister Jay A.Pallen