I woke this morning from dreams about guitars. I was a player, and I played well, effortlessly in fact. I just thought, and the sounds came, like Eric Clapton does in real life. A huge jamming session was in progress, myself and a half-dozen heads from Bruxelles, years ago. We played and played and played. I should have known I was dreaming. The fact that we were outdoors, walking from Merchant's Arch along the Quays and across a misplaced Ha'penny Bridge was one clue. And, of course, the fact that I could never get guitar strings to make anything other than tuneless twanging noises while awake was another. I never wanted to learn how, just to play. In the end, I didn't know a single chord. Still don't. In Bruxelles were two tabletop video games, one of which I don't remember too well, (probably Pac Man), but I liked the other one, Asteroids. The idea was simple. Take your money and put it into the slot, then steer your tiny ship from left to right across a screen, dodging or blasting huge rocks that came your way. You sped off one side and reappeared on the other. The trick was to avoid getting unexpectedly splatted. Collisions could be avoided, if you moved in time, but the game had a slick, slippery quality, that got out of control easily. No matter how well you planned ahead, or thought you'd planned ahead, you inevitably got your comeupance, your money was lost, and someone bumped the table and spilled half your beer anyway. It was the kind of game you knew wasn't good for you, but when money was a little more plentiful, when I had sold something to an American editor or to an Irish one, common sense and fifty-pence pieces were all lost one after another. I'd be Ready Player One, career my little ship headlong into trouble, turbo full-on, Game Over. Then the demo would start up, bright lights and action luring you in again, tempting you to get your name up there in its three-character roll of honour.
|
