Beatenberg

30. The moral of the story is: listen to our album now please. Thank you.

29. When they get back, Roy and Bob decide to go surfing, like they used to do so often. There are no waves, but they stay out there in the water, waiting, for a long time.

28. On the way back to the airport to fly home Pat sees parakeets in a tree and points them out as the same ones that have settled in parks in London, where he also now lives.

27. In the morning the three convene in the foyer and have a stressful semi-argument about where to have breakfast. Unfortunately, no one mentions the dream, which might have unified them. They leave without eating.

26. They have a glass of wine and go to bed, soothed by frog song. Strangely, they are all troubled by similar dreams in which they live through the Great Fire of London.

25. For Pat, it is bare brick, orange domes and the parking lot. For Roy, it is the porch that wraps around the music building. For Bob, it is the face of a student he never spoke to and whose name he never learned.

24. With the sun setting pinkly over the gently lapping sea, the band reminisce on their days at university. As they talk, each has a different image in mind. Back in those university days they also had different images in mind.

23. After their performance, the band spend their last evening on the island walking along the beach. They bump into a lecturer whose ethics course they had all taken. He tells them that he moved here after he got divorced.

22. Before leaving the island, the band is obliged to do a short performance and interview for a phone company at a slick, newly renovated mall, which, they are told, used to be ruins of the island’s only concert hall.

21. When Pat gets back to his room he sees a missed call from his dad who had called to say happy birthday. He sees what he had tried to write earlier and turns it into something else.

19) Walking through the grounds of the hotel to the restaurant, Pat sees a man tending the garden and imagines his love song. The man suddenly meets his gaze.

18. Using the complimentary pen and notepad he attempts to write something but gets bogged down, gives up and goes to breakfast. The action of the pen was not smooth enough, he thinks.

17. Pat reads in bed until he falls asleep, which is almost instantly. The next morning he wakes up in inspired mood – the lush surroundings and bewildering opulence of the hotel seem to need transcribing somehow.

16. After a few drinks Pat gets a shuttle back to the hotel alone. He is glad for the solitude, but sad also. In his room he tries on the dressing gown provided.

15. Later that same evening, after the ceremony, the three of them get invited out to a club by some young locals who somehow know that it is Pat’s birthday at midnight. On the dance floor they shout observations on the music into each other’s ears.

14. The band win a prize and say a speech. A picture is taken which later will be useful in convincing authorities that they once achieved at least a modicum of success.

13. Bob weaves rhythmic textiles with his drumming and, watching his bandmates and their guitars, remembers a time he left a door unlocked and his dad’s guitars got stolen – then he sees in his mind the very same sugar cane of Roy’s remembrance.

12. Roy grounds the moving harmony with his bass notes, like pebbles holding down a cloth in the wind. He thinks ‘I should ask for sparkling water on stage next time’, and finds himself seeing sugar cane from the area he grew up in.

11. At the awards show they play the song that led them there. Pat sings – he doesn’t know where the words came from, or who they are destined for, but he likes them. Like the shirt I am wearing, he thinks.

10. After landing, the three friends are guided to a bus which takes them through the tropical evening. They are astounded by the dense vegetation. Pat begins to lament the deforestation he saw from the aeroplane but soon falls silent.