{ Shoot Me Out of A Cannon } // Dorothea + Julien

The impact of her hand across my face sent me stumbling back a few steps, more from shock than force. Less than a second ago our mouths were locked in a teeth-colliding samba, like I was holding hostage the secrets of the world in the back of my throat and Celine was not a girl who took well to ignorance.

"My name is Natalie," she said, beaming out a glare filthy enough to spoil holy water, grabbing her jacket and making her way to the other side of the pub. But not before adding a regrettably deserved, "Asshole."

James burst out into hysterics behind me, setting his bass on the ground to hunch over and cough up any last minute flem mines twenty years of chain smoking may have laced the home-front of his ribcage with. At forty-four, James perfected the art of perverting all his second chances. He's his own public enemy; drowned his dreams in vodka and clipped his wings with the same angry hand that ruined his first two marriages. But an artist without a heavy heart is just a faceless prospector with a hobby. James refines the crystal methods life created to burn him in a personal hell of his own mind, of his own design, and belts out his sorrows in the facade of a serenade. James is great at what he does because he knows the sound of a breaking heart all too well. The sound of a breaking heart isn't the timid chirps of cracking glass or chipping porcelain. The sound of a breaking heart is the horrified faces of your children, screaming at the sight of your outstretched hand. The sound of a breaking heart is being alone in your thoughts, just before you fall asleep, reliving every hateful moment that pushed her away. The sound of a breaking heart is the moment of realization that the only thing that makes life bearable is not bearing it at all. An artist without a heavy heart is just a faceless prospector with a hobby, and the weight of James's heart could crush Atlas's skull.

My hand instinctively reached up and touched the phantom sting of Cel--Natalie's slap, letting out a dry chuckle and sending an assault of my own at James' arm. "Hey, maybe if you could tune a guitar half as well as you get off on peeping on kids we could finally get through a set..." I said, hopping unto the stage, adjusting the mic stand to my height. The bar was hazy with cigarette smoke and foreign affairs. The lights were far too dim in the room, and subsequently the girls all too pretty. "Maybe if you could write a song half as well as you can piss off a woman we could get paid sometime." Jamie snorted, plugging in his bass to an amp to my left. "Maybe." "Maybe."

A light brightened on the stage, stabbing through the thick narcotic mist that shielded our inhibitions as if the gin and malt liquor gushing about weren't enough. My guitar hung off my shoulders and off to one side when I took it against my body, my guitar being the only body on mine I could bother to remember in the morning. I took the microphone in my hand and pressed it gingerly against my lips, because lately I've been pressing them up against glossed glamour dolls whose names excape me. My heart picked up in tempo, being on stage seemed to be the only thing it wanted to beat for, lately. Funny thing about a stage: suspended up there, even if only for a foot or two, you think, for a split second, those above you can hear you clearer. The words you sing on a stage will reach her because you know she's reaching out to you, and all that's left between the two of you are a few measly millions of miles of atmosphere and one night stands in your morning bed. And so every line you belt out, every syllable you can croak is for her. You put together each song with surgeon precision because each word was delicately selected to shoot across the universe. And what keeps you going, keeps you dancing and shredding your strings until your guitar cries for mercy is the idea that it is all for her. But deep down you know the tragic truth is that men cannot hear sea monsters profess their love from a million leagues beneath the sea.

"I wrote this song for a very pretty girl. So all you young ladies out there, if you're hot, feel free to pretend I'm singing about you."