Echo Of Us • Zarry

TV 2

Being on tour is very likely Harry's favourite state of being. Since he'd started touring alone, he doesn't even find it exhausting. There are fewer shows, more time for just existing and keeping a healthy structure. He likes the pace of it, being in a different town every other day, different country. Most of the time, he likes to get a tiny slice of regular life in the city he's in. His favourite way is to get a work out in, go to a soul cycle or a yoga class, visit a gym somewhere in the city that isn't at his hotel. It almost makes him feel like a local, just living his life and trying to stay fit. He does some research before each tour, finds an interesting spot in the cities to visit. By now, it's a very rare occasion that he visits a city for the first time, given that he's been on around ten world tours and likes to travel in his downtime too.

To Harry, it's as magical trying local food in Krakow when visiting for the first time as finding a new street that takes his breath away in Paris, where he's spent months altogether. Old cities can feel like a few one each time you visit because there is just so much to see, so much history, so many stories that have unfolded on the ancient streets. Harry has a journal, just for travelling where he jots down all his feelings and ideas. It's helped him while writing too, he's been able to create stories that aren't even grounded in reality. They are just stories. The journal is littered with polaroids too and is currently on its fourth volume.

One thing Harry does hate about touring is the hotels. No matter how fucking brilliant he feels after a show where he puts his everything into performing and he's bursting with the incredible energy of sharing a show with thousands of like-minded souls, nearly all of it disappears when Harry's stuck in a plain, desolate, icy hotel room that could be literally anywhere in the world. A luxury hotel in Helsinki looks the same as one does in Manilla. Harry will find some complimentary chocolates on his pillow in Pittsburg, in Moscow, in Dublin, in Tokyo and they'll all taste the fucking same. Time and space don't seem to exist in these hotel rooms. They're laminar spaces, but in the worst way possible. You don't get the chaotic calm of airports or mind-numbing peace of highways. They just feel wrong.

Thankfully, touring isn't about hotels, it's about bringing his music to thousands and sharing those special two or so hours with thousands of different people every night. Harry has always loved performing, ever since he was a child but being on stage is something wholly different. It's a universe onto its own and Harry never wants to give it up. Knowing himself, he will be trotting around a stage even when he's so old people wonder every other month if he's died yet. Music is capable of creating an incredibly strange and wonderful bond between everyone in the room. Thousands of people, yet they all feel like one entity. The spectators, the band, the performer, the crew, everyone is one and the same once those first tones of an instrument chime off.

The second night in Rio was so far the best show of the tour so far yet after it, Harry finds himself alone in a nondescript hotel room, bored to the very marrow of his bones and unable to sleep. When he was on stage, it felt like he will never calm down, never sit down again and he'll just continue singing and singing and dancing and feeling the vibrations of the entire arena shaking until he's dead. But then the last notes of the last song ended, Harry said his goodbyes and suddenly he was in the backseat of a car and the night seemed like a distant dream. After his shower at the hotel, he threw himself in the bed in his bathrobe, amped up the AC and started flicking through the channels on TV.

That was hours ago. Harry glances at the large, overtly stylish clock on the wall, seeing that it's 2 AM, he sighs and starts flicking through the channels again, for the millionth time that night. He's grown tired of trying to guess the Portuguese words and finally moves to the American channels. He leaves it on an ancient re-run of Bones and rolls over his bed to the edge of it and reaches into the bedside table.