“You're
a cheerful soul”, which when said to me is not as you might think
meant literally, as a compliment even, but sarcastically, and to
which though they can't see me I pull a face, a long face as if I've
been sucking lemons. I'd rather they said that actually: Have you
been sucking lemons? Because then I could be honest: Yes I have. I
like lemons. And limes.
Really,
it's their attempt to change the subject. Or the record. They'd
rather turn it over to the B side. I know I'm picking (and I know too
I'm probably being a bore) but if there wasn't some thorn, some truth
in whatever I was saying before, this remark wouldn't have been made.
Of course, this stratagem only works – both ways – on those
closest to you.
It's
rare that 'cheerful' in the sense it's meant could be applied. Not
that I'm glum or pessimistic but then I'm not what you might describe
as sunny either. Ever. Obsessive, sometimes, about an interest, never
people, well, not those known to me or even generally speaking alive.
I'll just spit it out shall I: you have not entered stalker
territory. But, hang on, are you, possibly, stalking me? If you are,
I don't want to know. Some knowledge is good, some is dangerous. So,
carry on...whilst I'll find another record to put on.
Hmm,
bit dreary this...yet mesmeric and forbidding. Glaswegian. Written
especially for a French drama. Is that the atmosphere I'm aiming for?
Ghosts.
Hades. Shades of Homer. I know, I know, stop with the Homer. I said I
was obsessive, didn't I? once my eyes have been opened. Tin-opened
like the Trojans and Greeks from their armour as they battled on the
plains of Troy, though these warriors were, I imagine, unsealed like
sardines (why is it never corned beef?) with a spindly key. Just more
aggressively, of course. With swords. Whereas with eyes, it's more
akin to removing spectacles – the images, the words burning into
your brain should be blurred but instead still appear sharp,
spear-sharp, pencil-sharp, the point driven home on a body or page,
and you can't, for your life, figure out why.
The
world makes a little more sense. The foundations on which it might
have been laid anyway. So what if it's mythical? It's obviously
inspired, fed into many people's work. Like Shakespeare. Oh God, I'm
talking Greek classics again. Somebody stop me!
Now
I've plateaued. The record's got stuck; the needle scratching the
same surface area over and over. My favourite track too.
Why
is it always my favourite track that can never play right through? An
instrumental halting or skipping; the vocals (when there are some)
fading in and out as if he, the vocalist, is being suffocated or his
windpipe squeezed so he chokes on a word, the same word again and
again. Which then (again) makes me think of war. Arrows and shields.
Horses.
Bronze.
Iron. Clad head to toe in armour. And yet a weapon finds a gap: a
strip of unprotected skin, vulnerable and quivering. Or the attacking
warrior uses instead brute force, hacking and stabbing everywhere, at
close range, until metal is pierced and flesh is punctured.
Homer.
Troy.
Revenge.
Honour. Funeral pyres. Zeus and Athena beseeched to intervene.
I
have a will of iron, it seems, when it comes to this particular
record. It plays even when it's not being played: just there all the
time, as if all the time it's connecting dots, and won't, hates to be
interfered with. It's there when I walk across a cobbled pedestrian
street, my limbs heavy with fatigue; and when I enter a huge shopping
centre, all glass and domed ceilings, and their shops, where my eyes
refuse to rove over seas of muchness and to scout out categories; my
ears to hear, my tongue to engage.
What
is this landscape? Where are the dustier, emptier plains? Where are
the tents and the men? Where is Troy?
Is
this Hades...? The new Hades, built layer upon layer of the old, so
it sits on the same level as the living and not below. A world
alongside, gleaming white, with food courts.
Have
I sucked too many lemons (and limes)?
Picture credit: Still life with lemons on a plate, 1887, Vincent van Gogh (Source: WikiArt)
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
