You probably already know about them: where the group is from and how they banded, what year their first EP came out, if the lead guitarist is left or right handed.
Maybe you own a few of their albums, perhaps you’ve known of them forever, but this song reminded me of you though we’ve never listened to it together.
We didn’t ever hear it in that place we like where the barmen all wear pocket flowers, and we never queued it on the juke box that night we drank and laughed for hours.
And it wasn’t playing in your car when you dropped me at central station, but this song reminds me of you and fills me with a blue elation.
So I reckon, several years from now, needing something to get me through I’ll play this song I’ve played so much because it reminded me of you.
The other night I dreamt you came into my house and wouldn’t leave. At first, I didn’t mind – we were just sitting together in my kitchen – but as I neared the dregs of my second cup of tea, I started to wonder when you planned to go. When I woke, I considered the parallel universe where we now somehow coexist: your keys in my fruit bowl; your hands on my bath taps; your feet on my couch. And in the haze of my morning I wasn’t sure what it had meant or whether it had even been a dream at all, and half expected to see you pass by, step-less and slight, like a ghost on the landing.
Shark
Finally! A good one. Can’t remember who asked. Who knows how these things come up, just go with it fast. Which creature would you least like to be killed by? If you had to. If you just had to. Doesn’t matter why. We dipped into silence, underwater in thought, each seeking an answer in the fashion we’d wrought. The lot of us sat in a circle of green bottles and spent ends, barely friends in a debauched fairy’s ring – and, for a second, not saying a thing. Godzilla doesn’t count. Then one spoke out. A grizzly bear. Why? You could just run. From a bear? You’re fucking joking, son. A few others offered and we talked through the zoo. But I didn’t have to think – I already knew. How, being frozen in the deep, I’d die thinking of you, as it swam, torpedoed steel, and took what it wanted. It’s eyes gloss and haunted. I wondered if you’d feel it burst you apart. Turn your organs to mulch. Teeth through the heart. After a while, we spilled beer, and turned to something new, but I sat for a while, and thought of the blue, of the dark and of death, and of it, and of you.
Secret
Later on, as I’m walking back to the station, I remembered when she used to do her lists. They started years back, before she started ditching mass, before she started pinching things – even before Nan. She would spend hours somewhere secret, because I never saw her do it, writing list after list of all the families we knew – our neighbours’ families, our teachers’ families, our friends, their mothers and fathers, families off the telly, their names, their ages, aunties, uncles, cousins – all the many ways in which they belonged to one another. All the families we had ever known, all but our own, hidden away in drawers and under mattresses for years. In that quiet house, I always found them, and when she didn’t think I was in, or if she didn’t think I could hear her, she would cry, and no one ever came.
An hour into Scarface (for the fifteenth time) the power cuts
and the sloping Bolivian hills snap into darkness.
The silence thrills us; it hits like a car crash. We slowly clank into action.
You use your phone light to find the fuse box – Who owns a torch these days? I light a candle: the one in the burnt yellow glass and look out the window at the street in pitch.
I imagine our neighbours in the dark arms outstretched, like swimmers, reaching for lighters and batteries – whatever glimmers.
I wonder about kids crying, dinners spoiled, and hands feeling in the dark.
After a while, still nothing: no spark. We step outside.
The night is balmy – the bricks hold the heat of the day and it floods back into the house.
I fetch beers from the warm fridge. The bulb is out so I feel for the tins: I know where they are and grab a few.
Gunther did not remember much about his death. In fact, the moment had passed somewhat uneventfully and, had it not been for the audience’s few gasps of surprise and an ill-timed giggle, he might have thought he’d dreamt it up altogether.
Emily had been sat in the second row, slightly left of centre stage – not that he’d been able to see his wife during much of the performance itself. The stage lamps had masked the audience from the players with a brilliantly intense void of white light. He had felt the glow draw conspicuous beads of sweat to his forehead almost the instant he had taken his first steps on stage, like the rapid onset of fever. It had felt like being in the presence of a dying star.
ataraxicat 