THE TEACHER:

The guitarist enthused at length in gentle tones as we sat together under the stars. A professional for years on the Paris circuit he’d turned to teaching, passing his experience on to the Parisian youth. He lived in a state of permanent smile, surfing a perpetual wave of light. He lit up the dark as he spoke about the joy of music, the rich gifts exchanged through the giving of live performance & the limitless rewards he’d received from teaching.
He talked about things I forget daily, a joy I’d exchanged for toil, a music that existed just for the fun of it, exploration without reason, driven by intuitive desire, a ‘fancy it’, a process, a journey repaid in energy & laughter – material reward being just another useful bi-product of passion. And for a moment, an hour, an inspired night of dreams he had me.

(K)

THE BIGGEST MACHINE:

Pushing back from his bowl of midnight ice he leaned across the isle & motioned me to lean in.
“That is the biggest machine that has ever come here”
pointing with his eyes, nodding a head towards two rows of enormous caterpillar tracks slipping precariously between the buildings, dwarfing the trees, but brushing them as delicate as whispers. A familiar childhood smell of machine oil & excavated earth pervaded our cafe as the lights across the road were suddenly eclipsed by the vast metal bulk teetering on the back of a flat bed rolling like a ship in a swell.
“How did they know they could bring it this way?” I asked open mouthed
“Exactly” he replied

(K)

NIGHT TALKING:

The silhouettes of old men talked long into the night on the verandas of summer houses over looking the ocean. A dog bark, a distant car horn, a motorcycle leaving town on a single country road,
a lone cicada singing underneath the house.

(K)

THE GUITARIST:

“Hello, my name is ‘John’ ”
he said offering his hand in
a French accent.
“You are a musician?..a guitarist?
…good. You are from England?
…even better!”
It was late, that time of night when everything begins with ’00’, I should have switched off my face, found the exit & left, but something in his demeanour made me pause – he was a man of few words & a stripy
t-shirt.
“We have a guitar for you, any time you want. You can come here & just play, no one will bother you”
Cut off in this remote place I thought of Tich, legend of Cardiff, a gentle man, rumoured at one time to have been ‘average’
(a myth everyone knew to be slanderous) until he locked himself in a school room up in the valleys one summer with an amp & guitar until by Autumn he emerged as one of the greatest Welsh guitarists of all time. Rumour had it he’d even been courted by the WHO but had turned them down because it meant leaving his beloved Wales. I imagined the cut of the strings, the thrill of the first chord & what unfettered things might emerge after so long away.
“Thank you” I politely declined, not wishing to focus my drifting state of mind.

(K)

OLYMPIAN:

She walks like a swimmer dressed for the catwalk waiting on tables to pay for summer, in a chi-chi cafe overlooking the city lights for the men & their delicate coffees. She walks like she’s approaching the high board, the horse, the rings, the mat, with stiffened limbs like a weight lifter, an Olympian  unaccustomed to moving for long without tumbling or diving, in constant readiness to perform fantastic physical acts. Unlike the others with their languid motions & easy manor she’s  a seasonal waitress in the body of a gymnast, a disciplined athlete working her passage behind a mask of superior detachment as she moves between tables with perfect balance, melting into warm smiles as she approaches, asking softly,
“Water?”

(K)

THE FIRST SOUND:

The first sound she made
every morning was a heavy expelling of breath that let the world know the exact weight of her burdens. It was a sound that put all who recognised it on alert, a melody that never altered, regardless of day or season, a song that made everyone who knew it turn inward for a second, mustering their joy in readiness to haul her out of her dark abis. Wo betide anyone who withheld their joy or skirted around the great hole, for that familiar expression of resigned exasperation would become a lasso, flung out with precision to pull them in.

(K)

BLUE DUST:

She sang the blues deep as desert dust and longing, yearning for something lost awaiting it’s unpromised return.
She sang black bird melancholy strumming a guitar with fingers unable to sister the beauty of her voice. A big man to her left, old as the rocks, played something older in a tie-dye shirt. Silver beard and swept back hair encrusted with salt from a life lived beneath the sea.
The whites of her mascara eyes looked into the faces of the crowd beneath hieroglyph brows dancing to a rhythm that betrayed her thoughts. Then, closing her eyes, she leaned back in black exposing her skin & released the silence of a North African desert from between her lips.

(K)

BLACKSTONE:

After the ironing is done she wraps herself in shadow & sits silent still beneath a sleeping birdcage, concealed in the rhythm of dripping pot plants. Watching the night & all it’s radiant drunks, hold hands, kissing staggered smiles of summer romanced distractions slipping past her night garden without bothering to look in see her sat alone, absorbing light, black as stone.
She must’ve (did she?) see  me glance in at her, catch her in her shadowland attracted to her silence slipped between the potted wonders of her garden, perfume masked by the sweet warm embrace of fresh pressed linen. Will I feature in her log of people grooves tonight, will I loose some of my light to that discrete meticulous unwavering iron stare? Will she smooth out all our wrinkles in exchange?

(K)

RED CAR:

At night this young raven woman pulls onto the taxi rank, parks, flashing warning lights, inserts a roll-up in her tiny red car – waiting for a man. Cigarette glued to a lip jumping faster than a race car rev counter, Mascara builder, head crooked clamping cell phone to shoulder, two hands speed trawling the contents of a bag for a thing they’re frantic to find. This young flaxen woman, enquiring gentle direction, steps up to the red car window, recoils at the violence in those eyes flicked back faster than circus knives. Needle fingers pull the Rollie, pop the cork, spill the cocaine contents of the Mouth unbridled, convulses random, spasms a hole, a cut, a crack, a chasm, a beast without a brain, a bronco bucking a stone cold killer face – waves of loathing & detestation. We catch each other’s eye, the raven woman with the bubbling  lips, caught with her cool betrayed, waggling gear stick desperate in the dark for reverse as I observe, unfazed, leaning silent underneath this streetlamp.

(K)

SLOWDANCE:

Late at night, at the shrine to the ironing woman she stands alone smoothing the world.  Eyes stare through TV flickers in  a white room dancing beneath a halo of fluorescent light. Surrounded by her memories, photo frames on every surface & every surface dressed in lace. Faces watch & wait for
her to join them, hold a place for her, she slow dances somnambulant, little puffs of steam – left to right & back again, left to right & back.

(K)