This evening the street is deserted. The footpaths are empty and the swoosh of cars from the nearby overpass, a constant thread of undersound, - always - this evening has emigrated and silence reins.
The footie is on the tele. I look out my ironing room window at the line of houses across the street, studying the cookie-cut tapestries behind every front window, one identical to the next – and that tapestry-within-a-tapestry the television set, those too all the same, assuming Orwell's telescreen ubiquity this street of mine, those identical flatscreen televisions, all broadcasting the one symphony of colour and sound and light the same, run from one house to the next like bedazzling hypnotic beads on a fibreoptic string. I almost think I can sense the air humming...and come the 80th minute, if the prospect of victory for Utd fans seems certain, the collective roar they'll emit will sound like a superwave rising like a giant's gloved hand over the entire land and crashing down upon us all.
Earlier this afternoon I went out and took a walk around to clear my head. I sat on the old peoples' favourite bench nearby and watched a parade of soldiers go by, back from somewhere, and having done something, that's set their faces askew.
I reflected with great sadness on the fact Gil Scott-heron's dead at 62. Dunno what happened to him, other than when he died he was in the hospital. These soldiers walking past, eyes forever more grimly fluctuating between deadly anticipation and combat-stricken sadness, they put me in mind of this song
which I put up here, in memory of Gil and as a requiem to the minds of these ones that came past me this afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment