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When I close my eyes I still see through you
And I call the colour there gun metal blue
The Big Bang
‘Into the light... we’re heading into the light!’
‘Mercy! Mercy! You’re pure... pure... Oh I don’t know.’
‘Gold.’
The sunlight flamed across the windscreen blinding the driver as she welcomed the headlong rush of the lanes vanishing beneath a
tunnel of trees. The flickers of gold switching on and off invoked the ancient rhythms of epilepsy. The spasmodic strobe of the repeatedly
broken light hammered home between the trees, drumming out the beautiful violent song to fanfare the madness. Like some secret
code it told the driver to go faster, her brain waves inextricably linked to the music of the sun now. Certain major chords grouped together
to transport her from her usual patterns. Alpha, the rhythm of alpha, eight to twelve cycles per second, enough to cause swimming in the
head, but Mercy was a strong swimmer and she bathed her naked eyes in the syncopated stream of gold, arpeggios she had heard
underwater and in clubs when she lost herself in her limbs rising and falling in harmony. It all comes in waves, waves of light, waves of
sound; the trick is to get the sunlight to flicker at the right speed and not to pass out. She was searching for the alpha theta train, the
dangerous territory between meditation and sleep, where dream-like images come dancing but you are aware of them as vivid pictures,
not distant dreams. Mercy had done it before but this time she was going to film it. She took her Super 8 camera from her lap and leaned
out of the window until the sucking vision of the lens became part of the tunnel of flashing trees arched across the road just unable to
clutch the dancing partner on the other side. The car was being sucked into the vortex of the low-lying orange disc spewing reds and
purples across the sky. Mercy's left hand came off the wheel to join her out the window.
‘Look, look,’ she screamed. ‘On the horizon, they’re touching.’
Down the road on a hill in the distance, the branches overlapped cascading in the wind. The arc of the tunnel was complete at last and
the fast disappearing sun filled it to perfection, silhouettes razor sharp around the last whispers of the day. The passenger looked at
Mercy through tinted Vegas Elvis Polaroid’s, marvelling at the gold shafts of lightning trying to tear Mercy’s halo from her hair flying in and
out of the car. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette letting the smoke billow through the bronchial valley sensing its way onto the vast open
plains of the lungs and the air in front of him moved in solo slow motion as the smoke submerged him in blue vapour. He reached his
right hand to coax the contraption over the potholes. Mercy screamed at him to step up a gear, pressing down on the clutch, her red wrap-
round skirt flapped open to cool her afterswim legs.
The road dipped severely into a small valley entertaining a mist, but she was too high to notice the fall, sniffing the little glass bottle,
snorting the liquid scents deep into her nose and placing it between her bare thighs having lost her grip on the world and the lid in the
excitement. The smell was part of her evening symphony to accompany the dying of light. Twilight lips licked the hesitating golden shafts
through the dark heady succour of the perfumed mist.
‘Oh Jesus what a bloody beautiful evening,’ Mercy shouted.
‘Mercy, Mercy! Slow down, you’ll kill us both. I can’t see a thing in this soup.’
‘It’s okay, I know this road blind, it’s dead straight up and down. I want to catch the sunset and see if they’re actually touching and film it
through the fish eye to get that curve of the earth, the one you see on the sky when you’re hanging upside down. I need to exaggerate the
arc of the silhouettes above the road. Remember Judas, that is today’s mission, we can save our souls from torment if we find two trees
arched and clutching.’
‘Writhing in a tunnel of twilight, were your words,’ Judas said, laughing on a puff from his tiny roll-up.
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘Well our souls will be damned if we hit the ditch,’ said Judas, squinting through the cloud of smoke trying to steer the car from the
passenger seat.
Judas felt the absinthe carcass rattling round the floor striking a beat against his foot, bringing on the visions of his father’s last days
before he drowned in the storm. He was rambling on about ‘the light, the Ark of the Covenant and the light, the alchemists knew that
enlightened consciousness thrived on manna, the food or vibrations from the heavens, the energy of the dancing lights in the sky,’ and
Judas turned his artist’s eye away from that light, it was blinding him so he retreated into the world behind the blue smoke. Once again
the liquid film over his eyes entertained his latest canvas, the image flickering on the hazy light in front of him, but there was still that
ghostly mist verdantly roaming across the landscape inside his head. The empty bottle tempted him to invite the spirits back to clear the
fog and finish off the painting they had started, but you couldn’t push them. They’d be back soon enough to tell him how they had created
that perfect colour he’d seen last night up by the standing stones surrounded by green spirits. Climbing once more out of the mist only
one more fall and then the final ascent, the car dipped into a small sheet of cloud reclining about ten feet off the ground, as if some giant
or god had been smoking herbaceously on the border of the hillside, stretched out puffing a blur of blue mist over the fields.
Suddenly inside the blur, inside the failing half light, a cut out shape on the twilight, a birdlike form, growing larger at speed, half a figure
on the road. BANG!
Silence.
No noise. The distant engine of the halted car on the road, that was all. No, there was a noise, a great shining disc was rolling down the
asphalt, it was the only motion and it seemed endlessly slow as it wobbled left and right and eventually ran out of steam. It was one of
the hubcaps, making a metallic whirring noise and a whinnngcchhunn.... whinngchun... whinchun.. gradually quickening to
wingwingwingwin as it circled in on itself to stillness and silence. The internal thud of blood became louder than anything else in the
cosmos as adrenaline pumped to bursting. Judas lifted his glasses and looked at Mercy lying back in the shell of the seat, the camera
in her lap, her eyes staring straight ahead as if the mist was going to smother what she had just done. But the wisp of fog lifted as a
fierce wind dispersed it inland away from the ocean and the sun blinded her again.
Pieces of paper were flying in circles and some settled on the windscreen. Judas tilted his head to read the line. "It's written in the stars,
it's written on the car parked outside, it's tattooed on your arm, how we see this life." Judas watched the words peel away, flying down
the road and suddenly he realised the gravity of what had just happened. The actual physical weight of it made it impossible for him to
move his legs.
‘Mercy, Mercy,’ he whispered. ‘You hit it.’
‘What? I hit it? You had your hand on the wheel, you were driving!’ Mercy said, looking disgusted as she put the car in reverse and
screeched back in time to the point of contact.
‘I don’t believe you sometimes. Alright, We hit it, but I think We had better check what it was that We hit.’
Mercy opened the door and some pieces of paper flew in as she turned her legs to place them on the road. As she was about to rise
she heard Judas mutter.
'What it was that You hit.'
Then he saw in the swift turn of her face that she had heard him and he retracted.
'What it was that We hit, we we …..you.'
There was debris all over the place. Papers flying into the trees, across the road over the hawthorn hedges and up into the fields, where
the giant utilised the litter for another roll-up, puffing out more blue mist. Rising from the seat Mercy felt liquid across her thigh and in
slow motion watched her bottle smash and scatter on the road.
‘Ah no, my clary sage,’ she shouted as the wind cooled the oil on her skin.
She came round the back of the car fighting through the whirlwind of paper and there she saw the mound in the ditch. She stood
motionless for a while, the Super 8 camera still in her hand, hanging limp at her side. When she climbed down she heard Judas crying
above her.
‘Mercy! Mercy, you’ve killed him.’
Mercy went slowly up and knelt down by the body covered in mud and bits of foliage. There was a high-pitched feedback noise in her
ears and the heady scent of the clary sage made her feel faint. Tears blurred her eyes and the whole scene slipped out of focus as she
tried to touch the body but couldn’t manage the final meeting of energy fields. Then amidst the soundtrack of white noise she heard a
groan and in the blurred frame of the film the body flickered and moved.
‘It’s alive. He’s alive!’
‘I’m alive?’ Groaned the body.
She turned the shattered frame over and it was half smiling with a sly attractive grin. She was so pleased that she was not a murderess
that she hugged him.
‘Pleased to meet yah, yah lovely creature.’
The body groaned loudly almost crushed to death by this reckless angel which had broken through the mist. Words flew over his face.
Shattered by the force of all those thoughts and contemplations on your mind, there’s so little time..
‘Oh my God are you okay?’ Mercy said, letting go.
‘It’s my head,’ said the smile, spitting out some bloody grass and half a tooth as more words flew past. I’d love to tell you more than I
could touch on in an evening with my eyes.
‘I couldn’t see you in this mist. I think I only saw your lower half. Did I actually hit you?’
‘I don’t know, just my bag I think, but I was kinda attached to it. In fact I’m very attached to it, my life is in there.’
‘Well I’m afraid your life is scattered to the four winds now,’ Judas said, standing by the roadside.
‘But my book.’
‘We’ll get it.’
Mercy clambered out of the ditch letting the victim’s head fall back onto the ground with a thud. She frantically picked up bits of paper and
followed Judas to the car to put them on the back seat. Judas crammed pages into his jacket jumping into the air reviving some strange
ancient dance to catch the words all separated and spiralling on the wind.
‘Leave them go,’ said the ditch to the wind.
The searchers returned to the ditch to answer the voice, realising that flesh and bones were probably more important at this time,
although Judas would more than likely have disagreed. A person’s art is their soul and if a soul is scattered to the four winds you must
try to save it. They had found a mission for the day after all, a real soul to save.
The victim was clutching something tightly in his hand as they lifted the body from the ditch and ouched him onto the back seat of the
car, laying him out on the crumpled litter of barely a sixteenth of his soul. The rest was dancing down the road on the breeze, back in the
direction from whence it came. Reseated behind the murderous wheel, Mercy turned and introduced herself.
‘My name is Mercy and this is Judas.’
‘Jude really,’ said her co-pilot.
‘Hi Mercy, hey Jude.’
‘We are superheroes on a mission to save our souls,’ said Mercy.
‘Save what holes?' said the hurt voice.
‘There is nothing to do around here so we have to try and get above and beyond the here and now by setting ourselves a mission once
in a while. Today’s was to find two trees touching over one of the lanes and just as the sun was setting I was going to film them with my
Super 8 camera.
‘We’re sort of Super 8 heroes actually,’ said Judas dryly.
‘There is still time, do you mind? We’ll get you sorted then,’ said Mercy, looking at the last lingering rays of sunlight.
‘That’s fine, I feel okay,’ said the back seat, lying through his remaining teeth and as the car pulled away he passed out and vomited all
over his redundant soul.
‘Oh Christ,’ said Judas. ‘Would yah look at that, we should throw him out again.’
‘You wanted him saved.’
‘Yeah but Sean only gave me the car on condition that I keep it spotless. It’ll stink now and he’ll never let us have it again.’
‘Ah shuttup yah big baby, we’ll clean it at Sinead's.’
They reached the summit but the trees weren’t touching, the wind was fierce and the branches were being pulled in all directions. Mercy
began to film the trees but the sunlight was dying fast and she turned to film Judas clearing the sick out of the car with the remaining bits
of paper, some of them blew up into his face and he screamed.
‘Argh, would you look at me chops.’ Judas thought that this was no position for an artist to find himself in, using the words vomited from
this poor soul to clean up his bodily expurgations.
Mercy moved round to focus on the stranger who had been dragged unconscious onto the road. From his cruciform slumber he let
loose his grip and a harmonica fell onto the road. Judas picked it up tooting one or two notes, it reminded him of his father playing
harmonica on the island in the middle of the lake, that high and lonesome sound. He noticed the way Mercy had been looking upon the
harmonica mouth of the stranger and turned back to the car closing two of the doors, half sealing himself in, blowing long notes for the
dead departed souls. Mercy was still filming the unshaven face on the road. She knelt down and the wind whistled through her skirt
circling her hand around his moon of a skull before turning the camera off as the light had faded now. She touched his face and he
groaned again.
‘Judas! Where are you?’ Mercy cried.
‘In the car,’ came the voice from her open door.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Heavy breathing.’
‘Enjoying yourself?’
‘I’m okay, bit of a stench, but it’ll pass if we keep the windows open I reckon.’
‘Judas! What of our saviour in the road?’
‘What of him?’
‘Well what about what’s left of him?’
‘What about it?’
‘Are you leaving him to be scattered to the four winds too?’
‘Well, that is up to you, he’s your victim and your patient. You’re the superhero, I just provided the Bat mobile. What can you do for him
anyhow?’
‘I can take him to Sinead's and get him seen to by doctor McCoy in the morning.’
‘Right so,’ said Judas, slamming the door and lifting the body back onto the interior of beige brushed cotton and leather trim, now with
an additional slapdash mosaic of carrot and sweetcorn soup.
Once again Mercy reached over and stroked the face of the stranger to soothe the pain. The eyes of the stranger half opened at the touch
of the soft fingers on his aching skull. There was a bright white light behind the angel leaning over him and as he began to try and move
he was paralysed, it felt like his arms and legs were trapped. He panicked, yet there seemed to be sensations alive in him alright, there
was pain. Feeling around with his hands and toes, he realised he was no longer at the side of the road, he was in a warm bed. The
sheets were tucked in so tight that it was impossible to move. He felt the weight lean over his body and he heard a voice say the word
Mercy.
The name Mercy rang a bell. The face the patient had returned to in the ditch after floating through a tunnel into the white light. There he
was, playing harpoon, practising his Kung Fu forms in the dying light, half submerged in the mist on the road. Suddenly a wind, then
bang. He had managed to react and deflect the blow at the last second, directing his Chi to his right side to absorb the force and direct
him with it into the ditch. He felt like he’d been sucked up into a blazing star and seemed to be swimming in milk which evaporated to a
gas and out of the vapour there came an angel of mercy, all ghostly pale in the mist. Even though it grew dark she seemed to have a
glow of colours all her own; blue, green, red, white, grey, black, and gold, pure gold. Now the angel had re-entered his world
circumnavigating the bed to place a cup of tea and a bowl of soup on the small bedside table. After stroking his face she leaned over to
look into his eyes and then retreated to the window where Judas was standing in a cloud of blue smoke. The sunlight blazed in through
the full-length window and she was silhouetted in the frame. Sifting through the universe the patient could see the ghostly form of her
body through her apparel and the light skirt seemed to separate from her in the layers of dust illuminated by the sunlight.
'Would you ever put that bloody cigarette out,' Mercy said.
'It's me last one.'
Mercy shook her head and ushered for Judas to whisper.
'I tried to pick up all I could of his book. I assume he belongs to the book,' said Judas, blowing out a cloud.
'You did your level best. I'm sure he'll be grateful, if it wasn't for us he'd have lost it all.'
'If it wasn't for us he'd still be wandering the highways and byways polishing off the last chapter and verse no problem.'
'Yeah I guess so. Anyway Sinead said he can stay until he finds his feet again. Doctor McCoy was here and said he is suffering from
shock and has bad bruising, but he is better off here. He'll come and check again. But he couldn't remember his name earlier'.
'What, Doctor McCoy?' Judas said, avoiding the look of despair coming from Mercy.
'I'm not sure this lad is all there yet.'
'Well his book isn't all there, it's flying over the Maharee islands and sailing off to America like St Brendan.'
The body stirred in the bed and the patient cleared his dry throat.
'My book?'
'We tried to save all we could, but I would say a good three quarters of it was scattered on the wind, north, south, east and west, mostly
west into the ocean.'
The patient followed the image of all those words flying amongst the gulls, out over the beaches where he had cast his nets, over the
rocks where he hauled in the images in the first place. Maybe it was right that the ocean reclaimed them, he had stolen them from there
and a cloak of mist would disguise the hand of the wind which followed to claw them back home. He could not remember much, but he
remembered doing his Kung Fu forms on a golden strand and asking the waves for inspiration, whatever the cost. He had given himself
up to their mercy and walked into the depths and they did not like the bitter taste of his flesh so they spat him out again. After that he
wrote words which were not his own, the deluge flooded page after page and he screamed and laughed like a madman at the freedom
of the fingers and the Zen ink drawings in the margin. He was untouchable, the spirit and the fire in him, walking into the sunset down
that lane stopping to do one last Sun form. The peace, the book on his back, the songs in his heart, the world at his feet, the spirits in his
hands painting pictures in the orange disc on the horizon. Oh yes the fire burning was unquenchable, he really had it all at last. Until…
bang… the lights went out. The fire was burning so deep … Oh but look at the battered frame now and all those words gone, gone
home. The waves washing the ink leaving it blank, just the void of empty whiteness once more. How could he have lost all the beauty of
the words and the songs he had been allowed to gather from the dawn and the dusk.
Judas approached the bed and placed some crumpled sheets of paper down.
'Here are some bits, there are more in Sean's car. I'm going to get it again tomorrow so I'll come and see you then and I'll take you for a
pint if you're up to it.'
Mercy kicked him in the leg and Judas retreated back into his lingering cloud of smoke next to the window.
'Maybe it will jog your memory a little bit. Anyway you'd better get some rest now,' said Mercy, guiding Judas out of the room and closing
the door behind her.
The stranger picked up the crumpled sheets and looked at the handwriting, was that his scrawl? Where were the great insights from the
dawn? This was something else altogether.
The First Star
I never had any money worries, i.e. I never had any to worry about. A few days before I left England we’d been to Leonardo’s to get our
hair done and Asbestos had picked up a blue sports car from round the back. Even when he stole a car he checked the music first, this
one had James Brown and Bob Marley sitting next to each other on the seat, so we cruised on out to Stanborough Lake to Mr Brown
singing Ain’t That A Groove. I used to get up to James Brown because I had no heating on winter mornings and also did my martial arts
training to Mr Dynamite, doubling up as practise for the Northern Soul nights at the 100 Club. As we crossed town I changed to Mr Marley
singing Mr Brown, a sweet melody about heroin, death and a crow riding round town in a hearse, appropriate, considering who belonged
to the car, although we didn’t know it at the time.
‘That’s next,’ said Asbestos, ‘a hearse. Your hair looks cool, Bruce Lee right. I mean I can’t really see it but its dancing great
constellations of light on the wind.’
I placed my guitar on the back seat. Asbestos called it Frank because it had a bolt through the neck to keep it together since he fell out
of his tree and cracked it. I rolled a Zen cigarette. I couldn’t smoke normal fags because of my asthma and martial arts training. But I
loved the image of having five minutes of deep inhalation and relaxation to calm the self. Some people miss the moment but others are
true masters at the art of smoking. I needed nothing physical, I could light up anywhere, taking my invisible papers out and selecting the
right wisp of cloud from the sunset. Bringing the thumb up to the eye I placed it directly below the cloud, letting the weight sit on the soft
fleshy bit, then I brought the forefinger over on top of the cloud and softly pulled it down to place it in the paper. The clouds at sunset were
the best for rolling as they had such great depth and shape in the light, a bright front with a darker underbelly to nestle on the thumb. The
rolling was vital, like the tea ceremony the mindfulness of the doing is the key. I knew my stuff, I had rolled enough for Asbestos in my
time. I sat back and ignited the flame from an upward flick of the thumb ready to inhale deep on the light of Zen. The beauty of it is you
can inhale holding the cigarette to your nose or your ear, or any available orifice you can think of. Asbestos knew what I was doing and
he joined the festival of light smoking some blue, ready rolled from his maroon tracksuit top, looking not unlike Bob Marley doing his
football thing.
Just before inhalation I sometimes liked to remind myself that I was entering a new state of consciousness, crossing the border or
frontier away from the petty worries of the day, so I liked to exorcise the energy with a good shout at someone, if only to enlighten them,
the way that the great Zen master had answered the question “How deep is the river of Zen?” by picking up his pupil to throw him off the
bridge into the water. The idea being to shake you out of your everyday cycle of thoughts and to stop the conceptualising and
intellectualising, to become the experience is the truth, not to analyse it. If you love listening to a piece of music, you just love listening to
a piece of music, once you stop and try and say why you are picking up good vibrations you are far removed from the true beauty of that
experience. Yet I could not get down to writing my songs again, not until I knew who killed Nathan, I could not find that easy flow while the
whys and whos haunted my frame. Great artists must work with ease, unaware of themselves, having tuned in to the wondrous waves out
there which most people blunder through every second on the way to the future and the shops. Even if they became aware that they were
shopping they would at least be alive.
‘Shift yer carcass!’ I screamed at a car stopped in the road turning into Tesco, (the car was about to turn into Tesco, obviously it could not
be at a stop and be turning at the same time unless the rotation of the globe was so great, but this globe is always rotating so can we
ever really be at a stop, are we ever still? No, we would have to move to be still, to be in the same position in space we would have to go
against the rotational habits of the earth, and we would be moving all the time, we are moving all the time, atoms swimming and dancing,
there is no such thing as stillness, yet it is one of my greatest ambitions, to just be and be still. The other thing is, while I’ve got the cover
of these brackets, is that I said that the car was turning into Tesco; this does not mean that it was about to become Tesco, to transmigrate
its soul into a superstore, although the occupants of the space in the craft could be said, in some sense, to be on the verge of becoming
Tesco, Zen and the art of shopping).
Sorry about this little diversion into language but all my blood and roots and idle thoughts spring from the west of Ireland, where you
have a thirst on you instead of being thirsty, the words all come in a different order, from the Irish, so the meanings depend on
understanding the way the ordering occurs. I just thought I’d mention it because it was one of the little comets flying around in my head
as I shouted at the car. Millions of thoughts all at the same instant, but to communicate these vast constellations would require something
with numerous screens and speakers and a creature with many receptacles. Yet I can get through to Asbestos and I used to be able to
do the same with Nathan, because he tuned in to the same station; Bruce Lee, Baudelaire, the Fantastic Expedition of Dillard and Clark,
using the outside of the foot to curve the ball into that beatific arc from an impossible angle. All of these things merged together in that
spinning globe curving into the top corner of the net, I ran to the corner flag and Nathan, Best, Leftover and myself all did our Kung Fu
high kick and splits. The whole football team had become Kung Fu; Zen and the Art of Free Kicks. The only one that didn’t was Barry
Dogsmuck, but he went on to earn a mint at sixteen, from the poster which he had designed showing Jesus in the crucifix position tipping
a Brazilian free kick over the bar, underneath it said- JESUS SAVES. That’s another story; the one in my head has a team of kids from
the estate, all on the same wavelength metamorphosizing from a bunch of losers to a golden group of positive thinkers and
philosophers. Working class kids bundled round a television, watching Bruce Lee films which their dads used to watch for the kicks, but
these eyes were focussed on the ART. It all started when James Cheung joined the team and he invited us round after he saw some kids
fighting, his father offered to show us some real Shaolin Kung Fu and we were hooked. Yes we were all tuned to the same station,
especially Nathan. That was before they put a bullet in him, now he transmits on a completely different frequency, if I can find that
wavelength he can whisper the killer’s name. I haven’t been at peace since- I can’t be. My master, Ip Cheung, taught me that I must not
use Kung Fu to harm innocent people; if I did it was his duty to punish me. Kung Fu advocates non-violence. If I used it to maliciously kill
someone it was his duty as my teacher to kill me, and if someone maliciously kills me it is his duty to kill them. I was Nathan’s teacher,
he was my first student and it IS my duty to avenge his death.
It all seemed like a dream; I didn’t believe in violence, I just happened to be good at it. People set up Karate schools and that kind of
stuff but this was a way of life, it became our reality, it was all we had, something which grew and grew in a small circle which eventually
came to run the estate. For two of us in particular it became our whole being until Ip Cheung was called back to China, I had just turned
twenty two and both myself and Best had trained under the Master for twelve years, going through different styles of Chinese Gung Fu,
Shaolin, Taijiquan and Wing Chun mostly and a great deal of Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee’s style of no style. Best and myself were
inseparable, we had to study the forms day and night and sometimes on our own we would lay down challenges to each other. To keep it
exciting for us we would take it in turns to state the form of combat and the duration. One day I got Leftover, our closest Kung Fu friend, to
deliver my prized black Kung Fu suit to Best. This meant a no rules fight, TO THE DEATH. It was a joke but Ip Cheung heard about it and
we began the series of philosophical lessons which were to change my life. When Ip Cheung found out that he had to go back to China
he was to select someone to take his place. Best was by far the stronger, but I had plunged the depths of philosophy and for some
reason could use this in inspirational ways, to be positive and inspire others to reach for their stars in their own way, that was what Ip
Cheung had inspired in me. That was when he persuaded me to teach Kung Fu, the philosophy, the life, not the stunt kicks. Nothing for
show, nobody would ever talk about it unless it was appropriate.
The Master asked Best some questions and then he turned to me and asked: ‘What is the Tao?’ I was tempted to copy the Ch’an monk
Yun-men and say: “Walk on,” which was a way of communicating the ever changing reality of the cosmic process, the flow where all
things interact as one; this was also because I had been listening to Neil Young singing those very words the night before circling my
eyes to observe the vinyl rotating against the needle and the melody kept popping to the front of my head without warning.
Yet for some reason that didn’t come to me at all until later, what did come to me was the light in the street outside my bedroom window.
On asthmatic nights I used to mist up the window and see that light blur and fly golden lines off at all angles. The night before the Master
was to leave I could not sleep and I kept hearing his voice talking about stillness. I explained that I had found what he meant by stillness
in movement. When I was running I was running ‘on my feet’ and for the first time I had discovered the circular motion of the legs meant
that I did not think about going forward, I just let them circle and suddenly I was home. It felt strange, I had been completely still while I
was running. This made me realise that when I was still so many vibrations were going on in my body, in the atoms of the wood on the
window sill, in the nuclei and electrons of the atoms, in the protons and neutrons of the nuclei, all those atomic discos going on within
metal and stone. I was in the lowest class for physics but suddenly in the lamplight I grasped the micro cosmos by the throat. The Master
smiled and said: “The stillness in stillness is not real stillness, only when you find the stillness in movement can the rhythm of the spirit
truly enter. You have found the spirit. You must continue my work here.”
Best could not accept the choice and things were never the same again. He set up his own Kung Fu thing and our circle broke up. Comet
Rangers, the football team which had been together for twelve years was finished. Leftover was the only link between Best and myself.
Best was physically awesome, he just used his presence and eventually came to run the estate. He fought to keep out the heroin, and he
dealt good quality speed and E’s to the clubbers and kept prices low on his dope to try and keep the youngsters off the hard stuff. But
there was pressure from London to push heavy on the estate and Best had to fight hard to keep them away.
Anyway, back to the car, just a few seconds had passed since we left me and the only thing to happen in that space was Asbestos turned
up Bob Marley and blew smoke into the cassette player as he had to put his face that close to sense the controls.
‘Come on! Come on, go go go!’ Asbestos shouted, speeding his face off, whizzing through the inside of the car bumping up the kerb. He
believed in freeform jazz traffic. We screamed, merging with Marley as we flew round and off along the dotted lines into the city fields,
inhaling deep Zen smiles. This was the bit I loved, taking the corners into the trees and up the hill to the magic world of Stanborough.
Breaking a cool hundred, Asbestos skidded into the car park and stopped. There we sat as still as possible, allowing for the rotation of
the planets, the car purring beneath us. I watched an old fella belonging to a bicycle staring at us, motionless, or as close as can be
allowed...
‘What’s up?’ Asbestos asked. ‘I can smell something’s up.’
‘Well Mr Magoo, we have Big Brother bearing down on us in the shape of a cyclist, pensionable, obviously hiding a neighbourhood watch
tattoo and a medal for meddling.’
‘No, he clocked me before.’
‘Easy, just park up there, let him look elsewhere for a medal.’
‘Nah, I could do him, he’s in my sights,’ said Asbestos, drawing smoke deep into the bronchial tubes, letting it glide out his nostrils like a
raging bull, revving up.
‘No, no, that’s your speed paranoia speaking. You’re blind, you can’t see his eyes.’
‘Look, it’s not paranoia, it’s energy, fuel. I’ve never been wrong with my instinct and I’m still here despite my eyes. I can see bad colours
all around him. He’s an ex-cop, he has that aura. Got retired, got a bike, got an attitude, I can smell those piggy eyes.’
‘Yeah he does look like a cop... Or a bailiff.’
‘Right. He Goes!’
The foot slammed to the floor, my head hit the seat as gravel spewed out behind and Asbestos whacked up Natty Dread, Natty Dread as
we hurled across the stones of the car park, straight between the lines of poplar trees, lights of the traffic flickering from the nearby
motorway. The old fella knew his fate, he had been trained all his life to know and we were pleased to make him feel that he could still do
it after all this time. He must have had a rush of self worth as he jumped on his bike and peddled for his life towards the lake, hoping he
was heading with the earth’s rotation to get up speed, his legs whizzing in circles like a cartoon.
'He’s blurring into blue,’ shouted Asbestos. ‘This baby’s too quick, he’s a dead man!’
‘No, no!’ I screamed, the rush of death making me choke.
‘Where is he?’
Asbestos headed straight for a tree and I shouted:
‘Brake! Now, now. Now!’
Spinning the world in circles, I thought of everything and nothing as blue vapour covered my eyes. Slow motion spirals sent me out of
my body, looking down on the back end of the car hitting a tree. I saw words arcing on the lights from the motorway. “Sometimes vapour
glides on the breeze as summer climbs through the poplar trees she floats free, all out of focus gone.” I could see a body drifting on the
lake, a mermaid with her hair splayed out around her like a peacock and then it was gone into the layers of mist. All was quiet and almost
still. I was back down aware of me, but I couldn’t see the old fella. Maybe he was in the lake. We hadn’t hit him I don’t think. Maybe he
was a ghost, he’d gone on the air anyway, anywhere away from our world, back up into the vapour. Asbestos turned and smiled and said:
‘Whoo hoo, I lost it then, sorry mate. Christ I need a fag, I lost that one.’
We could smell burning. I looked around and a coat on the back seat was in flames. We jumped out and Asbestos shouted that Frank
was still in there, so I leaped over the seat and Frank was already alight. That was when I saw the name McLaren, on something burning
yellow and gold, pure gold. I grabbed the guitar as the neck began to blaze and ran to the lake extinguishing the sweet burning flame
with a swift stabbing motion. We looked at each other, laughed, and ran around the lake looking back to see the flames take hold of the
car.
‘Burn baby burn!’ Asbestos shouted.
The petrol caught and it blew up as we fell back, just like in the John Woo Hong Kong movies.
‘The big bang,’ I said, getting up. ‘That’s how the universe started and the first star was formed.’
‘Yeah, beautiful, cool reds and blues and greens. We made a constellation while the world went home from work.’
The light was slipping as we headed higher above the lake. It wouldn’t be long before the police came. The now legendary Tesco
superstore was only a mile away and the explosion would have been seen and heard from the A1 M motorway which semi-
circumnavigated the smaller lake where kids went rowing and ducks narrowly avoided death from miniature motorised boats.
We parked our carcasses under my favourite Lombardy poplar and I looked up to see the first star come out through the leaves. I took
my harpoon out of my top pocket and started blowing soft then sucking low bends on the long notes, deep bronchial invasions of earthy
blues, the breath of ages sweeping life through the reeds. Soon the comet would be visible as the sky grew dark and the sun headed
way out west, or should I say we turned our back on the sun. My astral sheath was so light these days that it would peel itself secretly away
and play truant at even the slightest whiff of epiphany. The essence of everything washed over me in a wish at seeing the star appear. Up
through the trees there was a road. My angles having melted, I was wandering through the branches up into the twilight sky along a
stellar motorway. I took a golden slip road into my dreams and could see a beautiful lake covered in silver mist. The silver took over from
gold, cooling me as I fell back down through the leaves locking back into my temporary assigned physical shell next to Asbestos.
‘I love this tree, it’s like Monet’s Poplars, all the branches reach out to the sky screaming yes! YES! It is positively my road to the stars,’ I
said, watching the cars spill around the corner of the motorway.
‘When are you heading off then?’ Asbestos asked, lighting another cigarette.
‘When I can get enough cash and when I get a sign.’
‘Give me a sign or I’ll do time,’ said Asbestos, gesturing to the sky with outstretched arms.
‘Hey, that’s a good line for a song.’
Picking up poor old Frank, smouldering but amazingly still in tune, I burst into song, plucking a melody from the ether, sometimes it
just happens that way.
‘Give me a sign or I’ll do time, this evening you said all love is blind, but when I close my eyes I still see through you and I call the colour
there gun metal blue.’
‘Gun metal blue,’ sighed Asbestos approvingly. ‘Yeah, nice one, the burning car and my baby.’ He took out his baby. A blue revolver he
carried in case there was any trouble. He always said, you’ve got your harpoon and I’ve got my baby. Since Best had gone inside the
Hilltop patch was wide open and it had gone beyond Kung Fu, shooters were out since Nathan’s death and things were getting stormy.
The Hilltop Mafia was always Best’s baby, but since he was otherwise occupied, McLaren was trying to take control of all the estates.
Leftover had been left in charge of the Hilltop Mafia and he was preparing for Best’s release with a campaign of BEST IS BACK slogans
painted all over town. I never quite saw where Asbestos slotted in to all this. He was Nathan's half brother, but I had never been allowed
near him in all the years I'd known Nathan, only recently had he really come onto the scene just as I went off it. I didn't know Nathan had
become entwined in Best's web until it was too late, and then he was dead. They said Asbestos was there when they shot his brother but
he wouldn't have seen a thing, just a flash of lights and colours. I swear Best did it to get at me, he even did it in my old house, the place
which supported my childhood reveries. Leftover had it now and I found myself increasingly drawn back there since Nathan's death, but
answers were hard to find, Asbestos would never talk about it, only I had the feeling he had something planned for Best when he got out.
It was a good time to consider getting out and maybe the tail of the comet was the sign for me as well as for Hope. I began to see her
face in the lake again but then Asbestos waved his shooter under the tree and put it to my temple.
‘Aren’t you ever scared of death?’ he asked.
‘I saw my life flash in front in blue that time,’ I said. ‘ Know no fear, Bruce Lee!’
‘I was on a bus the other day and I saw my death driving headlong into my whole life.’
‘Were you scared?’ I asked, watching the barrel move round to my eyes.
‘See no evil,’ he said, moving the gun to my mouth. ‘Speak no evil,’ and round to my ears, he whispered, ‘here they come.’
‘Hey?’
‘I can hear the sirens-a-wailing.’
I couldn’t hear a thing but Asbestos had a heightened sense of hearing. Once, passing the University he said he could hear the students
scribbling away and, sometimes, if he sat still, he said he could hear their fetid little minds ticking away like time bombs under the weight
of heady expectant thoughts, not about the universe but about their first tepid messy sexual sprawls in their halls. He knew, because he’d
slept with many of the first year girls, giving them a greater education than any institution could offer, that was the gospel according to
Asbestos anyway.
The sound of the sirens came to me then and the northern lights crossed the sky, circling the horizon until they reached the flaming star
of our creation. The sun switched off and I could see the comet reflected in the dark pit of the lake.
‘Were you scared of seeing death?’ I asked.
‘To die first you must be alive,’ he said, wiping my sweat with the gun skimming my forehead.
‘You’re full of quotes today boy.’
‘That’s the truth of it all right. Death is a point on the horizon,’ he said, pointing the shooter straight out in the direction of the wailing sirens.
‘I’m heading straight for it, but it’s always through the heat haze you get in summer, when the road is melting. I see it when it’s not even
there. My eyes are screwed up, I’m screwed up. I live by hot-wired senses. Rainbows are always round my head and in my eyes. Nobody
sees what I see, ‘cept you, Hope (he raised his hand across the tail of the comet in the lake and pointed up to the sky and waved) and
Leftover; and the Brain who’s doing my eye experiments at the University. The rest dilute it, water it down with yesterday and tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow’s soon yesterday but today is still today,’ I said.
‘Yeah, forget the past and don’t run around headless after the future. I mean I’ve seen the future but I ain’t gonna chase it. We’ll get
together sometime, when the mood is right and it’ll be like great art, my body smashed up against the wheel, the Speedo stuck at one
two five, and all of those things I dreamt up scribbled down on the dashboard in blood ,the King of the asphalt is dead, long live the King .’
‘What is it like, your picture of death?’
‘It’s drifting, just like the snow scenes in one of those Christmas glass domes, but it’s cracked and the water is draining out and rolling
down a gutter into the sewers to merge with the scum and shit of the world, floating out to sea and evaporating up to become blue vapour.
I’ll come back as a storm cloud and piss on ‘em all, raining thunder and lightning down on the disbelievers, the cynics, the hypocrites,
like the storm in Zaire after Ali showed ‘em all by winning the Rumble in the Jungle. We can all fly, the secrets are all around, you just
gotta believe and tell the others before they get you. They still cling to the physical and shag the earth for money while we head for the
stars with the real loot. They’ve killed the spirit so it’s left to us to change things and show the way, we need to be the cat’s eyes on the
road. It’s just I don’t know how to explain it in words. Marley knew, Bruce Lee knew, Malcolm X knew, and they took all them. You know,
don’t let them take you until you’ve shown the golden ones the way to the stars. Don’t let them take you!’
‘Well the nearest I‘ve ever come to death has always been with you!’ I said, smiling.
‘Nah, in my death there’s only me in the car, gun metal blue, I’m the bullet from a gun, I don’t look up or down, left or right or behind. I’m
heading down that vortex, I can’t stop until I hit and that is written in the stars. It was tattooed on my arm by the fella in the launderette.’
Asbestos rolled up his sleeve and there was a car in the shape of a bullet.
‘Life, you see, is like a game of cards Junior. It’s not what you pick up, it’s what you lay down’s gonna make it, so show your hand.’
‘Well I’m clearing everything out to see what’s left in my hand and then I’ll lay it down heavy. Something big is on the rise, I can feel it.’
‘Yeah it is. I’ve got this big deal coming up which will see me right for cash, and I can then go away and get my eyes done.’
‘Where?’ I asked, delighted that something could be done for his eyes.
‘It’s all part of the deal, a bit hush hush. The Brain knows this guy in Ireland who has been experimenting with LSD and these virtual
reality vortexes or something, Jesus I don’t know what these freaks get up to, but only The Brain and some Yanks know about it.’
‘What’s the big secret if there is a cure out there?’
‘Well the original process does not involve any drugs but it opens astral doorways, similar to an acid trip, but the cure involves reversing
the process, since my sight is already like an acid trip, because my front cones are damaged and so I only see with the rods at the back.’
‘The same way some animals like cats can see at night, because they have no front cones?’
‘That’s it. That is why I can see auras. The old Tibetans used to recommend that you look at an angle to avoid the front cones and that
way you would be more susceptible, is that the right word? Yeah, more susceptible to the infrared end of the spectrum.’
‘So this could be the hottest drug on the market.’
‘Exactly, it can show people’s auras and you can project your astral body anywhere and still be aware of it, not like a dream or anything.’
‘That sounds like the sort of thing the military mess about with.’
‘Spot on again Junior, that is what these people are afraid of.’
‘So you’ll be the first to do this then?’
‘The second. The first went blind. So it is still in the early stages, but I’ll risk it. I’ll have the cash and the details in a few days so will you be
ready?’
‘Me? You want me to come?’
‘Yeah, I need daylight eyes and besides it is in Kerry, that is where you’re family are from isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Well I love writing out there, so I could get the book and the album done in one go. Sounds like heaven.’
‘Well I’ll get it sorted, I’ll meet you by the bridge tomorrow night to tell you more.’
‘Take it to the bridge!’ I screamed doing the James Brown splits. I ran off round the lake entertaining ideas of freedom. A radio was
booming from a car across the water. On the waves I could hear the voices of Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq broadcasting from
Glastonbury, sharing a joke which is gone from me now but at the time made me smile out loud as I watched the reflections of the flames
on the water and lost myself again in my harpoon, sending long notes around the shoreline before greeting them again, their echoes
landing on the mirror of the lake.
When I next looked across the lake at the burnt out car, there were people standing all around it. Circles of light were falling on the water
as a few drops of rain came down, caught in the headlights of the cars parked by the side of the lake. After a while I noticed the comet
was gone and the rain was really pelting down all over me. I must have been there quite a while thinking about Hope and the comet. I
looked at the water plummeting from the heavens illuminated by the headlights and there I saw a group of umbrellas part to make way
for a huge figure. He seemed to be looking directly across the lake, as if trying to pinpoint the source of that strange lonesome echo
which had been travelling through him since his arrival on the scene. I recognised him straight away. It was the Kid, the seven foot
monster trained by Best, but now one of McLaren's boys. I did not know who McLaren was at the time and I was about to find out, but I
knew the Kid alright. He had tried to kill me once because he had heard that I was as good as Best and Best was inside now so why not
take the crown. I wore no crown, take no heroes only inspiration as they say, but others tried to place it loosely on my head when Best
went. I declined after what they had done to Nathan and Leftover was leftover. The Kid wanted to rid the town of my Kung Fu. He wanted
no more pupils to walk out of my school. Most of them had gone away after they killed Nathan. I had expanded their horizons and they
followed the rotation of the globe beyond the narrow sights of the town. Now it was my turn to get out while I still could.
I couldn’t believe it. I was going to get away, going to do it all in one summer, flood it all out and Asbestos could get his eyes done as
well. I was getting out of this place, expanding my horizons and I focused on the circles of raindrops in the light letting my astral body
wander off once more on a single note shot from my harpoon arcing high into the night sky. I went with it, hovering over the wet glistening
rooftops and the places where I had grown and outgrown, with a love hate passion that would always linger on the yellow gold of the dim
street lamps across the estates and over roundabouts at four in the morning after a game of cards at the Hilltop, or fumbled embraces in
alleyways, sharing dreams and saliva with a girl from Welwyn Garden City, who got me swimming, swimming in the sky. She taught me
about chemical reactions, the universe and the Big Bang. Upon that night performing my Kung Fu forms against the moon I had seen
another layer of the town, and I called the colour there gun metal blue.
TO BE CONTINUED...
