Silence, not-silence. Because nature, we're told does not like a vacuum. So there's always something crashing into something else somewhere. Exploding, being pulled apart or crushed by gravity. Nature is, by nature rowdy, raucous. Even these words raining upon this page are not silent. Pitter-patted out by keyboard tapping and pencil blustering across the page. Every glittering crackle of the ground underfoot, every release of gas, breath, fart, plop. We have ignition! Not silence. 4 minutes and 33 seconds of the universe on tick over...
3 a.m. to 4 a.m. deserted street silence. Sodium neon breeze murmur in the trees, leaf-rustle, hustling trainer footfall, clip-clop heels stuttering homeward gaggle-giggle, barking vixen yapping, 22? 23? Heel skips in the groove with the weight of laughter with plenty of reverb.
Muted unmuted. Colours are filtered and only the orange part of the spectrum makes it through the night alive. Even the fatty piss-stain moon slides by jaded, smoked and insolent, tie haggard around its neck, cigarette sagging in its lips, one eye squinting a tut with a shrug and a grunt. Stacks another shot glass on the shelf above the bar.
Barking signage and street frontage gagged on nicotine and tannins. Key change up a gear, bin lorry percussion unit.
Just think about those sounds for a minute...
Garbage truck jazz.
Two streets in the distance, duelling.
Single after-market exhaust, accelerant,
two geezers in the kabab shop, protestant.
Three, four. Blues in the night are actually an acid brown-black.
Burnt caramel. Umbrage taken.
Vocal melee red-shifted, receding into distance, melting out of focus, resolving into - dunno, I wasn't there, I just heard. A generator above the cab, air con in the alleyway. The sound of a bottle falling into the road.
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Under the covers, burrowed into the bedding, a private film club. 37 degrees celsius, circadian rhythms, liminal and subliminal unfold and refold. There is a large spiral shell on the beach. Big as a cathedral. I walk in. The entire interior is smooth polished mother-of-pearl. But I know the meaning of nacre. I've been here before.
At a table near the door is my mum, selling pamphlets and collecting alms. She tries to speak and advise me, but her voice is the sound of Aglaope, and rather than succour, I am suckered. Her pamphlets are nothing but platitudes, placebos and propaganda. "Save your art for a hobby" she says.
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A gentle sizzle of rain begins around four to usher in tomorrow, the next day, uncertainty, a deadline... The tide settles as it turns. Something turns, cavitating in the water. Light ripped on the ripples. Thirty three and a third r.p.m.
The alarm beeps on entry while a pin is pushed in. Its punctuation vanishing without a trace. Ticker, ticker parade of fluorescence blossoming into life. There is nothing innocent about fluorescent lighting. It is mean, and industrial, functional, soul-sapping cold. A fridge light is more welcoming. A microwave is more human.
Foxes in the garbage, gulls and crows bicker about the dawn. East coast mainline, motorway harmonics. Dawn is a rabble clattering into the room with the radio suffused in condensation, coffee, toast.
Aroma of a freshly ironed shirt, citrus shower gel and spicy deodorant. That's De-odorant... and a quick, sneaky cigarette in the car, another on the walk to the station. The day is broken before it's even started.
