The Saturday night gig at the Students Union
featured one of the most notorious up-and-coming-bands
that would never quite make it to the big time.
This band had a fierce cult following amongst
those students who prided themselves in having
a non-commercial taste in musical. The warm-up
band trotted onto the stage. The crowd herded
towards the front of the hall to gaze up at
the motley crew adjusting their instruments.
The lights went out and the keyboard player,
having set his synth to Hammond organ, welted
out the first few bars of Bach's
Toccata
and Fugue. The Banks of Marshall amps duly
rendered these ancient power chords ear-splitting,
but the homage to ancient music did not last
long. The lead guitar chorused the organ, almost
imperceptivity at first, but gradually it took
over. Bach's music was hijacked by a Fender
Strat-toting youth with compositional ideas
of his own. The organ toned down and the bass
and drums kicked in. The band launched into
head shaking rock. There followed a guitar solo
by the youthful musician that echoed his ego
above his skill, playing as many notes per bar
as possible rather than carefully choosing those
notes for their musical payoff. Oceans of reverb
and distortion were drafted to disguise any
shortfall in the actual musicality presented
to the audience who were revved up by the mania
and the intensity of the sound. The singer
patiently waited for the guitar soloist to wind
up his solo before slapping both hands onto
the elbow of the chromium mic stand in front
of him. He closed his eyes and blared rapid
vocals into the mic.
A multitude of bedroom guitarists studied with
concentration knitted on their brows the fingering
of the lead axeman's slender, bony digits over
the fretboard. Most of the women gazed exclusively
at the singer, whose face was obviously youthful
and handsome and yet hollowed - the pallid countenance
of the drug connoisseur. This curious demeanour
of the singer added to the prerequisite rebellious
image that was the uniform of the numberless
bands doing the rounds.
Gallie was last seen consoling the distraught
Karen. Karen played the part of one who would
sooner be wearing black to notify her state
of grief to those beyond the range of her howls.
She had said that if Steve had died instead
of betraying and leaving her she would not be
so wounded. If Steve
had died she would
have mourned him as the picturesque, bereaved
lover. Then after a tearstained episode of
mourning she would have quietly discarded the
tasteful black armband and got on with living
her life to the full. But Steve
hadn't
died. He had had the temerity to live and betray
her absolutely. She felt humiliated and angry
and upset. Now she had nothing left except
Gallie's shoulder to cry on and she wasted no
opportunity to take solace in Gallie's uncannily
comforting ability to listen while looking genuinely
concerned at what was being said to her.
The warm-up band launched into a finale, the
bass player attacked his fretless bass and the
keyboard player hammered punchy, buzz-like warmth
from analogue synth. The lead guitarist and
the singer took turns to attempt a coup d'etat
on the spectacle of the headline group to come,
hurling themselves into a frantic orgy of blast.
And so the gig ended for the support band and
the crowd were energised and eager. The disco
DJ played some filler pop: Europe's
The Final
Countdown, with its cheesy keyboard hook
braying earnestly from the PA system, sounding
patient after the fractalesk riffs churned and
belted only moments before.
Greg was chatting to a girl by the stage. In
a backroom bar huddled together in a mutually
confidential pose of comradeship were Gallie
and Karen. They opened up when Howard arrived
at their table but Karen however continued to
talk without directly acknowledging Howard's
presence.
'At the end of the day he was shaggability king
of all the blokes I've ever shagged, actually,'
she bemoaned. She gulped her vodka and lemon
mid sentence so that she should not be interrupted.
'Clearly we were meant for each other in bed
but not in his fucking eyes. Fucking men! Actually,
it's my fate as a tortured artist to be bashed
against the literally jagged rocks of pure love.
It serves me right really for trusting a
man
- trust a man and the jagged rocks will, like,
break your heart and make you look totally discredited
in front of your peers.'
She repeated her miserable theme with the tenacity
of a perpetual motion machine. As it became
obvious that even Gallie was wearying, Karen
compensated by diving her self-pity to new depths
of bewailing pathos. Gallie ushered Howard into
the conversation.
'Ohhh, it's such a terrible thing, poor Kas,'
sighed Gallie. 'She loved him more than anything
in the whole world!'
'She's feeling sorry for the injury to her interstellar
ego more like.' muttered Howard.
'Men!' cried Karen with the sullen defiance
of the jilted, 'as far as I'm concerned men
can totally go to Hell! They can all go straight
to Hell without passing God!'
'Well looks like I'm damned' said Howard. 'I'll
see you in Hell!'
Karen crossed her arms. Howard hoped in vain
she would lighten her mood. Upon reading Karen's
frosty eyes Gallie stifled her cheer and turned
down her mouth.
***
*****
***
Howard dreamed that he stood at the head of
a large canyon. An old man was hurling fluffy
pink rabbits at him. Wielding a squash racquet
Howard swung at the rabbits and with satisfying
strikes he propelled them across the canyon.
Missing was cause for panic for a missed rabbit
savagely bit his legs and had to be whacked
several times with the racquet before it would
desist.
Howard attended the afternoon lab session with
his reluctant lab partner Jacintha. His mind
was troubled and he was less conscious of her
than usual. Their assigned experiments were
concerned with the quantum properties of light
and had to be performed in darkness. They shut
themelves into a small optics lab and worked
alone in the darkness with only the dimmest
lamps to work by.
Howard switched on a shielded sodium lamp.
Through a small crack in the case he watched
a faint pink light gradually turn red before
waxing into a dazzling glare. With difficulty
they set up an interferometer.
'There!' declared Howard triumphantly. He peered
through the metal eyepiece of the interferometer,
'the bands! Ha!'
'Let me see!' said Jacintha coldly.
The dim lights were switched off. The yellow
stripes of sodium light filled Howard's view
in the darkness like a trapped particle of sun.
With a start he realised Jacintha's hand was
touching the hair over his left temple. Her
other hand touched his head on the other side.
She softly tousled his hair. He stayed where
he was, making no attempt to acknowledge or
discourage her caresses. His sensory input
in the darkness consisted entirely of the yellow
bands of light and the sensation of her delicate
fingers toying with his hair. His breathing
paused. The caresses emboldened. He wasn't
sure whether he had remained staring at the
interference pattern for thirty seconds or thirty
minutes. Gently her hands coaxed him away from
the interferometer. She was silhouetted against
the feeble stray rays of sodium light. Her
barely invisible image was gorgeous and surreal,
like a monochromatic hologram of a goddess.
They kissed. The embraces became abandoned
and as unstoppable as a tide. He felt his heart
rushing in a feral agitation.
Then he tried clumsily for full-bloodied sex
but she pulled away. Breathing heavily they
corrected their loosened clothes and reprised
the experiment. He was even more formal towards
her and she wintrier toward him. If a third
party had observed them at this point he might
have concluded they were disinterested strangers.
With a gazelle-like animation in his gait, Howard
entered the house on Napoleon Terrace. As he
filed past the kitchen he was accosted in mid-stride
by a bark from Karen.
'Howard, you
never wash up! Like, just
look at the state of this totally filthy kitchen!
It's absolutely over the top.'
'Well, dear,' said Howard with overconfidence,
'that is the way the universe is. The Second
Law of thermodynamics demands it. Entropy will
intensify. Chaos will trump order.
We
grow old and
kitchens grow messy. Now
I'm not one to mess with nature. Who
am I to-'
'Shut up! You're such an idle bastard! Fucking
wash the dishes before I increase the entropy
of your nose.'
'Ok, ok!'
Howard's mood was so superior with the unanticipated
intimacies of the afternoon that the prospect
of dealing with the grease-filled crockery was
not so ghastly and so he set about his Herculean
errand. He scrubbed and rinsed and scoured and
wiped with such pluck that Karen looked askance
at his alien conduct. Finding his manners to
be impeccable and beyond denigration she seemed
to sink further into her prevalent depression;
her face was sallow and her limbs sagged like
those of a rag doll. She shunted out of the
kitchen in a reddening huff.
 | | | | |
| From: |
Knor | Subject: | 2002-01-12 09:30:47 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2002-01-15 06:35:51 |
| | | | |
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