She gathered her clothes and left for church. Religion was always the oil between the gears, another spiritual opium to keep us moving.
Mine isn’t found in dusty crosses or organ pipes. Mine is at rest on the turntable, incarnated in tiny rifts of black vinyl, waiting to spin and pour waves into the air.
Forty-three years ago in a grungy Wessex studio the magic happened, the sounds were captured. Swift, syncopated horn runs; smoothly wavering flute melodies; long stretches of soft atonality; lyrics to match the grandeur of classical epic.
It’s been raining for three days now. The mint and basil are flourishing, fresh ingredients for my amateur delicacies. The sky is dark blue but the earth, shaded from the blinding haze of its mother, is greener than ever. My toes clench and unclench over the dark, wet grain of the wood. This is my palette, these are the colors I choose: the browns, greens, and cloudy blues of a forest during a rainstorm.
No tempo now, only the cymbal taps and the rambling guitar. The penultimate noises are pregnant with the final song. I can feel it lusting for life. Then, it is born with a simple drum fill; images of mythical kingdoms, court jesters, and towering, striding kings flow across the backs of my eyes. Every time that last song reaches its chaotic death throes and drops out of the air, I marvel that the world remains.
The needle spirals inward and the songs pass me by. As they fade one by one into silence, they go to a place, I imagine, not unlike the scene before me. A place of soft falling water and gentle grasses, where time has evolved the strange feel of both moving on and never moving: so that songs may pass through every note, yet drift on each forever and never end—a hawk soaring in place, hanging weightless against the wind with feathers spread like open hands.