against each other, coming together in time and key as the suite took its final crystalline form. And yet the hotel was dead. Had I come to the wrong place? If so, there was nothing I could do about it, especially as I was now trapped inside. I decided that the error, if there really was one, could be blamed on my attitude . Clearly I needed to get deeper into the swing of the occasion. A desperate, absurd measure but the only option which presented itself to my somewhat troubled mind.
That feeling of having just missed out on a chance is the one I fear and despise most. Acting like a rock star seemed the only positive option left, however little it currently appealed to my nerves. My limbs were stiff, my whole metabolism sluggish. But I roused myself to perform a traditional gesture of professional defiance. I resolved to throw the television set out of the window. The management, if they existed, would expect it and so would my fellow musicians, elusive as they were, not to mention our hypothetical audience. I grasped the sides of the frame but found it too heavy to move. Then a peculiar notion entered my head: that it might prove to be lighter if I switched it on. The electromagnetic field set up by the ancient circuits would push against the Earth’s own magnetic field, allowing me to glide it along the floor to the window and the moist oblivion of a bottomless puddle.
I flipped the brass switch. The tubes warmed up very slowly. A tiny bright dot appeared at the centre of the screen, and even before it expanded it seemed full of the energy and potential of a new or parallel universe. I felt I was watching the birth of a different reality, a cosmos that wanted nothing more to do with me, its creator. There’s a word for this phenomenon: deism . I learned it when we plundered philosophical dictionaries for references for our musical suite. I peered more closely at the screen. Now the sound came through from the primitive speakers, a hiss of ambient radiation that gradually settled down into something more audible, the chaotic mutterings of an excited crowd. As the spot of light grew, I heard music, familiar because I knew it well, but odd because I had never listened to it from the outside. Previously I had helped play it.
The dot expanded to fill the circular screen. Perhaps it continued beyond the limits of this circumference, but there was no way of telling. Slotted between the static specks were pixels of meaning. A group scene, profoundly human and yet disturbingly alien: a conventional cameo distorted by immense distance and depth, as if the signal had circumnavigated the universe before returning to this point of origin. Naturally, in such an ambitious transmission there was bound to be a lag, but not just of time: also of inclusion and roles. My mind slowly interpreted the soup of angry colour before me. It was the climax of a concert, my gig, taking place now in this hotel, and there was a large audience, but I was missing. The new keyboards player, whom I had never seen, was compensating for my absence by pounding out the bass lines on an electric organ with his left hand.
There was wild clapping and cheering. The pompous suite hadn’t turned sour after all. The band dismounted the stage and struggled through the audience, pushing something before them. The crowd parted reluctantly. I recognised the sweat on the faces of the vocalist, lead guitarist and drummer, and beneath the pungent moisture a communal flush of determined excitement. The gig was barely cool and already they were forcing pleasure from the aftermath. When they were halfway across the dancefloor I saw what they were pushing. It was a model of the hotel, mounted on castors as our laundry basket had been. Possibly it was the laundry basket, rescued from the sea, washed up the mouth of a river and through a series of locks into the canal system which watered Birmingham in cruel alliance with the rain, and now converted into this replica,
That feeling of having just missed out on a chance is the one I fear and despise most. Acting like a rock star seemed the only positive option left, however little it currently appealed to my nerves. My limbs were stiff, my whole metabolism sluggish. But I roused myself to perform a traditional gesture of professional defiance. I resolved to throw the television set out of the window. The management, if they existed, would expect it and so would my fellow musicians, elusive as they were, not to mention our hypothetical audience. I grasped the sides of the frame but found it too heavy to move. Then a peculiar notion entered my head: that it might prove to be lighter if I switched it on. The electromagnetic field set up by the ancient circuits would push against the Earth’s own magnetic field, allowing me to glide it along the floor to the window and the moist oblivion of a bottomless puddle.
I flipped the brass switch. The tubes warmed up very slowly. A tiny bright dot appeared at the centre of the screen, and even before it expanded it seemed full of the energy and potential of a new or parallel universe. I felt I was watching the birth of a different reality, a cosmos that wanted nothing more to do with me, its creator. There’s a word for this phenomenon: deism . I learned it when we plundered philosophical dictionaries for references for our musical suite. I peered more closely at the screen. Now the sound came through from the primitive speakers, a hiss of ambient radiation that gradually settled down into something more audible, the chaotic mutterings of an excited crowd. As the spot of light grew, I heard music, familiar because I knew it well, but odd because I had never listened to it from the outside. Previously I had helped play it.
The dot expanded to fill the circular screen. Perhaps it continued beyond the limits of this circumference, but there was no way of telling. Slotted between the static specks were pixels of meaning. A group scene, profoundly human and yet disturbingly alien: a conventional cameo distorted by immense distance and depth, as if the signal had circumnavigated the universe before returning to this point of origin. Naturally, in such an ambitious transmission there was bound to be a lag, but not just of time: also of inclusion and roles. My mind slowly interpreted the soup of angry colour before me. It was the climax of a concert, my gig, taking place now in this hotel, and there was a large audience, but I was missing. The new keyboards player, whom I had never seen, was compensating for my absence by pounding out the bass lines on an electric organ with his left hand.
There was wild clapping and cheering. The pompous suite hadn’t turned sour after all. The band dismounted the stage and struggled through the audience, pushing something before them. The crowd parted reluctantly. I recognised the sweat on the faces of the vocalist, lead guitarist and drummer, and beneath the pungent moisture a communal flush of determined excitement. The gig was barely cool and already they were forcing pleasure from the aftermath. When they were halfway across the dancefloor I saw what they were pushing. It was a model of the hotel, mounted on castors as our laundry basket had been. Possibly it was the laundry basket, rescued from the sea, washed up the mouth of a river and through a series of locks into the canal system which watered Birmingham in cruel alliance with the rain, and now converted into this replica,
Similar Books
