Saturday, May 10, 2008

THE SONG THAT LOU REED NEVER WROTE

Alba and I were walking home down the deserted night time street and she seemed distracted, somehow, somewhere in some other time, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on the distraction. Our footsteps echoed off the damp London pavements and red brick walls. Then she started singing in a low, sweet sentimental voice, a sad song I was not familiar with, but which sounded some chord in my memory.

“Well now darling, those other lights invite me on, so you better look down here quick or I’ll be gone, ‘cause you know baby, I’m the man that looks around and right here’s my shadow on the ground. Well now baby, I just know those other lights invite me on, so you’d better look down here quick or I’ll be gone, ‘cause you know now I’m the man that looks around and here’s my shadow on the ground, I’m the man that looks around and here’s my shadow on the ground....”

It brought back smells and tastes and sounds from some ether or another, of student flats and parties, Rumanian red wine mixed with orange juice, Cheddar cheese and pineapple snacks, marijuana, Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, 1972 and Lou Reed live at Kingston Polytechnic, Lou and the Tots, but I didn’t register the words until she got to the chorus, which she repeated over and over, with minor variations, with growing stridency and confidence in the rhythm and melody till she suddenly stopped, looked up at me, blushed a little, and broke into a shy, slightly sly, laugh.

“You’d better look down here quick or I’ll be gone, ‘cause you know now I’m the man that looks around and here’s my shadow on the ground, I’m the man that looks around and here’s my shadow on the ground , just the two of us, the two of us. The two of us….nomads, the nomads, the nomads....”

“Sounds terribly familiar, but what on earth is it?”

Alba kissed me. It was a sad nostalgic kiss and I loved her even more for it.

“The song that Lou Reed never wrote!”



THE NOMADS

Always some grit or other shit blown in my eye
Always some marvellous habit I’ve got to break
Would surely cause a lesser man to cry
And break the curse of reflection for its own sake

You’ll catch an infinite sigh on the breeze
Two strangers you’ll see slapping mossy bark
Walking through the darkened night time trees
Walking through the trees in Columbus Park

Well I think those other lights invite me on
You better look down here quick or we’ll be gone
You know I’m the man that looks around
And here’s my shadow on the ground

Always some new darkness amongst all this light
Always such a storm brewing in this dusty air
Always some new painful screaming in the night
But there are always those so cool lights over there

Two strangers you’ll see slapping mossy bark
Walking through the darkened nigh time trees
Walking through the trees in Battery Park
You’ll surely catch their infinite sigh on the breeze

Well I see those other lights invite me on
You better look down here quick or we’ll be gone
You know I’m the man that looks around
And here’s my shadow on the ground

Well I know those other lights invite me on
You better look down here quick or we’ll be gone
You know I’m the man that looks around
And here’s my shadow on the ground

The two of us
Nomads

Copyright, Jone Johnson & The Blue Roadsters,2008

The image is a photographic reworking by B. Sherpa of a sculpture by A. Gormley.

Friday, May 02, 2008

A LUST (SWAN)SONG FOR A LOST YOUTH

Red hot days. Red hot nights. Even the moon’s on fire. You sat down just over there, just there, in front of me, so close I could smell your sweetness and I was instantly burning for you, here, in our red city of fire. Then you closed your eyes and that hurt me for its innocence. You looked away and this hurt me too because, in that instant, I ceased to exist and I realised my eyes were just too old and opaque and waxy, too burnt out to interest you, but, you know, they’ll be burning bloodshot for you somewhere out there in the city of fire. Burning for evermore.


You looked away and you were gone. You must have been, what, twelve or thirteen? Thirteen years in this city of fire, where even the moon’s on fire, and you were lost to me in the shimmer of heat rising off the dark, blackened street, and in the chimera of my overheated memories. Only chance will ever have you sit down so close to me ever again and that kind of chance was burnt out for me years ago, you know, when I was just about your age I guess.


In red hot bloodshot mornings I’m burning for you in my red hot city of fire. Burning for your cool blue veins streaming through your fresh transparent downy white skin. The fresh flesh of youth, kissed by no sun at all in the flickering smoky shadows of this city on fire. I’m burning to look into your crystal clear, clean, guileless blue green eyes, eyes that have never ever dwelt on trickery or scheming.

Head slightly lowered, your blonde pageboy fringe shifts slightly in the fresh cleansing breeze you seemed to carry with you in your aura, in your wake, and the nostalgia for youth is like acid in my twisted, swollen veins. Your eyes looked up to me and there was a smile, and no slyness, on your lips and there was a quick childish laugh at nothing in particular I could discern, and so I’m burning for innocence in this city of burning red hot fire. I’m burning with a passion for cold, icy transparency in this red hot city of flames.


Red hot afternoons. I desperately want to pinch just one of those blue chill veins in your chest or neck or temples, or anywhere, or put my lips to your body to see if they really are as cold and delicate and perfect and young as the idea the actors up here in my theatre of memory torment me with all the time.

My name’s Alba, something I guess you’ll never ever, ever know, which means dawn in English, and I’m twenty one years old tomorrow, Saturday the third of May, 2008.

Just one kiss is all I desire on red hot evenings when I need to prove I haven’t been taken in by you, or by my memory in flames.

But it can never be. There’s no new dawn for me. I’m simply just more fuel for the furnaces of a city on fire.