Track six from Future Ghosts.
night is collected in your room
you breathe its rhythm
dead lots
moonsong
taste
of your lips
these memories
are no longer mine
-
you window-watch
out there;
trees
brick
lawn
so still
suburbia foxed
under streetlight
car beams
you blade-dig
for welcome blood
-
your skin tastes of tears
of could have been
of a life lived
in the passenger seat
-
when the cosmic joker
fucks with you
he never fails to do so
with style and a sense of irony
-
you finger-write your love
in a bus window's steam
the bus pulls into depot
and all depart
only your words remain
until the next rain
-
that murmur you hear
ever in the air
and which you mistake
for wind;
the sound of the universe
laughing at its own absurdity
-
'when you're a kid
your world is filled
with magic'
you say
'but as you
grow older
your soul dies
from the inside out'
-
i have no difficulty
picturing you
on a beach
alone
undressing
stepping
into the waves
and never turning back
Much of this text was initially written as sketches for a supporting character in a future fiction. Most-all of it appeared, piece by piece, on my Twitter feed as it was written. The title is from a mental health assessment of sometime Jack The Ripper suspect Aaron Kosminski: "he declares that he is guided & his movements altogether controlled by an instinct that informs his mind; he says that he knows the movements of all mankind..." My text does not concern the Whitechapel killings; I was more interested in Kosminski's mindset. Do I think he was the killer? Probably not.
I cheated a little on this track, breaching my 'Shamania sessions' remit when creating the musical backing, since it draws very heavily from Jason Oliver's remix of the track Bipolar Binary, which you can hear on the Logos remix album Everything Under The Sky, and which was created some time after the Shamania album was finalised. It still counts, I think, since every aspect of that mix is found in the original. I did mess around with Jason's version for Future Ghosts purposes, quite considerably albeit subtly. The coda is taken from the unreleased Shamania-period track Friends.
Some comments:-
"night is collected in your room / you breathe its rhythm..." This line was likely inspired by the song Kosinski by The Angels Of Light (Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home album, 2003).
"london's dead lots" - See Preludes by T S Eliot: 'And now a gusty shower wraps / The grimy scraps / Of withered leaves about your feet / And newspapers from vacant lots.'
"these memories are no longer mine" - see my text Fissure King, from God Thing: "Golden and ghost boy, where are you? Fool; you lived that life as if it were real. I don't recognise you any more. I don't recognise myself any more.'
"suburbia foxed / under streetlight / car beams / you blade-dig for welcome blood" - In part a sketch for a new character in a new fiction, as mentioned above, in part an imagined memory of my ex-wife, at her parents' house as a late teen and before I met her.
"your skin tastes of tears / of could have been / of a life lived in the passenger seat" - Have I changed at all? Has anything changed? All things are my property, yet never a part of me. This, perhaps, is the crux of the matter. All things my property yet never a part of me. Promise of ever now but nothing I can hold on to.
"when the cosmic joker / fucks with you / he never fails / to do so / with style / and a sense of irony" - I wish I could remember which particular sequence of events inspired this.
"you finger-write your love / in a bus window's steam..." This line was indeed written on the bus home from work, drawing my twisted sketches, listening to my iPod, and people-watching. Note to self: a moving vehicle is a poor choice of venue when trying to draw a perfect circle.
"...stepping into the waves and never turning back." An imagined other, or autosuggestion?
Currently reading: Under The Black Flag - Sami Moubayed
Currently listening: Hypnotise - System Of A Down