“Are you there?”
“I think so, I sense a few shadows dancing on my Plato’s cave remix.”
“I’ll just be a second, the signal is a bit feint.”
“Line up the pylon with the mast and the lightning tree, that is the triangulation point.”
“That’s better. I thought I heard Beloved on the radio for a second, is that you?”
“I was thinking it, must be coming through loud and clear now then. Let’s hope the signal lasts.”
“Some things they were never ever built to last, the Comet in the sky and this burnt out car.”
“The plane might no longer be around, yet when you see an aircraft warning sign guarding the verge, that is still the ghostly silhouette of our tragic Comet, the shape mirrored, perhaps, in an antecedent notebook, sketching his birds beside Bishop, the streets shooting off Bishops Rise down the hillside, spreading like the cracked glass in this splintered windscreen, each named after his De Havilland planes, the Heron, the Dove and the fateful Swallow, like the figures in Plato’s cave they flicker, illuminated by the dying embers of some unseen flame.”
“Maybe that’s what attracts you the temporal nature of your cave art, like your subway walls, that painting under the A1 of the Comet’s silhouette was as fleeting as the plane. As fleeting as that tiny sketch you did which blew away on the wind.”
“Comets only trace a few ellipses around the sun.”
“They go out in a haze…”
“A blaze of glory?”
“No, a haze. From here there’s a slow motion blur, as if you’d used a finger to smudge the dust.”
“That’s a scorch mark on the glass.”
“Are you sure this isn’t going to go up in flames again?”
“I think the chariot has scorched this spot on the earth enough already, the lines aligned with our waste land.”
“Phaeton you mean? Is that what you were painting in the subway or was that the sail of Theseus, St John’s Hilltop triangle over there?”
“It’s was part of a series. I’m going back.”
“You can only go back when you’ve been somewhere before.”
“I’ve painted that subway many times. Orpheus, Cupid, Ariadne…”
“The mirror man and the Minotaur in the snow globe, the shipwreck in the bottle. The Minotaur is watching for ships like the Watts painting. Echo Boy and the Minotaurs, they recorded at Regan’s too didn’t they, the pull of the swallow holes. It’s like the mirror man, why does he only look at the sky in that broken car mirror, just as I have framed you this very instant, a reflection upon reflection in reverse, heading backwards? What do you see?”
“Hope it’s not what Zarathustra saw in the mirror when he returned to the cave, although there is a sense that all this has happened before and that time stretches forward and backward into eternity from here, where the dream ends and begins at the World’s End.”
“The World’s End where the A414 crosses the River Lee? Is that what the mirror man used to look at the upside down sky? The reflection on the water?”
“It depends which fable falls into earshot at the HILLTOP or The CHALKDRAWERS ARMS. He was searching the sky for the ghost engine, someone else said he stood there waiting for the Swallow to return when he heard the sonic boom. One of the jet test engineers said that strange figures used to appear in the flames but you couldn’t see them in a mirror.”
“At the jet test beds? I thought they said it was the portal through which the phantom test pilots returned. They tried taking a photograph and the flash exploded. All that came out was a pattern not unlike the silhouette of the Comet, a shape inside a glass sphere, like the snow globe glued to the dashboard.”
“I never heard that. Like the comet in the sky up there or the Comet plane?”
“The plane.”
“The first passenger jet airliner that crashed or the red racer outside the Comet Hotel?”
“Don’t talk to me about the Comet Hotel, I regret ever telling you about that wall and why you always insist on taking that roundabout at warp speed I’ll never know, unless you’re trying to shake the snow in the globe on the dashboard. Is that why you added the globe to that wall?”
“You were using it as your own private cinema. Remember the silent movie we made with pylonstarlings? I recall a certain person stating they were definitely pulling that wall down, like The Horse’s Mouth, it was a last chance to adorn the space. A job for Best you said, a place to paint your masterpiece which will then meet the wrecking ball.”
“That’s what the paperwork said before plans emerged for the University to build something alongside the Comet roundabout and the ghost train tracks.”
“Don’t they know what happened there before they built the tunnel?”
“Not quite a story you can slip into the coffee steam swirl.”
“Is that where you heard your mirror man story?”
“The one about the photograph of the Comet? Yes they said he fears the sky is going to fall if he looks directly at it but he needed to guide the test pilots back in. At night he fixed a star…”
“In the mirror? Guiding a plane in would be like riding that fairground bike! Remember?”
“Where it goes left if you turn the handlebars to the right? I was good at that. I just fixed my eyes on the horizon at Stanborough and watched the motorway lights and that other burnt out car, you know Asbestos by the poplar tree.”
“I don’t think that has happened yet. Are we watching one of your films here? I thought I saw Junior’s houndstooth coat and those Robot shaped shoes stepping into the frame inside a cinema portal, are we following the footsteps of future ghosts? Watch out for Give Way signs on the edge of town and be careful if you find yourself sleepwalking at STANBOROUGH, put the lake over your shoulder and head for the railway arch through to the World’s End, look for the dying flame of burnt out stars.”
“I’m running out of sync. John Dunne’s fault again.”
“Dunne the criminologist with all our faces on file or the poet John Donne? Didn’t he write a famous poem in that valley there? Wasn’t he a direct descendant of Thomas More’s sister?”
“We’re getting off track here.”
“That track is where the spectres of More were first reported. Isn’t that why the church on the Lone Star road is named after him, where the river ran crimson, to mark his path through purgatory on the land where he finished Utopia? His figure sometimes seen wandering where Dellsome Lane falls down this hill and ends in the air, severed by the new motorway.”
“It’s not headless. It doesn’t end there, it rejoins the body again on the other side where the electricity substation is which feeds the pylons beyond the woods. Looks that pylon which links to these running up the hill and off to the transmitter station in the east. The highest point until you hit the Urals.”
“Sending signals nine miles high.”
“Is that what they are doing, sending signals to the east?”
“That’s what they accused some people of, passing the jet secrets behind the Iron Curtain. Did you see those postcards in the pub of Danger Man? They filmed an episode at the Hilltop, our local estate shopping precinct was relocated behind the Iron Curtain. St John’s church was supposed to be a spy training centre. The next thing you know they are saying we have spies in the jet test experiments.”
“An experiment with time.”
“I guess it was. They were the first to break the sound barrier, although Geoffrey Jnr swallow dived into the Thames so it didn’t count.”
“No I mean, An Experiment With Time, the book by J W Dunne where you see an event in a dream before it happens. Pre-cognitive dreams, that’s it.”
“You had a pre cognitive dream about another burnt out car? Another Phaeton? Maybe I’m painting your dream. Is there a single tyre track in the snow like this one?”
“There was definitely a shooting star and a burnt out car involved and snow was falling but the sky was still crisp and clear enough to see the stars, is that possible? Like it was happening inside the snow globe again. A twin world.”
“Maybe that’s where this is. Did you ever consider that?”
“You mean, they’ve finally put you behind bars, I’m back in the red room in the blue hour and we’ve come here?”
“In the blind hour.”
“Cupid Goes Blind? Isn’t that the title of Junior’s novel? I bet we exist there too, like Justine exists in the Quartet, the book inside a book.”
“Like Vonnegut’s Now It Can Be Told. Shall we make a pact then? Here at lover’s leap. It can finally be told from beginning to end, or from the end to the middle eight, now the wall has gone.”
“Let’s write it in the ashes on this wreckage and in the stars in the mirror. Best end Hope begins.”
“What’s that line in Dying Flame? Writing these lines travelling in between the last house on Dellsome and the dream. Where we both return here in another song?”
“And watch the sky for shooters all night long.”
“Those flashing lights are heading this way. They’re after shooters too.”
“Shooting stars through burnt out cars.”
“We’ll both return here in another dream and say this is where we came to watch the dying flame of burnt out stars.”
“It does feel like life is drifting like the snow, what’s the phrase, suspended in a broken bottle? Didn’t he use that on the second Aromasound single as well? The song about the car being stolen. I can still smell that song when I hear the line about the snow globe.”
“Can you see the snow with your eyes closed? When I close mine it carries on with the sound of radio interference. Is the radio still transmitting or is it a delayed leak from the Marconi factory? I can hear something… do you hear it too? Something about Slow Jones? Is Mercury still sending coded messages out on Dream Radio?”
“Maybe it’s a message only meant for you. If I could create a perfume to capture this moment, that’s what it would be called. I’ll use scented paint in the subway on resurfacing.”
“The one they haven’t bricked up yet. Closing down our entrance to the underworld concrete. Do you remember what Junior scrawled beneath the musical notes on the painted wires?”
“You mean the painting where pylons met Pythagorus”
“PylonThagorus he wrote…where Mercury aligned with the strings on Junior’s guitar. You tried to paint his song lyrics.”
“They were his guitar strings threading musical notes between the pylons. That was a successful painted representation of his medium, in my book anyway, if you pardon the…”
“I thought it was because you heard about the Pythagorean intervals associated with the planets and you thought he saw your sketch before he wrote the lyrics. Isn’t that where I joined the debate?”
“Something like that. It was originally based on that story about Dr John Dee coming here to read the sky to determine the best date for Elizabeth to wear the crown. I imagined him spying Mercury over this hill. You know they insisted that a church be placed on the Hilltop to offer morel guidance to the New Town neurotics about to land. They didn’t expect that Utopian Spaceship aligned the wrong way around so that the stained glass sucks in the sunset over Willow Way. I painted it sailing off into the sky over the motorway. Did you see any of the Theseus ones?”
“Of course I did, you pretty much told Mercury to tell the whole town that I was your Ariadne even though you think nobody knows it’s you!”
“Yes but don’t you see. That’s exactly it. It was only meant for you.”
“You could never say that to my face. The closest you ever came to saying it was playing that Beloved song on your beloved boombox. Do you remember when you placed the headphones over my ears as if to suggest, I’d say it if I could.”
“It’s our song isn’t it? Ahead Of The Clock are our band aren’t they? I didn’t think it needed saying. Those who have to say it probably don’t always mean it.”
“Wasn’t Beloved recorded at the Regan House? Ahead of the clock, that’s what you said when you opened the front door.”
“No, I think I shook the door knocker and said, here’s the hand that always stood at storm, remember the barometer in the hall?”
“I remember that you got me to open the curtains and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw your painted stars. You laughed your head off. I thought it was a legend that he bricked up every window and wallpapered every door.”
“It was to soundproof it for the studio but it does look pretty off the wall.”
“You played that song to death. The fact that it simply says Beloved over and over like a chant, that’s what appealed to you.”
“And it didn’t to you?”
“Of course it did. Can you hear it now, coming through the radio? Always knew it was only meant for us.”
THREAD CHOICES
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Below you can listen to Beloved by Ahead of the Clock and open the Danger Man Postcard portal.
Beloved by Ahead Of The Clock
The numbers in the first postcard indicate the locations in the Danger Man postcard below.
