something changes when you get to a hundred miles an hour. you're just driving along, and then you notice something different, without looking at the speedometer - the car isn't forcing against the wind anymore, or the drag, and the road is pushing you forward rather than sticking the tyres. it seems slower than eighty, too.
there are smells on the road that are much more pronounced and consistent, if only because they are some of the familiar smells of the road, and are blasted through the dashboard along with the cold air. the smell, of course, is oftn the same one - manure. but sometimes it's not manure: sometimes it's blueberries. and, even when it's not blueberries, i reached the point a long time ago where manure stopped smelling bad, and just smelled like farms.
(a school trip in first school, to a local farm, and the guy showing us round cut us up a piece of sugarbeat each. it had the same texture as a really hard pear, and the slice i had was off-cyclindrical in the same way. it didn't have a lot of flavour, apart from a vague sweetness, but i enjoyed it anyway. and there was this constant smell of manure arond, and being little, everyone was doing the erggggggg and raaaank and whatever noises, and holding their noses and scruntching their mouths in a pronounced fashion. we moved on from the sugarbeat onto another part of the farm, and he was showing us some piece of machinery, and i dropped my much-licked slice of sugarbeat. i was hugely dissapointed, but the farmer saw and told me i could go back an cut another piece of, which was awesome, so i did. finding my way back through the barns, i came to realise that manure didn't really smell that bad, and the smell has got to be buried somewhere in the sugarbeat anyway, considering it had been growing in it. and i got back, and loped off a generous chunk from the abandoned beat with a big, sharp knife, which was probably the beginning of my lifelong big-sharp-blade obsession.)
a moving vehicle seems like the modern equivalent of a meditation mat. i always remember a quote from dubliners, 'rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the possession of money,' and i thought he must've thought the first one while in a car, about the car; and then the second two as further meditations on elation, while in the car. it's easy to think, and even easier not to think, to be completely peaceful - loud music, filling an enclosed space, and vibrations, and movement, ever changing scenery, with the constants of the road and the vanishing point. it's a lot easier to spot moments of intense natural beauty when the land beneath you advances without changing. when a huge moon lights up the darkest corners of a cloud, creating a struggling, moody glow, it's not hard to keep half your eye on the car in front and half on the sky. at least, until the road peels away, or the cloud envelops the circle.
andrew bird's bowl of fire - two way action
2 or 3 years ago, in the summer, i was working 3 jobs, which meant i was working 12 hour days for 6 days, mostly. and sundays were just 5 hours, or something, cutting grass. i'd just recovered from PVT, which was quite a severe case of post viral fatigue...at one point, they thought i might have ME. but i didn't, and i was working, and i was a zombie. i remember those weeks almost exactly the same as the weeks i was on a load of drugs for having all my wisdom teeth out - zombie weeks. in the zombie weeks of the wisdom teeth, i couldn't complete sentences very easily, if at all, and would have random, unstoppable bursts of lucidity, where i felt it was important to write every thought down incase i needed to access it in the interim.
in the zombie weeks of the 3 jobs, it was the first time, and i kind of revelled in it. or, not revelled in it, but just accepted it for a while - if i didn't think properly, i wouldn't work out that i was fucking crazy. but, i remember driving back from norwich, after working until 6, and knowing that i was going to get back and work till at least 9, cutting grass. and i remember the 12"/80 compilation that i borrowed from the library, and driving in the dark, down the acle straight, listening to the extended version of the cure's 'a forest'. but more, i remember listening to the 12" version of soft cell's 'tainted love', and wondering why it was called 'tainted love/where did our love go', and i remember hearing it morph into 'where did our love go', and that moment of absolute, pure revelation, and how the fuck did they manage to turn that halloween-thump into a tightrope bassline, and this is fucking awesome, i am so fucking happy about this.
at that point, for about 15 minutes, i am alive again.
the cure - a forest (extended mix)
soft cell - tainted love/where did our love go [12" mix]
when you walk places barefoot, as i have been doing (intermittently) for a while, you have to watch where you're going - really watch. every bright, twinkling object becomes a threat. every gravel driveway is a slight discomfort. and, just forget about your footprint in melted bitumen.
but, you have to watch where you're going - really watch. you see all the imperfect tarmac, the lines covering plumping or cables, the strange little stones, all the pennies, and the black. but it doesn't mean you're a constant shoegazer, even if your are headphones distorted and your hands are in your pockets - when you look up, it's even better. colours, birds, light, sky, people: people's eyes.
ash - walking barefoot
