I am sat on my perch above the high street and the friday night zoo story is unfolding before me. I am in a dark room and am afforded the sight of a sniper, mentally following people past who do not know I am there. there is a guy with a guitar who has been sining the bridge of 'I just called to say I love you' reggae style in a loop for at least 15 minutes, seemingly trapped in an unwitting reprise and unable to make it out of there. A bin is being used as a football and I am above it all, above even the Cc tv cameras that are catching us all from every angle. Up here on the roof there is noone but sounds, dislocated voices that call and yell. It is friday night and whether it is my age creeping cancerlike through my veins, (probably) or whether the weekend culture has changed for me as a 30 something, (weekends seem now to be filled with a combination of motorways, rehearsing, wine with friends, dinners and walks) bur there is an unrest at the bottom of the growl of the street. People seem pissed off and the friday night pissup is not venting enough any more. Booze don't do it, E's are too cheap, coke is so passe and smack is for the losers, so what next. Don't even need to mention weed. So what next? What next, what next, there has to be an exit, some way out of our dilemma, someway to ignore, put off, escape from the worrying niggle that we might be fucking stuck here, that this, terror of terrors, might be it. our lot. I hear a strangled 'Whooo' and a shit load of glass hitting the pavement. There is the discontent sucking the pint out of the glass and the sound distorts at 50 feet into an incessant foot-scuffled, can kicking ticking time bomb. Exits. We have to have them and at the moment I see all of us so demographically placed, marketed, sorted, decided with our career paths and our mortgage choices - 'and at the end of the day, mate, 'ees a fuckin' wanker'- and our inane Englishness, (down at the Burger Van even the the street fighter will queue for kebab and dubious sauce) lapping all the tick-boxing up, so that even the friday night escape has been a carefully monitored seduction by the powers that control the pornography of persuasion - even that is calculated and planned out for us, watched, of course, on Cc tv to make sure we get it right and land our lines on time. There is no exit. I'm not even sure where I came in. There is no exit from this play - I feel like I've been cast in this role and I'm still not sure I want it. Where to from here? I feel today we are all in search of a community, a space, some kind of freedom outside ourselves, outside the now of today.
Blogging? Working in a space in search of a community? So yesterday. What next?
Down below me, I just called to say I love you just calls again.
