First it starts with the organ and later the mariachi guitar and he sings, "create me, create me," like it's, I don't know, a plea or an instruction or a dream.
My dad used to play the drums. He was really good. He was in a band. They played lots of local bars and in Canada where it's cold, people sat around in bars and listened and they danced.
Was he famous?
He could have been.
What happened? I mean if he was that good?
He met mum. They had us.
She was a doctor then? Or training to be? So he just stopped?
He's a butcher.
And a drummer?
A butcher.
How old was he?
My age.
Neil Diamond sings, "Day breaks, night falls. I wait alone." They were in the movie theatre not long ago. One of the last old movie theatres in town. He used to go there as a boy. It brought back memories for him, she could see it from when she walked in, four minutes late, the past in his eyes. The movie they saw was terrible but the theatre felt great, like going back to your grandparents' house before they were gone, when the smell of them was there and the roses in the backyard and the damn cat scratching in the garden. The ground is shiny from a storm that came while they were watching the movie. The sky is watercolour wet, Blackford Hill obscured by steamy dumplings of cloud. He suggests a bite to eat then says he's not hungry. He suggests a drive.
This is where I lived when we were little.
Did you have lots of friends?
Yeah, there were lots of us. We used to hang out before dark, before dark came down and we'd play games. I was heavier then.
There was a stone house, a drive that wrapped behind the garage into a wood. Even though she'd never been a child here she could see through his eyes how it looked bigger then, it looked like the whole everywhere.
Does your dad play with you?
No. He doesn't really play now. He beats on the breakfast table, with his silverware.
Do you think he misses it?
I don't know. I get mad at him for not…
Does he ever come to your gigs?
No… I mean, I don't really like for my family to.
They drive down a side street. He wants to find a place he remembers or thinks he remembers. It's an orphanage, a rambling house in the neighbourhood next to the one he grew up in on the other side of the wood. He tells her the story while he drives, winding the aching truck through small lanes, following the sight of trees beyond roofs of houses. Green lushes, bushes thrall.
I was with a friend of mine, a boy. We were about ten, nine or ten. We were in the trees. We went through the trees and came up to the fence and went over it. There was this adventure playground, in back of the orphanage.
"I wait behind a wall to hear you call my name."
We were playing on the swings and the slides, jumping off the climbing wall. Then these boys came out of the wood, they had some kind of uniform on. We ran. I think they dropped out of trees actually. It was like an attack. We ran for the fence. He caught me, before I got to the fence.
Were you scared?
I don't know. I don't remember. He punched me in the head. That's what I remember. You remember the first time you get punched.
Two young girls in hot pants and high heels stumble out the front door of one of the imposing houses they pass. He eyes up the girls as they pile into the backseat of the cab. He tries to ask the driver of their taxi where the orphanage is but the taxi driver thinks he's mad and pulls away.
They turn around and drive up another street. A sign in front of a weedy lawn says 'Barnardo's Home for Boys' and it's not as he remembers. They stop near the far side of an encircling fence.
My dad came over the fence. He must've followed us from the house. He got the boy off me. Dad says it's not true, that he didn't. He can't remember this but he's like that. He forgets things.
She remembers the story he'd told her about his dad coming into the kitchen to get a sandwich. A friend of his sister was there, a heavy-set girl. The father, totally unawares of what is coming from in his head out of his mouth starts singing ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and the sister and the fat girl are horrified and the rest of the family is just about to piss themselves with laughing and the dad is humming away. He could be like that too, she thought. But was the father really oblivious? Was he?
"The greatest story ever told is you and I, and how we tried, and how we won and what you've done, creating me."
A few days later, or maybe it was weeks, I got this letter from him.
From who?
From the boy.
How'd he get your address?
I don't know. I mean, that's what makes me think, well that's one of the things that makes me think my dad must've been there. Because he must have given the kid – well he must have been in touch with the orphanage somehow.
What did the letter say?
That he was sorry for punching me.
She says they can get out of the truck and go look if he wants. He doesn't want to. He says it might seem dodgy, them nosing around. That is the reason he gives.
"How many seasons have we endured?"
She wonders if he will get famous.
"How many fields yet to plow?"
If someday she'll hear him on the radio or see his face on a poster half torn off a bridge and remember this day, how his upper lip twisted when he smiled or how his arm felt around her hips. She wonders if it doesn't matter how much love your parents have for you or how much they want you to live their dreams, if it is just something that is in you or not in you, this light that could shine onto people and make them feel less lonely.
She looks out the window and listens to the motor running. She wonders about other folk's minds, if theirs are like hers or different somehow. She listens to the music. Neil Diamond sings, "It comforts me to see you there. There you are." Outside everything looks fresh washed. New. The sun going down in the mist over the mountain makes the sky look like blushing.
He drives her home. He talks about being tired. She looks out the window. The houses on the streets they drive grow more familiar. She knows she will be in her room soon, doing the things that make sleep possible and imagining him as a little boy in bed that night, his head sore and the face of the other boy looming, the poor angry boy with no parents, not ones who played drums or didn't, not ones who were doctors or weren't. Just rooms at night full of darkness and sometimes crying.
"Days break, nights fall… I dream alone."
© J.L. Williams
J.L. WILLIAMS - PERFORMANCE/COLLABORATION DETAILS:
PERFORMANCE
2002 – present Big Word Poetry Slam Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Competition, Bongo Club, Edinburgh and Various Locations - Four competitive performances including one at the 2004 Edinburgh International Book Festival, 2002 – 2005 - Kin Open Mic Night, Café Royal, Edinburgh, Poetry Readings April 2005 Big Word Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Night, Tron Bar, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance November 2004 Big Word Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Night, Tron Bar, Edinburgh Poetry Performance June 2004 RCAfe, Royal College of Art, London, Poetry Performance June 2004 KAFKA: Corpus Et Voce, Experimental Theatre, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Theatrical Performance with Edinburgh-based theatre company Highway Diner June 2004 SIRIUS Concert Series, St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance April 2004 Hotel SiLENCiO Performance Art Collaboration with Glasgow’s Chateau Art Collective, Brunswick Hotel, Glasgow, Techno-poetry recording experiment with theatrical accompaniment by Edinburgh-based actress Laura Cameron Lewis February 2004 Dialogues New Music Festival, Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance with simultaneous reading of text by Edinburgh-based actress Laura Cameron Lewis 2003 – 2004 SiLENCiO Performance Art Cabaret, Counting House, Edinburgh; monthly and also in Edinburgh RUSH Festival May 2003 and May 2004, Regular poetry readings and experimental poetry, video and sound delay performances November 2003 SIRIUS Concert Series, Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Poetry Performance October 2002 An Opera of Clouds, premiere of music theatre work by Christine McCombe with chamber music, electroacoustic soundscapes, video projections and live electronics at St Cecelia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Reading of poems by Australian writer Alison Croggon February 2002 Big Word Performance Poetry and Spoken Word Night, Tron Bar, Edinburgh, Poetry Performance
COLLABORATION
July 2005 Scottish Arts Council Grant Award for Poetry and Music collaboration project with composer Martin Parker April 2005 Collaboration CD with AJ Yush 2K (Musician, Composer and Producer) Spoken poetry recorded and mixed with music for CD August 2004 Digging in the Vaults: Rosslyn 2004 CD Collaboration, Rosslyn and Edinburgh (for international distribution) with William Page (Music Journalist, Producer) Voiceover June 2004 Black Mother, poetry and music composition with theatrical accompaniment, KAFKA: Corpus Et Voce, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh with Martin Parker (Sound Designer and Composer) Writer and Director May 2004 – June 2004 Hollywood Law by Paul Hughes (Filmmaker) Producer November 2003 SIRIUS Concert Series, Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh, Performance of John Cage’s Swinging with Daniel Williams (Sound Designer and Composer) Spoken performance of lyrics June 2003 Minotaur, live original poetry reading and sound delay with film accompaniment, SiLENCiO, Counting House, Edinburgh with Martin Parker (Sound Designer and Composer) Writer and Filmmaker November 2003 Poetry and music collaboration for Paragon Ensemble’s ‘Whatever Happened to Music?’, Tron Theatre, Glasgow with Daniel Williams (Sound Designer and Composer) Writer and poetry performer May 2002 The Sash Unwinding by Joshua Bryan, Edinburgh (Artist, Filmmaker) Film Voiceover November 2001 Thirst by Joshua Bryan, Edinburgh (Artist, Filmmaker) Film Voiceover Jan – May 1999 Vision (strangely there is a wisdom), Experimental Theatre, Jewett Arts Centre, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Writer and Director May 1999 The Accident, short film, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Filmmaker December 1998 Kiss, short film, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Filmmaker May 1998 Visiting Emily, short film, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, Filmmaker
DAVID CONSTANTINE
TED HUGHES
ROBERT LOWELL
T.S. ELIOT
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT - Fyodor (Mikhaylovich) Dostoevsky
AUSTERLITZ – W.G. Sebald
BLOOD MERIDIAN – Cormac McCarthy
THE END OF THE AFFAIR – Graham Greene
THE WASP FACTORY - Iain Banks
YUKIO MISHIMA
NAOMI MITCHISON
JORGE LUIS BORGES
TONI MORRISON
VIRGINIA WOOLF
