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Volume.1.Issue.5 |
High Flying |
Apr/May.2001 |
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Verbal Video |
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Play. You're walking down stairs in a sports bar in London. Undressed: You're unqualified, uninteresting, un-athletic; but you're wearing a suede leather coat with a wool collar. It's the new one you bought in Camden town at a second hand shop. It was cheap, but it looks expensive. It took a while to get used to because it makes you stand out. You bought your last coat at a K-Mart in suburban America. You've always bought unexceptional clothing but with this coat, you 're a pimp, a secret agent, a superstar. You are Samuel L. Jackson in a re-make of a 1970s black exploitation film. Who's the man? You are. London teaches lessons. Lesson one: fashion slavery grants freedom. The image you craft through fashion unchains you from insecurities. Clothes cover the naked gaps in your soul, keeping you warm under the cold scrutiny of eyes around you. You walk onto the dance floor. Rewind. Two English men urinate next to each other. "So give me a progress report. How's it going?" "Well, she just wants to have fun, you know. She's just teasing.
Typical American girl." You laugh inside as you finish peeing and
head towards the top of the stairs. You remember all the times you've
been teased by American girls. It's like voting for the wrong candidate
in a close election. The ballot confused you. You got Gored in the Bushes. Fast forward. Dancing you discover that there are no Olympic champions in the sports bar. Only the few, the proud, and the inebriated venture onto the floor, and you become one of them. You do Saturday Night Fever impressions. A man with a Clockwork-orange style bowler hat takes up a lot of space in front of you sliding back and forth. He jerks his arms and shoulders in a furious seizure. Middle-aged women gyrate in leather skirts. Differences in years don't matter in the half-light. You weave in and out of groups. It's surprising how you move when you cease to care how cool you look. You sense a strange solidarity among the people in this space. It's filled entirely with bad dancers. There's a feeling of community and equality. You wonder if Marx was a bad dancer too. Moscow failed, but maybe music can deliver Communist utopia. Rewind. You're walking down Oxford Street. It's filled with people sliding into the creases of nightlife in the city. They look so nice. Some have attire that shines like the Christmas lights above. You notice a pretty girl. She's wearing a tight tube top, tight black pants, and leather boots with high heels. That's it. The rest of her flesh is exposed. She looks so cold and uncomfortable. She walks along quickly, arms folded. You think she should be wearing a coat. (Fashion slavery grants freedom, but liberation has a price.) Fast forward. New night, new outfit, new objective. You're by yourself in a club called Plastic People. The dancers here are more intense, more skilled. You want the beat to achieve maximum penetration. You want to be transported into a solitary refuge this time, not a community. You attempt to marry your motion to the music. You listen, peeling the songs down like onions. Melody upon melody, you dig into the layers of each track-vocals, horns, synthesized loops. Finally you get to the bass-the final layer. Its power slams your eardrums, and you react. Pause. Occasionally people enter your realm of imaginary solitude on the dance floor. For a second, you pretend the woman dancing nearby actually wants you. For a second, a man in a suit pushes past you like you don't exist. You pretend you're invisible. Play. You realize that these interruptions are only tributaries of your river of fantasy. Your ultimate goal is to flow into the pure oblivion ocean inside yourself. There you are nothing, so nothing can hurt you. Rewind. At a pub you stare at a screen. You watch others play a game. "Which aspect of life rattles you the most? A. Trying to understand love and loneliness. B. Struggling for your daily bread in a capitalist free market economy. C. Decay and death. D. Trying to find meaning in it all. What's your final answer? “What would you do with a million pounds?" You'd buy a really, really nice coat. Fast forward. The lights come up at Plastic People. Two English guys are chatting up two American girls. "So I'd go to Coney Island, but not without a gun-blam, blam!" "Have you ever been to New York?" "No, but I watch the Sopranos. 'Hey Louie!'" he yells faking
a Brooklyn accent. You join in. "Actually, the Sopranos are supposed
to live in Long Island, aren't they? That's a New York suburb, right?"
Your contribution to the discussion isn't received well. You laugh
inside at your pathetic social skills. You were just teasing. Typical
American boy. United States of |