Three chairs (faced inwards) created a scalene triangle in the back third of the room. Their occupants looked like a carefully presented experiment in how to sit uncomfortably. If this was a competition then Henry V would have won. Her legs were lifted towards the sky in her customary fashion, one of them was grafted around the arm rest, and the other more precariously leaning on metal frame that constituted the chair back (which itself defied gravity barely gripping the chair after years of misuse by posing rock and roll bands). Leif, the bassist would have disqualified for the competition as she was starting to stand, a swerve of the back, a flick of the immobile dirt moulded hair and soon she was. As unselfconsciously poised as a mindless ballerina, lead between her teeth, electric bass crudely tied to her back, long dark coat floating about her ankles, one booted stiletto on the chair, one in the air, a hand balanced on her amplifier and her other hand lifted the lead from her teeth, and then the lead was in the amplifier and she was the first band member ready. Two footed now Leif looked expectantly. Nobody would be ready for some time. She grabs the amplifier with both hands and lifts herself up. She was only small and her amplifier was very tall. She took a book out of her jacket pocket and waited. The figure in the third chair was wearing a pair of leopard print leggings, a long thick blanket like nightie and three days layers of make-up and four of stubble. His hair was of uneven length long and short in turn reflecting the deceptive nature of his body, he could look as if he was any age between twenty five and sixty two. This was Derek – and the band were assembled to practice for his coronation. He had forgotten.
In the very middle of the room, sat Gill, the youngest of the band and a gentleman, and the largest and strongest of the band habitually checking that all of his drums, bottles, cans and saucepans were attached to the correct part of his kit, that they were in easy reach, that the strings attaching them together were of sufficient length, that his vast quantities of sticks were all in the right place, including the smaller ones that he liked to keep in his frizzed up hair and his blazer pockets. Gill was not an artist, not in the psyKo mozKeto modal. He did not awake every morning with a swaying room covered in vodka, paint and poppy cakes, he did not storm out of rehearsals, he did spend countless dealing with his “demons”, he turned up on time. In recent months, his girlfriend Lief had moved in to his house in the artist colony. They lived on Seapigen Alley – and cared for the Sea Pigeons who nested there. As a favour to the professor he would occasionally attach messages to their backs, or miniature copies of Je Ponse – and invariably they would deliver them – a more reliable method of communication than any other the Professor knew. The best thing about Gill as he was happy with himself – and that is not something to be underestimated.
In the last third of the room was a door. There was also a PA system, a half rotten sofa, a dustbin, a burnt fragment of carpet, a leaky roof and a whole bunch of wires. the walls were kept apart by a longer metal girder, that looked as if it has been placed there a temporary measure many years ago. There were light hanging from the girder and there were further wires wrapped around it. On top of this sat St Stephen, his legs hanging over the edge – his eyes facing away from the door. He had rushed from the office today and had only time to put on his long black boots, his most elegant cloak, and his eyeliner. The rest of his office uniform was intact – although his tie was askew. He was being ignored again. He didn’t like that at all. His cloak billowed in the way in which it was designed to as he leapt off the girder and landed boot first into the sofa. A lesser man would have tripped and possible would have sprained his ankle. St Stephen would never have attempted such a feat without prior practice. His boots hit the middle of the sofa, before being lifted into the air, his arms hung like wings. In a moment he was comfortably dominating the sofa and he was confidently dominating the room.
“And it looks as if I will be having to sing again tonight”, he said, concealing the glee from his voice but not from his eyes, “we should have started twenty seven minutes ago.” Derek had awoken by this point and had decided to concentrate his efforts on removing an interesting piece of melted carpet attached to the centre of his hallux valgus. Jayne, the vocalist for psyKo mozKeto was missing again, the Silver Wizard was wondering where she was, but he was also feeling unhappy about St Stephen’s entrance, he knew the planning must have gone into it – and that in itself made the man suspicious, it was also making him strangely apathetic – or maybe that was the cake he was munching on.
He picked up the large pair of tweezers that he had borrowed off Derek, and carefully reached into the tiny coal scuttle that he had left on the floor by his coat. He did not pick up the first piece of coal that the tweezer reached, he gently turned it aside but not so as to threaten the singularity of the particle and moved on. He found a perfect particle of coal. He placed it into his contraption and the music started. It started quietly; an intermittent thumping and chugging followed and joined by clanging meandering acid sounds. New noises joined in, and soon the sound collage was a dance, and Derek was leaping around the room, hands placed in a senseless and delicate symbolism, nothing to stop him but his his nightie (acting as it was like a parachute), unrestrained by any sense of rhythm or timing or balance.
From the chaos of the Silver Wizard mechanism’s Gill found something that nobody else would have believed was there. He found a beat, and before his stick had hit his rusty kettle for the third time, Lief with an almost telepathic abandon was there, and a moment later Stephen was there, and The Silver Wizard hurried to the other side of the room where he kept his violin, where the wood would be safe from fire sparks – as far from his steam driven mechanical instruments as possible.
confessions of a rodent fiddler 