My Adventures

In the world of the musical, the morning song was a dirge sung by the commuters as they dragged their feet to work, the slap-slapping providing the drone, and the rhythm. At least, so it seemed from a distance. As I got closer, I came to perceive melodies in the drone. I realised that what I had heard as one long, endless tune was in fact made from each individual person’s separate song. And the songs were fast! That was the amazing thing! It was like one of those pictures made from thousands of tiny little pictures – all the images are busy but as part of the wider picture they mean only one thing. White, for example, or shade. The scale is very important. All these private little songs were so busy, so lively, that it was amazing to step back and hear again how they melded into the soulless commuters’ drone. Only their bodies were truly closed up and sad.

I asked a man for directions, and he left his private melody to join mine for a while. We rose above the drone, always harmonising with it, and provided, briefly, a tune. But I was aware that at the same time I was still part of the drone myself – still backing for other melodies that I was too distant to perceive.

In my line of work, I occasionally run into trouble. But it was incredible here. I had notice, of a sort. I walked around the corner, and just at the moment my body tensed because I sensed that something was wrong, a chord in the background made me sure that I was correct. It articulated my unease. I jumped behind a discarded crate and I found I had more agility than I had before I entered this world. When the threat itself appeared in the form of a drunken reprobate, there was an uncommon co-ordination to his falling about, a muscular power behind his wild lunges. I suppose if it hadn’t been real, his movements might have been beautiful. I dealt with him kindly – I did not want him to remember anything that would cause him to punish himself too heavily in the morning – and moved on.

By now, the endless tide of the commute had ceased, and the 11am crowd had appeared with the falling away of the morning fog. The song had become lively, but not exuberant – the kind of happiness that can be sustained all day because there is nothing wild in it. They sang about the weather, and how much they enjoyed coffee, and how they would deal with a difficult scene – most of the 11am crowd are writers and artists. They sang from the coffee shops and the parks, and they moved with the energy reserved for those who habitually rise at 10am. I knew it was him immediately. His was the only melody I could pick out from the chorus, so that to me they were all his accompaniment, and he darted and leapt between them down the centre of the road towards me, all life and youth. The tune slowed to a refrain when he saw me, and I caught my own monologue joining perfectly with his.

In the land of the musical, first meetings are brief, so I should not have been surprised when, moments later, everyone I had ever met approached and surged around me, carrying me away from him. I was part of a lively number now, mostly concerned with whether we could all skip work that afternoon and go to the open air movies instead, but as I glanced back I caught a snatch of his dumbstruck ballad as he stood motionless in the centre of the street.