The rest is silence
I am sat on my own in the garden of the house that I own and I’m wondering whether or not I have an agenda for every single thing I ever say. I’m wondering this because last night I went to dinner with a woman who bore a startling resemblance to an ex of mine who got married about a year back.
It is night, which is just as well.
If it were day my cheery retired neighbours would be bustling about in their garden. They’d have the grandkids over, and from behind the honeysuckle with the white-flowered bindweed curling through it would come shouting and laughter. Unmediated. Without an agenda.
She accused me as I was in the middle of saying something. What’s curious to me is that I cannot remember what I was saying. I recall a distinct change in the atmosphere at the table and becoming instantly aware that I’d been talking for a while, and equally instantly aware that I could not remember a single word I’d just said. Just looked at me and said “do you ever say anything without an agenda?”
I asked her what she meant, a few times. Becoming increasingly bellicose as I did so, my voice rising enough in volume and pitch to cause a nearby couple to turn towards our table in alarm.
It’s not just night, it’s pretty late at night, which is just as well.
If it were earlier in the evening my cheery retired neighbours would have their family round for the match. Liverpool were playing some team from France, I think. Or maybe Spain. They’d be chanting and shouting and full of direct intent. They’d care only about winning the game. I could hear them, as I stretched out on my bed and looked at my bedroom ceiling, attempted to follow the tracery of lines from the moulding in the corner as it reached towards the top of the window. I’d seen John that afternoon and he’d invited me round. He’d done it so openly, so without artifice. Just simply inviting me round. Because of this I felt instantly utterly unable to attend.
There’s a Groucho Marx line which is constantly paraded by the sort of people who like to rent others senses of humour rather than maintain one of their own. You know it already, the one about clubs and members. It doesn’t really bear any relevance to why I am sat out here, late at night, with even the birds asleep, wondering whether or not everything I ever do has an agenda. It does bear relevance to something though. I’m sure of it.
When I was ten I was afraid of dancing. Petrified. I couldn’t understand the mechanics of it at all. A girl called Clare asked me to dance at the school disco. I turned her down. I think it all started going wrong from there on out.
There are the first intimations of dawn, a change in the pressure of air, the honeysuckle thick and cloying around my nostrils, which is just as well, because soon there will be an explosion of birdsong, and when there is an explosion of birdsong there will be a distraction.
All from Clare, down to me sat at a table in an overpriced restaurant where the customers only care about the shiny fittings because they were all wolfing down food which I couldn’t help but note was pretty poor, buying dinner for a woman who I was becoming slowly aware that I didn’t even like but who did bear a startling resemblance to an ex of mine who got married about a year back who now I come to think of it didn’t have an ounce of artifice in her whole body and who I broke it off with brutally for no readily apparent reason other than perhaps I was being invited to join a club with dancing and I’m still scared of dancing even now, to this day, to this night, sat in the garden of the house that I own, wondering whether or not everything I say, or do, has an agenda. And what the implications of this are.
The woman in the restaurant had beautiful hair. The rest, I guess, is silence.
It is night, which is just as well.
If it were day my cheery retired neighbours would be bustling about in their garden. They’d have the grandkids over, and from behind the honeysuckle with the white-flowered bindweed curling through it would come shouting and laughter. Unmediated. Without an agenda.
She accused me as I was in the middle of saying something. What’s curious to me is that I cannot remember what I was saying. I recall a distinct change in the atmosphere at the table and becoming instantly aware that I’d been talking for a while, and equally instantly aware that I could not remember a single word I’d just said. Just looked at me and said “do you ever say anything without an agenda?”
I asked her what she meant, a few times. Becoming increasingly bellicose as I did so, my voice rising enough in volume and pitch to cause a nearby couple to turn towards our table in alarm.
It’s not just night, it’s pretty late at night, which is just as well.
If it were earlier in the evening my cheery retired neighbours would have their family round for the match. Liverpool were playing some team from France, I think. Or maybe Spain. They’d be chanting and shouting and full of direct intent. They’d care only about winning the game. I could hear them, as I stretched out on my bed and looked at my bedroom ceiling, attempted to follow the tracery of lines from the moulding in the corner as it reached towards the top of the window. I’d seen John that afternoon and he’d invited me round. He’d done it so openly, so without artifice. Just simply inviting me round. Because of this I felt instantly utterly unable to attend.
There’s a Groucho Marx line which is constantly paraded by the sort of people who like to rent others senses of humour rather than maintain one of their own. You know it already, the one about clubs and members. It doesn’t really bear any relevance to why I am sat out here, late at night, with even the birds asleep, wondering whether or not everything I ever do has an agenda. It does bear relevance to something though. I’m sure of it.
When I was ten I was afraid of dancing. Petrified. I couldn’t understand the mechanics of it at all. A girl called Clare asked me to dance at the school disco. I turned her down. I think it all started going wrong from there on out.
There are the first intimations of dawn, a change in the pressure of air, the honeysuckle thick and cloying around my nostrils, which is just as well, because soon there will be an explosion of birdsong, and when there is an explosion of birdsong there will be a distraction.
All from Clare, down to me sat at a table in an overpriced restaurant where the customers only care about the shiny fittings because they were all wolfing down food which I couldn’t help but note was pretty poor, buying dinner for a woman who I was becoming slowly aware that I didn’t even like but who did bear a startling resemblance to an ex of mine who got married about a year back who now I come to think of it didn’t have an ounce of artifice in her whole body and who I broke it off with brutally for no readily apparent reason other than perhaps I was being invited to join a club with dancing and I’m still scared of dancing even now, to this day, to this night, sat in the garden of the house that I own, wondering whether or not everything I say, or do, has an agenda. And what the implications of this are.
The woman in the restaurant had beautiful hair. The rest, I guess, is silence.
posted by Matt at 12:27 AM
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