Soundtrack to the Capsule

Round a friend's house. Rain clogging up the window panes, fracturing the street outside into fluid, untrustworthy angles. Mock-Tudor building across the road. Tall streetlamps, pink-beige modern glow. Always prefer the orange lights. Seem to be phasing them out now though.
Street lamp incident. Clanging noise from the street. Look out. Big white lorry pushed up against the lamp post, now swaying and swaying. Vertiginous dance. Half expecting it to fall. Lorry drives off, and the swaying stops. Still shining out there now, still again. Won't trust walking underneath it though.

Rained all weekend, not that I particularly mind though. Rain, gloom and wind. Walking here tonight, I was fascinated by the rushing rivers in the gutters. Dams of drowned leaves. Blocked up drains. Floods stretching across roads, blossoming in nightswells.

Woke up on A's sofa at lunchtime yesterday, slightly hungover. Ale and whisky. A. snoring in bed. Sat and smoked cigarettes, watching it get dark outside. A certain sense of triumph when I saw the streetlight (orange pleasingly) scar the curtains.
Go to Tesco's. Pot noodle, the Guardian, apple juice. A. gets up when it is fully dark. He feels guilty for sleeping all day, but in a strangely gleeful way.
Inevitably, what we call 'the capsule' descends. The Capsule is one of those shared concepts that often exist between friends who have known each other a long time. Difficult to explain to anyone else, particularly as such concepts have a tendency to evolve over the years.

Christmas of 2004. I was still working at the petrol station then, and was unable to get the time off to go back to my parents. Only A. and me left in Brighton, a strangely deserted place on Christmas day, streets full of drunks and people who had nowhere to go. A bottle of Baileys, sat in A.s flat, curtains shut, telling ghost stories. Inevitable really. At some point we become aware of the atmosphere in the flat changing, becoming charged with a strange air. Felt like we had been in there forever, and that outside the flat wasn't Cromwell Road, but some bleak moorland, suburban-Carpathian landscape. Felt like the flat was becoming haunted, a capsule in the midst of a sudden mystery. Continued telling ghost stories, until I probably fell asleep on the sofa, careering toward the Boxing Day Baileys hangover.
Over the next few years the concept of the Capsule evolved. It usually occurred on a hangover, or the second day of a hangover. A. would have woken late, seen no-one, then, by the time night fell, he sould say that the Capsule had descended; a skittery, haunted feeling, like being watched. The mundane becoming different, pleasingly, disorientatingly sinister. I remember one time I met A. at his flat one evening. Much to my initial amusement, I found him crawling around the floor on his hands and knees. 'My doorbell keeps ringing!' he explained 'I think it's the TV licensing people!'. You would think, as this was not my flat, that I would find Andy's behaviour very amusing, but somehow I ended up -caught now, as I was, in the Capsule- being drawn into this strange atmosphere. We turned off the lights, convinced that the TV licensing people would be looking through the curtains. The doorbell rang again. How would we get out? What sinister authorities were trying to get into A's flat? Who was that figure in the car outside? We came up with an escape plan; if anyone questioned us, we would say we were from a fictitious 'flat 18'. I felt certain that I was going to get into some form of unspecified trouble. We managed to escape the flat, but not the Capsule. No-one was outside. The mysterious figure in the car turned out to be a dummy in the passenger seat. This made us feel even more uneasy. So we went down the pub, taking unfamiliar streets, in case the doorbell ringers were following us. We discussed later how the streets seemed changed; haunted and mysterious, a kind of suburban gothic. I'm sure after a few pints we felt better.
A. bought a TV license the following week.

The Capsule then, could be best defined the following way; a feeling of supernatural mystery in familiar surroundings bought on by waking up late, being hungover, not going outside until dark, and a mild hysteria.
Isolation, even relative isolation, plays strange songs in your imagination.

I digress though.

Back to last night again. After A. had said that the flat had turned into the Capsule, we decided that the best course of action was to go down the pub. We decided on the Prestonville, a considerable walk away (well, about 25 minutes) and a pleasingly hartrowing one through the wind, rain and hail. We were hoping for a quiet night in the pub, and we were initially dismayed to find that there was some kind of music on. 'Louis B Delta influenced blues'. A well dressed black man of indeterminate age was playing the guitar, occasionally singing. Pleasingly incongruous, he looked like he had stepped in from another decade. I know nothing of blues music, all deals struck with devils at crossroads, prohibition-era moonshine, rail-riding and switchblades. Delta influenced blues? Is that something to do with Mississipi? Hmm.
'Listen' said A. 'he seems to be providng the soundtrack to the Capsule!'
As I listened, I realised the kind of blues he was playing was quite unlike any other kind of blues I had heard before. Echoey guitar effects, hypnotic rhythm -actually the rhythms were dreamy and fractured - and use of strange almost atonal scales. This was excellent. I had never heard anything like this before. It was quite busy in the pub, an old man and drunk woman arguing, ('you're accusing me of doing something I aint done!') a group of students discussing tree surgery ('in Canada they don't use chainsaws, just axes as big as your face!'). We stood at the bar and listened to the bluesman, Louis B, strange time traveller. Louis B noticed us at one point. I don't know why, but said 'are you two musicians'? We shook our heads and he carried on playing. What would have happened if we had said yes?

Went to another pub after The Prestonville, met another friend. A. headed off to another friend's house to drink rum. I walked home through the rain and the hail, got back soaked, and fell instantly asleep on the sofa.

I don't remember dreaming, and woke up at midday. Left the house before it got dark though. A. just waking up, was complaining of having drunk too much rum, and of how he didn't want to go out and see old hippy experimentalists, Gong play that night, but had bought the tickets and couldn't get out of it.

Means of course that I'll get back before him.
Wonder if The Capsule will be waiting for me?

We Don't Come Here Often

Late November twilight. A cigarette outside the call centre. Dark blue sky, passing shoppers. Cold air hanging over everything like some faltering premonition. Back in the call centre. A 20 pence coffee from the vending machine. Close the door of the office on the Friday afternoon sales teams. No more work to do. Clock out. Watch the strip of twilight outside the window, the brick wall overshadowing the slope down to the call centre car park, a half-concealed street lamp, beige yellow, setting up watch for the night over a similarily half-concealed street. Say goodbye to T. Alone in the office.

Staying on A's sofa until I get a flat sorted. He hears me sleep talking in the night, wrote down what I said the other morning; 'Hands and vision. All vision will be checked'. Have no memory of the dream that led to this, what it might mean, if anything. Dreams cut through time. Years, decades, seconds. Told N. at work of a dream I had more than twenty five years ago. She came up to me the next day, said that the dream had kept her awake, made her afraid to go to the bathroom in the small hours. She seemed strangely pleased by this though.

I don't know why I remember my dreams so well, and this is not the earliest dream I can remember. One of my first memories was a dream, (a failed expedition to a doomed planet, astronauts attacked by spiders. Exploding volcanoes).
The dream I told N. was set in the second flat we lived at in Malta. In the dream I ran from the hallway into the living room. It was night. I remember the midnight blue sky through the porch windows. A distant moon over dry plains. There were two women in the living room, sat on the sofas. They were both identical, or if there were any difference between them, I do not remember. Headscarves. Sensible shoes. Floral pattern dresses. Blitz-era London chic. Typhoid-white skin, staring eyes, drinking tea from china cups balanced on saucers. One looked at me and spoke. I do not remember her voice. She said 'we don't come here often'. It was the most terrifying voice I've ever heard. I woke up.

The dream has followed me for years. I do not, of course, trust my memory of the dream, aware I must have embelished it, changed it, re-ordered and disordered it over the years. Dream rumours. Nightmare factories.

Did I even dream it in Malta? Sometimes I still think I dream of that woman, but when I wake I'm never sure.

Nearly full-dark outside now. Barely any differentiation between the blue of the sky and the black of the building. See the calendar reflected in the window. Andy Warhol's poster of Marilyn Monroe. Desk littered with coffee cups and warning notices 'QA use only, not for agents'. Busy weekend dawning. Moving flat, maybe. Hopefully. A friend's birthday tonight. Helping out at an exhibition on Sunday.
Put on my jacket, prepare for the consolation of a late November walk, all cold air, rain-scent, night-blackness and street light.

Put things in my bag; sketchbooks, notebooks, the free newspaper I picked up on the bus this morning. Three days left of November. Five weeks left of the decade. The faltering premonition suddenly rights itself. I am not sad it tolls the end for this decade.

Roll another cigarette, ready for the walk to A's house, where I am, temporarily, dreaming.