The olympics & the true face of medusa.

The True face of Medusa?

I write this time from Ocean Village a complex of expensive apartments and piers built by speculators hoping Gib will become another Monaco. The dream to attract people with a lot of money to buy summer homes and berth their luxury yachts. I’m in one of a slue of high class restaurants which have opened and this is an Indian restaurant without a hint of Indian styling or dark skinned waiters. Through the open windows the smell of the sea and the sounds of the bay float across me and the sweet white flower which floats in a glass on my table. All this mingles with Nora Jones whose crooning quietly in the background. As I peruse the menu and listen to the music. I notice a heavy set woman in her mid-sixties looking towards my direction almost smacking her lips. I wince at my sudden attractiveness and order a drink to steady my nerves. A gin and tonic in honor of my dear friend John Whitley who would love this tranquil moment. He would also smile to know that the man with no sports gene (moi) has so far successfully managed to miss the Olympics. A hard thing to do in Gib which like the rest of the western world has become littered in every bar and restaurant with flat screens plastered with the games.
The young waitress with the accent from some unfamiliar European country comes over with my drink and I order a chicken Byranni with some Nan bread. The lady across the room is still glancing over towards me with that hungry look. Feeling like an appetizer at a homeless persons convention. I try looking elsewhere towards a framed picture opposite of me of a British fox hunting scene. An image totally incongruous with the Asian menu I’ve chosen my food from. I drift back to my notes and sip my colonial G&T. Where was I? Oh yes…the Olympics in China with all it’s Ying and yang grandeur and grotesqueness. A more humdrum looking singer swapped out for a lip-sinking cutie. A spectacular fireworks display tweaked with computer graphics. A mind blowing opening ceremony utilizing countless humans doing the same thing in unison. Spooky and spectacular. You ask me Chairman Mao still casts a long shadow across this culture?
But not to worry folks here comes President Bush who bumbles and drools his way through the ceremony and games. Ignoring…like all the press…China’s human rights record and pollution levels. Why wouldn’t they? The USA’s are not so good! I like John Stewart am looking forward to the end of the Bush administration ‘as a person….and as a mammal.’ Speaking of mammals the woman is now looking like she’d like me to suckle her deepest desire.
I look once more towards the picture of English gentry on horseback hunting down a fox…when I spot it. Like Perseus avoiding the gaze of Medusa by using his shield’s reflective surface to see. The glass of the painting opposite me has a reflection dancing in it from an until then unseen television screen which is above my head. A perfectly beautiful young man on the parallel bars. The figure that the woman has been watching with such hungry eyes. He is the tall drink of water which her thirsty body would love to drink. I smile…a little disappointed and eat my dinner in peace. At least I didn’t get turned to stone!

Motor cycles and music (August 14th)

I slip down Parliament lane towards the Star bar where our oldest pub and my local is. Its situated in a razor blade thin cobbled stoned street which reminds me of New Orleans. For a second I remember my sweet ex-wife Lois dancing with me at a jazz funeral. Then she’s gone swaying on the balmy air. Behind me I can still hear the sounds of the crowd coming from Gibraltar’s main town square. Where I’ve just walked through to get to here. It’s the Summer nights festival and a large stage and sound system has been set up in Casements square so that dancers, musicians and DJ’s can entertain a large crowd of locals eating and drinking at the restaurants. As I pass through the crowd checking out the scene I shake my head smiling. A couple of 21st Century sorcerering apprentices in the guise of two young DJ’s are dueling each other with a cacophony of robotic beats, repetitive crescendos and lusty electronic mush…but not a note of music. Like enthusiastic amateur lovers they grope around each other with sampled slivers of sounds but there’s no ecstasy to fool the ears into orgasm just deafeningly loud sloppy moments. A pair of struggling Mickey Mouses comes to mind with an over conjured tempest brewing wilder and wilder all about them and threatening to drown us all.
Earlier this week the same square had been full of some 800 Shiny Harley Davidson’s from a motor cycle rally that we had here in Gib. (I have a couple of photos attached.) A nice bunch of leather clad folks took over the town. Shame the bodies were not in better shape. Mostly…beer bellied men and older women who should know better. But tonight, the bodies are much younger and hesitatingly move to the beat. Mostly just teenagers dancing who are on vacation and so don’t have curfews and much confidence in their steps. Suddenly, as if hearing my thoughts about the lack of real music in this musical event, Tom Jones voice roars out across the square with a cry of “I think I better dance now!” and The Art of noise song ‘Kiss’ pounds away with it’s own brand of retro electronic beats. Then as if magically freed from the DJ’s spell the youngsters are gyrating as one. A split second later the music wave washes across the adults in the restaurants and toes start tapping while butts bounce around on their seats. Will he ever die I wonder? Or will Tom Jones just keep living on in some zombie form? Inside some future mix? I think he just might. It’s our modern mummification. An eternal digital after-life.
I move inside the tiny Star Bar to get a drink and the babble of music is taken over by the drone of dueling TV’s spewing out news. SKY (British) on one…CCN (European) on the other. Not much of it good…the markets are still collapsing from the credit melt down and the Middle East wars are escalating with their casualties. Joined by Georgia’s foolish attempt to get into a pissing contest with the Russians. Plus, I still haven’t met up with a Hash dealer. I take my brandy and move outside to a cooler table in the night air and sit opposite a stationary store called ‘Write away’ How things have changed? No pen and paper with weeks to get your words to someone. We now keep in contact with facebook and can see the smallest things that a friend is up to. Feeling anachronistic as I write in my journal, I smile at the ease of all the other things in my new life this time. It’s no longer the scarping nails on glass at having to give up the USA. Instead a growing acceptance and confidence in the future. I still miss people but the sense is of something to the end of a run but not the adventure. That there is much more to be accomplished.
The job has turned out to be mostly fun and this week I had a singing experience with some four Germans folks in their sixties who were riding down from the top station. It was a truly beautiful day and the sky we were moving through seemed just endless as a powerful cooling wind slid through the open windows of the cable car. (Yes, we have open windows in summer but they do have bars to prevent folks from falling out.) Then a husband of one the two couples began quietly singing a song to his wife. It caught my ear because it was the same song that I had been loudly singing on top of the cable car as we did our test runs. Partly to overcome my nerves at the long drop but mostly because it is such a thrill to be doing such a thing. Anyway, the fella starts singing and I join in. He turns around, smiles to me and starts singing louder. Then all five of us are just singing our heads off as the cable car seems to fly!!! I finish this weeks ‘Bloggo’ from Gib with the song. Love and miss you all.