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.