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non iguato cresseunt

An Autumn evening just after the end of school - we are all at home now and the last of the light is streaming directly in through the windows. There is a bar of sun-lit distemper in front of us so we are lit like ghosts, dreaming of fame and how cool we could be. There is some audience in our distantly perceived visions but nothing to react against us and so we dance like maniacs , like David Byrne who seems to have turned into his own father, dancing that dads' version of the moonwalk. Our singer seems to bounce, just out of time, swinging her arms in time with her artistically rhythmical dress. She turns to us in turn and smiles, white teeth in the sun but this smile is only for herself. She is deep into thinking only of herself and who she could become. She has learned this dance of illness from someone else, someone really ill and it makes me nervous that she will sort of catch something; by trying to act ill she will get ill and die and then maybe we will be famous. But of course I do not want to be famous, to be rich. I want so much to just curl up, hide in one of the battered sheds outside. But she needs us, all our limited talents at guitar and bass and drums and even that sad keyboard that plays itself.

Our singer smiles too much. She is lost to this rhythm we cannot escape. I want to stop and everyone else wants to stop but none of us can. Maybe this is hell - we will play until our hands are cut down to stumps - maybe it is heaven and the sound will take us to some top level where we will find our own Beatrice, helping God to decide on what to do next.