Lester Bangs

*Argh this post is a bit gruesome. If you are squeamish, please don't read any further. It's also long. My only defence is that I write short disjointed sentences so it isn't as long as it looks at first.

One day last week I read Kenny's beautiful post over at Glow in the Woods, the answer.

It was about a song he had written for his own funeral.
It was the final line that snagged me, that this song remains the most cathartic.
A song for his own funeral.

***

Listening to the radio . . . . a familiar segue around here. . . .

In the morning, on my drive to work, I am frequently accompanied by a programme called 'The Life Scientific' which is a sequence of 30 minute interviews with leading scientists about their work.

The interview on this particular morning was one with an entomologist, Amoret Whitaker. She works, in her day job, at the Natural History Museum in London but is also, on occasion, called in by the police to crime scenes. In this capacity she collects insect evidence from decomposing bodies to help assist in ascertaining time of death.

As part of her research, she has monitored the decomposition of many bodies, animal and human (the latter only those who have chosen to donate their bodies to scientific research I hasten to add.)

The interviewer asked if she, herself, would choose to be buried or cremated.

She replied, "When you're actually there and you see it up close  . . . . it's a very natural thing. . . nature just doing the natural thing . . . it's very calming and very peaceful . . . it's not violent at all . . . I think it's a very good way to go."

I wished, fleetingly, that I had managed to have Georgina buried rather than cremated. Burial was my first instinct. Gone to earth. Returned to earth.

But I had her cremated instead. Due to various practical considerations.

I did think that perhaps I would like to be buried. It did sound restful.
When Amoret Whitaker described it.

Not violent at all.
No raging against the light, dying or otherwise, necessary.

***

Rest.

In my comment on Kenny's post, I mentioned one of the songs I associate with Georgina. With her death and the strange echoing presence it still has in my life, is Astral Weeks.

Whilst I was looking for a link to the lyrics, I found an extract from "Stranded" published in 1979, the year that I was born, written by Lester Bangs.

He wrote that Astral Weeks is an album about people who are 'stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralysed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend.'

And I thought, ho hum. No wonder I like it so much.

Because I am flapping about like a stunned mullet.
Overwhelmed.
Transfixed by one moment of vision.
Of my tiny, dying child.
The strange, sensation that I nearly had the answer.
That I saw something that I was not supposed to be see.
The inner workings of something.
Fate? God? The void that occupies the space supposedly occupied by either of those two?

I haven't been around much lately. I feel that I no longer have anything useful to say. What possible use could the human equivalent of a fish that has recently been hit over the head be to anyone?

BONK!

Eh?
Hey, hey!
Why are you hitting ME over the head? What did I ever do to . . . . ?

BONK!

Stunned.
All is black.

You! You damn person bonking me over the head!
You took my baby away! Stop! Thief! Bring her . . . .

BONK!

Stunned.

Gasp, gasp, gasp.

Why?! Why are you still hitting me you b******!
It's been four years!

BONK!

Gasp, gasp. Expire.

Dead fish.

A stunned, dead fish with no words of wisdom.

I didn't find peace. Just the occasional moment of oblivion or forgetfulness.

And yet I am at peace.
Possibly as a result of being hit over the head once too often.
So I'm at peace.
Or possibly concussed.
Who knows?

***

It's all such a mishmash.

I want to hold my arms out to you and say, 'it will all be better, it won't hurt as much. Not always. These things you've seen will fade or become understandable, acceptable.'

And it will. It truly will. Joy doesn't stop here.
You might think it has.
With that strange, awful moment of being bonked over the head. Repeatedly.
When your baby dies and you give them up to fire or to the gentle ministrations of insects.

But perhaps you aren't going to ever be quite the same again.

But joy doesn't end here. Don't give up on being alive.
Don't give up on the strange exultation of being alive.

I'm just overwhelmed.
With . . . . an excess of everything.

I look at the shopping centre, in a dull surburban town, full of rain. And it is full of Georginas. Full of our stories. And all those people standing up and bumbling around, looking to buy something in Claire's Accessories or in Tesco, suddenly becoming the stuff of legend. Epically heroic. Wondrous. Because they've all got their Georginas, hanging around their necks, on their backs.

And yet  . . . .they are shopping.

I am shopping? Really?

And some people walk upright and casually.

Other hunch over, bent with their eyes to the floor.

I circle far above us all. I want to hug them all. I want to fly away.

Or at least I want to know which of those trudgers also have wings.

***

I was blind.

But now I see.

***

Thank you Georgina love. But please put the blinkers back over now.

Sometimes I need to un-see.

***

I stand outside work. In the rain.
And the names run down my hair like the water does.
Names who never drew a breath.
If I know you, your babies were there.
In the surburban downpour.
And I hope I didn't summon them there against your will, against their will.

Where are you now? My dears?
Everywhere. Everything. All the time.

Immortal, invisible.

In a puddle in a multi-storey car park outside a dull surburban town suffering in the economic downturn.
And in the stars reflected in those puddles.

Because only you could do that. Only our children could do that.
Inhabit those both at once. Puddles, stars, tarmac, reflecting lights.

Fire can't stop that. Insects can't stop that.
Out of the the way you weaklings.
Fire. Insects. Decay. Destruction. Mortality.
We see you.
Tweet, buzz, burn all you like.

We roar straight past you.
Move on over.

And you fall from our limbs like so much dust.

Fire. Insects. Decay. Destruction. Mortality.

Give it up because you cannot hope to stand against us.
You don't have an ice cube's chance in hell.

We will outlast you.
Because we are their mothers.
Their fathers.

Until we hold them in our arms.

We will endure.

Hi kids.

We miss you. We love you.

In another time. In another place.