ADAM Masterson

Been thinking a lot lately about my next incarnation. In my room in New York laid out with influenza, there were no books on the shelf that were to my tastes, so I went back in memory to the folk tales of my childhood.

Thought of Snow White and her seven dwarfs, thought of her laid out in her glass coffin, when she ‘dies’. Felt a little like her, my sick bed being my own glass coffin, a surveillance post.

A batch of DVD’s were delivered from the living room. Watched ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ starring David Bowie. I liked the movie, it went with my convalescence. You can sleep awhile wake up again and feel you’ve missed nothing. No plot to it, hallucinatory, like a William Burroughs novel, or life.

I felt like the alien, drinking cups of water, taking vitamins and dreaming strange news from another star. My room too resembled the man who fell to earth, with him he’d scattered a closet of cloths, a cupboard of pharmaceuticals, and as he’d landed he’d tipped over a bureau stuffed full with scraps of scribbled lyrics, crumpled receipts and out of date billets doux’s.

I slept lyrics, reciting them as I drifted off like people count sheep, I’d wake, still reciting them, hours later only to find them in a much better order, I’d reach for my bed-side table and scribble them down.

I thought of Sleeping beauty and the seven fairies at the party to celebrate her birth, six of the fairies bearing gifts to help her live a happy life and the seventh being Saturn or Satan cursing her with death and a long deep sleep.

I thought of the seven gods of the planetary spheres and all our lives and after-lives mapped out for us by the stars and the planets revolving round in circles. Are Job and Hecules still out there today in some corner of the world suffering the same trials?

I thought of the seven notes in the musical octave, I know you’ll tell me there are eight, but the eighth note is the same as the first only you’ve ascended into a new musical sphere.

I thought of Elijah no longer revolving in a circle but spiraling upwards, ascending into heaven in a whirlwind chariot of fire and triumph!

The infection got worse and my glands swelled up. I put two postcards up on my wall for moral support. I’d bought them previously at a card shop on Avenue A, one of Oscar Wild photographed by Napoleon Sarony circa 1882 the other of Arthur Rimbaud photographed by Etienne carjat cica 1871.

Whenever I looked up at Rimbaud my heart would beat a little better, my breast would heave up on the waves like his drunken boat at sea. Unlike ‘Le Bateau Ivre’ and it’s cargo of flemish cottons fled away with the waves, my scattered cargo were pieces of consciousness, half remembered songs that I was drawing back to me.

I remembered a song I’d come up with at heliocentric studios, in East sussex England, my friend Richard Causon had taken me there. Richard’s a piano player, one of the best the world has, but we sat with two guitars. Playing guitar with a piano player can move you in different directions. I came up with a verse, I could see a girl, vividly in my mind walking down Kensington Park Road, between Elgin Crescent and Blenheim Crescent, where the cafe’s and restaurants are open till late night with a warm glow, I could see her walking barefoot in the rain, unnerved and unhinged, her wet dress sticking to her body, the make-up running down her face.

We had a chorus too, but I found it weak, not musically, but lyrically it was limp had nothing to say. I disgaurded it.

Till now in my sick-bed it keeps coming back. I thought of an article I’d read in a bookstore in Notting Hill by Lester Bangs. It was about Van Morrison and the Velvet Underground, something about their music and song having many lifetimes behind it. I put the book back on the shelf and wandered round Notting Hill Gate in a serene state. Bangs had really excelled, the article had put me in a spiritual harmony, the same kind of evening harmony that the music itself puts me in. I never bought the book, and I guess you can look these things up on google, but I like to learn things by heart. I like to train my mind to remember.

I took my girlfriend out that night we met in the Warwick Castle on Portobello Road. I remember elatedly repeating into her big beautiful eyes ‘How many lifetimes? How many lifetimes?’ and her smiling up at me like I was half-crazed. I knew in that moment I loved her entirely.

I hit high fever, and deliriums till a courier with antibiotics was sent to me. I went into deep sleep, I could see the portrait of Rimbaud penetrating my dreams, like his poetry had tried to penetrate the godhead, to penetrate infinity like a saracen to bold a genius to know you have to win promotion gradually.

Like the archangels Lucifer and Michael, and their quarrel at the beginning of creation. Michael tried to wrest the crown from Lucifer’s head only for the emerald stone on Lucifer’s brow to fall to earth and be lost, like the unicorns of Atlantis that Noah neglected to make room for on his ark, the horn from their brow, the third eye lost beneath the flood, submerged in the waters of our subconscious.

In the end I think it was Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis that cured me. I watched ‘Some Like It Hot’ for the first time and laughed myself better. I’d like to take Marilyn Monroe out on a date in the next lifetime, or maybe I will in this lifetime if Job and Hercules don’t mind.

Like snow white in her glass coffin and the egyptians in their gigantic pyramids, I’m trying to point my incarnation converter mobile towards my happiest star.

I jumped up and sat at the edge of my bed feeling fresh. I rubbed my eyes, and on the bed-side table all these portions of consciousness piece themselves together…

Rain lit sky, wipe those eyes, headlights blur
A muffled drum, a beating heart, a distant hurt
Faint and pale the shelter line, calm and cold
Silk and steel, a still return her ribbons torn

She’s been sleeping in a stolen dream
Hideaway, hideaway

How many lifetimes?
How many lifetimes?
Dry your eyes

Beauty sleeps, the almond eye, the emerald stone
Face to face our challis burns, our dream of home

We’ve been sleeping in a stolen dream
Hideaway, hideaway

How many lifetimes?
How many lifetimes?
Dry your eyes

Trying to see you, trying to hear you
Trying to talk out loud
From beginning to beginning
Just to turn this light out

How many lifetimes?
How many lifetimes?
Dry your eyes

How many lifetimes?
How many lifetimes?
Dry your eyes