entangled
by uzwi
insects, lawnmowers, dogs. hot cars on the rolling road, running up to 5000rpm then going abruptly off the cliff’s edge into silence. “How do!” “How do!” “How do!” in the street. hot cars in the street, rumbling & banging on the over-run as they square up for the roundabout. the rag & bone man’s cry, which isn’t a cry at all but a four-note bugle call slowed to a gurgle by some kind of ancient ice cream van sound system and which I have been failing to write this five years. sun on the lawn. baked walls. sun in the street. beyonce in hot cars. washing machines that grind away as if at stones. light aircraft nauseously repeat the same pattern across the breadth of this May afternoon. flashes of light from windscreens. “How do!” at the greengrocer’s. “How do!” outside the pub. None of these things are happening in memories from being eight years old except one–light flashing off shallow rippling water in partial roadside shade–and yet they somehow all are.
the m john harrison blog 
♥
A friend of mine in Manchester was telling me about the heat earlier. While not anywhere near as eloquently, I think you two are having vaguely similar days.
For those of us colonial children bred in subtropics, the sun is a fact to be avoided.
I like “How do.” Now it’s fucked, cheers.
The rest of that piece is brilliant, as per usual.
Just finished re-reading YSCWMN.
It is one story – or different iterations/variations on one continuous narrative – and just gets better with more investigation. Total value for money!
Thanks, timcee. Making a single piece by bricolage & suggestion was certainly part of it. Tried to haunt it with itself, repeating themes & partial iterations like ghosts of the one thing, the one meaning you’re never shown, but also make every titled component readable on its own & without reference to the rest. Whatever it is emerges from the act of reading, etc etc. Anyway, glad you liked to enough to read it twice. Cheers!
It’s a fascinating approach and it works fantastically well – one is compelled to revisit the text in search of the one thing that remains just out of sight. As far as it being “haunted by itself”, you’ve summed it up brilliantly. It just doesn’t stop working on the reader. I shall be reading it a few more times yet. No choice now…
Bricolage? Absolutely – rap that over the new Iggy/Underworld track “Bells & Circles” (YouTube) and it’s hand in glove
I had no idea they’d done a new track. Thanks.